I watched the Tipp-Galway All-Ireland hurling final in Galway and then got a Ye Olde Bus Eireann bus back to Djabbalin about 5:30pm on the Monday. There were a couple of forelorn bonfires on the side of the road on the windy Ye Olde main road in East Galway and my bus passed the Galway team bus going the other way.
I was due to to start another pointless year of whatever pointless course I was doing in IT Tallaght on the Wednesday so I was knocking around doing nothing on the Tuesday. In the days before home INTERNET. Neighbours was on. I might or might not have knocked one out to Flick Scully while lying in bed in an empty house watching it. Alright, I did. Itâs the sort of thing you remember. What were you doing when the first plane hit the World Trade Centre? Knocking one out to Holly Valance in Neighbours on the telly while lying in bed.
This listing has Neighbours not starting on BBC One London until 13:45. Iâm pretty sure it started earlier than that on BBC One Norn Iron, probably after the local BBC Newsline with Sarah Travers and the weather forecast with Angie Phillips. I think it usually started around 13:38 and finished around 13:58. It definitely finished before the main event.
https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/service_bbc_one_london/2001-09-11
When Neighbours was over I immediately flicked through the channels and heard Kay Burley on Sky News talking over a picture of one World Trade Centre tower on fire. This was around 13:58. I was obviously agog at this and kept watching, while still in bed. Then the second plane hit. After about ten minutes I made a mental note to myself that this was something very big and to get the fuck up. I had the quickest shower I ever had and continued watching Sky Newsâs coverage downstairs as I dried myself with a towel.
I was on my own in the house and had nobody to share this earth shattering event with, so I did what anybody would do, I put a VHS tape into the video and pressed record. I gave the video to Scano the following spring and never got it back. I rang my granny in Drumcondra, who was then in the early stages of Alzheimerâs. She didnât know what the World Trade Centre or the Pentagon were, though she had I believe once been in Windows On The World restaurant on the top floor of the World Trade Centre.
The weather in Dublin was the same as it was in New York. You felt like you were there. The video tape recorded every change of the channel I made because it was recording the channel on which the new Sky digickal box was. It had flicks to BBC, RTE, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg, Euronews and whatever.
David Learmount on Sky News about 2:20pm knew the score. He all but predicted the buildings would collapse. So when the first one did, we who had listened to him KNEW. While dimwits around the channels were scratching their heads as to what had happened. Some dimwits around the channels were still speculating about an air traffic control malfunction.
Me Mam got home from work around 4:30pm and I had to explain everything that had happened. I think she looked at the telly for a couple of minutes and then went to the supermarket. I had Dunphy on the radio, he had Robert Fisk and Alan Dershowitz on. I heard that, the shouting, and then more shouting. This was incredible. By this stage the rush was so great that there was only one thing for it, to leg it down the offo and get cans. I think I got four Strongbow. The evening light was devastatingly beautiful. At this stage I had no idea how much traction this event was getting in the real world, I thought maybe people wouldnât be that interested. There were faces agog in the village. The people in the offo were all talking about it. I legged it home and started on the cans.
My oulâ fella had been on his monthly flexi-day from work, he left at lunchtime and went out to Howth on the DART for a bit of air. He had no mobile phone, he didnât do mobile phones. He had no transistor radio with him, unusually. He got home about half seven. It was still bright. âI thought I heard something alright, a fella in shop told me America had got what was coming to them. What happened?â
Building 7 collapsed live on Newsnight. They said it had already collapsed, but it hadnât. They caught the collapse then, because people knew it was coming down. There was widespread speculation the American Express beside the Hudson would collapse too, but they didnât.
I couldnât get an Irish Times or even an Indo the next day, they were sold out by 9am, so I got a Cork Examiner instead. The Irish Times of September 12th is commonly cited by people in the trade as the worst front page cover ever made. It reported the events of the previous day like it would report speculation of a VAT increase. The Irish Examiner went full page photo splash, as every newspaper worth its salt did.
I think the weather on the 12th in Dublin was overcast enough but the 13th and 14th were balmy and beautiful. I spent our national day of mourning on the Friday pucking a sliotar off the garage and using a heat gun to strip the chipped varnish off our battered front door. I started crying uncontrollably on the Friday night.
Paul Dempsey made a hilarious comment introducing some boxing card on the Saturday night on Sky, which went something like: âItâs been a terrible week, a tragic week, but out of the ashes, sport is a great healing force and (this shit boxing card from some shit British arena) will help to pick us up, to heal the wounds.â
On the Sunday Channel 4âs live Italian football match featured revolving pitchside advertising for Osama.com.
The song I was listening to most in September 2001 was âTemptationâ by New Order. I bought âBummedâ by the Happy Mondays in Chapters in Middle Abbey Street in September 2001 and I associate both this song and this album with this month.
