News

MONDAY

My son has just started school. He's going part-time so I've taken the morning off work to settle him in. He looks so grown-up in his new uniform and I take lots of photos of him and his eight-year-old sister. It's the end of one era and the start of a new one. He has his future opening up in front of him. I wonder what it will hold.

TUESDAY

  I rush to a meeting with colleagues in a town 23 miles away. We need to discuss how we can best provide a service which is accessible to children and families in such a diverse rural area. As I leave the meeting I hear one of the administrative staff talking about a plane crash in New York. It sounds serious. I start to drive home and switch on the radio. I can hardly believe what I am hearing. It is unreal and horrific. I go straight home to find my partner watching television. My daughter is playing on the computer and complaining about the children's television programmes being cancelled "because of some blooming bomb". I cannot take my eyes off the television. There is talk of another plane missing, another crash. Men in suits talking of war. My children go out to play with the little girl next door. They complain that her mummy is watching the television too.

WEDNESDAY

I take my son to school. Parents are greeting each other as usual. My son compares Power Rangers with another boy in his class. There are smiles as people go about their usual daily business, but quietly, in huddles. Instead of hearing "did you watch EastEnders last night?", it is "isn't it terrible about America?". The newspapers talk of war, Armageddon. A tremendous fear comes over me.

THURSDAY

The haunting phone calls from people in the planes and the World Trade Centre dominate my thoughts. Until now we have been protected from such details of people's last moments. We didn't know what those terrified men thought as they went "over the top" in World War One. We didn't hear the last anguished voices of the passengers of the Titanic when they realised all the lifeboats had gone. How does it feel to get home from the shops and hear the last words of your loved one on your answering machine? Does it help? I don't know.

FRIDAY

Every time I hear a plane go over I flinch.

Unbeknown to me my children are looking over my shoulder as I read the paper. "What's that man doing, mum?" asks my son. "He's falling from a building," is all I can say. "He's not got a parachute," says my daughter. "Maybe it's Superman." I can't answer. All I can remember are those anti-nuclear films I watched in the 1980s; the ones where the end of the world started with war in the Middle East. We grown-ups now have a responsibility we have never had before. We have a duty to all the children in the world to enable them to grow up safely and without fear. I hope we can live up to it.