My 9/11

Twenty-five years.

It hardly seems possible.

Yet when I think about September 11, 2001, I don't first think about history books, documentaries, memorials or the countless photographs we have all seen since.

I think about an ordinary working day.

I think about sitting in the office at H. Nickolls & Son.

That is where my memory of 9/11 begins.

There was nothing remarkable about the start of that Tuesday.

I was at work.

The phones were ringing.

Customers were calling.

I was speaking to people, including Tim at Alstom, doing the sort of things I had done on hundreds of other working days.

Business.

Conversation.

Orders.

Questions.

The normal rhythm of working life.

None of us knew that, thousands of miles away, a chain of events had already begun that would change the world.

Then the news started coming through.

An aircraft had hit the World Trade Center in New York.

At first it was difficult to understand exactly what that meant.

My immediate assumption, like it probably was for millions of other people, was that there had been some terrible accident.

Maybe a small aircraft.

Maybe pilot error.

Maybe some extraordinary mechanical failure.

Something awful, certainly.

But an accident.

It is worth remembering just how different 2001 was.

There was no Facebook.

No X.

No smartphones lighting up every few seconds with breaking-news alerts.

No endless stream of live video from people standing in the street.

News travelled differently.

We spoke to people.

We phoned customers.

We listened to radios.

We turned on televisions.

And sometimes you heard about a major event because somebody on the other end of a telephone had heard something.

That is one of the strongest memories I have of that morning.

People talking.

Customers talking.

Everyone trying to work out what was happening in New York.

And then everything changed.

A second aircraft struck the other tower.

In that instant, the possibility of a terrible accident disappeared.

This was deliberate.

Someone was attacking America.

Even twenty-five years later, writing those words brings back a little of the disbelief of that moment.

Normal conversation suddenly felt completely unimportant.

Whatever you had been talking about five minutes earlier seemed to fade away.

People just wanted answers.

How many aircraft were involved?

Was somewhere else going to be attacked?

Were there more hijacked planes in the air?

Who was responsible?

What was happening?

Nobody knew.

And that uncertainty was frightening.

At some point, I decided I wanted to see properly what was happening.

So I left the office at H. Nickolls & Son and went home.

That decision has stayed with me.

I remember getting home.

Turning on the television.

And then simply watching.

Like millions of people around the world, I watched events unfold in real time.

The pictures were extraordinary.

Smoke pouring from the World Trade Center.

Flames high above Manhattan.

Crowds standing in the streets staring upwards.

Emergency vehicles racing towards the towers.

News presenters trying to describe events that they themselves could barely understand.

And above it all was that extraordinary blue New York sky.

Bright.

Clear.

Almost beautiful.

The contrast made what was happening beneath it feel even more unreal.

And then things became worse.

There are images from September 11 that I don't think will ever leave me.

The burning towers.

The smoke.

The fear.

The confusion.

And eventually the collapse.

Watching those enormous buildings disappear was almost beyond comprehension.

One moment they were there.

Then they weren't.

And all the time you knew those buildings contained people.

Thousands of ordinary people.

People who had got out of bed that morning expecting another Tuesday.

They had driven to work.

Caught trains.

Bought coffee.

Sat at desks.

Answered telephones.

Made appointments.

Spoken to customers.

Talked about what they might do that evening.

Exactly the sort of ordinary things I had been doing at H. Nickolls & Son only a few hours earlier.

Then everything changed.

It was absolutely horrific.

Twenty-five years later, I still struggle to find a better description.

Looking back now, we know the sequence of events.

History has organised September 11 into a timeline.

We know which aircraft were hijacked.

We know where they went.

We know what happened at the Pentagon.

We know what happened aboard Flight 93.

We know when the attacks ended.

But sitting in front of the television that day, we knew none of that.

There was no ending yet.

The story was unfolding live.

Another aircraft had hit the Pentagon.

There were reports of another hijacked aircraft.

American airspace was being closed.

Aircraft were being diverted.

Rumours were everywhere.

Nobody knew whether another attack was minutes away.

