On this week in history....

....was the title of a piece which appeared on the wallpaper of our PCs and laptops in the office this week.

This week Elizabeth I was born on 7 September 1533, the London blitz began on 7 September 1940, and the Beatles performed their last TV show on 11 September. And in our time the Twin Towers of the World Trade centre in New York were destroyed by aircraft hijacked by terrorists on 11 September 2001.

It gave me a peculiar feeling especially as there was nothing for 10 September. And 10 September is of course the day in 2006 when FLN and El Pasto were killed on the M6 motorway. Not world shattering may be but world shattering for us.

So Teapot and me went off to Willesley Wood in the National Forest to see the place where the Woodland Trust had planted an oak tree in memory of FLN paid for by my chums in the office at Christmas 2006. The picture is of an oak tree in the wood.

We listened hyptonised to the Channel 4 programme last Sunday about the telephone messages left by office workers in the Twin Towers and firecrew as they tried to reach them before their collapse. How wives girlfriends and families hold onto those messages and play them again. One family only had the itemised bill of the last calls that awful morning.

We understand that holding on only too well. Teapot still has FLN's texts and short videos shot by mobile phone or camcorder of him in Yosemite, the Lake District and in his garden in Erdington. They are timeless and feed our memories.

We re-read his blog on Thursday evening, and it reminded me time does not stand still because in the unyielding logic of cyberspace FLN is now 33 years old.

Perhaps cyberspace has a point. Although we cannot see him and share his life he and El Pasto now enjoy life in that place which Jesus went to prepare for those who love him and which is beyond the mind of man to figure out.

And that is really world shattering.......