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I was in a Christmas Office party when it happened. I called upon a friend a few days ago - he was involved in the aftermath, his wife confided it still badly affects him...where were you that night.
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Where was I? I don't remember.
King George VI - yes.
Lady Di - Yes.
Apart from friends and family those are, I think, the only two deaths that I can remember where I was at the time that I learnt the news.
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Office party which was being 'furthered on' in a pub in London. Didn't put telly on when I got home so only heard on the morning after on Today.
Nowadays news like that would be on the net and spread to all and sundry in moments.
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>> Where was I? I don't remember.
Neither do I
Ayrton Senna and Princess Di are the only ones that I can remember...I was a bit young when Kennedy went (5 months).
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>>Ayrton Senna and Princess Di are the only ones that I can remember
Jacks Cannery Bar, San Francisco and Italian restaurant, South Beach, Miami.
09/11 - in the office, Bogota Beach, Rio de Janeiro.
I think that those are the only three I remember.
Edit: oh, plus the tube bombings in London, I was in my office in Warwickshire and had to drive into London to get my S-i-L.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Sat 21 Dec 13 at 19:00
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>> the tube bombings in London,
After those, I got a charming concerned email from a Chinese lady I had been in correspondence with - something to do with work I think - hoping that we were all right.
Felt churlish to say, thanks, really, but none of us were in any of those places, big town, happened quite a few times over the years, we're almost used to it you might say....
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I was in Dagenham having just finished a driving lesson when the Lockerbie bombing came on the news.
In the shower when Mrs O'R came in yelling that Diana was dead.
In the car listening to Steve Wright when the 9/11 story started to break.
Sitting at home when the Irish woman upstairs came rushing down to tell us (An Irish family) that Kennedy had been shot, Kennedy being revered in Ireland almost as much as the Pope.
For whatever reason I have no recollection of the Moon landings.
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"For whatever reason I have no recollection of the Moon landings."
I remember that I passed my motorbike test on my Ambassador Popular on the day that the astronauts were launched for the moon landing.
My late (and much missed) uncle was a keen photographer of the old school and I have a wonderful b&w self-portrait that he took leaning against the wall by the grandmother clock; in his outstretched hands, he is reading a copy of the Daily Herald showing the clear headlines 'Man Lands on Moon'. A wonderful way of freezing your image in time!
Last edited by: Haywain on Sat 21 Dec 13 at 21:29
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>> >>Ayrton Senna and Princess Di are the only ones that I can remember
>>
>> Jacks Cannery Bar, San Francisco and Italian restaurant, South Beach, Miami.
>>
>> 09/11 - in the office, Bogota Beach, Rio de Janeiro.
>>
>> I think that those are the only three I remember.
>>
>> Edit: oh, plus the tube bombings in London, I was in my office in Warwickshire
>> and had to drive into London to get my S-i-L.
Yeah, fair enough, now that you remind me.
Ayrton Senna....flying back from Pisa, having spent 2 weeks on Elba. Was 'P'd off that I'd missed the Grand Prix coverage. Mate picked us up from the airport and was going on about the tragedy..and I thought he meant Roland Ratzenberger who'd died the day before..and couldn't work out how the mate knew about it as he wasn't a car man, let alone a motor racing fan...took a fair bit of inane conversation before it clicked.
Princess Di....walked over to my newsagent on a day off...Sri Lankan chap, whose English wasn't brilliant...he had to get hold of one of the tabloids and show me a headline before I believed/ understood him.
9/11...New Orleans hotel. Had spent the night before and early hours in a jazz club in the French Quarter...fantastic night...had a right rough head though. Was sharing a room with my brother as we were both doing a sad and single stint in our lives and had joined a mate of mine who lives in the US. Brother gone back earlier than me...and was wide awake in the morning..so he put the news on. I was doing the grumpy old man bit and took some waking up..and can vividly remember seeing the early news footage of people jumping..before they were edited out. Awful..... Later in the afternoon, having maxed out the news coverage in the hotel, we went out and booked a paddle steamer trip on the Mississippi. Whilst waiting an hour for the boat to leave, we sat in the shade of a tall building with a drink..before half the city's police force turned up on the blues and twos..and the building was evacuated. We then realised it said 'World Trade Centre New Orleans'...so we cleared off pronto.
7/7...My deputy and I were at work in jeans etc, cleaning out our new office, which had been a store room for several years and was filthy. Someone popped their head in and told us there'd been some electrical explosions on the tube..so we went down to the canteen and joined a throng watching the news...no real updates for a while, so we went back to the cleaning task and put the radio on...some while later when it became known it was bombs...I rang the control room and offered our services and the fact that there was an unused minibus in the yard, but to be fair to them they were so busy it was a distraction.. and it wouldn't have been appropriate for us to take it, because later 'Aid' serials may well have needed it. Still doesn't seem right that I was cleaning a damned office when all that crap was going on..but hey ho, that's the way it was.
