The first and only time I heard a bomb go off was in London, back in 1995. I was working in the Strand Palace Hotel, which is actually situated on The Strand, being a main thoroughfare of the city and as such a pretty busy one. It was night. I was waiting tables in Johnson's Bar and I remember there were a number of customers eating dinner. I heard what I immediately thought was a waiter dropping an overloaded tray of crockery and silverware from shoulder height onto the floor, and as I walked toward the kitchen to inspect I remember an immediate but mild sense of confusion, as I had seen the windows shake at the same time I had heard the noise. It turned out to have come not from the kitchen, but from The Strand itself and as I found myself rushing toward that street with other staff members and a few guests we were confronted by a cop, or a number of them, as if from nowhere, screaming at us to "get back, to get back, to get inside." One cop was saying "there could be another, there could be another, get indoors" and I realised then without any sense of fear or panic that what I had heard was an explosion. A member of the "real" IRA had been carrying a fertiliser bomb to a courthouse that was situated some way up the road from where we were. It went off in his lap, killing only himself but most probably ruining a number of lives at the same time. The bus wasn't packed but it was carrying passengers.
I wonder how that bus driver felt, watching the news on Thursday morning. I wonder now if that bus driver's still alive. Or if he's perhaps been living in the bottom of a bottle since that awful night on The Strand ten years ago. It may sound odd, but these days I can't help but say God bless the bus drivers.
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