Where were you for...

[Gus Mears]

12 minutes ago, PunkStep said:

As I saw the front page of every newspaper every morning, you could guarantee she was on the cover of at least one of them. 

And that really did feel like it went on for fucking years. I know it was a HIGNYF/Private Eye style joke, but genuinely, The Express never seemed to go a month without a Diana front page for about a decade after the event.

Edit: they've had two stories on her in the last two days! 

Edited September 11, 2019 by Gus Mears

[Devon Malcolm]

I was in the UKFF chatroom when *the* biggest event happened.

When @neil was revealed to be the pCc higher power.

[wandshogun09]

I was off work at the time 9/11 happened so I was home asleep that morning when it all started. I woke up sometime between the first and second planes hitting the towers. My parents were at work, brother and sister at school and my girlfriend at the time had gone to college so I was in the house alone. I switched the telly on and through blurry eyes saw the news was on. At 16 years old I couldn’t give a fuck about the news so I switched channel, news again, switched again, news again. Soon realised something big was happening when the news was on all 5 terrestrial channels and showing the same footage. Got my bearings just in time to see the second plane hit live. Well, I was watching the moment it hit but didn’t actually see it from the angle on the live feed. Spent the rest of the day glued to the TV. Barmy day. 

With Diana’s death, I found out the next morning off my Mum. Pretty much total indifference from everyone but my Nan who was distraught for some reason. Main thing I remember is that Shawn Michaels was supposed to be making an appearance in Birmingham City Centre a few days later to promote the upcoming One Night Only PPV. Me and my cousins were going to go but it got cancelled. We weren’t impressed. 

Edited September 11, 2019 by wandshogun09

[Factotum]

9/11 I was on my way home from school. Was 13 at the time. I remember coming in and my Mum said she had heard something had happened in America. Turned on the TV and I don't think we moved for the rest of the evening. I remember thinking we would probably have a day off from school the next say. Didn't happen. A few people were justifying not doing their homework because of it. Didn't work on the fascists in charge

Diana I woke up in the morning and my Dad told me the US had killed Diana due to her being involved in landmines. I think he's still sticking to that.

I'll say as well Michael Jackson dying. I remember sky news just following an ambulance with his dead body in it. A dignified end.

[Sonny Mustang]

I was in the US on 9/11- staying at my bfs and he didn’t have internet or a tv. We were in bed and got a phone call about it so went out to the car and listened on the radio!

The next day I had to get a greyhound up to NYC as  I was supposed to fly back to the UK on the 13th (didn’t happen as there were no flights- but that’s another story!).

like many others I was in bed when I heard about Diana and didn’t understand why I needed to be woken by my Mum for this news...

for Michael Jackson (good shout Factotum) I was on a flight from the UK to Dallas so missed the announcement. When we landed and started driving we couldn’t understand why the radio stations were playing non-stop MJ music- ‘maybe it’s his birthday?’ I suggested. Took us a few hours to click.

Edited September 11, 2019 by Sonny Mustang
Another point

[Monkee]

When 9/11 happened I was sitting in the doctor’s office waiting to have jabs before going travelling for a year. I remember watching on the TV in the waiting room and staring in disbelief.

When the 7/7 bombings happened in London I was late for work because I was trying to enter a Radio 1 competition to win tickets to the British Grand Prix. When I got to the station (Holloway Road on the Piccadilly Line) they were just closing it and people were evacuating. I managed to get a seat on the first bus that came along - I worked in Leicester Square at the time - and was sat near the driver. I could hear his radio say that there’d been a power surge at King’s Cross and signal failure. I had to phone signal so I just about managed to text my boss to tell him I was going to be late after several attempts.

I got off the bus outside the Shaftesbury Theatre and was walking towards Seven Dials in Covent Garden when I heard a bang. As I’m from Wales I’m used to the noise of coal lorries driving past. They have a gate on the back that bangs with a metal sound when they go over a bump. That’s what the noise was like and I remember turning around and thinking how odd it was for a coal lorry-type vehicle to be in the centre of London. When I got into work my office phone was ringing. I picked it up and it was mum mum sounding frantic. She asked me where I’d been and I laughed saying I’d had to get the bus and then she told me there had been a bombing on the tube and that a bus had just exploded near Euston. That’s when I realised that was the noise I’d heard.

