A nightingale sang ....

London seemed busier and more hectic than ever. The rain fell in fits and starts making the headlights blur in the early evening darkness. Artificial lights had replaced the gloom of daylight bringing a brighter feel to the grey city.

People jostled and harried for position on the pavement like Olympic race walkers at the starting pistol, but the race wasn’t for gold and glory but for home and the warmth and safety of their own private castles. The roads were near gridlocked, traffic was bumper to bumper, moving occasionally but mostly idling, pumping out toxic fumes for the race walkers to ingest. A helicopter buzzed overhead giving a traffic report to a local radio station, while a siren wailed in the near distance in the vain hope that it could beat the traffic.

This was Piccadilly Circus. In the mind’s eye of a child it conjured up an image of magic and wonderment; a circus! in the centre of London! How many children have fallen into that trap? The London of childhood was a mystical, magical world of streets paved with gold, the bells of St Clements and birdsong in Berkeley Square. But the only gold you were likely to see were a thousand cigarette butts strewn at entrances to offices, you’d be lucky to hear the bells over the building works and as for nightgales in Berkeley square well none sang when I went there, they may have coughed and spluttered, their lungs ruined by the pollution, if indeed any still existed.

There was no warning, lights didn’t gradually go out one by one, it was sudden and total. Everything, from the neon lights to traffic signals to the small transistor radio playing Capital FM in the barber’s shop all died all at once, like someone had clicked their fingers and blown the fuse.  Of course the lights from the cars, buses, vans and trucks still lit the streets, but across the centre of London life froze. Hair was left half cut, tattoos uninked, meals part cooked and beers half poured. People emerged onto the already crowded streets to see what was going on but no answers were to be found there.  Deep beneath the ground passengers used mobile phones to provided emergency lighting on dark, hot, airless trains while they waited for further announcements that never came.

Far from creating a party atmosphere like the blackout in New York, the London version caused anger, frustration and resentment. People impatiently wanted to get home and this wasn’t helping.  As time went by rumours spread like wildfire. The one that seemed to have the least truth but gather the most momentum was that this was the work of Islamic terrorists. ‘They’ve taken out a sub-station’ someone said with absolutely certainty.

‘And now they’re coming with machine guns.’ Suspicion spread, the threat could come from anywhere, anyone. People eyed their neighbours with mistrust; moving away from the different towards the safety of similarity. Fault lines formed, normal everyday people creating angry hostile mobs, ready to defend themselves from the enemy within.

Then, more gradually than they went off, the lights began to reappear, an abandoned hair clipper buzzed in a deserted barber’s shop, the transistor radio crackled into life, drivers told their scared passengers that they were waiting for clearance to continue while huge neon signs began to illuminate the night sky again and a million lights from a million abandoned offices floodlit the battlefield of London’s streets.

With the return of the light came the return of rational thinking. People looked embarrassed, ashamed, shocked at what had nearly happened.

People crossed the no man’s land with nervous smiles hoping the uneasy truce would last and build into a more comfortable peace. The rain got heavier and those Londoners making their way home hoped that it would wash away their shame.