Dear LPG,

I wonder how many readers remember what they were doing twenty years ago today. 

Many of us younger pensioners were not pensioners back then, but whatever you were doing, I bet your daily regime was very different.  It is funny how each of our lives evolve as we stop doing something that was part of our daily routine like watching a particular television programme, getting up at a different time in the mornings, attending a particular club, working at a particular job or engaging in a new pastime.  We younger retired people are perhaps the most privileged age group in our communities because, for just a short while after we first retire we are at the time of our lives when we are most likely to be able to do exactly what we want to do when we want to do it I suppose, but we still seem to settle into a routine again even though we don’t have to.

Until we were locked down, I bet we took all those things that were a part of our life-schedules for granted but having to stay at home for a while got us appreciating exactly what we do a great deal more. 

But there are days in our lives that we will always remember I think and even though I am remembering this one in advance, I suspect that I won’t even give it a thought on the day that I hope LPG will be able to post my message. 

It was twenty years ago today that the USA twin towers were crashed into, and all those people lost their lives.  I worked for a taxi company at the time which specialised in arranging to collect people from the airports around London as they arrived in Britain. and regularly spoke on the telephone to personal assistants and secretaries based in other countries as they arrange for their bosses to get from the airports to their next ports of call.  I regularly spoke to two who worked in those buildings and lost their lives.  It was early on a weekday morning for the Americans, but just after lunch when we Londoners learned what had happened. 

So many of us Londoners knew people who were affected because their friends or relatives were affected and even though it was the top television news item of the day, unlike so many such news items where we somehow manage to distance ourselves because it all happened somewhere else in the world, I think it hit home quite hard for a lot of Brits.

But time moves on and we have had so much to deal with since all that happened that it is easy to forget. 

So, on this twentieth anniversary I wanted to ask the question again, ‘Can you remember what you were doing twenty years ago today?’

SC, Sydenham.

Just in case your memory would appreciate a little more of a jog, LPG found a few online reminders of what the affected Americans were doing…

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