I was a ten-year-old girl. I was still in Primary 6 and had heard nothing about the attacks until I came home at the end of the day. I don't even think the teachers knew - and if they did, they hid it very well as they didn't seem shocked or off. They were just normal.
At 15:00 I walked home as usual by myself. It only takes a few minutes for me to get home as we all live in an area known as 'The Manor' - basically the privately owned, non-ex council homes in Tilbury. So my school was literally just across the field from me as our house backs onto the field.
I let myself into the house. It was only then I knew something was wrong because usually my mum, back in the days when she could walk a bit better and was generally better in health, was usually downstairs with some homemade bread with some Philadelphia cheese on it. I called out to her and she said, "I'm upstairs!" I went up and saw her sitting on her bed with the TV on.
The first image I saw of the towers was 'earlier footage' shown on the BBC of the first attack, which was initially reported as (and assumed to be, according to my mum) an accidental plane crash. I asked whether it was an accident and my mum said, "We thought it was, but then ten minutes later another plane crashed. The BBC didn't immediately realise it was another plane crash and not debris hitting the second tower." I vaguely remember standing at the bedroom door and looking across the room at the TV and seeing the repeated footage of the planes crashing into the towers. Then they showed the footage of the first tower falling down. My mum then told me that was the second one that was hit and that the first one that was hit was still standing.
I went to my room at that point. I was a child and didn't quite grasp what was going on. I had no thought about it being terrorists. When I thought of terrorists, I always thought of the IRA and the Troubles. Even then my labelling them as terrorists was very hazy. My knowledge of them came from them making nail bombs and setting them off in Manchester. I remembered a documentary I had caught sight of several years before when I was about seven about the Manchester bomb. It had only happened two years previous then and was probably the most recent terrorist attack in my living memory.
Even then my thoughts turned to simpler things. I was disappointed that all the channels - all five - were dedicated to this attack which, even at this point, I didn't quite grasp the gravity of. I knew it was horrible but terrorist attack... I didn't comprehend that something so big could actually be a terrorist attack or even grasp was real terrorism is. Like I said, I might have thought of the IRA but this was something completely different.
Children's Hour wasn't broadcasting, and I'll admit I was more annoyed by that. We didn't have satelite or cable then so I couldn't watch it being broadcast on another channel either. So I watched the BBC news like everyone else was. Mum went downstairs to make me my bread and get me a drink. I remember then seeing the footage of the Pentagon too. I asked my mum about it and she said there were four planes; two that hit the Twin Towers, one that hit the Pentagon and another that crashed in a field. "They think it was headed for the White House," she told me.
It all went over my head. I still didn't grasp the gravity.
The last thing I remember about that day was watching the second tower falling down. They didn't catch it live, obviously, because the British news feed was slow due and we didn't quite understand what was happening. Mum and I were in the kitchen at that point and I was eating. After that all I remember is them repeating the footage and talking to bystanders on satelite phone. My dad came home from work that evening and said he'd only heard about it when the staff were called into the staff room and had their old TV on. That might explain my teachers didn't know - their staff room didn't have a working TV.
Everything felt very matter of fact. I don't remember horror from either of my parents or anything. My dad immediately suggested it was probably a terrorist group. "I thought it as soon as I saw the second plane flying in," he said. I don't really remember anything much after the second tower collapsed.
The news coverage of BBC media, which I flicked between on the day, have been preserved on YT:
