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[Replaced_Texan]

Gotta love the Brits:

To quote an old Londoner who lived through the blitz and got caught up in the Canary Wharf explosion: "I've been blown up by a better class of bastard than this!"

London is a tough old town, and will bounce back just fine. Which is not in any way, shape or form to diminish what happened today. Indeed, I wish I was there now, to be with friends and family. Or just as a defiant "in your face" to the killers who did this. I recognize all the areas from the clips American television replays (and replays, and replays), and I want to be with my city while it's hurting.

If the Luftwaffe couldn't bring the city to it's knees, these pathetic penny-ante cowards certainly won't. I lived in the Commonwealth Hall dorms just off of Russell Square at the height of the IRA campaigns. It's surprising how quickly one adapts, in a way, to life with bombings. If the IRA decides to bomb Harrods every Christmas, you just don't go to Harrods at Christmas - no matter how good the flapjack is.

One of my friends at Queen Mary College was Anthony Allen. Not "Tony" - AN-thony. Though slight of frame, he was, to my mind, the quintessential Englishman: the True Brit, in a stiff-upper-lip, sophisticated, Etonian kind of way. I'm quite sure he didn't go to Eton, but dammit, he should have.

A favorite memory from college was when he and I popped into the McDonalds by the Tottenham Court Road tube station for a milkshake

This was in the day when a McDonald's was still a novel thing in London, so it was a bit of a treat. I mean, up to that point in time, ordering a milkshake in Britain meant getting a glass of milk with a little froth on the top that might - might - taste vaguely of strawberry, banana, chocolate or whatever, depending on how generous the server was feeling at the moment.

Now, you must know this: to eat food in a British restaurant, you had to pay a Value Added Tax. Somewhere between five and ten percent, I believe it was. It could have been less. This was before my economics degree, you understand. If you wanted the food to take away, though, that was easier: there was no extra charge.

Well, Anthony and I decided to take a break from the summer heat and pay the VAT on a couple of milkshakes and fries (a significant decision, when you're on a college budget). We took our trays upstairs, to the second floor seating area, and grabbed a table by the window. Not that the crossroads of Oxford Street, New Oxford Street, Charing Cross Road and Tottenham Court Road offer spectacular vistas, but there you go.

We were a few bites into our fries before we noticed police outside slowly but surely cordoning off the McDonalds.

I look around, a little nervously, bomb squads not being a London sight I had any prior close-hand familiarity with.

A woman came up the stairs.

"The IRA phoned in a bomb threat," she said. "They said they're going to blow up a fast food restaurant on Oxford Street. Everybody should leave."

Everybody left in a very English, orderly kind of way.

Except Anthony, who chewed calmly on his fries.

"Uh, Anthony," I prodded. "We really should get out of the building."

Chew, chew, chew.

Swallow.

Pause.

Antony picked up his shake, and took a drink.

"No," he said, in that particularly reasoned and responsible voice the English do so well. "I paid to drink my milkshake in, and I am going to drink my milkshake in."

There really was no arguing with that.

****

As it turned out, the IRA blew up the Wimpy's, further down Oxford Street. Nobody was hurt, but the restaurant was destroyed.

If you, like me, had ever eaten at a Wimpy's, you, like me, might consider that a mercy killing, also.