Shaken, and stirred

Today I spent approximately 10-15 minutes inside the Holborn Sainsbury. Inside, I helped a little old Chinese lady pick a box of cookies from the top shelf, walked around an aisle because a handicapped lady in a wheelchair was blocking me and debated whether I should satisfy my Bailey's ice cream urge. However just as I was settling the bought items into my bags, I notice policemen outside, all on the High Holborn end, cordoning off the road.

I went out, and heard a man in the crowd say that they found a suspicious package. Indeed, I saw a cardboard box on the ground, about 20 metres away. Policemen were going about from building to building to evacuate people. An American girl came up to me and we spoke a little, said she was supposed to walk that-a-way, but couldn't any more. Then, I left.

As I walked further and further, the gravity of the situation hit me. As I walked from what was effectively the epicentre of shit, I saw that more and more police cars were arriving from the initial one or two, to what must be like a third of the entire police force in London. Holborn's Red Lion Square area was slowly being closed off, policemen were shouting in an attempt of crowd control trying to make cars go away from the site. More and more emergency vehicles were rushing to the scene, and slowly, a massive jam of confused and angry drivers were building up.

Then I came to Gray's Inn Road, almost 1km from the actual site. It was in the process of being closed off too. It seemed the lock down was spreading, radial-like. The fear, struck me. The thoughts of, "God this would never happen in Singapore" kept running through my head. This was for the first time, a very real and very acute fear of the world outside me. Of the terrible terrible things we do to each other, and the fear of such depths.

Now here in my room, the safety of a place I call home, I can still hear the road outside. I can hear the emergency vehicles rush past, I can hear the horns of frustrated drivers. I feel my heart race and a part of me shrink inside. I still feel like eating Bailey's ice cream.