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9/11 - I was in an Office working, I had rudimentary internet access on a laptop (dial up) - someone came in to tell me that "something" had happened....we dug out a television (a device for presentations with a combined VHS) got a snowy picture on the native aerial....I went off to see a client that night and only when the Archers came on at 7.02pm did the world returned to a semblance - I understand that the broadcasting of the Archers was a key signal to the Trident boats that the country was functioning. Don't know whether this was the case in 2001.....
7/7 I was driving to Dover en route to France with some friends to do some Battlefields. - the M25 was eerily quiet - the radio was turned down so no news penetrated the BMW I had at the time...we saw convoys of Ambulances under escort....and we turned the radio up..........Matrix signs saying "London Closed" are the other abiding memory...
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Sept 11/2001 I was at our office near Manchester airport and couldn't say what alerted us to this. Phone call to someone. Internet access was very slow. And I remember calling home to tell what was unfolding...
7th July 2005 I was in our Crewe office for a meeting. Got a text from my wife and what was known at the start just got worse.... meeting sorted of ended.
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I absolutely recall where I was on that night; we were round at our next door neighbours drinking G&T and testing (playing with) the Scalextric that they were concealing for the boys' Christmas present. I remember the news coming on the t.v. and that, at the time, I assumed it was some sort of mechanical failure.
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I don't know where I was.
My immediate boss was on the PA103, a 727 feeder service, from Frankfurt to LHR that day. He had been on a beer run and I had a tray of beer ( in cans) that he brought back.
A family of four who lived a few hundred yards from here were on board and I am reminded of the event when I frequently pass their house.
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I'd just finished twonking a girlfriend in her Birmingham University hall of residence. Went for a wipe-down, switched on the telly and it was on the news (Lockerbie I mean).
I recall that night with absolute clarity because although she was a brunette, she was ginger 'downstairs'.
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I drove past Lockerbie and saw the mess the day after... never forget it. Hired Mark 3 Cavalier.. family in car... about 1.30pm Sunny I think.
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Me too, drove past the scene the following morning on my way north to Edinburgh for the Christmas break. Very disturbing at the time.
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Haven't a clue where I was. But I do remember at least one authoritative-sounding press report that said very positively that the real authors of the outrage were Syrian, not Libyan. Can't say myself how likely that seems, but apparently it was what the CIA thought at the time.
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I don't know where I was either, but at that age and single I was probably in a bar somewhere and probably not in the UK much.
Don't I remember a huge amount of conflicting reports and confusion around whether it was an accident, a fault or a bomb?
My memory says it was on the following days that it was gradually confirmed as terrorism. My memory may well be clueless though. I think that's why I don't know where I was in particular, it was just* an aircraft accident.
* I do not mean to trivialize a crash, I mean that whilst it is important, it doesn't strike home to the memory like something as individual as a terrorist incident.
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I think the element which retrospectively strikes me is how different the official response was in terms of road closures etc from how you might imagine it would be now. The A74 ( now M74 ) was damaged by falling aircraft parts and when I passed the scene only hours after it had happened there was indeed one northbound lane closed (The other had a crater in it ) but you could clearly still see debris and there was still smoke from impact sites within yards of where the traffic was continuing to pass.
The younger brother of a good friend was a young police officer in Edinburgh back then but he and many others were drafted in to the area to search the crash site and surrounding locations for property, bodies and other items. I remember him telling us how harrowing it was at times. The ground was frozen but they were still finding things ( and people ) punched 10 or more feet down into the frozen soil.
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I think it is the personal stuff which is so terrifying, as well as the ongoing ramifications and impact.
I don't worry about dying in a plane crash. I fly so much I'd have died from stress by now.
But if I imagine those seconds before you die, when you know you're going to die, that is truly terrifying. 9/11, Lockerbie or some random plane accident, there are always a few seconds of thought.
When they speak of 9/11 and people jumping from the buildings they don't mention that many of the fallers, and it took 6 seconds to hit the ground, put their hands in front of their faces just before they hit.
I cannot imagine the terror of that moment.
I don't know, but I suppose that "personalisation" affects emergency workers even more so. I rescued a baby from a car once, messed me up for some time. To do that for a job must be tough.
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>> Haven't a clue where I was. But I do remember at least one authoritative-sounding press
>> report that said very positively that the real authors of the outrage were Syrian, not
>> Libyan. Can't say myself how likely that seems, but apparently it was what the CIA
>> thought at the time.
Jim Swire, whose daughter was killed in the crash was on the radio this morning. He sat through the trial of the two Libyans and is convinced they were framed. There's a theory that the Malta and Frankfurt connections are false and that the bomb was put on at Heathrow following a security breach earlier in the day.
He also quoted a US source as saying US/UK governments were covering up true background.
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>> quoted a US source as saying US/UK governments were covering up true background.
They very obviously were. One persistent allegation at the time was that the Company itself was responsible through deniable agents and instruments. The Libyan intelligence officer who took the rap was a Gaddafi loyalist said to have been bribed by Gaddafi with a pay-off for his family.
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Some time after my second stint as a travelling freelance hack in Chad a DC10, Air France I think, flying out of Ndjamena (heading for Paris no doubt) blew up over Niger killing everyone on board. The Chadian information minister, whom I had met more or less daily for several weeks, was on that aircraft sitting, it was reported, next to the CIA station chief in Ndjamena, accordding to some the intended target of the bomb. I don't know who he was but I bet I'd spoken to him too. It's a small town.
