We sung for Live Aid, celebrated like high school kids on a Friday night when we won the Olympic bid, and now we’re praying after the London blast that will forever remain for us at 7/7….A note from a Londoner:
On Wednesday the city of London celebrated with a party to end all parties after the International Olympic Committee said that it would host the Olympic games in 2012.
Then, on Thursday, everyone was united in shock, anger and sorrow as terrorists let off four huge bombs, crippling the train network and tube stations. People were horribly maimed and pulled bloody from the trains, which, only seconds earlier, were to be their choice of travel for a day’s work.
My cousin, Marc Perves, was one of them. He’s a student who’s working for my father in the City, and he was on the tube where one of the bombs struck. He told us that he fell unconscious before he even heard the noise. His spectacles were shattered and his face went from white to a bloody mess. For some reason, he kept standing through all of this, and was rushed out by an Australian and a nurse. He doesn’t know their names, but if I found out who in the hell they were, I would give them a bottle of champagne and a dinner at the nicest restaurant money could buy.
Of course, this has nothing to do with sport. I don’t know if it had anything to do with the G8 Summit in Edinburgh, where I’m crossing my fingers that they deal with aid from Africa- hopefully saving lives instead of taking revenge. I don’t know if was about the city’s victorious Olympic bid. I just don’t know.
Every sports fan in this country, despite the amount of hatred that is generated from rivalries during the course of a soccer or cricket season, is united with each other. I don’t know who wants revenge- we just hope we learn from this and catch the people that did it.
Hopefully, we can learn from this.
Yours,
Alex Ferguson
4 replies on “A note from a Londoner on 7-7”
Best Wishes I can’t imagine how horrible this day has been for you. I can only hope your cousin will have a healthy recovery. If you every find that nurse let me know, I will chip in for the champaign
7/7 I hope your cousin recovers fully and I am glad you yourself are alright.
My condolences go out to all who are tragically affected by this and I wish your entire family the best.
On a side note not meaning to be insensitive, 9/11 occured 2 days after the conclusion of the largest tennis tournament in the U.S. 7/7 occured four days after the largest tennis tournament in the U.K.
Also an interesting 9/11 sidenote:
The headline in the Business section the morning of 9/11 in USA Today was about McDonalds being indicted for fraud in its Monopoly game.
Yet again, I hope your cousin fully recovers and my best wishes go out to you and your family.
I fell for ya. I hope everything goes back to normal for you soon.
sports In times like this, people start to debate about the importance of sports in society. Clearly, sport is not the life and death situation that we sometimes act like it is. However, I think Yankees fans can attest to the healing power of following that team after the 9/11 attacks. Following the Yanks didn’t diminish the horror of the WTC attacks but it did allow a city a distraction as it rebuilt. Hopefully Londoners can find such a distraction in its teams.
Alex – thank you for a heartfelt column and I hope your cousin is ok.