...I have missed the anniversary of September 11th and I kind of had it in the back of my mind to talk about what happened on that day from my perspective...(after what happened on 7/7 it's brought the events of that day back into focus a little, so, slightly late (but none the less) here we go)...
Back at the tail end of 2001 I happened to be working right on the Heathrow flight path - in a place called
Hounslow which is right out to the far west of London (if you click that link you'll see quite how near the airport it is), it's a crap town, dirty and run down, crowded and absolutely packed with various minority groups...(not that this is a bad thing, you understand, it's just to set the scene)...the many mosques and Muslim sheltered housing were (then at least) as evident as the burnt out houses and cars and the HM Prison detention centre...suffice it to say, I wasn't at
all comfortable in Houslow after the hours of daylight had passed, and the evenings were starting to draw in (it being that time of year)...
Standing in the midst of all this squalor was a glittering palace, surrounded by a strong security system - swipe access, toughened glass doors and lots of security guards (getting in involved passing several stern inspections, including the occasional bag search). Again - just to put things in context - I was told early on that the place was regularly targeted by religious extremists from the local community, attacking other businesses on site - some big US bank and American airlines were sharing the rent, so security-wise they were taking no chances...Anti-US feelings were strong in the local area...
I was contracting for a GE business, situated on the top few floors doing IT support (2nd line) covering for a guy who was off with a back injury...it was the standard kind of thing, diagnosing faults with Windows machines, installing apps, building workstations (nothing too taxing) and had been there for several months. Contracting was good business at the time, big pay packets...so I put up with the extremely long journey in and out (was getting up at 5am most days) and the distinctly uncomfortable area I had to walk through to get to work...
From the top floor of this building you could feel the rumble of the engines as the constant procession of huge aircraft came into land at Heathrow, and (thanks to the altitude) they would pass the window at about the same height as you were standing when coming in to land. You would have been able to see the passengers through the windows if they had come any nearer...and it almost goes without saying that the deafening whine of the jet engines was audible throughout the building (and was pretty much constant)...
Now, I don't know if you have ever worked for, or been into a GE business, but every one that I have ever worked for/been in seems to have been notable for the number of televisions they have dotted around the place. Without exception their reception *always* has a flatscreen showing CNN/NBC (with market prices running by) and the meeting rooms all generally seem to also be equipped (for presentation purposes, I guess)...
Not wishing to sound clichéd, but 9/11 started just like any other day (and there was no reason why it shouldn't have done), a bit quieter than normal I guess, but support in this place never seemed to go at any rate other than slow, with only about 80 people in the office the number of problems on the go never seemed to exceed one or two...Breakfast had been my usual Woolworths' "Full English" with free newspaper...(lovely fried bread there)...so I had skipped lunch...taking my break a little later than usual (it was fairly easy going there) I was reading my way through the news sites on the web to catch up on things when that first "breaking story" came to my attention (from the BBC)...
That moment changed my attitude to news forever, or perhaps it was the fact that over the next few minutes, as word spread, CNN, BBC, SKY etc. (with the interest of the entire planet focused solely on one thing) became totally unavailable. I couldn't find out what was happening...and I *had* to know...(I guess that is why
RSS is so important to me now)...
In the office, everything gradually ground to a halt...someone ran past shouting that two guys from the floor above us had flown out yesterday to attend a meeting in one of the towers...they would have been in there when the plane hit!
Giving up on the internet, I was in reception with a small crowd of worried people (some failing to reach US colleagues on their mobile phones) staring in disbelief at the TV when the second plane hit...I watched it happen...everyone gasped or screamed, someone started crying...
I don't know why, but for some stupid reason I didn't think I should stay watching it, I thought I should have been doing some work, so I headed up to my desk and tried to get on with things...but my mind kept on seeking news, what the hell was going on...?
Thus, using the internet I found the only place I could seem to get any joy at all was on
Fark, which is usually a home to the
photoshopping community, a place to find inspiration for their amusing images from stories in the news (it's where all the funny pictures you get on email usually originate), their forum became for me a source of what was going on, and the entries remain in their archive. I like to re-read the events unfolding from time to time...If you want to take a look then click
here (where it all starts)...it reads in real time, so it's like being back on the day again...(I'd forgotten the news footage shown-
that *very* day-of Arabs dancing in celebration in the streets when they heard the news, for example)...
By the time the first tower collapsed I knew it was really serious, and definitely deliberate, so I was back in reception, with pretty much everyone else from the office...and I'll be completely honest with you, the rest of a day is a real blur in my memory mixed with a feeling of horror and helplessness, so absorbed was I...I remember jumping each time a plane went past the building, picturing it striking us (silly as that sounds)...and I remember the eerie silence in the building when they stopped coming...as all flights were grounded...
I remember dreading my walk back to the station...but I don't remember the walk itself...I remember strangers on the train trading stories, trading updates as text messages and phone calls came in to our phones...trading "where were you" stories, trading "my mate is in New York" stories...trading the untrue rumors that were rife (until the dust had settled)...And I can remember telling someone "Someone is going to pay for this, like waking a sleeping dragon"...and I remember saying (thinking closer to home) "That's the end of the IRA, no way Americans are going to fund terrorists now"...It's funny, mostly because in England, no-one ever talks on the train, apart from to say "Will you move down a bit please?" or "Excuse me"...
The next day at work the building was evacuated (and everyone sent home when the police arrived to conduct a fingertip search that was going to take all day and most of the night) thanks to a specific bomb threat that had been phoned in that our building was next...I have to say, I really wasn't sorry to finish that contract at all...
I know why I have remembered these things, what with the London bombs, but this has also highlighted how easy it is to let terrible events like this slip gently into the mists of time...it's funny the way things have turned out, I've actually been to ground zero now, on several occasions (I never imagined at the time that would
*ever* happen) and I know, thinking about it now, that when I was there I didn't feel the same, even
actually standing there, looking at the great big hole in the ground, as I feel now, typing this...recent events have brought things back with a bit of a bang, I guess...
Anyway - That's all I had to say....so time for a deep breath and a
*full stop*.Thanks for listening, dear blog - with a bit of luck that's
that out of my system...
