Sunday 11 September 2011

Where were you?

Remembering 9/11
We were in a hotel in France on our way back to the boat to move her to her winter mooring in Southern Burgundy. We'd checked into our rooms (with one dog each) and had gone to bed for a nap before dinner.

As is my custom on settling into a new hotel room, I turned on the TV and switched to the news channel. We were too far from Calais to receive BBC news so it was difficult to make sense of the repeated footage of a plane flying into a skyscraper with a French commentary. I thought that I was too early for a scheduled news broadcast and was watching some sort of disaster movie, until the newsreaders appeared on the screen. I had a little difficulty with the rapid French but caught the words 'New York' and 'explosion'.


I went to the next room where MWNN was sleeping and woke him up, telling him to switch on his TV. We both had difficulty making sense of what we were seeing and hearing and went down to the car to listen to Radio 4 on longwave on the car radio.

I don't think I will ever forget that endless loop of the plane hitting the second tower.