London

I know that this is a place in which I usually describe the humourous aspects of my life in the Suburbs, but today is not a day for funny stories.

London. I have such conflicting memories of this city. It always appeared so much more real in my imagination than it could ever truly be in life. In my mind it was the city of Shakespeare and the Globe Theatre, Dickens and Virginia Woolf - a pastoral world of Mayfair townhouses, civilized conversations and soothing cups of tea. Hyde Park, the Serpentine, Buckingham Palace and Green Park. Royalty and big black cabs. Harrods and "the tube".

My first visit was a terrible shock. Like hitting an emotional brick wall. I wanted to love it. I must love it! But I didn't. 18 years old, feeling very alone in a cheap hotel in Earl's Court, overwhelmed by the sheer strangeness of being on the other side of the world. It was horrible. I came home, crushed. I had been cheated!

I did not return for several years. Even then, the sting of that initial heartache tainted my feelings for the city. It took me several trips before London began to grow on me. It was as if I had to accept that my initial crush was just that: a fancified attachment to a place that never truly existed outside of BBC television serials and my imagination.

It seems strange to think now how many important moments in my life are linked with London. That initial trip - no matter how difficult at the time - was a big step in my life, a real attempt to be on my own. Ten years after that initial trip, I ended up using London as a hub when I worked as a travel columnist. It was a city that I grew to know quite well - to appreciate it's quirky strengths and accept it's inevitable failings. I even fell in love with my now husband while he was working as a professor in London.

It is a great city. Not a perfect one - if there is such a thing - but a great one.

Tonight, I grieve for it.


BBC News, July 7, 2005 : A series of bomb attacks on London's transport network has killed more than 30 people and injured about 700 others. Three explosions on the Underground left 35 dead and two died in a blast on a double decker bus. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the bombings had "the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda-related attack".