'Please, can you call my wife?'

Every single morning of the 11th of September since 2001 I wake up hearing that man pleading with me - or someone, surely it was a nightmare and he might have been begging someone else to telephone his wife and tell her he wouldn't be home that night to read bedtime stories to his two wee sons. That first morning, on waking before I knew what was happening, I didn't understand the dream - who was he and why was he standing in the middle of a burning high-rise office area looking straight at me asking me to call his wife, why was a youngish man standing to his left saying 'I don't want to die' over and again, who was he and why was he asking me to telephone his wife?

I didn't connect the dream to what was happening in NYC once I turned on the television to listen to the news - and the news knocked the memory of the dream out of my head until a few days later - suddenly it dawned on me and since then I've never doubted there truly are experiences people have that have no supposedly rational explanation.

And frankly it did not help me get over the thought I'd somehow telepathically connected with a mid-30ish man (saying he was trapped on the 103rd floor and tried to tell me his phone number so I could ring his wife) when a few weeks later a grieving widow-mum of two young boys weepily told one of the ghoulish interviewers about how she was sure her husband had died in the tower as he was always-no-matter-what-always-home every night to read bedtime stories to their two young boys. I've never been able to get past the feeling of guilt I didn't telephone her - if she'd believed me at all, surely it might have been a comfort that his last thoughts were of her and their small sons?

Of all the memories of 9/11 and the days after, that pleading voice is what has stayed with me more than anything else bar one - the voicemail message my friend Joey left on my mobile just before the South Tower collapsed in on him the rest of the people trying to flee down one of the stairs. 'Don't come here', he said, his voice strange, echo-ey and breathless, 'Don't come here no matter what. Once the dust is settled, don't come here.'

A few minutes after he left the message I missed as the mobile was turned off whilst being charged, the tower fell. I'd woke up about the same time he was leaving that message, got downstairs and turned on the box just in time to watch the tower collapse on live telly. I found the message in my voicemail after the mobile towers were switched back on the next day. For 18 years I've mentally kicked myself for missing the chance to say goodbye to him owing to having the phone turned off during the charging - and since then I've never charged my mobile with it turned off. Ever.

Waking on the anniversary morning to find the sun shining in the same way as it had that day makes me angry and terribly sad at the same time. I remember pushing myself out of the house after seeing the North Tower fall to walk down to the complex management office to see if what I thought was happening was real. I remember walking through the complex, eerily silent with clear blue skies, bright sunshine and a small crisp autumnal breeze lifting the American flags hanging from several of my neighbours front doors (mine included).

I remember praying, hoping I was in the midst of some sort of brain-tumour induced hallucination, that on arrival to the manager's office I would discover I was in need of immediate medical attention instead of having just watched hundreds if not thousands of people die as the towers came down. And as I walked I remember thinking having a brain tumour was a much more desirable thing to what I hoped I'd imagined.

But of course what was happening was real. No brain tumour, no hallucination, no 'dream brought on by a bit of bad beef'.

How can the autumn sunshine, the crisp breeze, how can these signs of nature-on-course mock us so after such a terrible thing, how? Every single 11th of September no matter where I am in the world, if the autumn morning dares be as lovely as was on that hideous day, I am angry and sad.

This morning as I type this (at 10am BST) our Scottish sky over my small town is dull, leaden and threatening rain.

Good, the very skies should open and pour down saints and angels tears at the memory of the horror inflicted that terrible day. Every single anniversary day across the entire world until the end of time.

'Please, can you call my wife?'