9/11 at work, message came scrolling round on the pager dot matrix that a plane had flown into one of the towers, I muttered something about “bloody Cessna or something”. After the second page message we broke out the TV and watched in horror.

Diana, no idea, not important to me, Diana’s funeral was spent grinding knee sliders on local roads and roundabouts as the roads were so quiet.

7/7 at work, !(Horsham) got a sarky text from a colleague about causing fires on the underground (I have a history with unplanned thermal events). Texts stopped when people realised it wasn’t an electrical fire.

Diana’s funeral was spent grinding knee sliders on local roads and roundabouts as the roads were so quiet.

Have a very vivid memory of opening the front door while that was going on* and hearing absolutely nothing but wind and birds, not a single vehicle in earshot. Weird moment.

* The funeral, not Ming out scratching. 🙂

9/11 Ozzie backpacker hostel, thought it was a film at first.
Diana Death – Stoned AF with my mate’s mum
Diana’s funeral = top speed run on motorway as it was so quiet.

Diana: in the kitchen. Remember we were pissed off about the amount of fuss that would be made but otherwise not a big deal (and I think I was still working for a charity of which she’d been a patron. I’d not met her but most of our comms/events and fundraising folk had).

WTC: just moved out of London. Felt relieved as I was sure property prices in world capitals would crash (instead of going up fourfold as they did. Hey ho.) A certain self-centred theme seems to be emerging…

7/7: in a hotel in Bloomsbury. Massive rattle of the windows was obviously a bomb – bus round the corner blowing up reminded me of the several IRA bombs I’d heard go off – and my first thought was ‘well that’s my trip home buggered’. That’s how selfish. Set off on foot for my meeting on Gower St as I didn’t know what else to do, bypassing Tavistock Square, and the meeting actually went ahead, though we weren’t allowed back out until a couple of hours after it finished. Ended up walking to Chalk Farm to kip at a friend’s as no trains out of KingsX.

In early 1989, I remember putting my hand up during a GCSE History class to ask my teacher if he thought that the Berlin Wall would come down in our lifetimes. Several months later, I was at our neighbours’ house watching people on the television swarming all over the graffiti’d wall with sledgehammers. My neighbour had been based in Berlin during the Missile Crisis and vividly recalled eating breakfast in the mess hall and looking out of the window at Soviet tanks, lined up as far as he could see.

Two years later, I was sat in another History class at sixth form, when a breathless teacher ran into the classroom to inform us that the Prime Minister had resigned. Out of a class of sixteen, fifteen of us cheered loudly apart from one guy who cried.

Don’t remember Diana’s death, not that I’d have given a toss.

9/11 was at work – every news site crashed from overloading and it was really hard to follow it online….

Princess Di. It was a Sunday morning I think. I had the radio on and it was clear something had happened, sombre mood and all that. Even called in my partner to say “something’s up”. It was several minutes before it became clear.

9/11. At work on a long support phone call with some snippets of news coming up on my screen. When I finished the call I looked up to say something was happening in NY and saw the office was empty, everyone was out watching the big telly.

Berlin Wall. Can’t remember exactly where I was at the time but I was in a performance of Beethoven’s 9th that Christmas (the conductor and I both had German mothers and it was quite a moving experience for us – as we discussed in the pub afterwards). Leonard Bernstein also conducted it with the Berlin Phil that same Christmas.

How about the Iranian embassy siege? I was in a hotel at Heathrow waiting to fly out to Saudi for the first time!

Diana: My mum told me in the morning
9/11: At work in a factory, not far from a ‘potentially high risk’ target. As we watched the news, all of the power went off and we all thought that there was an attack on the local ‘target’.

What about the rising of the Mary Rose?

Was off school ill so watched the whole thing from the sofa. Really interesting to see something so old being brought back up.

9/11 – first week of my first proper job. Trying to work out whether it was acceptable to join the cluster of people by the to. We still went for welcome drinks that night, but it was rather subdued and more like group therapy trying to understand what we’d just seen.

Diana – at home just after reading an article in the Sunday times about Diana…

Brexit – in a campsite on Flanders having toured some battlefields the previous day. Realised I should have got some euros out of the cash machine the day before.

