I was 23 on 9/11

I went to another fruitless blood donation appointment yesterday, and was a bit shocked overhearing how young everyone was. All these DOBs that end with “9x” and “0x”. Plenty of them were not even born on 9th September 2001, whereas I was a few days away from starting graduate work – well, looking for some, anyway.

I don’t have anything very interesting to say about my memories of that day, because I was sitting in front of the TV watching CNN at home in Germany, before anything even happened. Tath was abit weird in itself, because I never watch CNN, so I don’t know what prompted me to turn it on before walking the dog. I was watching a report about the bankruptcy of Ansett, when programming was interrupted. I watched the second plane, and then it was all too awful to think about, and I think I walked the dog for about an hour, somehow hoping it would have all gone away as a big hoax when I got home. Reader, it was not a hoax. Or a conspiracy. It was a bunch of guys seeking twisted retribution. They’ll always exist, the task is to prevent them finding a seemingly just cause and a bunch of useful idiots. It’s going well so far.

I’ll write down what I did today, but I’ll do so in the style of this very amusing diary entry from 1988 (in my defence, I was 10):

Here is what 11th September 2026 looks like in the same style:

Today it was 25 years since 6,000 people I never knew died in a terrorist attack in America. In some ways, the world was never the same again, and I have never forgotten that day, although I can’t really imagine any of it. I got up earlier than I wanted to at 6.30, because Basti needed to leave for the school bus. I coudn’t eat anything because I was having my health check done at 8. My annoying husband emptied my water glass and stacked it in the dishwaher. I played my violin quite badly, talked to Ingrid and wandered out the door.

My health check was boring and uneventful, and now I can’t download the report because the OTP doesn’t work. Came home to find husband had drunk all the coffee, so I made some more and went upstairs to find he was having an interview on the phone, which was awkward because I had just started saying “hey darling, how come you drank all the coffee?”. Sat down to work. There were too many Teams chats, too many people who wanted stuff but hadn’t actually done stuff I’d asked for. I worked until 7. Then we went to Brasserie Blanc for a date night. I think I wanted an apology, but I’m not really sure what for. We didn’t take any photos. For some reason we talked about Danielle Steele’s hilarious life, prompted I think by one of the ridiculous characters in the book I’m reading being very similar to an acquaintance. We drank a glass of champagne, half a bottle of wine and some sherry, in Richard’s case brandy, and cycled back home at about 10.30, which was fun.