I was living in London in July 2005 when the city's transport system was attacked by terrorists. Four young men killed 52 people with shrapnel and home-made explosives packed into rucksacks and detonated as they travelled outwards from King's Cross St Pancras by Tube and bus, their short and murderous journeys describing the shape of a raggedy cross.

It was bedlam and in the weeks that followed, London learnt a lot about itself. That it could raise terrorists within the cultural cacophony of its own urban sprawl was the main thing; a most discomfiting realisation.

I learnt some stuff about Londoners, too; mostly to do with their brilliantly laconic accommodation of crisis. Exactly a fortnight after the first attack, a second was attempted. The circumstances were horribly similar: garbled reports of smoke and explosions in tube stations. The mobile phone network shut down. It was impossible to know what was going on.

Out and about, I raced into a Primrose Hill pub, where patrons and publican were glued to Sky Sports, watching an in-form English bowling attack mow through Australia's top-order batsmen on the first day of the first Test.