“The Independent newspaper reported this morning that 20,000 people die each year in NHS hospitals from bacterial infections caused by super bugs that are almost immune to all known antibiotics. Well, that might be the cause of death as a coroner sees it, but every housewife and retired old-fashioned Matron knows better.” Liz Butterfield laments the primacy of cost-cutting over excellence.
“Had cameramen captured another submarine volcanic eruption – surely that was it? Only slowly did I realise that the deep blue was sky and the monolith was a skyscraper. Somehow in those moments the brain filtered out the explanatory words of the newsreader. Only when a second plane swooped like a dragonfly and exploded in flames into the World Trade Center did reality reassert itself…” Liz Butterfield writes in the aftermath of the 11 September tragedy.
“It’s been an eerie week out in the countryside. The weather clamped down over the weekend and the first signs of Spring were quickly covered with a blanket of icy wet snow, chilled hard by a biting wind straight from Siberia…” Liz Butterfield describes the eerieness of a country in the grips of foot-and-mouth disease.