LONDON, June 29 — The headline of London’s Evening Standard newspaper today said 1,700 people could have died at “ladies’ night” in the Tiger Tiger night spot. The police gauged the potential death toll as “significant” if the car had exploded.
But, in the manner of a city that shrugged stoically at the July 7 bombings two years ago, many people in the streets near Piccadilly Circus seemed less than troubled here today after police announced that they had defused an explosive mixture of gasoline, nails and gas canisters in a car abandoned outside the Tiger Tiger on a thoroughfare called Haymarket.
“It’s something you get used to, living in London,” said Andrew Fowler, a 39-year-old lawyer who was sipping coffee at an outdoor café near Piccadilly Circus.
“And given the stance our government made on the war in Iraq and elsewhere, I think we are just getting used to being a target,” he said. “It’s something we have to live with.”
This had been another episode of How Not to Wet Your Pants.
