Where were you …

… 25 yeas ago today?

I’d just started a new job and was visiting to Sydney to look at how investment platforms worked in Australia.

It was the last evening of the trip and I was in the hotel room gathering my stuff for the flight back the following day. A colleague called my room to tell me a plane had flown into the WTC in New York. I didn’t really understand what he was telling me. I switched on the tv and suddenly found I was watching the second plane hit the towers. Totally surreal.

I was at Bristol University working on my PhD. A colleague from one of the comms labs came into the office to tell us about the first plane strike & we all ran up to the lab to see the TV just in time to see the second strike.

From memory I was up to my armpits in lime mortar converting a grade 2 listed stable block into a rather desireable house. Heard it on the radio but no visuals until I got home. I remember thinking it must be just a huge scam and unreal.

I was working at a fairly dire job at Wilton Carpet Factory, prior to moving to the MoD. The noise of the huge carpet looms was deafening and constant, but management ordered them shut down for a two minute silence and the whole factory went quiet - Rob

I was fitting a kitchen about 5 mins from home, which itself was unusual, as the majority of my work at the time was usually 20+ miles away from home.

I think it was late morning/ lunch time when my then girlfriend/ now wife, rang me to ask if I had been watching the TV.....
I thought she was having some sort of mental breakdown......."Why on earth would I be watching the TV in a customer's house" I asked....???
"Just turn on the T V "she said.....And hung up!

Back in those days, I had a youg apprentice working for me and I remember telling him that from that day forward, our world would never be the same again.......

I was 2 months in to completely gutting our present home, I removed everything, so much so when the council inspector came to check it was uninhabitable on opening the front door there was a 2’ drop to soil, no plaster on the remaining walls & looking up you could see the underside of the roof tiles.
My then new to me neighbour popped round & asked if I’d heard the news, which I hadn’t, it was the first time I went in his house as I watched the re-run of the planes hitting the towers on his TV.

Working for ICL/Fujtisu in Footscray Kent. We lost our inter-company communications very early on but were able to huddle around a TV to watch the events unfold. Missus was at home in bed with our first born totally oblivious until I got home that evening.

I’m not one for remembering where I was when significant events happened but this one sticks in my mind even though it was so mundane. I’d been out somewhere with friends, it was just before I went off to uni. Mum was ironing and had the TV on, remember standing in the hallway door not quite able to belief what I was seeing.

The image will never leave me of the plane hitting the tower. News released 2 days ago that virtually every sample of the dust from the clean up contained Asbestos, there have been a lot of deaths amongst the people having to deal with the aftermath, what a terrible thing to have to face.

I was in a big office in Bristol, full of separate teams with very little to do with each other.

There was one TV, belonging to a Press team. As the word went round the building about the first hit, we all crowded in, watching the scene on repeat.

Then the second hit came and we collectively realised how the world had just shifted and would never be the same again.

It was a day of massive change for the whole world.

I was at work at Nottingham Trent university the internet was very slow but we had a tv to watch the events unfolding.

Pete

I was standing in front of an auditorium of about 100 biology students about to start the day's lecture. A few of the students filing in said something about a plane hitting a building in New York but I had no idea what they were talking about and went on with the lecture. Of course by the time lecture was over, the entire campus knew.

I was in a cab in London IIRC

In Biology Lab 3, preparing stuff for the impending new term, my technician came running in, "switch on the telly!". My colleague Michael, newly returned from his stateside holiday (including the viewing gallery high up in the W.T.C.) just stood there, staring at the T.V., endlessly repeating "I was there...just a week ago...I was there". I was as struck by his deep shock as I was by the unfolding events.

I was at home in the UK. CEO of an airline catering air side supply business, supplying mainly US airlines in the main intercontinental hubs, and my Dutch girlfriend was in NY in my flat a block away from WTC. I watched on TV the second plane go in, and immediately was on the phone to the office to cancel all in/out US orders followed by checking on her. It was the most shocking day of my life. She was stuck there for 8 days.

It changed the world, it changed air travel, changed us, and I got out of that business the following year.

I was at home, slurping a cuppa and decided to put the news channel on out of sheer boredom. I saw the second plane go into the tower and thought, “That’ll piss off the Americans”. Then I went back to my ironing. I thought nothing more of it because the news channels show that sort of stuff from all around the world so often. I didn’t see its relevance to me in Britain and, to be honest, I still see it as one of those events that punctuate our times before we move onto something else. I put it behind me as soon as I grabbed His Lordship’s shirt out the laundry basket.

I was doing the first leg of a long trip down the East coast today in beautiful weather with a pure blue sky, and I passed a place with what looked like beams still covered in concrete that reminded me of the ones from the Tower ( there’s one doing a fundraising tour of the states) and then two minutes later across the water there was that unmistakable skyline, quite gave me goosebumps.
Ian

Tuesday 9th September 2001 I was off shift (4 on 4 off 12 hour) from the dairy I worked at and saw it happening on the TV as it was being broadcast. I found it difficult to accept what I was seeing happening - still do . What followed from it and still continues

I was sitting in the factory boardroom getting my papers sorted for overseas factory visits and watched on the TV. Difficult to believe.

We were flying the next evening to UK onto France, Belgium and N/Ireland and back to UK, 5 days of business and factory visits and 3 weeks of holiday. I called BA in the morning “are we still flying tonight?” “Yes, as long as you are not going to the USA.”

I was clocking out of work at B&Q. Or clocking in. A mate/colleague mentioned TTs and I didn't even know what it was. What followed was my watching the news for the first 48 hours and noticing lots of things that made not much sense.

Then the witchhunt against Islam and Muslims came, assisted much by the Rupert Murdoch media and I was always concerned (due to being an open looking muslims and regular worshipper) about being taken to a black site and tortured myself.

Sounds totally irrational to many but for Muslims, being targeted by a schedule7 or other (so-called anti terror laws) was/is a real thing. Double standards which are open to see now when the genociding soldiers return back from Israel/Gaza and are not even questioned a thing.

For people like me (far from being military, or trained,just an average worshipper and muslim) we wouldn't dare step on a plane (for me, cos I didn't wish to be humiliated by an anal check cos of my beard).

Very sad and something these secret services(Mossad, MI5, MI6, CIA, FBI, Epstien folks) folks will have to answer to God one day. I saved life during Covid, alot of it (and so did much of my muslim colleagues that work in the health service) but nobody every explained to Joe Public that this is what our religion is all about.

Saving life, not taking it. Those that are complicit know what they've done/did. But for me it just made me stronger and gave the ability to endure with Beautiful Patience, just like the Quran mentioned that Jacob did when his Joseph (peace be upon them both) was taken away from him.

I'm one of the fortunate ones (or am I) as my religiosity only had me living in fear. People like Dr Aafia Siddique (girls rights campaigner and high level teacher from MIT in Pakistan/Afghan) were scapegoated, raped,children kidnapped/murdered, left at black sites and tortured with special methods and ) remains in abuse to this day.

Thankgod for people like Clive Stafford Smith her current legal rep who bring governments to account. His podcast with Jamal from The Thinking Muslim explains alot.

Closing statement, I come in peace . But yeah, the last 25 years have been a stressful time for all of us (both sides of the fence). Thankfully people like Tucker Carlson are now asking the same questions we and CAGE.NGO asked/noticed for years.

Politicians... The world over! I have a different name for them and they will be questioned (as will we all).