As Londoners come to terms with the aftermath of the July 7 bombings and with living with the fear of what may be to come, Northern Echo columnist Peter Mullen, who lives in the capital, explains what life is like in the city and how the 'Blitz' spirit has emerged.

Terrorism in London is good for bicycle thieves. After the tube bombings there is a sudden surge in enthusiasm for cycling to work. Two members of our church choir at St Michael's have bought new bikes and one has had hers stolen already. Yes, there's a lot more cycling and a lot more walking. There seem to be two attitudes towards the bombers: many are extravagantly defiant, as a man in a Cheapside bank said to me. "I'm making a point of using the tube even more than usual. If I start changing my behaviour, the bastards have won, haven't they?"

As an extreme example of this gung-ho, up and at 'em attitude, there was even a street party in Shepherd's Bush. People wanted to express their solidarity, they said, in the good old spirit of the Blitz. But many have altered their daily lives, as evidenced by the far less busy shops in Oxford Street.

In the City, workers are at their desks in the big banks and brokers' offices early in the morning and they tend to stay there all day, keeping body and soul together by a steady supply of coffee and baguettes. And, in summer, the pattern is to relieve the stress of the long day by standing outside the pubs in groups and supping pints or Pimms. The pubs have been quieter this last week. When I went to the front door to put the rubbish in the bin at half past ten the other night, the street was deserted. And I live bang - no pun intended - in the centre of the City across the road from the Old Bailey and Barts Hospital.

If the purpose of terrorism is to frighten and disrupt, then the terrorists are having some minor success because there are dozens of scares and false alarms. Last Thursday, after the second of the two main incidents, my Rectory and the church were cordoned off - along with the Old Bailey and half of Holborn Viaduct - while the police checked what they called "a suspect bus". It turned out to be nothing, but it's eerie to see all the traffic and the people vanish so quickly from one of the busiest parts of the capital and let the police with their sniffer dogs have the place to themselves.

But these are irritations, nuisance-value only, as people carry on with the daily routine. But scared or defiant, everybody is angry. Getting around - always a frustrating task in central London - is a lot more difficult at the moment. Parts of the underground network are closed, including a stretch of the Piccadilly line which many use for getting from King's Cross to Heathrow. But every time you go to the tube station there are fresh announcements over the incomprehensible or inaudible tannoy to tell you: "There is currently no service on the Circle line, the District line..." Or wherever has been singled out for further checking.

One of the usual features of the Underground is that nobody looks at anybody. Most people seem half asleep. And the carriages are crowded. Usually people just squash in silently and strap-hang until their stop. This has changed. You find yourself looking around you, getting the measure of your travelling companions. And there is some nervousness - especially when you see someone with a rucksack.

There's a lot more jumpiness. Normally the sound of police sirens and ambulances is the constant background music in the City. People joke that it's only the coppers rushing home for lunch. Suddenly there seems to be a lot more siren music, and folk look to see what's going on. Any loud bang - such as a car back-firing or a building contractor dropping a girder from a great height - makes everyone nervous.

Of course, the whole country is appalled by the bomb outrages, but the feeling is intensified when they happen on your home patch. I mean, what others hear on radio and TV, we Londoners can experience just by going to the window and looking out. Last Monday night for example, when the police revealed the names of two more of the bombers who are on the run, the early evening news said: "One of them is thought to have caught a train to Bank tube station and then taken his bomb on board the number 26 bus". Strewth! Bank station is in my parish and I pass it every day. And I've lost count of the times I've nearly been run over crossing in front of a number 26.

Everybody knows someone who was involved in one of the atrocities - or nearby when it happened. I was at a livery dinner and a High Court judge told me he'd just got off the tube train that was blown up at Russell Square. One of our congregation, a young policewoman who's getting married in the autumn, was on duty and first on the scene at the bus bombing on July 7. You can imagine...

There is a silent contempt for the way the mass media tries to describe the local mood: "Londoners are this... Londoners are that... Londoners are bearing up... Londoners are boiling in terror". The mute response to this pop-psychology is: "What the bloody hell do they think they know about us?" What we're really trying to do, frankly, is to ignore the latest fatuous statement from our unbeloved Mayor Ken Livingstone and get through the day in one piece.

The City churches have tried to do their bit. My wife and I were at the Aldgate incident on July 7, hanging around in St Botolph's, Bishopsgate, pouring cups of tea for the emergency services, poor courageous devils, who were up and down into the tube station dealing with the unspeakable aftermath of the bombed train. They weren't trembling or wincing or anything of the sort - just quietly outraged, furious and disgusted because life and limb had been attacked so savagely. Yes, that's it: atrocities are truly atrocious. Evil is banal.

There's another thing: everybody is speculating. In a pub by Leadenhall Market, I overheard a bloke saying: "7th July - 7/7 - then 21st July - 21/7. D'you think the buggers are dealing in 7s - or 3s? They do play with numbers you know. Someone in the New York Police Department told me that after the twin towers everybody was sure the terrorists had chosen the date - 9/11 - as a sick joke. 911 is the number for emergency services in the States".

This is what you always get when people are under attack: genuine fear, bloody- minded determination to "carry on" and gallons of speculation and rumour. Rumour and humour. When the first bombs went off, the news bulletins were saying these might be "power surges" on the Underground network. One old wag said: "It reminded me of when Hitler started sending those V2 rocket bombs - them that you couldn't hear coming. The government tried to prevent panic by saying the bangs were exploding gas mains. So when another V2 hit the East End, the Cockneys would say, 'Don't worry - it's only one of them flying gas mains again!'"

The spirit of the Blitz is back. Londoners are "carrying on".

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.