I still love Russel Square Gardens.

It seems ironic to me that I made that post about walking through Russel Square Gardens and feeling, well, happy, little more than a week before the name 'Russel Square' acquired the peculiar taint associated with places where something big and tragic has taken place. It won't shake off that taint in a hurry. Every time I walk through there I won't but be able to recall that. It's sad. It's a beautiful little park, and peaceful in spite of the usually-busy roads, all now eerily quiet, that surround it. But I at least probably won't ever feel a hundred percent settled there in spite of all that.

God willing it won't always be worrying. Once Tavistock Place reopens to traffic and the crime-scene tape has been cleared away, once the 'Missing' posters have been taken down and the few bouquets left on the grass have wilted, it'll be that one bit easier to ignore those feelings of unease. But they won't ever quite go away.

Once a location acquires this kind of taint, it doesn't wash out easily, or entirely. It's hard not to hear certain place names and not associate them with tragedy. It doesn't help that, for those outside London, this may be the first they've ever heard of Russel Square and Tavistock Place - they're hardly exactly tourist traps. If the first time you hear of a place it's in association with something like this, how likely is it that you won't associate the name with the tragedy?

London may not have lost its innocence last Thursday - this city's faced far, far worse and come up smiling - but I suppose I must have done, in some way.

I feel as if I have been forced to grow up, in some strange way. I wasn't caught up in this any more than by inference, as a Londoner, as someone who works in the area all this happened. But this is the first time something big and bad has happened and I haven't had my parents to take it all away. I've spoken to them, sure, but no more than that. I miss being with my family; I want a hug. I want to go home, just for a few days - I can't. I guess in some respects all this has forced me to realize that in some way I'm alone now and I'm alone simply because I'm an adult. There's an expectation that I'll be able to cope with it.

The issue isn't that I can't cope alone: of course I can. I'm back at work and feeling glad to be so, and surprisingly sanguine about the thought of being up and doing - there's something very British, I think, about this grim determination to carry on doing our thing and living our lives regardless - and I'm downright thrilled to see London getting by (it'd be more worrying, in a lot of ways, if it had done nothing of the sort). It's that I'd rather I hadn't realized that, by default of maturity, I'm just kind of expected to be able to.

And life goes on, of course.

Russel Square Park reopened on Saturday. It's not as busy as it should be, of an evening, but people are marking time there just as they always have done. We're ignoring the policemen, the large white screens blocking off the road to Tavistock Place. The restaurants and bars along the streets are busy, or busy enough. Blame the bloody-mindedness of the average Londoner if you blame anything at all. Call it wanton, or stubborn, or brave - whatever it is, we're doing it. But I can't be the only one who's feeling a little uncertain, too. Just a little, but enough.

We're getting by, but it's not that easy. It's strange and sad and yet almost funny the way that people on buses have started gravitating toward the front end of the top deck. I always sit there, because otherwise I get bus sick. Now I sit there, and other people sit there too, because the people who sat there, on the no. 90 which exploded, got up and walked away. I suppose we sit there because, deep down, we feel it's safer there. Because we want to pretend there's something we can do about this, some way we could hope to keep ourselves safe if the worst were to happen. Because deep down we're scared, and desperately pretending otherwise, because we're all adults and adults are just expected to be able to cope...

Funny what a fragile thing normality can be.

I'm in again tomorrow, pulling my third long shift in a row. I'm carrying on, because it's expected, because there's nothing else for it, because I desperately need to. Deep down I'm anxious, though I'm pretending otherwise - to me the city feels worried, too, worried and desperately trying to hide it behind a slightly frenetic, slightly forced air of business as usual. I'm turning a half-blind eye to the crime-scene tape and the Missing posters. I'm trying to ignore the sirens, to stop thinking about how I've never seen this many policemen on the streets, in general, in my life. Trying to stop worrying.

It's not easy, but I'm trying. London's trying. And that, I suppose, is half the battle won.