The wise counsel of friends

“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.