...Over the next hour or so the news gradually emerged that there had been a bomb and that some people had been killed. Then gradually the full enormity of the attacks emerged. My wife's family are from the London area and many of them work in central London, some near the area of the bombings. My elder daughter was a student at University College London. Accordingly for several hours my wife and my brothers and sisters in law were making frantic telephone calls to make contact with and account for all of our relatives. The task was made harder as the mobile phone system was jammed by hundreds of thousands of other people trying to do the same thing. Fortunately nobody in our family was injured or killed. However as I write this, tears fill my eyes thinking about the many other people who were similarly trying to call their loved ones only to be met initially by silence, followed by the dreadful horror of learning that their relatives and friends had been seriously injured or killed.
Our standard office hours ended at 1730 but I almost always worked later than that. However I had full discretion when I wanted to come and go, especially as I was a partner in the firm. I recall that I did not rush home from work immediately but worked quite late before going home to face the 24-hour television news channels. Exactly the same thing had happened on 11 September 2001, when by early evening the office was deserted but I was still working; subconsciously I preferred the comfortable environment of the office rather than watching the continuous horror on the television. I knew that once I got home I would be glued to the television screen.
