On Thursday morning in SPIN, it slowly became apparent that something odd was going on in London...

The always on TV in the newsroom was as usual beaming out Sky News with the sound down... You get used to the flashes of colour and the news wall and the various drama associated with Sky's rolling news - so much so that the word NewsFlash really means very little anymore...

But this seemed to be different - a different kind of urgency, shots of traffic stopped, of ambulances flashing, helicopter shots of London...

Slowly people drifted towards the TV and stood watching as the News room kicked into action... Something had happened in London... Explosions, tube stations, a bus destroyed in the middle of the street...

Certain decisions have to be made in a short space of time, without too much information... How bad is it? Is it as bad as New York? Is it as bad as Madrid? What do we know? How do we respond?

These decisions are unnatural and uncomfortable... You don't really think about human tragedy, about people injured or trapped... Instead you do the maths in your head...

Should we stop everything? Do we do a newsflash ourselves? Will we still play the same music?

The criteria for these decisions are never clearly elucidated... There are no handbooks or quotas... You watch the screen - wait to see what's happening - try to get an idea of how bad it might be and what is the appropriate response...

It's an awkward ugly time - and part of your mind is thinking about the people who are hurt, hoping that no one has died, but fearing the worst....

All around the station work starts on the process of reporting and covering and dealing... The news room start writing, gathering audio, piecing together information in preparation for the next bulletin... Deeno and Damo on the Talk show start calling guests, who can we get? who's good on this kind of thing? does anyone know someone in London? the mobile netowrks are down? do we have landline numbers? are there any Irish injured?

And a small part of my brain is quietly relieved that it can't be the IRA, that it's not Ireland's fault...

I hate days like that... But, its the people staggering into the daylight, covered in blood and dust, who can't comprehend what's happened to them that you feel sorry for - and you hate the media for pushing cameras into their faces and I hate myself for turning the volume up...