“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.

There’s a “podcasting and rights” conference this afternoon which I’m going to - hosted and run by the UKPA.

If you’re not coming, you can still virtually come: they’re streaming the event live (as a test). If you’re lucky, you might see me with my new haircut. (This depends on whether I go and get my haircut shortly).

I’ll blog something about it, possibly, later.

Photo: Kim Mun Lee; used under licence

Graffiti on Longfellow Bridge, Boston MA. Photo by Frank Hebbert. Used under licence.

Presenting my journey home this evening, as it would have been if I was on Facebook, thanks to today’s tube strike. (Keen readers aware of my home location will question my need to avoid taking a tube, but I reckoned it might be a bit busy, and apparently I was right - not least because of a signal faliure)

James is leaving work on a bike
James is quite enjoying riding his bike
James is cycling past Western House, home of BBC Radio 2
James is inexplicably and totally unnecessarily on the Euston Road on his bike
James is getting a bit scared on his bike by the buses
James is walking on the pavement with his bike
James is pushing his bike through Kings Cross station
James is amazed how busy it is in Kings Cross station
James is folding his bike
James is waiting on a train which isn’t going anywhere
James is still waiting on a train
James is getting more and more crowded by people on a train
James is on a train that is moving at long last
James is getting off a train to get another one
James is waiting for people to get off this train I’m catching
James is still waiting for people to get off this train I’m catching
James is cramming onto a train
James is on a train
James is on a train, leaning on a door, without much space
James is on a train that is stopping seemingly less than a minute after getting going
James is having to get off a train to let other people off before getting back on again
James is back on the train
James is on a train wondering where he is
James is opening the door for other people because he’s closest to the door controls
James is slightly amazed that the door controls work on trains, because they don’t on tubes
James is on a train wondering which stop to get off on, whether it’s this one or the next one
James is on a train and has decided he’ll get off the early one with less of a hill to cope with
James is getting off a train
James is walking up the stairs holding a bike
James is watching his arm grow longer
James is unfolding his bike
James is cycling up a hill
James is finding cycling up a hill quite hard work
James is still cycling up a hill
James is navigating a rather nasty right-hand turn
James is still bloody cycling up a hill
James is wishing he got off on the next stop
James is on a busy road
James is cycling past a bus
James is blimey that car was close
James is in the middle of the road oooer
James is thank heavens not cycling up a hill any more
James is home
James is knackered
James is drinking beer

Only three more days.

Well used Oyster card; taken by Nico Hogg. Used under licence.

Annie Mole, author of the rather fine London Underground Tube Diary, mailed me the other week, idly wondering whether I was updating my Oyster card calculator.

I discovered a while back that if you use a prepaid Oyster card, rather than buying a season ticket, it’s cheaper in many instances. Indeed, if you only travel to work and back on your Oyster Card, it’s a pretty poor deal if you buy a season ticket; which came as a surprise to me.

For example, my travel pattern would mean that buying a monthly season ticket would end up £280 more expensive than using a normal pre-pay Oyster card. Mind, that’s nothing to paying cash every time; that would be £729 more expensive!

The script’s now updated - the latest version uses April 2007’s prices. Give it a play and see if you can junk the season ticket - not least, knowing that the strikes are apparently coming tomorrow, it’s useful information. The code’s all JavaScript, by the way; pretty shoddy stuff at that, but then, I was learning when I did it.