Of course now I have said that I will go on writing my brain has frozen. In spite of a house full of cats I can hear a rat chewing something really close (it had better be inside the wall) and they all have that 'I'm not listening' expression.

As I haven't read other blogs for a bit I was wandering around and got furious about the IRA again, having moaned about their portrayal in American films this morning. Having to deal with their bombing campaigns in London is the nearest I have been to understanding what it would be like to experience a war. I haven't been close to a bomb that has gone off but I have been within a couple of streets twice and been through many 'scares' some of which were hoaxes and some where a bomb was deactivated. I think that having to file slowly out of theatres or huge department stores when a bomb may explode at any moment were some of the most horrible experiences of my life. I have also been trapped in streets with policemen ushering people in random directions and having no idea which would be the safe way to choose.

One of my worst. I had taken my son, then small, to meet my daughter off a train and we were standing at the barrier watching the train draw in when a mad-looking policeman ran towards us waving his arms and screaming, 'Run. There is a bomb right here'. My daughter's train had screeched to a stop but it was already partly alongside the platform. I took my son's hand and raced towards the exit and found that it was sealed. Then the tannoy said 'Will everyone try to take cover near Platforms 1 to 5. The station exits are closed as we believe that there is a second bomb outside.' There was no cover but I found a huge concrete plant container and pushed my son down behind it; there was no room for me and he kept peering over it saying 'What are we doing? Nothing's going on', while I mashed his head back underneath. After half an hour of mental hell the police cleared away all their yellow tape and my daughter came walking towards us. We never knew if it was a hoax or not but when you are going through it there isn't a lot of difference.

Some friends of mine whose father was high up in the Army had the front of their house blown off (they were all out at the time). The mail box outside another friend's house exploded. This was a long running and horrible tactic along with the bombs in street litter baskets idea. There are STILL no litter baskets at railway stations. A bomb under a car a few streets away was intended for an acquaintance of ours but went off early killing a passing cancer specialist. A passer by noticed what looked like a bomb in the gutter near my childrens' school. It was and it had been lying under a car for TWO days while the entire school had passed back and forth to the gym, walking within a couple of feet of it.

One of the scariest things was that you always felt that even if you second guessed the IRA they could always get you because they were quite incompetent when out of their element in London. The bomb near our school for example had been left under a car that did not belong to the person they were after and he had moved from that address some months earlier.

Two of the many reasons that I hate them. The most personal. One is that they ruined Christmas for me for years with their 'Christmas bombing campaign' which usually started with a bomb in one of the main shopping streets in the West End around the beginning of December and ended on Christmas Eve. Even if they didn't go off there would be lots of 'coded warnings' by men with Irish accents which involved evacuations of shops, streets and underground stations and left you jumping at every shop announcement and checking all the emergency exits and trying to spend as little time as possible on higher floors. The other one, many years ago now, was the torturing to death of a friend of mine's soldier cousin while he was serving in Ireland. They took him to a lonely cottage and afterwards fed his body to the pigs.

The IRA are really just the Mafia under another name. An Irish friend who also hates them told me that a relation of hers who works in a factory had to pay money every week to an IRA 'representative' who came round and collected 'donations' just after they received their pay packets. One week the relation said that as he didn't support the IRA he didn't want to give them money any more. The next morning when he went out to go to work he found his car a burnt out wreck. When the 'representative' appeared the week after he lent close and said 'So, will you be paying or would you like it to be your children?'

Right - well that is all out of the way and never needs to be discussed again.

Typically, just as the IRA seem to have moved on, the Islamic terrorists have taken over. A couple of months ago I was in the basement of a huge Oxford Street store when the familiar running security men and soothing tannoy announcements happened all over again. 'Make your way slowly towards the Northern exits etc.' Have people no memories? I was away up the escalator like a ferret and muttering and pushing at top speed. 'Slowly' indeed. I couldn't believe it but I passed people still finishing their coffee and others sauntering along chatting. While outside they all stood around by the big plate glass windows, talking. I actually ran from the shop, well jogged, and sprang into the first taxi I saw and told him to drive in a circle well away from there to my house. They remote-exploded the 'bomb' and it turned out not to be. But if it had been, many of those coffee drinking idiots would not be alive.

One of the stupidest legacies of all those years is that I once read that all stores have secret codes to broadcast if there is a bomb and these have to be very ordinary so that the public don't panic. They gave some examples like 'Could Mr. Prendergast please come to the stock room'. So whenever they said anything that wasn't a lost child or money saving offer, I would make my way towards the exits and wait to see what happened. The last month one though I was out of practice. The tannoy did a funny little bing, bing, bing noise and then repeated it three times and I actually thought 'That sounds a bit like an alarm but no one is doing anything so I will carry on and pay'. Just after I had the running security men thing started. Next time I will drop my shopping and run.

- posted by Iris @ 1/18/2004 12:08:00 AM comment