London
After the fall, the bounce. Not just in economics, but also in the state of mind, the feeling of well-being.
Last week, doom and gloom reigned: Lehman Brothers had gone belly up, shedding 5,000 London jobs; markets were in free fall; Eurostar was off the rails; the capital hadn't had any sun for weeks as September ushered in the gloom of seasonal affective disorder.
Knife crime was rampant; the future of London Fashion Week was at risk; and the newspapers read as if they were guest-edited by a grouchy Nostradamus figure with the flu.
What a difference a week makes. The rekindled wartime mantra, 'Keep calm and carry on' won out. People kept calm and carried on. And just as the FTSE, London's index of blue-chip stocks, plunged, a miracle happened: the sun came out. London enjoyed its first full week of bright sunshine for nearly 18 months. On Monday, it was still shining, at 21 degrees Celsius.
The papers are putting out feel-good stories. Fashion Week fought back from its apparently imminent demise and conjured up one of its best showings for years, say the critics.
