London is O.K. (just ask a Londoner) and mostly feels normal. Mostly. Police with machine guns patrol train stations. There are steel and concrete barriers lining major bridges now to protect pedestrians. When I bike to work, across Waterloo Bridge, I find myself planning my escape if a car comes charging. My children’s school sent out a note, saying it was reviewing planned class trips into central London and will “be avoiding travel on the underground and public transport.”

I found myself wondering: Is this what they call the new normal?

It is not so much that Londoners are changing their lives in response to terrorism. It is more that terrorism has become part of life in London. Nervous glances passing between passengers on a subway car when the train gets stuck in the tunnel for a little too long — and relieved smiles when it starts moving again. A group of students outside a south London high school joking that the latest variation on “the dog ate my homework” is “sorry, miss, I was caught up in a terrorist attack.” One of my neighbors recounting how the loud “bang” of a blown exhaust pipe had given him a fright earlier this week. “I thought it was them terrorists again,” he said and chuckled at himself.

Many here know someone who knows someone who could have been caught up in an attack. One friend of mine, a civil servant, was crossing Westminster Bridge just minutes before the March attacker ran over pedestrians at 70 miles an hour. Another friend runs a stall in Borough Market but had already closed for the day when the attack happened. “I thought food was sacrosanct,” she texted.