London's burning

The terribly bourgeois nature of my Monday night was not lost on me.

There I was, drinking fancy wine in a champagne bar on the 42nd floor of a London skyscraper, watching bits of South London burning.

The sensation is indescribable when offices in Central London are closing in the middle of the day, and you find yourself on a packed tube surrounded by a carriage full of commuters looking just as bemused as you feel.

Exiting out of the tube and even at 3pm shops have their roller doors shut or wooden boards covering windows. Panic buying has set in at the last remaining newsagents.

I managed to find one open shop when I left home briefly at 7pm because I discovered I had no food. But even they were closing around me. The man practically followed me around the store, rushing me to make my dinner selection.

And then you sit in the roaring quiet, and watch the idiocy unfold through all forms of social media, the sound of sirens seeping through the open windows.

But what doesn't kill us, only makes us stronger. Disaster brings people together. Hundreds of people turn out at Clapham Junction with brooms to sweep clean; long-lost friends and colleagues reach out through email, skype and facebook to make sure everyone is ok.

As Alain de Botton tweeted this afternoon:

"The good tends always to outweigh the bad: it just takes longer to get itself organised"