I could have been on that plane if things had been just slightly different. Makes your blood run a bit cold sometimes, this sinister ruthless reasons of state rubbish. A bemedalled praying mantis in an office giving deniable orders to a subservient, scuttling cockroach or earwig. Yuck.
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>> I could have been on that plane if things had been just slightly different.
What I mean is that there were almost certainly two or three hacks in tourist class as there were on most of the Paris planes in my day there.
Sorry if I seem to be binding on, but this thread has got me thinking rather miserably about the great wickedness of some of these assassination and mayhem attempts. At the end of May 1984 some sort of invisible man carrying (it was alleged) a Danish passport placed a bomb on the floor at a press conference given by the Sandinista-turned-Contra Eden Pastora (whose nom-de-guerre was Zero, people will be interested to hear). Five people died including a classy New York woman hack. Pastora was injured but survived and is still alive.
Among the 30 or so injured, many with awful shrapnel injuries to the legs and lower bodies, was a woman freelance hack I knew quite well from North Africa, an energetic freelance and a successful one. Our relations were edgy but genial (it's often like that with freelances on the same beat).
She later made a TV film about being collateral damage in some swine's murderous enterprise. Its moral indignation is better founded than usual in such cases. She pointed the finger at an American rancher and CIA agent in Nicaragua or nearby. This stuff can get very indecipherable.
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This has reminded me that I am half way through a long review by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission into Al Megrahi's conviction. (I've been halfway through for months now, was quite enthusiastic at first but just forgot about it)
It's here, if anyone wants to read it. login.heraldscotland.com/SCCRC-Statement-of-Reasons-red.pdf
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One of my friends dad at the time was boss of Co-Op funeral company in Scotland.
I remember he went down to Lockerbie before Christmas day and didnt return for about a week.
As an aside, used to love hanging about their house which was joined onto the parlour. Had the funeral cars there so with that came everyhthing you needed to wash, polish and valet my pride and joy which at that time was a red Mark 2 Escort.
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>> This has reminded me that I am half way through a long review by the
>> Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission into Al Megrahi's conviction. (I've been halfway through for months
>> now, was quite enthusiastic at first but just forgot about it)
>>
>> It's here, if anyone wants to read it. login.heraldscotland.com/SCCRC-Statement-of-Reasons-red.pdf
>>
I have done no more than glance at this report.
Section 5 'The Golfer' caught my eye, for the title, if nothing else. References to the Toshiba manual, the babygro and other curious items made me wonder if I really ought to make a serious attempt to read the whole report. perhaps if things are quiet after Christmas I will make the effort.
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I intend finishing it sometime. I think what I was impressed by was the amount of detail. I don't often read this kind of thing, it looks to me really thorough.
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12 at the time so don't really recall much, and probably had no understanding of the gravity.
When Diana died I had been out on a bender the night before and woke up with a hangover. I remember not being sure if had really happened or if it was an alcohol induced bad dream.
911 I was sat at my desk when a colleague came up from the department downstairs to tell me what had happened and we all rushed to the BBC website. Working in the Aerospace industry I had no idea at that point what the longer term impact would be.
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bit of triv re lockabie, bass player from cockney rebel perished along with his newly wed on the flight.. they were to start their honeymoon
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John Lydon and his wife missed that flight because it took her too long to pack.
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Sobering thought then, not thought about it for years, was that I was on the equivalent flight with the same aircraft two weeks earlier.
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I was just at home in Berkshire, on holiday from University.
A couple of weeks later, I was driving back to Nottingham on the M1 and narrowly avoided being involved in this, by only a few minutes:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kegworth_air_disaster
I don't like flying but will do so when necessary.
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Stuff like this always makes me reflect upon the randomness of our lives. Some children were never born because their potential parents were on that flight, others though were born because their father or mother met somone else instead etc etc...
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>> Stuff like this always makes me reflect upon the randomness of our lives.
>>
Something on R4 today about living with disability. There was a tree surgeon who made one single slip while doing his job and he has to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair living with chronic pain.
It does make you think.
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>>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kegworth_air_disaster
My friend was on that flight, he worked at ICL in Reading. His family lived in Dublin, but he was flying via Belfast. He lived, although broke his wrists, legs and hip. The story he told of dragging himself out of the wreckage using his elbows was very sobering.
They took him to Nottingham [I think] Hospital and then flew him back to Dublin. When I queried is decision to be flown fly home it was the first time I heard the "you know what the chances of being in *two* plane crashes are?"
Last edited by: No FM2R on Tue 24 Dec 13 at 01:50
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan-Air_Flight_1008
My friend and neighbour from 5 doors down, Bobby Jones, was in this one with his fiancee.
They didn't fare as well as Mark's pal ! Commemorated on the memorial in Manchester's Southern Cemetery. The names are in alphabetical order but Bobby's is next to his fiancee's......which is nice.
HO
Last edited by: Horace Ontaltwin on Wed 25 Dec 13 at 15:15
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Lockerbie - 25 Years Ago - Duncan
