Just back from drinks in memory of Kate Peyton at the Frontline Club -- a chance to raise a glass in honour of our fallen colleague.

I had a long chat with Peter Greste, who was with Kate when she was shot.

Much of our conversation I'll keep private, but we both had remarkably similar reflections on our brushes with mortality.

Peter said he somehow expected death to be dramatic, accompanied by a stirring soundtrack -- like a movie. In the event, though, the events leading up to Kate's death seemed strangely ordinary. Her bullet wound seemed small. Though scared, she remained calm and composed as she was rushed to hospital. Yet just a few hours later she slipped away.

After I stepped on the landmine, I clearly remember lying in the dirt thinking "this is how it ends -- not in slow motion, in a hail of bullets, not with a crescendo of soaring strings, but in a drab, dusty field in Northern Iraq."

It all seemed something of an anticlimax.