Remembering
At exactly this time last year, I was sitting at a desk in Government office trying to get a notorious piece of software to function as expected. My colleague was sitting at the desk opposite me and, as usual, he was listening to the radio on his headphones while working.
Quite suddenly, and without a word spoken, he attracted my attention and pointed to the windows behind me. These windows directly faced the news office of the BBC World Service. At first, I couldn’t work out what I was supposed to be looking at, but then it occurred to me that the BBC’s office was in a flurry of activity.
I took my radio out of my bag and heard the headline. With my face pressed up to the glass I tried to follow the coverage on the screens inside the building opposite. All their television sets were on—each one showing a different news channel from around the world but all showing more or less the same picture. So stunned was I with what I saw I hadn’t noticed the crowd of office workers gathering at my shoulders. My colleague, still pressing his headphones to his ear, turned to me and said “Remember this date”.
It doesn’t seem like a year has passed. I can remember the day minute-by-minute as if it were yesterday, yet there has been so much discussion and coverage of the events it seems like an eternity ago.