What a W

Tonight, Jamie and I watched George W Bush give his final news conference as President.

I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that I was pleased when Bush first made it to the White House. As a bit of a political anorak, I had watched his progress in the four years prior to his election and thought he might be OK.

However, Bush Jnr will always be remembered for his responses to what happened on 11 September 2001.

That day, Vanessa and I were walking down a street in Pattaya, Thailand looking for somewhere to eat. We stumbled across an Irish theme bar called O'Shaughnessy's which caught my attention simply because I could hear The Sash blaring from the jukebox inside - not a tune you normally expect to hear coming from an Irish bar.

We ordered a drink and sat down to look at the menu when, without warning, the music was turned off, a big screen was pulled down and the BBC World channel was projected on to it; a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers in New York.

Also in the bar was a large group of US Marines who, like us, were stunned to silence when the second plane hit the other tower. The rest, as they say, is history - as will the presidency of George W. Bush in just eight days' time.

Thankfully Jamie will remember nothing of the man, although the world our little boy grows up in is sadly a lot more dangerous as a result of Dubya's actions in the years which followed that terrible day.