Where Were You?
That morning I had set off for Glasgow's Botanic Gardens determined to prove that everyone has a story to tell. I had been talking to some production trainees about a programme idea called Life On The Bench. I had suggested that people who took the time to sit on a park bench would be the very people willing to spare the time to talk to a ´óÏó´«Ã½ radio reporter. Not only that, I reasoned, but they would probably be in a reflective mood and might be persuaded to share a personal story. Leading by example, I grabbed a digital tape recorder and microphone and set out to find some stories.
My first interviewee was a man who told me that, until recently, he had travellled across Europe on business. He told me of a life-changing night in Warsaw as he watched the citizens embrace the new free-market economy and engage in the very same rat race that he himself now wanted to quit. Indeed, he had done that very thing and was now enjoying a simpler life as a homeopathic healer.
I collected three or four other interesting stories that morning and, just as I was about to leave the park, I got speaking to an American student who told me that, after three years living in Glasgow, ,she was about to marry her Scottish boyfriend and that they would both be setting up home in the States. She was obviously happy about that but there was a hint of sadness in her eyes and when I asked a few more questions she told me why.
"I'm just so worn out by the anti-American feeling in Scotland. I feel like I'm always have to apologise for who I am."
I wished her all the best and walked out of the park, across the road and back into the ´óÏó´«Ã½ building. I was making my way up the stairs to my office when a young researcher called Hermeet Chadha leaned over the bannister from the floor above and told me that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. In my office, I heard the events being described on the radio and then I switched on the TV set to see those images we now all remember.
A few days later I was again out with my tape recorder, but this time I was talking to people sitting on park benches in Broughty Ferry. An office-worker on her lunch break told me that she was English and had come to Scotland over twenty years ago. Her daughter was now grown-up and was travelling with friends in Greece. On the day of the twin towers attack she had called home from Athens and had asked her mother if the world was coming to an end.
"I know it seems silly , " said the lady on the bench, "but that's how we all felt that day. Didn't we?"
