Thursday 13 November 2008

Impressed by London

In my previous post I mentioned that I had been in London on Tuesday on a course. The building i was in was on the Strand and the room we were in overlooked the Strand and as I was sitting near the window I was able to observe the traffic and the comings and goings to some extent. It struck me that London is a very busy place with lots of comings and goings - lots of sirens (police cars)and lots of noise.
What did impress me was that at 11a.m. everything seemed to stop and an almost eerie silence descended as London observed the two minutes silence - I did make the observation at lunchtime that you could have heard a pin drop and for somewhere as busy and noisy as London this must be quite unusual.
So I say well done London for coming to a halt for those two minutes to remember the fallen not just of World War 1 but of all conflicts.

1 comment:

PamBG said...

The silence is truly impressive in a large city.

Often when I lived in London, I was in a meeting in a office building when they did the two-minutes' silence on 11/11 so I didn't get the full effect.

I remember standing in Trinity Square when there was a silence for the 7/7 bombings, though. Hundreds and hundreds of people came outside their offices to stand in silence and the traffic also stopped. It was extremely moving. Who says that the world no longer needs rites?