This passenger terminates...here

If you listened to the show last week, you'll recall that at one point I joked that one of my fears regarding the London bombings was that there might be a 'militarization' of London's streets; that is to say, that people would start arming themselves and having firefights on buses. I was just kidding. It was an excuse to have Al Pacino say: "Say hello to my little friend!" and then loop some gunfire effects. Now an innocent man is dead, shot five times in the back of the head at point blank range. It's so sad my brain can't even look at the event directly. I keep seeing the edges of it, making out a gradual shape that I don't want to see.

The thing is, I can put myself in the head of both the parties involved. I'm a Brazilian immigrant, minding my own business. I leave my house. I'm wearing my overcoat because it's overcast and even on warm days I feel cold. Maybe it's at this point that I first notice someone is following me- probably not. I'm probably keeping my head down, thinking about what I'm doing this weekend. It's been a long week and I'm looking forward to seeing my friends. As I near the station, suddenly there's guys approaching me from all directions, telling me to stop. You know what I do when I'm suddenly surrounded by men in Stockwell? I run. I get the hell away from them. Stockwell is not the nicest neightbourhood in London, let me tell you. I run and maybe in a panic (I grew up in Brazil, after all) I ignore the cries of the station personnel trying to stop me and leap the barrier and I take three steps at a time down the escalator and thank fuck there's a tube on the platform so I leap into the carriage and at this point the plainclotheds have put on their caps marked POLICE and they're all screaming "Police! Get down!" and so I drop to the ground and moments later there's a man on top of me and half a second later my life comes to an end, and those last few seconds of panic and terror were the last moments I got.

And I can see the Police side of it, too. I've been staking out this house for days. A suspect leaves, I'm assigned to follow him, my head still ringing with the emergency protocols initiated after the first wave of bombings. They had an anti-terror expert in from Israel, saying the only effective way to stop a suicide bomber is to shoot them in the head. Anywhere else and there is still a very good chance they can detonate the bomb. This guy's wearing a jacket that's way too big for this weather. He's heading for the tube station. We get the call to stop him. We approach. He starts to run. Into the tube station. He leaps the barrier. Fuck he's running down to the platform. We all pile after him. Shit, there's a train on the platform- he's going to take it out right now. He trips at the door and falls down. I remember the news about the bomber from last night- he fell to the ground in a cruciform position, then his detonator went off and burned his back, and he just lay there, waiting for the bomb to go off, until a Londoner came up to him and said: "Are you alright, mate?"; then he ran off, his bomb unexploded. This guy's lying just like that. These could be the last seconds of everyone in this station. My gun's out. Five rounds. I'm not even thinking about it. It's training. It's him or me. It's protocol. I'm pulling back the trigger over and over. I just killed an innocent man. I won't know this until the next day, but finding no bomb on him would certainly spark off some suspicion at the time. I'll go home to my family. His will get a phonecall.

I don't think it's anyone's fault. Jean shouldn't have run. The Police should have checked their target before engaging him. Both are understandable mistakes that unknowingly led to a tragic accident. This is the situation the bombers have created- this is what they wanted to create. Fear. I want to say: "Screw them. The best way for me to fight them is to just keep going as I go. Don't let them change they way I live."

I'm the sort of guy who likes sprinting. Sometimes, I just have too much energy and I'm sick of walking or I'm too bored to wait to get to the end of the street/platform/corridor, and I'll just break into a run, for no outwardly apparent reason. I'll just run.

I don't think I'll be doing that any more.