I started quietly, moving my room around and putting treasured old stuff in binbags. Gotta be ruthless! Then laundry, then a walk out to the shops for the next few days' grub. Lousy weather. And when I got back, Kate called to tell me to put the TV on.

I suppose this has been expected for a long time. The IRA left the Tube alone because carnage there might have upset their American supporters, and they weren't into suicide bombing anyway. This new lot don't give a shit so must be much harder to deal with. There was never a backlash against Irish in general whenever the IRA did something vile, partly because the London economy couldn't function without the Irish builders who built the railways and roads, and in any case are understood to be "nearly one of us". I hope the gutter press doesn't try to wind up a pogrom against Muslims in general.

My Australian friend John R. emailed to check that we were all OK. There is a lot of coverage Downunder, as you might expect. I may have overreacted in my reply, because I suspected that there were many more dead than the news was telling us. OK.

I also told him that there was a cricket match of absolutely no consequence being played, and that I didn't have time to watch it.
Later, however, in between loading Stacey Kent and more Miles Davis (Birth of the Cool) and Whites Stripes (Elephant) on to my iPod, I had a sly look, and was immediately sucked into watching the last hour because England were slaughtering the Aussies. By nine wickets! You can't turn that off!

There was some leftover food in the fridge, so I made the mistake of having a big lunch. Always a mistake, because it slows me down for the afternoon. Yes, really! But I'm going to force steak frites salade down tonight, because we have two rounds to play tomorrow for the Queen's Birthday Chalice. The same four blokes have played for this at least fifteen times. We are playing at my club, where there are several convenient exit points from the course should it all become too much for me. And the local hospital is quite close.

It will be interesting to see how London copes with this nastiness.