Coming in on the tube, I read about an attempted gas attack last week in the London Underground. All very scary. As the tube begins to go overland I see that London is shrouded in a thick blue mist. Visibility is so limited that the skeletal gas towers and iron bridges begin to strobe past me before I even notice their arrival.

I think about reading “Underground” (a book of interviews of survivors of the Tokyo sarin attack), and I look about the carriage. For a brief while, the only people I can see are those in the train with me. An Aisan man in a grey suit, about 22 years old reading a copy of the “Metro”, and a white woman looking pale and haggard on this Monday morning.

Graffitti suddenly veers out of the fog: “BOMBER” “MADMAN!!” “EXPLODE”