Where were you when... events that help shape our memories

As we’ve just started a new year, it's traditional to look back on the old.
Well last year, as regular readers will know, I celebrated my 60th birthday with lots of interesting activities which I feel I covered fairly extensively in my column at the time, so I looked for inspiration elsewhere and came up with an event that makes me recall exactly where I was and what I was doing when it happened. So this article is all about major world events over those 60 years and my memories of them.
I start with an event that recently reached its 35th anniversary, the tragedy of the Lockerbie bombing that occurred on December 21 1988, killing all the passengers and crew on board plus residents of the town below.
At that time I was in Wales, touring round the mining communities in the valleys with a production of Cinderella, a traditional pantomime put on by the Trevor George Agency, based in Torquay.
It provided all the local families with some much appreciated festive fun. I had been employed as a van driver for the tour, transporting all the set, costumes and props, acting as a roadie, as well as a small walk on part during the show.
Afterwards, we would strike the set, load it all back in the van and return to our digs. On December 21 that year, we were all looking forward to a few days off with our respective families to celebrate Christmas.
Upon returning to the house that night and turning on the TV we were greeted with the news of the terrorist atrocity that had just occurred in Scotland.
The images of rescue services searching through the wreckage are ones I will never forget. It certainly cast a very sombre shadow over the festivities that year and now it is already 35 years ago.
Being born in 1963, I can say I lived through the assassination of JFK and the birth of Dr Who, my early memories of which I’ve written about in a previous article.
Then in 1966, at not quite three years of age, England won the World Cup, but understandably this triumph passed me by However I’ve never developed any particular interest in sports, so I’m not too upset by that, but I do have very vivid memories of being ushered into the hall at my junior school, sitting cross legged on the cold, hardwood floor, and watching footage of one of the moon landings...awe-inspiring stuff.
As a child, our family holidays were spent caravanning in either Wales or Dorset and being part of a large family we would travel around in a Volvo Estate which in those days came with backwards facing seats. On August 16, 1977, shortly after my 14th birthday, I recall sitting in those seats when the commentary of the latest cricket test match, my father was in charge of the radio controls in those days, was interrupted by an announcement that Elvis Presley had sadly died, news that shocked the whole world and catapulted his latest hit, “Way Down”, to the top of the British music charts.
Moving on to the 80s, I will never forget the day of Live Aid, on Saturday July 13, 1985, as that was the end of my first year at Mountview Theatre School in North London. We spent the day presenting our end of year productions to our tutors, one of which involved me performing as a lion, fronting a rock band at Live Aid, as you do...my roaring vocals concerned the tutors in case I had damaged my voice for the rest of the proceedings, but no harm was done. We then had to wait and see if we had done enough to get called back to continue our tuition in the second year. This bothered me, as I tried celebrating the end of term with the rest of my fellow students, but by the time we had finished at the pub, I had managed to get out of one of our tutors who was getting drunk with us the fact my place was safe. I returned to my flat, happy in that knowledge, watching the rest of Live Aid that night and returning home to Bristol the next day to enjoy a well deserved break.
At the end of the 90s, on Sunday August 31, 1997, the world was shocked by the tragic death of Diana, the People’s Princess. I was working in the box office at the Princess Theatre in Torquay in those days and I had that particular morning off when the TV was full of all the details and speculation about the horrendous accident that had taken her life. I was overseeing the ticket sales for that night's show, which starred Joe Pasquale, and I arrived in work that afternoon not sure if it would go ahead as everyone was still reeling from the news. As the audience started to turn up, they were allowed to take their seats in the auditorium so we assumed the show was happening after all. When the curtain finally went up, Joe walked on stage to announce that he didn’t feel up to performing that night under the circumstances hoping that everyone would understand. He thanked everyone for turning up, urging them to return to the box office to either get a refund or rebook for another show. So that’s what I had to deal with for the rest of my shift, whilst everyone else went home.
The final event I want to reflect on is the one I personally feel has shaped our world into the one we live in today. It has certainly proved to be the catalyst for many of the conflicts that we have witnessed since then.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I had an appointment along with a few members of my paranormal group at a haunted cottage in Winkleigh. I had been contacted by the owner, who invited us to check out her spooky home. We had carried out an investigation a few weeks previously and this was a courtesy follow up visit. Sadly, the elderly owner had recently lost her husband and not wanting to be parted from him he had been buried at the bottom of the field that formed part of her property. As our first visit had been at night, it was good to have a nosy around the outside in daylight, where we found evidence of her late husband’s obsession with steam traction engines, with rusting examples overgrown in the back garden and poking out of hedges. Whilst we were there, she asked if we could do her a big favour by moving a wooden bench from the garden to beside the plot where her husband was buried so she could sit and have conversations with him. We knew she was quite capable of talking to spirit, so we were more than happy to help her out with some heavy lifting. We then left her with the knowledge that she still had some special times ahead with her loved one. As we drove home, our reflections on that morning’s achievements were rudely interrupted by announcements over the car radio of the terrorist atrocities that were being perpetrated in the United States. We couldn’t believe what we were hearing and when we got home we just had to watch as planes flew into skyscrapers causing them to collapse. Images that shook the world and changed it forever.
I hope you have found my personal take on certain world events interesting. Maybe it might make you reflect too and think where were you when...