It’s probably the most common question that’s been flying round in the lead up to today; 10 years on from the 9/11 WTC attacks.

It really doesn’t seem like 10 years to me, as I do remember it vividly as if it were yesterday. They always say that don’t they? However when a major event happens, you really do.

I was down in the Cotswolds with my family visiting my sister who had not long moved down there. We were strolling over the fields taking the dog for a walk when I kept getting calls from one of my best mates, Andy – the signal kept cutting out being in the depth of the countryside, so I only got the odd word here and there of what he was talking about. The main words, when I placed them together after several calls being dropped, were ‘America’, ‘under’, and ‘attack’.

I thought, ‘well, he’s always been melodramatic’, mixed with ‘I wonder what film he’s watching cause it must be good if he’s ringing me about it.’

Once we got back to the cottage where I could get a steady signal to return his calls did the full realisation hit. Screaming down the phone, words to the effect of ‘put the news channel on now’, and witnessing for ourselves history in the making. It was morbidly mesmerising, images that you just couldn’t tear your eyes away from. We were like that for the remainder of the day, glued to all the various news channels and radio. What was slightly jarring was the fact that it was our grandpa’s birthday, which was one of the main reasons we were all down there! Well, his birthdays were always even more memorable from then on.

I didn’t know anyone directly connected with New York, so have no hands-on personal scale of the tragedy and loss of life that took place, but I’m certain that anyone who saw the events unfold that day has every sympathy and empathy for all those involved, and the families they leave behind; the workers in the World Trade Centre, police officers, ambulance crews, firefighters, and others killed or injured who were nearby.

10 years on, but certainly not forgotten.