I am actually writing this article in the future…it’s the 11th of September 2023.
In 1988, I spent a summer working in the US. It was the time of my life at the time. I’d just graduated university and flew into JFK not a week later, spent just one night in NYC but took photos of the “twin towers” etc from the top of the Empire State Building. I fell in love with New York. Several months later I’d be staying in the same YMCA again and then flying home via JFK to a miserable London and then back to Newcastle. On that final night in NYC, window open, there were sirens and gunshots, outside it was American…my flight home was just days away from the Lockerbie disaster…
When the 9/11 attacks were underway, I was working on a deadline for one of the very early online science news sites I helped establish back in the late 90s. I had disabled my internet (modem) and had been focused on nothing but the research I was writing about. I hadn’t had a moment to leave my office to switch on the TV to catch the news. In fact, it got to 3:15 in the afternoon before I knew anything was happening in NYC and elsewhere. Mrs Sciencebase too had been working on something else and was also unaware until we reconvened in the living room to switch on BBC News 24, as it was called then. It was a shock to say the least. Unreality bit.
There has been, as the cliche goes, much water under the bridge since then.