Is it safe?

Life Every morning I wake up at 6.55 am. My alarm clock is set for 7 o'clock but I think it's been timed wrongly so there I am every morning waking up at 6.55. In the blur of tiredness I grasp around for my remote control until eventually I can turn the television on in time for the news headlines. So that I can keep myself informed about what the BBC thinks is happening in the world.

So this morning when I turn on the television, the big flashing white on red banner is saying things like 'Breaking News' and 'Terror Alert' and I wonder what happened overnight. Bill Turnbull looks like a cat in headlights as he talks about the alert level being critical and the disruption at airports and I'm wanting to go back to sleep, to try and wake up again into the world were the only news story is the usual speculation is about some government policy that won't happen anyway.

I was actually mildly petrified. I gripped my pillow and sat transfixed as people sat around the big table being interviewed by Susanna Reid about having to test powdered milk and only being able to carry documents through the checking in desks at airports and John Reid's stage managed 'press conference' which spent five minutes saying many things without saying much at all and I just wanted it to be ok.

Then, somewhere in the twenty minutes I woke up. I thought about the work I had to do today, saving my dissertation (which I think I did by the way) and went to the loo, and I only thought about the alert again right now as I write this and look simultaneously at the BBC website to see that nothing much has changed, that the only thing we do know is that we're safe for now.