Dear London

Dear London, you are the city I was born in, grew up in and have lived all my life. You are somewhere I go to take pictures, to have coffees and to meet friends. You’re beautiful buildings and wonderful diverse culture keep me here. Sometimes I get sick of you and want to leave, other times I feel immense gratitude to live where I do.

Yesterday was a sad day in my city, one man ruined so many lives with one cruel unthinkable act. The sadness in my heart today, for my city and its inhabitants is immense. I sit here thinking of the people who lost their lives or were injured, just going about their daily lives. The families whose precious loved ones will never be going home. But also the bystanders who will have to live through what they saw, the colegues of the fallen police officer, who must return to work and keep us safe through their loss. All the emergency services who bravely enter situations that I cannot even begin to imagine. That impact is huge.

To think of a place that I have walked many times, only last week in fact when I visited Westminster and took the obligatory photos of the beautiful bridge and the Palace of Westminster. This city is my home and this tragedy feels so real, there is no detaching myself from the horror of what has happened.

But my city and its people will carry on, yes it is scary, yes it is horrible, the world seems a little darker today, but we will carry on. Yesterday I thought about what our city has survived, fire, the blitz, terrorism. I feel huge pride that we will keep going, we will go to work, visit our city and life will go back to normal.

I also feel gratitude that these events are rare, we must still feel safe and we must remember people going through hard ship all over the world, people who are not safe and not protected. So I want to thank the hardworking people who keep us out of danger, who run into horrible situations and protect us. Our emergency services showed us yet again how lucky we are to have them.

I don’t know what else to say, other than that I am proud to be a Londoner more today than ever.