Work got cancelled later and I had to walk home. This was before I had Google Maps and had no idea where I was going. It took me about 4 hours. It’s probably just one of those “what if” things but if I hadn’t have been late leaving then I might have been on that Piccadilly Line train at King’s Cross.

And I still got horrible flashbacks when I heard that metal-on-metal sound like a coal lorry.

[Accident Prone]

 9/11 - I was in Year 9. During the last class of the day (History, weirdly enough), one of the heads quietly came into the room and announced that a plane had flown into the World Trade Centre to a puzzled bunch of 13 year olds who had no idea where or what the World Trade Centre was, and he then tried to explain the massive impact this had . A hushed, awkward silence filled the room along with a few students who tried detailing what the WTC were and the size and scope if it all. We left the class a few minutes later, back to our form rooms, unsure of what to feel. 

I got back home to see my parents stuck on the sofa in horror, and then sat myself on the armchair across the living room to catch up on what happened through the detailed television coverage, and that's where the enormity of the situation really sunk in. I'll never forget that day, from the pale look of the head who broke the news, to a kid on the bus home crying the whole way, to seeing my parents holding each other in fear, and spending the night unable to move from the TV screen. Every clip of the planes and the collapse is etched in my memory. 

4/4 - I was in 6th form, and I had just popped to Greggs during my lunch break and was moving down the high street to spend my next couple of free periods in the public library. I noticed a massive crowd leading into an Argos, so I was curious to see what was going on and managed to squeeze my way in. That's where I saw every display TV showing all this smoke and the husk of a bus and aerial shots of London. There must've been well over twenty TV's showing different news stations simultaneously. It was mental. People were crying and some were on their phones, and others were still trying to get served at the till.

I headed to the library after spending ten minutes in the company of shocked and grieving strangers, and hit the first available PC just looking for more info. My long-distance girlfriend called up worried sick because I hadn't answered my phone (I put it on silent mode whilst in Argos in case my assigned ringtone of '96 Quite Bitter Beings' blared through my Nokia 3210) and then other family members called, and soon the library was full of people trying to find out more. That turned into another evening sat in front of the TV, and one I won't forget either.

[King Pitcos]

Diana’s death, I was staying at my sister’s house. As I was on the sofa, I was woken up from about 5 or 6am when they were watching it unfold on TV. Then we had to go to church later that morning. I forget whether that was because of the Diana death, or one of the kids had a holy communion coming up, or just my sister was doing the religious gimmick at the time.

9/11, I was at university during freshers week, and in the midst of a massive mental breakdown - too self absorbed and out of it to take in what I was seeing. I was sat in a yellow scream pub in Liverpool, watching it on the TVs with a lad from school and one of his new flatmates. I didn’t grasp the enormity of it at all as I watched it, and didn’t until a day or two later, when I was reading about it in the papers.

[Devon Malcolm]

I was playing Doom 64 when I heard about Diana dying. It didn't help me get past The Spiral.

[Scott Malbranque]

My ma ran into my room first thing in the morning crying and telling me about Princess Diana, and there's a fucking H&E Magazine resting atop the bin beside my bed. I don't think she saw it, but I was teetering between sympathy for the upset woman standing in front of me crying over someone she never met, anger that she woke me and wouldn't fuck off out of my room, and jazz hands that there was a H&E magazine with someone who looked like my Aunty Peggy on the cover.

[Hannibal Scorch]

48 minutes ago, Monkee said:

When 9/11 happened I was sitting in the doctor’s office waiting to have jabs before going travelling for a year. I remember watching on the TV in the waiting room and staring in disbelief.

When the 7/7 bombings happened in London I was late for work because I was trying to enter a Radio 1 competition to win tickets to the British Grand Prix. When I got to the station (Holloway Road on the Piccadilly Line) they were just closing it and people were evacuating. I managed to get a seat on the first bus that came along - I worked in Leicester Square at the time - and was sat near the driver. I could hear his radio say that there’d been a power surge at King’s Cross and signal failure. I had to phone signal so I just about managed to text my boss to tell him I was going to be late after several attempts.

