“I don’t know what’s going on”, cried the business-woman, trying to get her mobile phone to work. “Someone says there’s been a bomb”.

“Don’t be silly”, said her female colleague. “Of course there’s not been a bomb. There’s just been a derailment or something”.

That was my first real experience of the 7th July 2005 - the day when the bombs went off on the London Underground.

At that time, I normally took the Piccadilly line to work - travelling in the front carriage. And I’d normally appear at about 9.30-ish at work. Reverse that back a bit, and you might reasonably expect me to have been between King’s Cross and Russell Square tube stations just after 9.10am - at exactly the time when the bomb went off. In the front carriage.

Instead, that day I took the bike, and travelled overground. I made it to King’s Cross at about 9.20am, where I heard the above conversation and took the above picture (and, later, more). My temporary fondness for travelling in on the bike could have saved my life.

Spooky.

Today, I was on the tube as normal. I’ve recently taken to reading RSS feeds using Google Reader and Google Gears on the little Asus Eee, and as I opened Annie Mole’s piece about the anniversary, I shivered involuntarily, and for a moment, my vision went into black and white. A very odd sensation. I looked up, to see where I was. The southbound Piccadilly line train that I was on was just coming into Russell Square.

I’d opened her piece, completely by coincidence, at exactly the point that the bomb went off.

Spooky.

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