Other Men's Flowers

It would be difficult to think, offhand, of a simple explanation of why a young woman, a total stranger, wearing only a nightdress, rang our...

…continued from Part 2 I was taken to the theatre three or four times during my visits to Pyongyang. The productions I saw were not only all...

An elderly lady of whom I was fond died last year. Our relationship had been founded on mutual affection and respect combined with utter con...

I have long since stopped minding when Americans comment on my quaint English accent, and I no longer bother to explain to them that I don...

At the time of her marriage in 1999, my daughter-in-law Wendy never dreamed that the next five years would put her into so many unhappy situ...

Many blogs feature in their heading a maxim, aphorism, saying, adage, axiom, saw, proverb, epigram or precept (thank you, Dr Roget). Sometim...

It would be absurd to assess the qualities of a holiday destination solely on the basis of what there is to eat when you get there. However,...

Off to Portugal so no more posts for a couple of weeks. Northern Portugal, not the Algarve. I hear they've had mosquitos there, blown o...

I have no need to apologise to my Italian friends for this; it was passed to me by a French friend. One day I go abroad and stay in bigga ho...

I met a man the other day who by some mischance had never seen George Dubya and Tony in duet (assisted by Lionel Richie and Diana Ross). In ...

When you come to the world of weblogs for the first time and look at a few dozen of them you will probably find to your horror that they are...

Many Americans seem to believe that Fox News provides a balanced, impartial viewpoint, but its right-wing bias is apparent from the merest ...

His Witnesses were at our door the other day, a rather sad blonde one in a chiffon dress, a jolly black girl with a nice white shirt, and a ...

Some years ago I worked as a part-time French to English technical translator in such fields as the gas industry. This was pretty boring but...

Dalmatians used to run along behind the carriage, to great decorative effect. This didn't require a great deal of intelligence, and it i...

It was a moment of inattention on my part which would have caused a small biff if the other driver had not braked with commendable speed of ...

Other Men's Flowers has attracted some criticism for being frivolous and aimed almost entirely at the very young. I am told it lacks gr...

The Shorter OED just describes it as an infantile word expressing thanks, first noted in print in 1772, but Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang ...

(The Taming of the Shrew, v, ii.) The nation-wide hilarity inspired by the Diana Memorial Fiasco – which began with the sight of the Queen’s...

Open-air performances usually encourage you to provide some of the facilities for yourself: you can bring your own chairs, tables, food, dri...