9:11 driving past Oxford on the A34
Dianna: on a years traveling round Australia. Let me tell you, the Aussies didn’t give a shit. Had none of the crazy media coverage which apparently dragged on for months, years over here.

9/11 I was in hospital, discovering I’d broken my hand, we watched it all developing on a wee TV in the waiting room, not entirely sure but I think we saw the second plane hit live, and both of the collapses. Every time you saw a doctor you had to give them a wee update because they were all stuck in cubicles. The thing I mostly remember is the mad panic we had about colleagues who might have been in NYC some time around then, it was like they were definitely dead even though it turned out the bank just didn’t have a clue where anyone was, all of the people in my area turned out not even to be in the states.

Diana, I was working in a nightclub, and tbh none of us could give much of a shit, but the cleaner was a proper Rangers fan god save the queen type and I thought he was going to kill us all for not rending our garments and covering ourselves in ashes

Dunblane was the worst for me as I had relatives who attended the school. I was in a maths class at the time in high school when I heard, I just got up and ran home to phone as many of my family as I could get a hold of for any news. Thankfully they were fine.

I was staying at a friends house when Diana died, remember joining everyone for breakfast in the morning and someone just casually said – “That’s Diana dead. Car crash.” can’t say any of us paid much attention as the royals aren’t really our thing. Was shocked not by the coverage, but by the hysteria that accompanied it.

9/11 I was in a pub in Glasgow city centre at the time the coverage broke, remember at first it was thought of as an accident and then the second plane hit. It was sombre for a few minutes whilst everyone got their head around what was happeneing then the jokes started to flow. Might sound a bit sick to be cracking jokes whilst folk were jumping out a building on fire but it was just the way the people in the pub handled it.

9/11: on the bus, but driver had the radio turned up. Got home to see the second plane hit.

Diana? Absolutely no idea.

Diana – sitting/slouching/chatting sh*t in friends house after a night of popping pills and dancing at Crème (early days when it was a good place!), like most things that night it was all a bit surreal.

9/11 .. at work watching it on TV

9/11 – In work, which at the time was a stately home.

Diana – Glen Nevis, will never forget my mate puking up every where from drinking too much (not from sadness about Di)

9/11 – working for one of the Big 5 accountants, in the City. We had offices in both towers – it was a grim day

Lady Di died – watching my very tall ex who had massive tits, jumping up and down on a bouncy castle, while wearing a wet slip dress.

what was the question?

Brexit – I was stood in a shop hiring an industrial-sized bucket to collect Remoaner tears.

who remembers where they were when they heard that Joe Cocker had died?

WTF, when did this happen?

Diana – had just got back from a sailing trip and had spent the night at the GFs folks house. Watched the news for a bit but neither of us really bothered.

9/11 – I was in Kingston buying a new rucksack to go travelling with. By my bus stop, there used to be a TV which showed adverts, except today it was showing the BBC news and everybody was watching…
Had a stopover in LAX a month later – never been questioned so much trying to enter on a transit visa…

For some reason I still remember exactly where I was when I heard John Major was putting it about with Edwina Currie.

Also remember hearing Rush for the very first time back in 1976.

9/11 – Work, at a hotel, the first plane hit and I as stood watching the news when the second one hit. There was an initial thought it could an accident, the second one somewhat disproved that.
Lady Di – Home, can downstairs and my parents had it on TV.
Brexit – Stourbridge Town train station. Having gone to bed as Farage all but conceded I checked the news confidently that morning, how wrong I was… Then I got a message from my wife saying how scared she was.
Oddly, the other event I remember vividly is hearing the cricketer Phil Hughes had died. It hit be harder than Lady Di did.

Steve Redgrave 5th Olympic medal Sydney 2000: it was my birthday and I watched it in a night club (Tall Trees, Yarm) whilst off my head. I always think of it as a ‘where were you when’ moment but I’m not sure anyone else does!

Diana: left a party in someone’s garden in the small hours of the morning and it was on the radio in the taxi that there had been a crash.

9/11: was driving between Newport and Cowes on the Isle of Wight and Mark and Lard were talking about it on the radio. went home and watched it all unfold live on the TV.

Diana – It was university holidays, I was working as a relief postman, Sunday mornings were the one day per week I could lie in. Wanted to watch some scheduled TV coverage from some music festival but instead got wall-to-wall Diana coverage instead.

