We live a few miles from London's Stansted Airport, which means we keep on having planes fly fairly low across the town. You see them glide on past in the distance past buildings in the foreground.

You looked up and you either thought "I wonder where they'be been fortheir holidays" or maybe "I wish they'd be a bit less noisy." Yes and there might be a thought about you get a plane crashing sometimes, and that's always the disaster scenario for any town on tey fklight path of an airport. But that's always been remote and theoretical.

But now I look up and the image of those planes flying into the towers interposes itself. More this week than ever, but it's always there.

There've always been warplanes around, and they look like warplanes, but these aren't supposed to be warplanes, guided missiles, amd now all of them are, potentially.

Rather like the way it's impossible for people in this part of the world to see an abandoned parcel in the tube without having the heart stop a second. The same image has new associations.