Five years on

It's hard to believe that five years have passed from the most vivid day in modern history.

Mrs Wife (who at that time was just Miss Girlfriend) and I were backpacking around Europe in September 2001, and had arrived in Barcelona on September 10th. As we were preparing to leave our hotel for the afternoon on September 11th, the owner, in pidgin English, said there had been a bomb in New York. We didn't pay much attention, and set off for a day of exploring the Catalan capital.

It was only when we saw American tourists huddled together weeping that we realised something was amiss, and not until that evening that we saw the TV footage of the planes crashing into the towers.

There are few other dates in my life that I can recall with such clarity as September 11th 2001. I can remember the birthdays of members of my family, but none of those scores of days spent celebrating stands out with any clarity - they have all merged into hazy recollections of parties and of people opening presents.

I can remember the day that Princess Diana died, and her state funeral, but I don't remember the dates. I know where I was when I heard that US troops had captured Saddam Hussain, and I remember hearing that George Harrison had died, but again, I don't know when these events took place.

But I can remember the day that America, and the whole western world, came under attack on its own soil.

Miss Girlfriend and I continued our trip around Europe that September, visiting Nice, Monaco, Milan, Venice, Florence, Pisa and Rome. We enjoyed the experience, seeing Europe's history firsthand and travelling through the Mediterranean countryside. But each day began with the purchase of a British newspaper as we tried to piece together the where, when, how and, most of all, why, behind the attacks.

Though there was a feeling in the days and weeks immediately following the attacks that life would never be the same again, thankfully a sense of normality has been restored in the intervening years, although I cannot speak with any great authority on the subject, given that I was simply watching through a television screen thousands of miles away.

But I have visited New York since 9/11, and found it to be the exciting, bustling metropolis I expected and which is portrayed in movies made both before and since September 2001. Those who claimed that the fabric of society had been altered forever underestimated nature's most compelling objective - survival.

If life had not returned to normal, if America had become a country living in fear for its future, then the terrorists would have won. That normal people continue to live normal lives is testament to a spirit of survival much stronger than any terrorist's desire to cause misery.