Any discerning Londoner has always known that this was going to happen one day. It was never a case of ifs, it was always a case of when, but no matter how you much you expect something, it doesn’t prepare you for the actuality.

When Bubs and I got the bus to work this morning it was just another ordinary day. We got to work safely blissfully unaware of the trouble brewing and within ten minutes the carnage had begun. It doesn’t bear thinking about that we missed the scene of that obliterated bus by a matter of a few hundred yards and god knows how many minutes.

At work my team rallied around to check up on missing colleagues, all day we pulled together to help keep spirits up, to work out ways in which to get home safely. We huddled together to watch the news updates and I damn near started bawling when Tony Blair made his statement and the enormity of what was happening today hit me. The flurry of text messages and e-mails rolled on throughout the day from my friends, some as far flung as Australia and Singapore, checking on my safety.

It’s been a scary day, one that will be talked about for quite a while and that many of us won’t forget for a long time. But as Bubs and I started our long walk back home and Red offered to drop everything to come pick us up, what I found most amazing was the general atmosphere of absolute calm. In Bubs’ words, it felt’ as though we were on some sort of mass exodus from the biblical times’ as we walked in droves out of town, all desperate to get home. The usual elbows-out pushing and shoving of the daily commute ceased to exist and I was amazed by people’s kindness and the general sense of unity. And the way the emergency services and all key staff and police worked efficiently and professionally was just staggering. It made me feel as though everything was under control and that we were being looked after.

I’m not sure I want to venture back into work tomorrow. I can’t help but think that just as the twin towers was the first wave of attacks, so too was today. I realise that today’s attacks were a mere fraction of the destruction and mindless deaths that took place at 9/11, but this isn’t about numbers. People are dead. It’s about the fact that these so called crusaders will seemingly stop at nothing and they do not discriminate. And that is terrifying in itself.

When a disaster like today’s terrorist attacks on London happens I am reminded of the fact that we are actually capable of altruism.

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