1 July 2007
These latest threats to my freedom from fear have had less impact than previous ones. Last night we had to pick up my niece from Heathrow. I can’t recall worrying about leaving the car in the multi-storey. Later, in the early hours, as we got nearer home, we passed a crowded nightclub, cars parked up and down the street on both sides for a block each way and the sidewalks/pavements teeming with young partiers. It all looked like great fun. For a second my mind built a scenario about a bomb in a car destroying that atmosphere and many of those lives. Our daughter had gone out to one of these outdoor all-night concerts where insane young people stand around in the mud and rain and listen to the latest electro-techno-indie-scooter-wooter music. And, yes, I had thought the unthinkable about that venue as well.
The decision has to be that you go on, that you adhere to the patterns of life before the first attacks, as closely as you can. Of course those patterns are subtly changed beyond recognition by the simple fact of being forced to consider the action, a concert, an evening at a night-club, a business trip, as at risk from terrorism, even if we reason it through and rightly determine to carry on seemingly as before, knowing the calculable risk is infinitesimal.
I guess we will eventually weave the pattern of these threats into our lives; they will become as commonplace as the risk of an automobile accident on a wet, rain-slicked highway. You know that the possibility is there, you register the risk in your mind but, by and large, you ignore it and go about your business. Life appears to be increasingly cluttered with these little fears.
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