Reflections

So, here we are. Yesterday provided a test of beliefs, now that I think about it. For the past four years of the “War On Terror”, there’s always been that thing at the back of my mind when I’ve expressed an opinion. The thing that says “Yes, but how would you feel if you’d been attacked?”

And now I know. And my opinions are no different. I’m not going to call for us to start dropping fuel-air bombs on, say, Algeria, because I still don’t think that would be a positive move. I still think that holding people indefinitely without trial, or detaining people because of what we think they might do is not a good idea.

There was also a feeling of togetherness I don’t think I’ve felt for a while. I was so relieved when all the London posters to RPG.net posted in to say that they were safe, when I got texts and e-mails from my friends to say they were OK, if scared. The advice to “have a cup of tea” was being freely bandied about. I did it myself. A half-joking reference to a dead idea of Britishness, brought up only in times of stress.

Sitting on the sofa, or in a computer-chair, letting the information wash over me. That statement on the Fundamentalist website was wrong: there wasn’t panic, either in London or elsewhere. We’re too used to things like that happening for panic. One RPG.net poster cycled 15 miles to work today, just so that things would continue as normal. Don’t mistake all this for a “stiff upper lip” or other clichés. This is a grim determination to go on living as normal.

And that’s victory. Nothing else.