A roast meal. A couple of bottles of good red wine. The company of people who have known you for most of your life, and can reminisce about shared places and happier times. A great raconteur who can make you laugh until your sides hurt. Isn’t it great how the simplest things can remind you of the warmth that life has to offer?

I have just finally managed to get online at home. I usually have no problem with writing my blog from work, but have had a bit of a busy period the last couple of weeks, and just haven’t managed to. I am posting-dating some entries for the last couple of weeks, which I will be putting up over the course of this afternoon. So to those who have berated me for my dilatory behaviour over the last couple of weeks, apologies. And in response to strcprstskrskrk’s comment: house prices seem about the same – still no movement on our sale. And you should see on Saturday 16 July a suitably dodgy entry about media-styled rock gods R.E.M., and their dodgy boyband rocker support act, Feeder.

I think enough time has passed to reveal that headline, one of many sick jokes doing the round on the internet at the moment. And in case anyone thinks this is an insensitive, ill-timed post, then I’m sorry. But as someone on the discussion thread that I nicked it off said: this is how we deal with things here. And he has a point. Jo Brand got up and spoke at the Trafalgar Square vigil, and in amongst a lot of guff and a lot of genuinely moving speakers, she said the only thing that made the crowd laugh, which was ‘there is one thing that no one else tonight has said about Londoners, and that is that we are tough bastards.’ And part of that is our ability to laugh at, and make jokes of, the most appalling tragedies. I won’t post any more, apart from my favourite: ‘So you wait ages for a London Terrorist attack, and then four come at once’. They’re out there and easy to google if you want to.

One of the things which has been of special interest to me in the wake of the bombings has been the media response to it. On the day it happened, I watched rolling news all day at my friends’ house, round the corner (the recently engaged ones, who I spent election night with. I realise it would be easier if I gave them names, so for the sake of clarity, she is Genius, he is RawSausages). Genius was at work offsite when the bombs went off, and came home around midday. RawSausages (who is a TV news producer) was at Aldgate, covering the attacks.

Prior to setting off to their house, armed with a bottle of wine to keep our blitz spirit up, I was watching Channel 4, and was discomforted by the following exchange, which to me clearly indicated the media’s desperate need for a death toll when it was still stuck at nil, between Krishnan Guru-Murthy and the head of the Royal London Hospital:

KGM: So how many patients have you admitted, and what condition are they in? HoRL: Seven serious, ten critical. KGM: And which of those conditions is worse? HoRL: Critical. KGM: So you have ten people there who might die?

The look on his face seemed to me to betray the fact that someone was saying ‘We need news – it’s at least half an hour since we found out they were bombs and not a power surge. Now find out how many have died.’

The other thing which struck me about the reporting of the bombings was the need for the press to name it. I noticed this in people around me too, and heard ‘7/7′ being used in conversation before I heard it on television. But many rejected it. As Genius said at the time ‘it doesn’t scan very well – needs another syllable really’. I had another problem with it – the enormity of the September 11th attacks meant that it deserved to have a whole day named after it. While not wanting to belittle the pain caused by the London bombings, they were not on the same scale, and therefore the name ‘7/7′ would not have the resonance of ‘9/11′. ‘Target London’ was mooted by some channels, but soon disappeared. At the moment, 7/7 seems to have gained the ascendancy, although many seem to favour the plain, non-emotive, non-bombastic, ‘London bombings’.