This list of people still missing after the London tube and bus bomb attacks is ultra-depressing — it puts very human faces on an otherwise almost incomprehensible event.

To try to make some sense of the senseless bombings in London this week, my friend Scyld & I spent some time researching the death tolls from various disasters, wars and atrocities last night while polishing off our third bottle of wine.

The fabulous Wikipedia turned out to have a wealth of information, with articles about any event we could think of (including this week’s bomb attacks in London). There’s also a very handy List of Wars and Disasters by Death Toll.

It seems that humans have an amazing aptitude for exterminating one another. The “Big Daddy” is still the World War II, where it’s estimated that approximately 57 million people were snuffed out by other members of their species (roughly equivalent to the entire population of the United Kingdom or Italy).

In terms of terrorist attacks, 9/11 tops the table by a huge margin, with 2,992 people — an order of magnitude greater than the #2 terrorist attack, the Beslan School Siege in Russia in 2004, in which 344 people died.

The highest death toll of any terrorist attack in the UK, and #5 in the global list, is the Lockerbie Bombing in 1988, when Pan Am flight 103 was brought down over Scotland killing all 270 people aboard — most of whom were young Americans returning from an overseas study program (I dated an American woman in London some years ago who claimed she was supposed to have been on that flight, but instead chose to remain in the UK).

This little research project certainly puts this week’s London bombings into perspective, albeit a very depressing one — they currently rank at #22 in a shameful list of terrorist atrocities, although could possibly move up the list to #21 or #20 if there are a few more casualties in the coming days.

I woke up this morning to the desperately grim news of multiple bomb blasts in London, on the first day of the G8 summit in Scotland and just 24 hours after the news of the city’s 2012 Olympics triumph. As I write, the official death toll stands at 37, although it will no doubt rise higher as some of the critically-injured victims fail to pull through.

I lived in London for 12 years (through the IRA’s mainland bombing campaign in fact, which now seems relatively civilized in comparison to this sickeningly brutal attack on the softest targets), and although none of my family is currently living in the capital, I have a handful of good friends, and a much larger number of less-close friends, colleagues and acquintances there.

I sent a mass e-mail to everyone that I thought might be at risk, and so far the worst reports have been tales of disrupted journeys and close shaves like this one:

Tony.

Hello.

I am fine but may well have been saved by a late running train. I was in Farringdon at time of bombs and should have already been in King's Cross. The week before I was stuck on a train in that tunnel for 32 minutes. This morning we were just disembarked at Farringdon and told to proceed by bus.

As no further information was then given to anybody I was just getting grumpier and grumpier as I went from bus to tube to bus to train to bus to tube to bus. Paying for each bus trip as I tried to get to work and finding one by one that all tube stations were shut.

Of course I just came to the conclusion that it was a conspiracy against me. Especially when the bus I got on to take me home (so I could just drive to work) stopped and turned off it's engine and lights. When the driver came upstairs asking about any unclaimed bags and said, "There's bombs going off all over London" it all made sense. Finding nothing the brave man then proceeded to drive us all to our destinations. Fortunately mine was merely home and not actual destiny.

So that was why they got all the tube trains out of the tunnels so fast though.

I got home, watched the news on the telly for fifteen minutes then cycled to work. An hour and a half late. If I was working for a company I could have had the day off free. But bombs can't stop the self employed. I shall also cycle in tomorrow.

Hope your life is ok.

Cheers

I'm off to the pub now

Paul F.

I feel very sorry for the friends and relatives of people that were not as lucky as my friend Paul.

I was surprised (and surprisingly pleased) to hear that London has won the competition to host the 2012 Olympic Games this morning, beating Moscow, New York, Madrid, and the bookie’s favourite, Paris.

I wonder if the recent peurile remarks by Jacques Chirac about British & Finnish cuisine had anything to do with the decision?

At last, some good news for the World’s poorest countries: The G8 group of the World’s richest nations has reached a deal to write off 100% of the debt owed by 18 countries, a sum of $40bn.

It’s about time.

It’s also pleasing to note that it was Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer in Tony Blair’s Labour government in the UK (who is also widely tipped to take over from Tony Blair as the next Prime Minister), who was instrumental in brokering the deal. I voted for Labour somewhat reluctantly in the UK elections last month in view of the Iraq debacle, so it’s good to see them doing something unarguably good in the World.

Six years ago today, I got off a ‘plane in California, drove a rented car to a shared apartment at 20th & Folsom in San Francisco’s Mission District, and started a new chapter of my life in the United States.

A lot has happened since then; I’ve moved house 3 times, moved jobs twice, made new friends and stayed in touch with old friends, had a 3-year relationship, travelled extensively, become a godfather, owned a classic American muscle car and re-located from the west coast to New York on the east coast.

