Terror and the UK - What I saw as Bush arrived to sign the book of condolence at the British ambassador's residence says a great deal about the state of relations between our two countries

I always feel strangely sympathetic to George W Bush whenever I see him in person. In the flesh, he is suddenly peculiarly vulnerable: a physically not-big man who struts that familiar swagger, I sense, precisely because he is always inwardly terrified that he will somehow not rise to the occasion.

The afternoon after the London bombings, I was invited to the British ambassador's Lutyens residence to see Bush sign the book of condolences; he was helicoptering in direct from Andrews Air Force Base on his return from Gleneagles on Air Force One. What I saw then and over the weekend, I suspect, says much about the president and the current state of UK-US relations.

I arrived early, only to see well-scrubbed men in suits fanning out. The men had twirly wires running up from their collars to earpieces in their left ears. A member of the armed forces in full dress uniform with white-peaked cap and red braid stood beside the French windows. It took a while for it to dawn on me that he was not a British soldier, but a US marine on active duty - and that the people preparing to take charge around him were not British, but members of the US secret service. Indeed, one of them was actually wearing sunglasses inside the British ambassador's residence.

Perhaps I should not have felt this way, but I found what I saw disturbing. Was this not sovereign British territory? Many times in the past, I have seen the secret service ensconced outside the building when their charges were inside; sometimes a small personal protection entourage would discreetly be allowed in, too. The ambassador's residence and the garden area around it are unusually secure, set well back from the road and effectively hidden from view. In other words, the US secret service was not needed - but, it seemed, the British still had to defer to it.

Air Marine One chugged overhead and landed at the vice-president's mansion next door. The embassy's ballroom was already looking like a film set, but then the White House pool of cameramen swept in, knocking everybody aside. Finally Bush came in with that strange swagger - chest puffed out, arms swinging and slightly splayed, knuckles facing forward. He sat at the desk and started to write in the book of condolence - and write, and write. There was total silence save for the camera shutters. Bush looked intently, lips slightly pursed, frowning. I noticed that there were still two plasters on his left hand, presumably from his cycling accident in Scotland.

Then he walked into the gardens with David Manning, the British ambassador, taking a long way round so that the film location could move with him. Embassy staff had been waiting there in the 90-degree heat for half an hour, penned behind barriers; somebody had taken pity and brought them water.

I went to see what it had taken Bush so long to write, but all he had said was something along the lines of hearts and minds being with the injured and bereaved. Bizarrely, he winked at a member of the embassy staff as he left. As I was walking through the car park, two young men in suits and short haircuts asked me whether I was a British citizen. I was prepared to tell them to mind their own business, but confirmed that I was. "Our sympathies, sir. America has no finer friend," said one, extending a hand. I returned home to find an e-mail from a senator friend: "My deepest feeling of solidarity and grief with your great nation." Then I switched on NBC. It already had tailor-made graphics and grim music to accompany film of what some were calling 7/7.

That was the kaleidoscope of images in the days following the bombs: a welter of goodwill and kindness, yet much of it cloaked in made-for-TV theatricality. Bush, the most powerful man in the world but all too human in the flesh; Britain, a fellow G8 power, surrendering control to armed symbols of US authority; children bringing flowers to the embassy.

Two days after the bombs, people were still delivering flowers on Massachusetts Avenue. "God bless Tony," someone had scrawled. The Washington Post, reporting from London, spoke fondly of "fur-hatted palace guards walking their posts as usual in a cold July drizzle". Never mind Spain, Turkey, Tunisia, Indonesia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, the Yemen, Kenya, Bali or Tanzania, all of them already struck by al-Qaeda bombs.

In American eyes, Britain had now seen for itself what terrorism was like; the two countries were now unique soulmates, sharing the horror. Bush told an audience of marines and FBI recruits that "the only way the terrorists can win is if we lose our nerve", speaking just three days after the US government had told Americans not to travel to London. But by then a Killer Storm was threatening Florida, and the nation's attention duly started to wander.

In less than five days after the atrocities, the flowers had been cleared away.

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