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David Gardner brushes up on his lines, with help from his wife Angela |
On stage... the actor who lost leg in July 7 bombing
Victim of Tube train horror says: ‘I’ve had a very good year’
A HAMPSTEAD actor-director who lost a leg in the July 7 bombings makes an emotional return to the stage next week – to play the role he was denied last year.
David Gardner, director of amateur theatre group the Hampstead Players, was due to play Brutus in a summer production of Julius Ceasar at Hampstead Parish Church in Church Row last July.
Instead, the 51-year–old accountant, who lives in Well Walk with his wife Angela and 18-month-old son Matthew, found himself caught up in the Edgware Road Tube train blast – one week before opening night.
Mr Gardner underwent a five-hour emergency operation during which his spleen was removed and his left leg amputated above the knee.
The cigar-smoking, Guinness-loving amateur actor, who has spent much of the last year learning to walk again, will now be seen on stage in three performances of the play next week to mark the July 7 bombings.
But despite his horrific injuries, he told the New Journal he had had “a very good year”.
He said: “Everyone is different. Some people had fewer injuries than me but they saw more. I was a victim but I didn’t see much. Everyone has their own story.
“I am back at work. I have learned to walk again. I am surrounded by a very loving wife, family and community. You hear from people you have not heard from in a very long time. And you discover you are more loved than you thought.”
Mr Gardner was on a Circle Line train on his way to work last July when the bomb exploded. Recalling the morning, Mr Gardner said: “I am usually a guy who stands up on the Tube but on this particular morning I was so tired. I had had a long rehearsal the night before. I had been to a stag do on the previous Saturday – the day of the Live 8 concert. And I had been celebrating the Olympics result the day before.
“I was sitting next to the partition in the Tube. From what I can make out the bomber was on the other side of the partition. Then there was just confusion.”
Aware he had been seriously injured but slipping in and out of consciousness, Mr Gardner was stretchered through the carriages and into an ambulance which took him to St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, where he underwent the five-hour operation. He spent a gruelling six weeks in the hospital recuperating.
He said: “I didn’t like the evenings. I was lonely. I couldn’t sleep. I was uncomfortable. I had a lot of that phantom pain.
“I couldn’t smoke or have my Guinness – although they allowed me half a pint of Guinness on my second last day in hospital.
“But the staff were terrific. And it was the thought of the next morning and Angela arriving that got me through it. Angela would bring me people’s cards and show me emails. There were a lot of people in Hampstead who we didn’t know who got in touch. Angela answered every single email.” For Mr Gardner, marking the anniversary of the bombings at Hampstead Parish Church is especially poignant because of his strong family ties to the church. His mother was christened there in 1923 and his sister was married in the church in 1979.
And the Gardners, who met through Hampstead Players, were themselves married there just over four years ago.
The terrible events of July 7 have now brought the couple even closer together. Mr Gardner said: “People say I’m brave but if I had known there was a bomb on there I would have run a mile.
“I am just dealing with it. We are both glass-is-half-full-people and that helps a lot.”
His wife Angela added: “It taught us a lot about ourselves and about each other’s strengths. And about the love and generosity of other people. I think that having got through this we can get through anything.”
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