People sometimes ask me if I’ll ever go back to the U.K., or whether I’m in the U.S. for good. After being here for six years, I’m still no closer to being able to answer that question; I’ll stay here for as long as it suits me to stay here. Of course I still have a lot of family and friends in the UK (not to mention a small storage locker in Hackney that has cost me almost 2000 pounds over the last 6 years!), but I also have a lot of connections here in the U.S. too.

I just finished a great book by Paul Auster, one of my all-time favourite authors. It’s the first book I’ve read in years that I literally couldn’t put down at times; the other day I was reading it while walking back to work after lunch.

Oracle Night is a story about an author recovering from a serious illness who discovers a semi-magical notebook in a stationery store that sends him on a journey of the imagination that has serious repurcussions in his real life. Plus, like the two Jonathan Lethem novels I read recently (see blog passim), it’s all set in my neighbourhood of Cobble Hill/Carroll Gardens (apparently Auster also lives around here).

Here’s the filthy lucre link:

I’ve been doing lots of fun activities recently here in NYC…

Last Tuesday (24th May), I had dinner with my pal Zoë Keating at Apartment 138, a new-ish bar/restaurant on Smith Street that I can highly recommend for top grub and a mellow atmosphere, then the following day (Wed 25th) I had dinner with Peter B.(visiting from Chicago, and coincidentally staying at a B&B two doors from me!) and Kelly R. at Al di La in Park Slope (which was also great), before seeing Zoë playing with Rasputina at Southpaw, in an end-of-tour gig that was, for me at least, their best and most powerful performance to date.

On Thursday, I rented a Zipcar for an hour to take Jonas’ deck and mixer back to his place in the city, and then brought him back to Brooklyn for fish and chips at Apartment 138 and a “Crap-A-Copia” at Floyd; a Crap-A-Copia is a selection of six cans of crap beer from Milwaukee, such as Schlitz and PBR. The hangover the next day was pretty crap too.

On Friday I had dinner with Jamie at Faan (always reliable for asian fusion food) before a few beers at the Brooklyn Inn and pool at the Brooklyn Social.

On Saturday I went to see the Basquiat exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum with R., which was very good, plus I was able to get us both in for free with my ICOM card. After the museum we went to a fun wine tasting class about “The 8 Noble Grapes” hosted by the owner of the Smith & Vine wine shop, before getting drenched in a torrential summer storm. Sunday was a beautiful sunny day too, so R. and I had a lazy day lying out in the sun in Prospect Park before a late supper at Pacifico.

On the holiday Monday (Memorial Day) I did some shopping and worked out before heading over to Scyld & Helen’s to play with a very lively Oscar and have some dinner, and then yesterday I took the day off work to see England beat Colombia 3-2 in a friendly international match at the Giant’s Stadium, courtesy of R. (who got the tickets) and Scyld (who got us seats on his football team’s minibus).

What a fun week!

I discovered something a little puzzling recently; it’s surprisingly difficult to get a large picture frame with the correct aspect ratio to fit a print from 35mm film.

The standard size for photographic prints from 35mm film is 4″ x 6″, which translates to an aspect ratio of 2:3. However, frame sizes larger than this tend to have the 4:5 aspect ratio of medium-format film, e.g. 8″ x 10″ or 16″ x 20″.

I also discovered recently that digital cameras have yet another different aspect ratio, 3:4 (I found a useful discussion of digital vs film photo dimensions on the ACDSee website, which is often a useful resource for imaging information).

I had a great birthday weekend! On Friday 13th (my actual birthday) I went with five friends to a restaurant in Red Hook called Bouillabaisse, and had a fantastic filet mignon.

Saturday was initially kind of hectic, as I was rushing around in a Zipcar — the first time I’d used the cars-by-the-hour service. I was supposed to get a Beamer for a couple of hours, but due to various delays and complications I ended up with a hybrid gas-electric Toyota Prius, which was cool in a different way — kind of like driving a laptop with wheels. I used the Prius to borrow a turntable and mixer from Jonas in the Lower East Side, after which I picked up hundreds of dollars’ worth of liquor and beer in Brooklyn for a party at my house later that night. It was a lot of work tidying the house and filling the bath with ice and drink, but the party was a lot of fun, so it was totally worth it.

Then on Sunday after cleaning up my apartment while listening to vinyl and running into various friends out and about in Carroll Gardens, I went to a reception at my new job to celebrate the opening of a new exhibition, Greetings from Home: 350 Years of American Jewish Life. The exhibition itself was very interesting, although I was a little tired from the previous night’s revelries, so the speaker program dragged on a little for me.

After the reception I headed back to Brooklyn and met some friends for a curry, followed by beers and a few games of pool in the Brooklyn Inn before getting a relatively early night.