looking for my cat in the top cemetery and collecting money for cats protection at Race hill Wyvale and the day got darker as it went on
a day that will live in the memory only for the fact that there people a lot worse off than me
I was at work when of the teachers came in and told us that the twin towers had just collapsed and could be 50 000 dead and they had no idea how many other planes were out there. I remember leaving to pick my son up from his nursery at the end of the day and hugging him so tightly and wondering what was going to happen next. He is now,at 10 years old, asking me about it as it's in the news and is really spooked. So am I!
I was at home and had just finished watching a well known Australian lunchtime soap..... Anyways i left the room for a piss & they'd gone to the BBC News link. I thought to myself i hadn't changed the channel so went to change it back. Then the relevance of what was happening began to sink in.
I'd only been in New York six months before so to watch the city i'd had such an amazing time in being attacked was devastating.
I was at school and didn't know anything about it till I was on the school bus on the way home and the driver had the radio on. In psychology a-level 4 or so years later we studied the way memories about that day are retained. It's a phenomenon called flash bulb memory that means people have very vivid memories of not only the actual event but in many cases the hours around it to. I certainly remember things that I wouldn't about any other day for instance where other members of my family were.
At work in a shop in Lewes, the afternoon was very quiet that day with very few people out and about.
We had a fire alarm go off in the store room at work so we called the Fire brigade and only found out something was happening in the US when they arrived and said that they had been sat watching the events unfold on TV beforehand. (it was a false alarm) I didn't really know what was happening in New York until i got home and saw the scale of things and how terrible it all was.
A colleague of works' parents had been up the twin towers at the same sort of time as the attacks on the previous day, they were pretty shook up about the whole thing and how close it had been to involving their family.
I'd been out of contact all day in a training session at work in London so knew nothing about it until I met my wife at Croydon station on the way down to the ground. I remember seeing it on the TV in that little sweet shop next to the Queens Head. Then we went to the ground and watched the Albion lose to Southampton. My wife's cousin worked in the towers but very luckily had not gone in that day. My Dad died about two weeks prior to the attacks and so emotions were already a bit raw
In the back room of the Bar Mariuccia in Montalcino, Italy, translating the live Italian TV news coverage for a group of near-hysterical Americans, including a couple of New Yorkers, who were trying to make some sense of what they were seeing, even though it made no sense to the people who were presenting the TV programme ... all the time worrying about the teaboy and his girlfriend who were on holiday in Lower Manhattan.
As it happened, the young 'uns had been out late the night before, had slept in (about half a mile from the action) and eventually woke up to find that it was "a bit dusty outside".
Was on a one day briefing/course for work at the Oval with all of my colleagues. Chinese whispers started mid morning about what had happened, culminating at lunchtime with our line manager (a prat, but I concede that he dealt with this superlatively) giving a totally off the cuff briefing about was known, what was being conjectured and what the possible implications for the business (pensions and insurance) could be whilst keeping us focussed on the human side of events.
Watched some of the events on the TV in the little gatehouse to the Oval whilst waiting to leave and also on the minibus home which had TV installed. I am sure that none of us remembered anything about the course or it's content afterwards.
That is weird, i picked up my French girlfriend at the time from Gatwick, she was flying back from Barcelona early evening, wen i met her at arrivals i told her what had happened and She would not believe me untill we got in the car and put the radio on, then watched it in her flat in Brighton all evening, the weird bit is that She worked at EA in HH you probably know her Bud
At the TUC conference, The Brighton Centre. (as was Tony Blair)
Had to be kept in the room we were in for security for 2 hours, untill the PM and his people had left the building. We were all oblivious to it, got home and watched it on tv... such a strange feeling seeing the images it was sureal.
I would have been nearly 7. I can't remember anything about that day, don't remember being told at school or watching the news. Suspect it was hidden from me until things had calmed down, shame really as that was a monumental event in modern history.
i came home from work, BBC 24 on telly but wasnt paying attention as made cup of tea, lunch etc, just concsious something had happened... fire? bomb? ... oh, tower on fire, thats not good. TV had lots of speculation as to what was occuring. then watched as the second plane went in. oh, thats a big deal.