Normality Returns

‘HOW do you know when things have returned to normal after the horror of last Thursday’s bombs in London?

Let’s burst the terrorists’ bubble

We’ve heard from commentators, reporters, world leaders but thus far not a peep from busty Zoe, thrusting Nikki or saucy Michelle.

The Sun’s legion of barely-dressed opinion formers usually have much to say on all manner of topical issues – the EU, war, David Beckham’s armpit Mohicans – but on the matter of London, they have been noticeable by their absence.

But things are slowly getting back to normal. And today the paper’s Page 3 is decorated by a picture of former Big Brother winner and professional blonde Kate Lawler.

Kate is no fulltime mo-del and prefers to cradle her breasts in her hands rather than display them with unabashed pride. But she does show enough frilly knicker to encourage thoughts that last week’s wounds are already beginning to heal.

Indeed, Kate is something of a trail blazer. She, like hundreds of others, is not afraid. And Kate proved just that when she conquered her fear of flying and stepped aboard a return flight from Ibiza “stinking of sweat and booze”.

Bottoms up to her. As London Mayor Ken Livingstone tells the Mirror as he rode the Tube to work: “We don’t let a small group of terrorists challenge the way we live. We carry on with our lives.”

Pah! That those evil folks ever could alter our course to the bar. The most dreaded words to any Londoner’s ears are not tales of a bomb but the phrase “Rail replacement bus service”, and “You can’t park there”.

And here is our friendly breed of traffic wardens in the Mirror, helping life return to what it was and ever will be by ticketing cars parked around Tavistock Square.

The brave men and women of the Camden Council parking enforcement unit were spotted slapping fixed penalty notices to the windscreens of cars belonging to local residents who had been unable to use their usual parking zones because someone had blown up a bus.

“If you are parked illegally, you get a ticket,” says one uniformed hero. Rightly so. And if you continue to flout the rules you not only let the terrorists win but you run the real risk of being clamped.

Watching estate agent Lee Matthews looked on at just such a scene of London life. “They were clamping this car and it turns out the owner was forced to leave it there on Thursday when the police cleared the area,” says he with pride.

But, as a spokesman for the council explains, “the car was never cordoned off” and the driver was free to pluck up his courage and pick his way through the carnage any time in the four days when the parking team’s activities were suspended.

Quite so.

Paul Sorene’

Posted: 12th, July 2005 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink