LONDON
On the first night I've had a tv in two and a half months we switched it on to hear the announcement that London had won the Olympics. On the second night we switched it on an hour after three London Underground trains and one bus had been bombed by terrorists. We sat stunned for three hours watching the chaos unfold, feeling a combination of long-held fears realised and a deep sense of unreality. We stared at the streets we know so well on the television in Cambodia and raced through mental lists of all the commuters we know. Even now as the media and the world digests the news there are still pieces of body being collected far underground in unbearable heat. We phoned and emailed and made contact, and still wonder about those people down there. I miss the city (for the first time), and feel distanced from the mood I am sure is tangible there in the streets. I also feel something else strange - a bubble of nationalistic outrage. Certainly it's been the talk of the travellers. And the next morning we watched the sun rise over the magnificent 1000 year old Khmer temple of Angkor Wat, powerfully reminiscent of a different time filled with different atrocities. I keep thinking about the people affected, and selfishly hoping I don't know any of them. I recall Tony Blair standing in front of a group of the most powerful people in the world, arms rigidly by their sides, faces like waxworks.
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