Stockwell station is somewhere I go a lot. My family use it all the time too. It’s not somewhere I particularly like; it’s always a bit edgy. There was an armed bank robbery a few years ago and drug dealers hang around late at night. But edgy is different from what happened yesterday when heavily armed police chased a man on to the tube there and shot him dead in front of terrified passengers. According to witnesses there was blind panic and passengers emerged from the station crying and shaking. The local vet’s, better known for its sensitive treatment of bereaved pet owners, was commandeered for witnesses of a suspected suicide bomber. Surreal was the word someone used and that’s what London now feels like to me. Yesterday’s event was another in a series that is transforming Londoners’ familiar home patches into alien, unfamiliar territory.

Full article: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/jul/23/july7.comment