In a meeting room at work, with many of the staff, watching it all unfold on the conference large screen.
Such an impact that we allowed everybody to go home.
I remember thinking, this is all very surreal, but where the hell do we go from here ?
So it could have been real, or not ?
Working in the Balfour Beatty offices at London Bridge Station. Heard the news on the radio and said Iām going home. No one else in the office moved.
I walked out and got the next train home. There was no way I was hanging around in London.
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Horrible memories, really awful time for me. Iād not long split up with my wife. She was flying to New York that day and was in the air when it kicked off. I remember feeling very confused about that, I didnt know if I cared or not.
My boss at the time had a tv in his office and we watched the thing unfold. Saw the first tower collapse live etc, etc. In the evening I had an invite to The Mercury Prize at a Park Lane hotel. My mates band Turin Brakes were nominated and I remember the event was really odd. No one was really that interested, it was very subdued.
A couple of weeks later and I was there myself, I went down to GZ. I saw the wreckage over the fence, smelt the decaying bodies, saw the tributes literally everywhere. Things really did seem fucked at the time and New York was jaded with a layer of filth on everything.
The rest of the country was an absolute nightmare to travel around. Being a foreigner, I was searched at the gate for every flight, there were huge queues everywhere in airports and the mood unpleasant. New York to Washington, Washington to Palm Beach- Dallas - LA - Sanfranciso - Chicago - Boston and back to NY. It was dreadful. The country had gone from air travel like catching a bus into town to it becoming horribly restricted with a serious armed military presence at every airport. Talk about shutting the door after the horse had bolted.
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Snap here , i returned home from the flight shed at longbridge at about 12ā¦20 ā¦switched tv on to chill for a while and watched it unfold with sheer horror , knowing we had been up the towers many years beforeā¦never to forget .
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I watched it on TV in my old office. There was a painful shock followed by a kind of numbness reserved for losses to big to compute. I remember thinking about going to dinner in the revolving restaurant at the top of the tower when I was a kid. I then wondered what kind of pain drives teams of men to see something like this through? I mean the planning, the screaming of the people on the flights - overriding the survival instinct - I couldnāt imagine - I still canātā¦ In the first statement form the president the positioning was set: āGood will triumph over evilā. I remember thinking that might be tricky as they had trained Bin laden.
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I was at work at a Dry Cleaning Shop. We were having a laugh and listening to the Chris Moyles show on BBC R1.
CM then made an announcement in the most sombre of tones. The mood changed in an instant.
The various updates were given as events unfolded. I think there were some extra News programmes with some sombre music by Moby in the background.
Customers were coming into the shop and telling us what has happened; also updating us on any developments.
It was a really shocking event. I was in my early twenties and it was a real wake up call.
I was sat at my desk at a company that I now work for again, we had the radio on in the office, a horrible accident had happened when the first plane hitā¦I remember thinking this canāt be right surely?
Only understood it fully when I got home and watched it on TV, and the second plane hit.
Still makes my blood run cold when watching old films with the twin towers as part of the backdrop.
I was on my first big music tour, with people from Ninja Tune, of Former Yugoslavia. A big train of vans and a bus, we were driving from Mostar to Banja Luka. We stopped by a beautiful lake, to get snacks at the lakeside cafe. Walking in, it was silent, everyones eyes fixed on the TV in the corner, with smoking towers. It was surreal.
Later that day we arrived in Banja Luka, being hosted at an arts centre. They had CNN up on a big projector screen across the wall, and were having a party celebrating. It wasnāt long since US led NATO had bombed Belgrade, and the Serbs werenāt best disposed towards the Americans at that point. A week later we arrived in Belgrade, and all the postcard sellers had cards with highlights of the bombings.
It was a very surreal atmosphere to watch it unfold from.
The day after, I met the woman who would later become my first wife.
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Anyone watching the National Geographic documentary series 9/11: One Day In America? We watched the first episode last night. Compelling.