Oxford life. Thirtysomething challenges. Music leanings. Anything really.

The first I saw of it was the front page of The Times last Saturday. It took me a while to realise why their headline was 7/7.

Then it dawned on me - that's the date of our own terrorist attacks.

Next, a pundit on the Today programme referred to the day using 7/7.

And finally on the BBC news, one of their graphics had 7/7 in the background.

NO! Stop it! We're not Americans, and we don't need to follow like a puppy dog where they lead.

Having a look at Wikipedia, it appears the Spanish label Madrid in a similar way (3/11). Or maybe not. Maybe it's the American authors and media who applied their need to grandify things who put the label to the day.

But why? 9/11 has a ring to it, I can't begrudge the Americans their label, but it seems to me that this is just an example of an unimaginative media mythologising terrible events.

I shall close with the antidote to the numbers. This is a quote from an email I got via a UK forum for Web freelancers. The person who wrote this last Thursday apparently meant it:

Has anyone noticed the numerology of this event?
7 explosions on the 7th day of the 7th month and the number of 2005 add up to 7.
Sounds like Al Queda as they chose 9/11 or the American emergency number for one of their attacks