Earwitness Testimony

As you may well have seen in the news, the top two floors of a building here in London collapsed yesterday afternoon around 4pm. No fatalities, thankfully, and people in nearby buildings - such as myself - were evacuated.

However, despite the various claims being made on interweb news sites about how the shower of debris was preceded by an explosion, I just want to go on record as one who both has a good memory and also heard the event, as saying that there was no sound of an explosion at all, but rather a thunderous sound of bricks or similar falling to earth, which is pretty much what happened.

I don't want to sound unkind, but given that, within minutes of the event, the BBC website featured claims about 'witnesses hearing an explosion', I'd suggest some people need to figure out exactly why they were rewriting events so very quickly to introduce elements which were entirely absent from the actual event.

Building up their parts in the story, I fear, but this is what happens all too often when something unpleasant happens - people seem all too keen to annex themselves to tragedy in some way, even if it is, let's be honest, nothing to do with them.

Do I sound harsh or unkind? Maybe, but it's been suggested that we rewrite memories of past events to fit our current emotional needs, and if that's true, who are these people who need to change their recollection of an event within mere minutes of its occurrence? They're clearly not mentally healthy, and we certainly shouldn't be listening to them.