I got off the bus outside the Shaftesbury Theatre and was walking towards Seven Dials in Covent Garden when I heard a bang. As I’m from Wales I’m used to the noise of coal lorries driving past. They have a gate on the back that bangs with a metal sound when they go over a bump. That’s what the noise was like and I remember turning around and thinking how odd it was for a coal lorry-type vehicle to be in the centre of London. When I got into work my office phone was ringing. I picked it up and it was mum mum sounding frantic. She asked me where I’d been and I laughed saying I’d had to get the bus and then she told me there had been a bombing on the tube and that a bus had just exploded near Euston. That’s when I realised that was the noise I’d heard.

Work got cancelled later and I had to walk home. This was before I had Google Maps and had no idea where I was going. It took me about 4 hours. It’s probably just one of those “what if” things but if I hadn’t have been late leaving then I might have been on that Piccadilly Line train at King’s Cross.

And I still got horrible flashbacks when I heard that metal-on-metal sound like a coal lorry.

7/7 I was supposed to be on my way to Uni to hand in one of my final assignments. I woke up late as I didn't have a class and was just getting ready to leave and Edgware Road had just happened. I didn't normally turn on the telly if I was going out, but I did that morning and saw what was going on. My immediate thoughts, other then I am not going in, was I knew a friend was working near Aldgate, and it was around the time it was travelling. Took me hours to get hold of him because of the mobile network but he was safe. 

My office is near Edgware Road and it was only a few months in that I realised that was one of the other stations and they now hold a gathering there each year with people who were effected. It's really moving  to see.    

[Frankie Crisp]

Thatcher snuffing it.

I was already on a day's annual leave as it was the day after Wrestlemania so given the time I got to bed, I woke up late morning. Butch wasn't there on this occasion so I didn't have to clean up any sick. Having missed breakfast, I went to the shop to get a bite to eat and as I was walking down the road, I felt my phone go off a couple of times in my arse pocket. Assuming it was work bothering me on my day off, I ignored it.

By the time I got into the shop, it was going mental with text messages but it was only when I saw the names of who'd sent them I realised it wasn't work. Almost none of the messages mentioned its name, but I knew by the celebratory tone what'd happened. I started to get a bit nervous in case I was wrong, but after a quick check online to confirm that it had indeed carked it, I swapped the planned loaf, cheap cooked meat selection and bag of crisps for a bottle of champagne, legged it home and rang my old man. He was working a part-time job and was over the other side of the Pennines. Don't know what excuse he gave his boss, but he was on the next train home.

I went to the local boozer and had the champagne with the barman who waived the usual rule of not bringing your own drinks into the pub after I had the pleasure of passing on the good news. A few hours later, I met my old man, a couple of cousins and a mate and at some point in that time, my boss sent me a message telling me to take the next day off if I wanted. That ended up being two days as town was collectively drunk throughout and everyone made lots of new friends. Glory days indeed.

[Chest Rockwell]

I remember the Boston bombing being one of the first breaking news stories of that magnitude that I was following live as it unfolded in the age of social media, Reddit and of course on here with neil as our man on the ground. Seemed like such a dramatically different way to experience something like that than just having to rely on 'proper' news.

Edited September 11, 2019 by Chest Rockwell

[gmoney]

43 minutes ago, Scott Malbranque said:

My ma ran into my room first thing in the morning crying and telling me about Princess Diana, and there's a fucking H&E Magazine resting atop the bin beside my bed. I don't think she saw it, but I was teetering between sympathy for the upset woman standing in front of me crying over someone she never met, anger that she woke me and wouldn't fuck off out of my room, and jazz hands that there was a H&E magazine with someone who looked like my Aunty Peggy on the cover.

I saw that you had posted in here an made a bet with myself that you would have been having a go at yourself. Not far off. 

Edited September 11, 2019 by gmoney

[IANdrewDiceClay]

I was on a bus coming home with a few mates. It was my first day of college, and a lad from school said "a plane flew into the World Trade Centre." I'll always consider 9/11 and MECW promoted by John Collins and booked by the Sandman as two events I vividly remember from September 2001, because I was reading a review of it in Power Slam as I was on the bus home. I think conversation switched to Tod Gordon's involvement in this new company not to long after the shock wore off.