Other Men's Flowers

When I was at school, during the Second World War, our teachers were men who had been drafted in because they were not in the forces. Some h...

Now that Ian Paisley in his dotage has stopped masquerading as a ranting bigot and taken on the role of cuddly national treasure it is appar...

More recycled posts from 2005: sex A 28,000 years old toy words Supermarket gives away drugs computers WWW, phooey!

...if you are seven years old: Pay an official visit to the local Comisaria de Policias Lead an underwater expedition Try out the local ...

Andy Lewis (Le Canard Noir of The Quackometer) is bearing up very well after the recent demise of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital, and...

This is the title of a wonderful book by Niki Segnit subtitled Pairings, recipes and ideas for the creative cook.  Published in June last y...

Cheese seems to attract poetasters, for there are hundreds of odes to it. Here is one written by Deric Guest, and published in Wine and Food...

Much of my long life has been devoted to the preparation and execution of deeds of unsolicited benevolence, with occasionally, for a change,...

Warning:  Here are more maudlin reminiscences, continued from  HERE ; two clicks on Page Down will move you on to something that may be mor...

After the Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology, and later the BMA, have clearly and unambiguously recommended that homeopathy ...

I have been closely following a worrying case which is currently being investigated by the state police in Massachusetts. A fifth grade stud...

No, on second thoughts let me not. Samuel Johnson noted a useful word for the one in four men and one in three women in the UK who are overw...

I came very late to drug addiction: in my teens and twenties I was too innocent to notice what was going on. Once at a party a girl passed m...

Warning: This post consists of personal reminiscences, and is therefore of no interest whatsoever to anyone except my family and close frien...

No 31 in an occasional series of extracts from The Postcard Century July 1927:  Dear Nellie, writes Ada to her friend, also in Tunbridge W...

Much has been written recently about one Fabio Capello, and some confusion has arisen about him, many people arguing that he is a kind of pa...

Londoners cursing the heat may like to be reminded what London has been like from time to time in earlier years: "In its long history t...

The other day I watched The Blues Brothers , the best musical comedy of all time; among the cast were Ray Charles, John Belushi, Aretha Fran...

Is Cameroon a mightier nation than Denmark? Can a graceless Scotsman beat a Frenchman called Jo-Wilfried Tsonga? All those of us with little...

This is a word which has been added to the Oxford English Dictionary in its June quarterly update. The OED says of it: One surprise of this ...