9/11 – I was at work, working for a large American company. Some folks from the US were in the building. Didn’t see any of it live but went through various stages starting with a vague “something’s happened in New York” through to the whole sorry story via the BBC news web site mainly. I remember watching the news coverage for much of the evening when I got home. A colleague was on holiday in the US at the time and had some issues getting home due to the travel restrictions it caused.

Brexit – Woke up by alarm, fired up the BBC News app and said “oh for f*ck’s sake”.

Columbia – I’d been out shopping in the morning. I was channel surfing after lunch when I saw that News 24 was about to cover Columbia’s landing. I was 5 when Columbia flew its first mission so the whole space shuttle thing had been the closest I had to a “watching the lunar landing” moment. I decided to watch Columbia’s return for old time’s sake.

I ended up watching the whole tragic event unfold. First it was “shuttles periodically go out of contact during this part of the approach”. Then it was “well this is a bit unusual but I’m sure it’s fine”. Eventually the presenter asked one expert a question and their reluctant response was “at this point there’s no chance the shuttle or its crew have survived”. Up till then everyone seemed to be thinking that, but were hoping that by not saying it, it wouldn’t be true. It was a chilling moment.

9/11 I remember vividly, I was a young junior in the Bank, back then, prior to social media you could request the BBC to send News Flashed to you via e-mail.

I had an e-mail to say that an aircraft had hit the WTC, then another saying that 2 aircraft had hit the WTC – seemed a bit odd, but at this stage the TV hadn’t caught up, they were talking about an incident, but no one knew what exactly – in the office we theorised that a couple of those Helitours Helicopters had collided or something and crashed into the building.

It was a full hour before the video images started to come through, I think some of the wild ‘theories’ that came after were caused by news agencies being very fast and loose with the phrase ‘Live’ – we watched a gasp as we saw the footage of the first plane hitting was played over and over, then during the ‘Live’ feed we watched as the second went in, the truth was the footage was a few hours old, but all the news agencies were showing it as ‘live’ even in the early 2000s you couldn’t broadcast Live to the UK from the US without a lot of pre-planning. We watched it all afternoon on a TV in the Gym across the road.

Diana I remember, we were doing what we did best back then, driving around aimlessly late at night, the radio came on in the middle of some late night Radio 1 dance DJs set to say that she’s been in a car crash in Paris – even by the standards of Diana the media were at an all time high point of appetite for her because of some photos of her on a boat with Dodi or something and we brushed it off as another massively hyped, but ultimately pointless update about a single person, when I finally tipped out of my pit at 2pm in the ‘morning’ the next day it was all over the news.

I don’t really remember where I was when the wall came down, I was just starting High School, it meant our History lessons became more interested though.

Oh Brexit,

Went to sleep when remain still seemed to have a lead that was growing and Farage and a few more of the die-hards were talking about a “close result” and “whatever the result, close enough that whichever it goes we should reconsider our position with Europe and the EU”, soon changed their tune.

I think one of the most remarkable things about it was how many in the leave campaign, resigned, retried or otherwise left their post quickly afterwards. What a bit of a mess – 8 years of slow, painful recovery from the credit crunch, wiped out by small minded scaremongers.

Brexit, woke up, turned the telly on ‘oh FFS’
Diana, on hols in the states, caught news just before bed, got to stay up late to watch.
9/11, walking home from college. Went in the next day, very sombre common room, lad walks in, apparently oblivious to what had happened, ‘Has somebody died?’

JFK, can’t remember cos I was just a kid, I do remember it being on though. Same with Churchill.
Diana, woke up to the radio alarm & thought someone had been swapping channels but realised someone more important than me had popped their clogs just by the dirgy music.
WTC, in the roof space above the comms room in HMP Durham.
Brexit…forgot all about it till about lunchtime then asked my Mrs who said, ‘oh I forgot to tell you, leave’, & I said, ‘oh right’. I still wouldn’t be excited if it had been Remain.

Brexit I was on holiday in the Lakes, wasn’t shocked but disappointed, it was weird being in all these touristy places entirely staffed by EU citizens but apparently owned by brexiteer kneejerkers though, I saw one horrible cow of a landlady in Bowmere banging on about how proud she was that we were taking back control and all these foreigners would be sent home and it’d be britain for the british, while her staff were just quietly going “**** you then” and half her customers were from overseas.

