There are some events which have such a major impact that we can all remember where we were when we heard the news about them. The deaths of President Kennedy and Princess Diana are good examples and now we must add the events of September 11^th.

I was in New York on September 11. It was a lovely autumn day and when I attended my breakfast meeting in Lower Manhattan I remembered that if we kept to the agenda I would have time to purchase a laptop from the computer store on the ground floor of the World Trade Centre.

Just as I was leaving my American colleague told me that a plane had gone into the Centre. I assumed it was a small private plane whose pilot had lost his way but my colleague thought this might become a major incident. Therefore I rang my wife to tell her that I was OK and, turning away from the World Trade Centre, walked to my next meeting which was on the 38th floor of one of New York's skyscrapers.

When I arrived in the conference room the participants in my planned meeting were all transfixed by the panoramic view they had of the World Trade Centre as a second plane went into the twin towers. The sheer horror of what unfolded is still difficult to convey. Whilst we could not clearly identify the people jumping out of the building to certain death nor were covered in the dust which made Lower Manhattan look like a nuclear holocaust, yet it was deeply unnerving to witness both towers collapsing and look out on New York's skyline replaced by rubble and billowing smoke.

At that point “controlled panic” set in as it was easy to imagine other planes were about to be targeted on the major high rise buildings in New York. Responding to the command to evacuate the building we had to decide whether to take the lift or walk down many flights of stairs. . Instinct made me take the lift, sharing the descent with a woman becoming hysterical because the previous day she had been working on the 88th floor of the World Trade Centre.

Safely out on the street, New York looked very unfamiliar. The city was eerily quiet. The police had closed all streets to traffic and no planes flew overhead. New Yorkers queued silently outside public telephone boxes to ring relatives and friends as no mobile phones worked and soon all telephone contact would be impossible for seven hours. I returned to where I had been staying and, with the rest of the world, watched the TV coverage and tried to make sense of what had happened.

Later that evening I was able to leave Manhattan by train to Boston. I spent several days in that grieving city as so many people knew those who had been passengers in the hi-jacked planes. The churches and synagogues held services and provided opportunities for private prayer throughout the following days as people needed to spend time with others to reflect on this tragedy and its implications. Then there were all the funerals and memorial services.

On the following Monday the business community returned to work and, with frightening speed, redundancies were announced. A business friend, having spent almost a week coming to terms with the death of his clients -none of whom had survived the attack on the World Trade Centre, also had to come to terms with the collapse of his business. When eventually I came home, having been stranded in the States for a week, I came back without any of the signed business contracts we had been working for months to secure. But at least I came back.