They may want to stop all the clocks or at least muffle all the doors, but there's been not a peep over here about today's two-minute silence. Mind you, last November they didn't observe Remembrance Day either; these people want silence, but on their own terms. That's just shouting with the volume turned down.

Last Thursday I relayed the news as it unfolded to my colleagues, who looked slightly confused as to why I was telling them news about somewhere as remote as London. Apparently there are even people there who don't have webbed feet. The capital, is it? We don't hold with that sort of modern rubbish.

I'm not a Londoner. I was born in Uxbridge, at the stubbed-out fag-end of the Piccadilly line. My first identifiable memories are of leaving the place. And to say "I hurt" would make a mockery of the pain that friends of mine are feeling as they mourn the loss of a friend.

Today I'm a livejournaller, and today I'm as helpless as ever on the sidelines of other people's grief.