Memories of 9/11 By TITVS ADVXAS

September 11th 2001

I remember the day like it was yesterday. I was working in Swindon, of all places, and had driven the 80 odd miles from my house on a white working class area of Birmingham, known as Acocks Green, and was toiling away in a little shop in 'Swine down on the hill' as my work colleague jokingly called the place.

Shortly after lunch, at around 3pm one of the customers came into where I was sorting out a computer problem.

"Have you seen the news?" she asked.

"erm no" was my reply as I wiped my brow with my cuff, the anti-static wrist band pulled my arm back sharply.

"Its New York" she continued, "someones flown an airplane into the twin towers!"

I can remember vividly the sudden panic I felt, like I was in deep water and unable to tread water.

Some ordinary bloke in England feeling so helpless and hopeless.

We turned on another computer and went online, in those days we were using a dial up with wanadoo or freeserve (whichever was in charge in 2001).

Slow would have been a massive understatement.

We tuned into the BBCi website (because we didn't know any better) and instead of the usual 30 to 60 seconds to upload a page, the 'net was taking five minutes or more to upload a page. We didnt have tabs in those days with IE, but we could open multiple windows. Sky News, Reuters even anna-nova (remember her) were deadly slow.

The whole of the United Kingdom was tuning into the news websites.

My 80 mile drive home that day was quite a sombre affair...

What we learnt in the subsequent weeks is that, as my blogging buddy dowlish so eloquently says:

Never forget, this attack was done in the name of Islam.

On that day 3,017 perished (including 24 presumed dead and 19 hijackers).
We will remember them...

©TITVS-ADVXAS XI-IX-MMIX
As Published