Oh yes. I was living around London at the time, and very well remember being stranded at some station when all trains were halted, shortly after I had gotten on

Oh yes. I was living around London at the time, and very well remember being stranded at some station when all trains were halted, shortly after I had gotten on board at King's Cross. As for mobile phones, I actually believe there were some at the time. They started appearing sometime during the latter years of the eighties, to begin with as rather expensive status symbols, conspicuously flashed by the yuppie mob. Tangential: Being stranded on the tube was not necessarily a waste of time. Not too long before, I was in a stationary train in a tunnel near Liverpool Street Station, in muted light for the better part of an hour. A woman in her eighties (who said: "I don't like old people") told me fascinating stories about the bombing of London that she had experienced. Only gradually did I realize we were talking about bombings of the first world war. Zeppeliners. Never heard of that before, and found it hard to credit, but of course, everything checked out when I looked it up.