Diana – ruined a perfectly good Sunday, that did. TV and radio were utter bilge that day.

9/11 I was on a lads holiday in Turkey. We walked down a street for brunch and it was on every telly. Bear in mind we were in a Muslim country too. Then we went to a bar and the beer mats were pictures of… the wtc. Was a bit weird.

I remember the Zeebrugge disaster as well – huddled around our first telly in black and white flavour. 9pm news was extended and we were at home.

Oh yeah, Piper Alpha. Watched the footage from the happened to be on board cameraman (Paul berriff) in glorious colour at the family caravan.

9/11; at work (not much getting done)

Princess Diana; feeding my 10 month old daughter in the high chair – shouted news up to wife in bed (a useful affirmation of my modern man status when this event crops up) 🙂

Brexit; in a tent in Bourges St Maurice on the first day of Enduro 2 Must be why I contrived to fall off in the first stage 🙁

Diana

Err off my head in a flat in Newport, with some members of the GLC, I think we may have raised a bifta in remembrance.

Same place I am right now, obvs.

9/11 – was in work, but was a few weeks after a friend had life changing injuries in a canyoning accident whilst I was racing with her and she was still in a coma (I thought at the time she was dead, she never properly recovered). I’m not sure quite why, because I wasn’t at all personally affected by it, and looking back it 9/11 isn’t any more significant to me than any other major news event, but it triggered the release of the emotions I’d been holding in after the accident and I ended up signing myself off work for a week.

Diana – was taking part in a Coast to Coast race in Scotland, camping at Braemar overnight out of touch with any news and cycled past Balmoral the morning after. Was surprised by the presence of lots of press and police there. It wasn’t until we got to our B&B in Aberdeen we found out why.

First Gulf War – was pulling an overnighter to get a uni project in for a deadline.

Brexit – stayed up late watching the results come in, went to bed when the result seemed obvious.

I’m trying to remember where I was the last time we did this thread.

9/11 – Returned from a day out in Newcastle, we were supposed in NYC for our honeymoon but we cancelled it as our dog at the time got ran over earlier in the year.

Dianna – Just arrived at work and the nigh shift told me.

Brexit – Heard it on the news not sure where I was but just remember thinking WTF have you done UK.

Diana- Pizza Hut, Indianapolis.

9/11-Getting my hair cut.

Brexit- On the way to Manchester airport to go back to Paris to work for a couple of weeks. We felt like we were just apologising for the rest of the trip. ****, us not the french.

Dianna, at home, got up early (primary school age) whilst parents still in bed, told them and mum told me not to joke about stuff like that then put the tv on.

9/11, on the school bus (rural minibus so we had a radio).

Brexit, watched the first few results come in, went to bed when it was looking bad. Wanted to be sick the next day, got made redundant 7 days later.

Diana: at home in bed having a lazy morning, thought my then girlfriend had re-tuned the radio to a particularly miserable classical music channel until the news headlines came on. Was surprised I was quite sad about it, but it did mean a really easy drive to Scotland on the day of the funeral.

9/11: at work in Staines. One of our store managers sent an e-mail round saying one of the World Trade Centre towers had collapsed. Didn’t really believe him at first, and internet was “stuck” due to overload, so it was hard to find out what had really happened. The rest of that day was utterly strange, couldn’t stop watching the TV with a sense of disbelief. That one I will never forget.

7/7: in an offsite meeting. I normally worked in London, but was near Reading viewing a suppliers products. Somebody came into the room to tell us, as they knew we had colleagues in town, fortunately unaffected directly. Spent most of the rest of the day trying to help my colleague get home, as she lived in north London but all the trains were paralysed, and I kept driving her to different stations to see if that helped.

Obama’s election. Memorable mostly because we were crossing a pass in the Jebel Sarhro when somebody got a signal. It was a surprisingly big thing at the time, and seemed a really positive result.

Brexit. Woke up early, and couldn’t get straight back to sleep so glanced at my phone news app. That really woke me up, as others said I felt almost sick that it had actually happened. Couldn’t get back to sleep and by the time I got into work that morning I’d already calculated how much the business (a charity) had lost for the rest of the year just due to the plummeting pound; around £350k. I was somewhat angry with my fellow citizens.