Entertainment Editor Cole Hill is in London right now as a part of the SMU in London program. The following is his first-person account of life in the city after a weekend filled with attacks from terrorists. Some, like the car bombs in London, did not go as planned. Others, like the airport attack in Glasgow, partially succeeded.
It’s my first late night in the neighborhood of Soho in London on June 29 and police are racing to deactivate a car bomb no more than two blocks away. Or that’s at least what I see spilling across the news ticker of the BBC when I get back to my room an hour later.
In the spirit of “ignorance is bliss,” it seems I missed the panic of a possibly devastating act of terrorism by a mere hour and blind luck.
And none of this seemed possible to me when I hopped on the plane 10 days ago to spirit myself 5,000 miles away from the Dallas area I’ve called home for the past 20 years to the “Old Empire.” Fine, call me ignorant, a touch uninformed or maybe poke fun at the fact that I read record reviews more often than reports on terrorism in Newsweek. But I think we can all admit it’s become scary how easy it is to forget about everything that’s happening outside our borders when headlines of “bombings, secret plots and al-Qaida” don’t run for a few months.
I embarrassingly admit I had shrugged most of my father’s advice about the world’s current state and “smart thinking for these times.” But that’s where I found myself: essentially unprepared for a trip into a totally different social and political environment than I had ever known. Thrown right down the block from a possible nightmare.
Thinking back, it should’ve seemed obvious given the context. Soho, one the craziest, “most happenin'” areas of London, is constantly packed with a mixture of locals and tourists from all over the world. So where better to hit than outside a popular nightclub just down the street from the perfume of restaurants serving Asian, Indian and Italian food-including one where I sat unassumingly, poorly attempting to use chopsticks to eat noodles. It’d be like winning the lottery.
That’s not to make light of the possibility of tragedy or, even worse, joke at the expense of one’s past. It’s become obvious after being here just more than a week how serious things are right now.
London has moved to a “critical” state on its threat-ranking chart (a system I would’ve deemed arbitrary a month ago). And that’s not to give off the impression that the SMU-in-London program is in some sort of imminent danger or that we’re throwing up fish and chips with worry (wow, university PR would have a fit). But there is something very real and startling about waking up in the middle of this every day, and knowing the responsible thing to do is to keep yourself constantly aware of your surroundings.
The environment here is not an entirely tense one either though. It’s obvious London is doing it’s part to keep itself safe from any possible attempts of terrorism. This can be seen through things like the act of a heroic policeman who deactivated the trigger to the car bomb that night in Soho or the fact that police are stationed on most corners. And it’s things like this that are a reminder of the classic adage: To keep living is the best defense in uncertain times.
And as corny and Toby Keith-influenced as that might seem at times, being here has totally proven the statement. After all, if I can’t “soldier on” and keep to normal activities like navigating the tube, trying to stomach bangers and mash for the first time or drinking a Carling at the pub down the street, maybe it means more than squeezing every drop from this summer abroad. Maybe it means adopting a more realistic approach to living in “these times.” But by now I’m pretty sure it’s a little bit of both.
