As the tragedy in Manchester shocked the world on Monday, British people valiantly carried on with their days, according to a Griffith local on the ground.
Ashelea Patterson was in England two days before the devastating attack by a suicide bomber at Manchester Arena, which claimed the lives of 22 people.
She said in the days following the attack, while many were in mourning, what was surprising was seeing people carry on with their lives.
“It is of course not that they aren’t affected but the way I have interpreted it is that there is an acute awareness of terrorism and that terrorism aims to produce widespread fear and that it’s so important to just continue living without allowing the tragedy to impact upon daily life,” she said.
Despite this brave attitude Ms Patterson said national security had definitely tightened with a huge presence of police and security about and rumours of further big changes to soon be announced.
“The one thing I did notice was that while the general public didn't appear to be particularly hyper vigilant, there was a huge presence of police and security about yesterday,” she said.
“I was in a little coffee shop and there were a lot of tourists and business people waiting for trains, there was a security guard at the door who noticed a suitcase sitting alone in the corner and suddenly there were three police officers dragging the bag into the middle of the shop and yelling ‘whose bag is this?’”
“This poor girl who was ordering her coffee turned around to realise the police thought her bag might have been a bomb.
