A great part of London in better times -- and as it will be again very, very soon!

[morsefan]

Just wanted to post a few pics here of sites very familiar to me from the area of attack in London in better times. Wish I had a few for you from the Russell Square area, but I didn’t have a digital camera available.

Comments

[supedujour]

Those are great pictures. Did you take them?

[morsefan]

Thanks a lot! Sure did -- I just wish I had a few of the much more beautiful architecture in the Russell Square area.

[supedujour]

You have an excellent eye for composition. People always laugh when I say that, but how you center a picture can be the difference between compelling and "oh no, more buildings". My brother-in-law will take pictures of clouds from an airplane window, but somehow he manages to make the pictures worth looking at. You know?

The SGM and I were just talking about visiting the UK. We may have to make the trip early just to lend our support to our most staunch and valuable allies.

[morsefan]

I do know what you are saying about composition and I do try to pay attention to that when I can, though I don't have any special knowledge of "what works." Having said that, some of the composition of pics like this is driven by "where to stand to get enough of the building in to show what it is and avoid being hit by a bus at the same time!"

[lyssiae]

Yay for great photos of London - they're bouncing back even as we type.

[morsefan]

AWESOME!!! That's what we want to hear. I was pleased to get the somewhat blase email from my friend Richard. He was fine; didn't affect him; he was heading home (where can he go from Temple to get a train, I wonder; gee, it would be a walk given that the tube isn't running, though I guess busses are). He didn't know anyone affected. Again, it's just that business as usual thing that is the only way to go if at all possible (read: you or your mom didn't get killed).

[lyssiae]

Yes, it's good. We're watching BBC (still!) and I'm fast becoming more and more impressed with how London has dealt with it. There are questions being asked about the (lack of) pertinent intelligence, but we minions never get to hear all that until years later anyway.

At one hospital at least one person has died from injuries - I suppose the death toll is now somewhere over 40. Realistically speaking that will probably rise overnight. What to me is "good news" is that (so far) there were only two deaths from the bus bomb in Tavistock Square. Did you see that bus? There is only half of it left!

I dunno if I'll post about this in my own LJ today, you know? I'm in sheer admiration but there's a LOT of stuff going on in my deeper heart that I don't want to let out until they've calmed down a bit.

London has done brilliantly today; I hold citizenship of the best country in the world, and I'm b****y proud of her, in the most sombre way possible.

[morsefan]

I have very dubious feelings about intelligence generally, especially when you think through what is going on out there. After all, everyone said Saddam had WMD, for example. I mean even the French and Russians "knew" it (hell, they probably sold the Iraqis a bunch of stuff). In the end it wasn't there. My suspicion is that a lot of CIA dudes got their info sitting around hotel bars in Moscow with KGB guys, because we know they missed all the obvious stuff that would have told them the USSR was dying. Now, they are totally out of the loop, because intelligence about al-Qaeda is certainly not that cosy. I'm sure strides have been made, but I'm not shocked that sometimes there just isn't information

[gfrancie]

when we stayed in London in May we stayed about there.

[morsefan]

No kidding -- where did you stay?

[gfrancie]

It was called The Central Hotel. It was on a block of many small family-run hotels. There was one called The Princess Inn and I told Mr. Jenner, "I should have stayed there." Most are run by Indian families and serve breakfast in the basement. Small but tidy place. We were on the ground floor so we could hear the underground.

[lyssiae]

I've stayed at the Central Hotel a couple of times. Funny how places link people together who otherwise have more or less no connections at all until you bump into them online :>

[josparke]

Looks nice... so sad what's happened :(

[morsefan]

Amazing the resiliance. We must pray that they can keep it up when the grief becomes tangible and sets in.

Minor Correction

[kit_hartford]

The red-brick building at the bottom of the pictures is St. Pancras Station, not King's Cross (Kings-X is next door and much less impressive, but somewhat better known). This is about 1/4 mile from where I work - all-in-all a rather disconcerting day.

- C

Re: Minor Correction

[morsefan]

I thought St. Pancras was across the street -- not arguing, but I could have sworn . . . . Reason I say that is that to get to St. Pancras I always had to follow this weird set of construction detours . . . or at least I thought that was it.

Hell, before I was there that summer I always thought Kings Cross/St. Pancras was practically the same thing anyway. I can live with it either way!

Thanks for pointing it out!