September
9/11: The attacks change forever the British convention for placing the day before the month in dates.
12th: Washington informs Tony Blair of attack on US.
13th: The immediate aftermath of the attacks generates fear and paranoia across America. Angry shoppers beat up a woman who's put a towel on her head to dry her hair, while people whose faces look like aeroplanes are subject to 24-hour curfew. Citizens for whom this is 'a bad time' include Tiara Ryzst, Tray Njinkampps, Mo Jardine, Moss Lamb, the Twain-Towers family, and Will and Tray d'Senta.
14th: Airlines report no one willing to fly. Bush insists this is a sign of defiance and commissions Hollywood to make films in which being scared to go on an aeroplane is an act of bravery. Filming immediately commences on an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie called Absolute Refusal about a businessman who cannot face boarding a plane but heroically makes a meeting in Cairo by crossing the Atlantic on a pedalo.
16th: Speculation about US retaliation grows. Expert opinion is divided over whether the 'medievalist' regime of Afghanistan should be bombed back to the Stone Age or forward into the twenty-first century. The prevailing Hawk argument runs: 'There's a big stone at the back of the Stone Age and we'll bomb them so hard back into that, they'll bounce all the way forward to 2002.'
19th: The pop singer Michael Jackson is refused permission to lie down and sing songs from his new album into the World Trade Centre rubble.