Now things are starting to feel weird

No doubt news of the second wave of bombing attempts has hit home. After the stoic reaction to the July 7 bombings, in which the defiance almost had a swagger to it - Londoners are a much more subdued lot now.

Tony Blair has gone from 'you will never acheive your goals of terror and disruption', to, 'please everyone remain calm and go about your business' in the space of a fortnight. I was with Kathryn last night and she point blank did not want to get the tube home - not my reaction but it still seemed like a perfectly reasonable stand to take.

Of all the doubts, fears and anger that the bombings have generated - todays events have stirred something in me similarly. This from a BBC report after a man was shot dead at a tube station this morning:

Mr Whitby, told BBC News: "I was sitting on the train reading my paper.

"I heard a load of noise, people saying, 'Get out, get down!'

"I saw an Asian guy run onto the train hotly pursued by three plain-clothes police officers.

'Bomb belt'

"One of them was carrying a black handgun - it looked like an automatic - they pushed him to the floor, bundled on top of him and unloaded five shots into him.

"I saw the gun being fired five times into the guy - he is dead," he said.

BBC Home affairs correspondent Margaret Gilmore said officers had challenged a known suspect they had been following.

"He ran, they followed him. They say they gave him a warning, they then shot him.

"They brought in the air ambulance. They did everything they can to revive him. He died at the scene."

Police had warned they would shoot to kill if they believed somebody to be a threat, she added.

So now we have gone from being in a country that is susceptible to terrorist attacks, to being in a country that is susceptible to terrorist attacks with a police force with nervous twitches and shoot to kill orders.

It just doesn't feel quite right at the moment. I don't feel directly threatened or in danger, more constrained in this place, jumpy when sirens start up near by and a little discombobulated. I say discombobulated because when a chance to uses a word like discombobulated presents itself, you don't turn it down.

UPDATE - This was written, but no posted yesterday.