"And then he said..."

Yesterday I went into the Co-Op Bank branch at the Angel to pay a cheque in. It's a rather splendid building that once upon a time used to be a Lyons Corner House, the oh-so-English cafes that were the Starbucks of their times, where stiff-upper-lipped characters in 1940s black and white movies meet up in order to act repressed with each other.

It's changed since I was last there several months ago, having been modernised. I remember it as one of those banks where the glass screen protecting the staff hit you in the face the moment you walked in, but now it's airy and spacious, with tasteful wood panelling, plenty of open space, and a small self-serve coffee machine stocked with free Fair Traded drinks.

It also has a round plaque on the far wall, incongruously large and brightly coloured among the soft restful tones of the Co-Op corporate branding, commemorating the building's pop culture claim to fame. In 1935, when Waddingtons had just bought the British Empire and European rights to the new American board game Monopoly, the company decided to replace the rather drab Atlantic City street names with familiar London locations. To that end, the company's managing director Victor Watson took his secretary Marjorie Phillips down to London from their head office in Leeds to carry out some research. As they toured the great metropolis they stopped for lunch in the Angel corner house - and that's why The Angel, Islington, made it onto the Monopoly board. (See Tim Moore's excellent Do Not Pass Go for more on this.)

Sadly, it's not just games manufacturers who travel down from Leeds these days, bombers do too - and the evidence of this was also painfully on display at the Angel Co-Op. A round table in the centre of the branch, more usually used by customers to fill out paying-in slips and other such mundanities of banking life, is currently home to a neat display of sympathy cards. They come from other Co-Op branches, Angel customers, rival banks - anyone who had contact with 20-year-old Shahara Islam, a cashier at the branch who was one of the first victims of the July 7 bombings to be publically named. She was killed by Hasib Mir Hussain, who came down from Leeds with anything but games on his mind and blew up the bus on which she was travelling to work.

I often like to finish these posts with a neat conclusion or a pun that ties all the different strands together, but comments about the randomness of life, fate working through dice rolls, and other such sentiments would be trite and rather pointless here, I can't help thinking. Rather like playing Monopoly on a wet Sunday afternoon, this whole terrorism business is one game that will likely go on forever, fail to produce any winners, and only lead to tears before bedtime.

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So far, so good in my return to office-based work. The transport network seemed pretty quiet to me, although the Standard was claiming that was because it was the first day of the school holidays.

Whatever the reason, rail and Tube both seemed to have fewer passengers in general, and in particular fewer older people, middle-aged businessmen in suits or ethnic minority members: I've never seen it so white and so young. But, to coin a cliche, it was definitely business as usual, and the Angel was bustling.

Ah well - off there again in half an hour. Still would prefer to be asleep, you know…

That's £550 with a hotel
I've been visiting the Angel, Islington, for years, but this is the first time I'd wandered into the bit with this impressive interpretation of the area's name.

Free parking
The police presence wasn't huge, but what there was seemed more obvious than usual - bulletproof vests here despite the mundane nature of the call-out.

Grim reminder
It was all pretty normal on the Tube - until you emerged at Angel and were hit with this pointed reminder that all was not well.

Higher, ever higher
The escalator at Angel Tube, from the bottom. Apparently it's no longer the tallest escalator in Europe, but at 60m (197ft) with a vertical rise of 27.5m it's still comfortably top on the Tube network

Not many people
Commentators said Tube traffic was normal for the first day of the school holidays, but to me there seemed fewer people - I'd normally expect to see a larger crowd than this leaving the Waterloo and City Line, even if it was late in rush hour