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雷达卡
写的就是伦敦铁石心肠的一面
CITIES THAT NEVER WEEP
— London
Preface
That London has already moved on from Julie Sillitoe’s death last week is proof of the unsettling power of urban renewal in the face of tragedy, says Andrew Tuck.（背景介绍：伦敦时间2月14日23：03，在英国伦敦市中心霍本Holborn区地铁站附近，一栋6层高大楼楼顶临街面的三角形砖石墙坍落，砸中街上的一辆捷克产Skoda Octavia出租车。车内49岁的女司机Julie Sillitoe（有3个儿子）死亡，两名乘客25岁男子和24岁女子受伤送医，1名男路人也受伤。大风疑是肇事主因。）
19 February 2014
The city marches on. But sometimes its ability to heal itself, shrug off adversity, ignore the arrows of fate and God can seem too strong. Sometimes it feels like a cold-hearted place. Didn’t you just see what happened?
Last Friday, London was buffeted（打来打去，buffet不是自助餐么，这里有点“人为刀俎，我为鱼肉”的意思） by a wind spirited up over the Atlantic. By the time it marched on London its strength was already dissipated（消失，驱散） but it still packed a bunch. Branches snapped from trees, rubbish was pulled from bins and sent scarpering（scarper，逃走、溜号） down the road and, just outside Holborn tube station, at a point where the city and the commercial West End bleed into each other, it hit the roof top of an old Victorian building. And at 23.05 it did its worse, dislodging（取出） a chunk of masonry（砖石结构） that fell towards the busy street and landed on a minicab, killing its driver Julie Sillitoe and injuring her two passengers and a passer-by.
The spot where the rubble fell is on my walk to work and today when I passed, the façade was covered with scaffolding（脚手架） and builders and across the front of the site someone had found time to make an awning printed with the words that all the businesses were open as usual “following the recent tragic accident”. Pedestrians（行人） marched along and nobody was looking skywards for falling bricks.
Julie Sillitoe’s family and friends will be mourning today but the city will heal and move on. I wish it wouldn’t be so good at letting us go; it makes you feel rather speck-ish.（speck是污点的意思）
One minute’s walk from this tragedy is Red Lion Square, although it’s not really a square any more as a multi-lane road carves its way along the western flank（侧面）. The road was made possible by the ravages（破坏） of German bombing in the Second World War. Many people lost their lives but there’s no memorial. In nearby Queen Square you can find a small metal plaque（匾额） commemorating a Zeppelin（德国的大型飞艇，齐柏林飞艇） bombing during the First World War – but you have to look hard.
Just a small patch of one metropolis where so many sad tales have unfolded and yet this city just shakes them off. It’s what makes a city so powerful, like an organism that can just keep multiplying and regenerating. But sometimes you want these small daily tragedies to hit us harder. You wish it wasn’t just business as usual in the morning. That the city took more care of us.
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