London calling...

Hey pop kids

I hope everyone's well after the awful tragedy of yesterday. I had a very slow journey into work on the bus as the tube station was closed, saw lots of ambulances and police cars outside University College Hospital on Gower Street but didn't discover what had happened until I got to the office and watched it unfold on the TV.

It was shocking to see familiar scenes of the city I've lived in all my life wrecked by bombs and panic. I hope all of you and your loved ones are safe. I spent the entire day phoning and emailing my friends, and getting a ton of emails back especially as friends in America woke up to the news. Then a long trek home. Got a lift, walked a mile or so and then got another lift from my sister who'd driven six miles in from the suburbs so she could take me back to my house.

I love London more than anything. My family came here as immigrants from Eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century to escape persecution and I feel the city flowing through my veins. It's where my family live, where most of my friends are and it inspires me. Now that Let's Get Lost is finally finished I'm working on my first grown-up book and it's all about my London from the Camden clubs of my wild teenage years to the Soho drinking dens of my early 20's and beyond to right now where I live in a beautiful part of North London, a few miles from where I grew up and on a summer's day I can look out and see the whole city laid out before me, sun glinting off the buildings, red brick Edwardian houses all lined up but beautiful woods five minutes away.

And being a Londoner is to be special. To be unflappable and practical in the face of whatever anyone wants to throw at us and to never lose that dry sense of humour that sees us through the bad times. I love London...