I’ve struggled into work this

I’ve struggled into work this morning, albeit late, in spite of the worst cold I’ve had in years. Just too much to do.
I was at the station in Chichester at 11 o’clock. The three minutes silence for the victims of the terrorist acts in the US was observed. I have never, ever, heard the city so quiet. There was total and absolute silence. Everyone on the platforms sat or stood still. The workmen on the new Wiley building removed their hardhats and stood on the scaffolding. Cars stopped on the roads. The only sounds that could be heard were a dog barking, a child crying and the distant toll of the cathedral bells (which you can never normally hear at the station).
I think it was a remarkable symbol of how ordinary people here, far removed geographically from the disaster site, have been touched by events. I have never seen the silence so closely observed – certainly it was more closely observed than it is on Remembrance Day.
The silence was finally broken on the platforms at Chichester by a security announcement, warning passengers not to leave bags and packages unattended – something that I had never heard at Chichester before this week, and symbolic in its own right.