That is something I think can be forgotten when we look back at 9/11 from the safety of history.

For several hours, there was no certainty.

No neat timeline.

No explanation.

Nobody knew how big the attack was.

Nobody knew where it would end.

And that was frightening.

For a while, almost anything seemed possible.

All you could do was watch.

And wait for the next piece of news.

One thing from that day deserves to be remembered forever.

While thousands of terrified people were trying to get out of the World Trade Center, firefighters, police officers, paramedics and other emergency workers were heading towards it.

They could see exactly what everybody else could see.

They knew the buildings were burning.

They knew people were trapped.

They understood the danger.

And still they went in.

Many never came back out.

That kind of courage is difficult to comprehend.

There were also countless stories of ordinary people helping one another.

Strangers helping strangers.

People refusing to leave colleagues behind.

People carrying the injured.

People opening doors.

People offering help wherever they could.

And aboard Flight 93, passengers and crew began to understand what was happening and chose to fight back.

On a day that showed the very worst of humanity, there were also extraordinary examples of humanity at its very best.

There are very few dates where you can genuinely say the world felt different afterwards.

September 11 is one of them.

There was a world before 9/11.

And there was the world after it.

Air travel changed.

Airport security changed.

Politics changed.

Wars followed.

Governments changed the way they thought about terrorism and security.

The way people talked about risk changed.

Even the language surrounding security changed.

But on that morning at H. Nickolls & Son, none of us could possibly know what would follow.

I was simply talking to people like Tim Bebb at Alstom and getting on with a normal working day.

And perhaps that is what makes the memory so powerful.

Sometimes you're just sitting at your desk when it arrives.

Today, 11 September 2026, marks twenty-five years since the attacks.

A quarter of a century.

There are now millions of adults who were not even alive when September 11 happened.

Others were too young to remember it.

For them, 9/11 exists through photographs, documentaries, memorials, museums and history lessons.

For those of us who watched it happen, it is different.

It has a place.

A sound.

A feeling.

Tiny personal details become attached to enormous historical events.

For me, September 11 is an office at H. Nickolls & Son.

A telephone.

Customers.

A conversation with Tim Bebb from Alstom.

News beginning to circulate.

People trying to understand what was happening.

Then the realisation that something terrible was unfolding thousands of miles away.

I remember deciding to go home.

I remember turning on the television.

And I remember watching the world change.

After twenty-five years, perhaps the part of September 11 that means more to me than anything else is the ordinary lives.

Because everything about 9/11 feels enormous.

The buildings were enormous.

The flames were enormous.

The television coverage was enormous.

The political consequences were enormous.

The numbers are enormous.

But beneath all of that were individual people.

A husband.

A wife.

A mother.

A father.

A son.

A daughter.

A friend.

A colleague.

Someone whose chair was suddenly empty.

Someone whose telephone would never be answered again.

Someone whose family expected them home that evening.

People who had left their homes that morning believing they would return later.

That is the part no statistic can properly explain.

I don't think remembering September 11 means endlessly replaying the most horrific images.

There is more worth remembering than destruction.

Remember the people who died.

Remember the families who lived with that loss.

Remember the firefighters climbing upwards while thousands of others were coming down.

Remember the police officers.

The paramedics.

The passengers.

The crews.

The office workers.

The people who helped strangers.

Remember those who showed extraordinary courage in moments of unimaginable fear.

And remember how quickly an ordinary day can become a day that history never forgets.

Twenty-five years later, my memory isn't perfect.

Memory never is.

But certain things remain incredibly clear.

Talking to Tim Bebb at Alstom.

Speaking to customers.

Hearing that an aircraft had hit the World Trade Center.

Thinking at first that it must have been an accident.

Realising, when the second aircraft struck, that it wasn't.

Going home.

Turning on the television.

Watching the towers burn.

Watching them fall.

And wondering what on earth was going to happen next.

I was shocked.

I was frightened by what I was seeing.

And I thought it was absolutely horrific.

A quarter of a century later, I still do.

Some dates belong in history books.

Some dates live inside your own memory.