Life is complicated. If, for example, you were a seabird enthusiast seeking to differentiate between the Greater and Lesser Frigatebird,...

Very quietly sometime last week, President Macron signed an order allowing the shooting of 18,000 turtle doves this coming season, which...

‘Sometimes, I feel like crying tears of happiness, tears of joy, to see the distance we’ve come and the progress we’ve made,’ said Civil...

Round about 2.6 million years ago, give or take, man started using tools. They were very simple ones, (hammerstones, stone cores and...

Yesterday, the spinning plates stopped, even if only for five hours. It was the poet, Edmund Blunden, who came out with the truest...

Some time in 1958, Chairman Mao established his ‘Four Pests’ campaign, ordering the extinction of rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows....

A Quiz Question for you: who was Prime Minister when the last person died of an adder bite in the UK? * Until one group of them were...

‘Nothing,’ a journalist who had stolen the idea from someone else once told me, ‘is ever as good or as bad as we lot make it out to be.’...

There have been very few Nigels in my life, unless you count my colleague and friend in the army all those years ago. However, he...

Dear Rishi First of all, thank you for my furlough cheques. To be honest, I normally thank myself each time one turns up, on the basis...

Three moments in time: When I was about eight, someone at school died during the holidays. No one ever said anything, either to the...

There’s a bandwagon rolling by. Social media is good and bad in equal measure, sometimes both at the same time. Messages are sent, and...

‘We are what we repeatedly do’ said someone who may or may not have been Aristotle. In which case, I am a Jaffa Cake. Whoever it was who...

In a life comprising inexplicable and mainly unimpressive lists, there is one that stands out for me. Since I was about 8, I have kept a...

Matt Hancock has a slight look of head prefect about him, which is why it is so difficult to for me to take him too seriously. It’s...

I think it was John Keats who said that ‘touch has a memory’. It’s just as well, as I’m starting to forget. My parents weren’t big...

A poor farm worker lived with his family, and kept a hundred and thirty one chickens. The chickens laid enough eggs to keep the family...

COVID-19 IN VERSE AND PROSE Surrealist thoughts for a surrealist time. In The Beginning Day 1: A Bat with a Cough One late Autumn day on...

Something rather wonderful is happening in our new Pontius Pilate world of hand-washing. Bear with me, because first we need to go...

I used to wear a suit, you know. I used to see my world through the prism of things my upbringing had taught me were sensible, probable...