First light comes at about 6:30am. Around London at this hour, many men (and it mostly will be the men) are bracing themselves for the day ahead.
They will have breakfasted. They will have travelled through the mainly empty streets. They'll be assembling round about now, talking, some smoking, looking at the ground rather than into each other's eyes. Soon, they'll make their way to the burnt out railway carriage.
They'll squeeze their way in, into the twisted metal spaces, in, past the lacerating, exposed edges, in, among the melted plastics and the charred fabrics, in, in search of the dead.
The briefcases containing the notes for the meetings that were never attended. The handbags containing makeups that will never be used again. The suitcases containing the holiday clothes that never got worn. The presents that were never handed over at the family reunion. The shoulder bags with the badminton kit for the return match that was never played.
I rang my parents last night. My mother was quite up front about it for once. She had been worrying. I told her there was no earthly reason why I should have been on either of those particular trains.
But that might be true for many of the dead. How many people got up early for an impulse trip to the capital? Conversely, how many people overslept and angrily missed their usual train? It always goes either way. The miracle is that horror happens so seldom.
And as the details of this terrible and poignant accident seep in, so the hysteria of the media intensifies. They are deriving an almost erotic charge from the lexicography of calamity and with each further juicy and salacious adjective the gleam in their eyes intensifies.
I despair. Sometimes, I despair. Pray for the living. Look after the survivors. Comfort the bereaved.
Shantih
Shantih
Shantih