I figure I must have been on the train around 8.45 on Thursday morning. The only sign that something was wrong was the usual event of one of the lifts at Edgware Road being out of service. There are two different Edgware Road stations. One, to the south of the flyover holds the Circle and District lines. the one to the north holds the Bakerloo line - the line I take to get to work.

We were stopped after Marylebone station, but anyone who commutes on the Tube knows that stopping between stations is a common event on the aging and dilapidated rail lines. When the train was held at Baker Street we all groaned. And when we were told to leave the train I briefly thought to myself, 'and you idiots think this will get fixed for the Olympics?'. The station was evcuated very calmly. There was a power problem and the entire network would be shut down. Hundreds of people made their way up the stairs of the multi-level Baker Street tube. Up on the street, and safely out of the building, I rang into the office to tell people I was delayed. That was when i first heard of an explosion at Liverpool Street. I still didn't think anything about it. I would simply go home, make coffee, and get back into work when the network opened again. Ten minutes later when I got back to Edgware Road I realised something was wrong. There were police and ambulances everywhere. Edgware Road was closed off at Chapel Street. Emergency services swarmed Praed Street.

I went back to the flat and switched on the television. At the time we only knew there were explosions in the Tube, still claimed to be power surges. I had a feeling it was more than that. Minutes later, a bus blew up at Tavistock Square and it was clear that London was being bombed.

Four bombs, more explosions, uncertainty and fear and an eerie calm.

It was then that I first learned of the bombing at Edgware Road. It was at the other station, and on a different train that I take, but still alarming that five minutes earlier I had left Edgware Road in an opposite direction. And it was then we first heard there were likely fatalities. I rang work again, to check that we had heard from everyone and sat and watched the BBC. All around me were the sounds of sirens and helicopters. A city under siege, and my flat somehow in the middle of it.

The sirens continued all day.

London has long been prepared for this. And it's not the first bombing since I moved here - a madman bombed Brixton, Brick Lane and Soho attempting to start race riots. And the IRA bombed the BBC and Blackfriars Bridge. After 9/11 London accepted that it was a likely target and we spent a few nights over pints wondering how it might happen - Parliament, Oxford Street, Canary Wharf, the Tube. We worried about poison gases, contaminated water and bombs. London raised its alert level, and messages to watch out for unattended bags became more frequent.

Unlike 9/11, there isn't a crystal clear, chilling repeatable video of the event. There is no equivalent of the plane flying into the second tower, there are only 'after' photos of the bus and grainy, choppy, ghostly mobile phone videos. We won't live with it in our visual memory, but in stories and feelings and glimpses. It won't cut deep into the psyche because London won't let it, and because it's image isn't sharp enough.

i always thought it would be safer to be near Edgware Road, home to a visible and sizable Muslim community. Surely, it wouldn't happen there. Now, we're not so sure. it's possible the train was meant to be at Paddington when it was bombed, but even so, one can't really ever be off their guard.

So, the next day, I got up early and took the Tube to work.

Life goes on - sad, cautious, and a bit weary - but on.