11/09/2001

Yes, I'm a day early. Here's the thing, tomorrow's my birthday so I wanted to remember the sadness beforehand.

When it happened, the eleventh of September 2001, I had just started work at Mayhem. I hadn't told anyone that it was my birthday and I had not done so for a reason. It was the first birthday for me since the death of my parents. Although it was ten months since their deaths, I still felt raw, vulnerable, depressed. I didn't want anyone wishing me a happy birthday because they, my parents, couldn't, because this day was a day that connected me and my mother, the day she and I went through life's first trauma together, and she was no longer there.

Around break time I received a text message from Austen, who was still working at a school in the London Docklands at the time. That was the first I heard about the atrocities. I can't remember the rest of the day, just that.

There is a paranoia that sets in when something like this happens, my brother-in-law frequently had to go to the States on business, he had to take internal flights, he had been to the World Trade Centre, where was he now?
A similar thing happened last year just before I came out to live here. On the day of the London bombings, the seventh of July, I had told my friend Ree that I was going to a concert. Knowing that most go on in London, and that even from Portsmouth, London was easy to get to for the evening, she was worried about where I was. I was actually in Chichester, and Alison Moyet, whom I'd gone to see, was held up because all of the trains were disrupted.

Vileness. Not forgiven and not forgotten.
A while later, my sister said to me,
'The Americans always say '9/11', so just think, it happened on the ninth of November,' and to some extent she was right. Austen told me of a pupil whose sister's birthday was the same as mine. Last year for the first time she made the connection between her birthday and the terrorist attacks on the WTC.

And tomorrow is the funeral of Steve Irwin. The Guardian always tell us what we the readers are reading this week. Out of eight sites, seven were about Steve-O. The other was the Test Match between Pakistan and England.

Benjamin has arrived back in England, safe and sound. His flight didn't leave until 20.55 last night. When I used to go back and forth, there was of course no good time to leave. That late flight was nice because you could more easily sleep on the plane, but the day was largely spent prowling around the house like an unhappy tiger. The only time it worked for me was when Showcase had a 'Kath and Kim' marathon on and I was able to wallow all day long. I got to about halfway through the second series before I had to leave. Then last year just before I came out, Living were showing series two. I got to exactly the same point before I had to leave. I still haven't seen the last few episodes.
I'm wondering now if Steve-O could arrange that for me.