Life

High life

Clash of values

Liberal columnists, especially in London, New York and Los Angeles, can’t quite grasp why some Christians get upset about people saying ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of ‘Happy Christmas’. ‘People who use the word holiday now face angry Christian protests,’ they assert. Well, if they have faced such protests, it’s news to me. Most Christians I know

Low life

Guiding light

A special-needs bloke comes to our gym sometimes. He can’t speak, and he’s deaf, I think, and he doesn’t walk too well, but the disciplined intensity of his work-out is an example to us all. A carer follows him around to advise, guide and watch over him; an elderly man with a neatly trimmed beard

More from life

Dear Mary… | 17 December 2005

For her traditional Christmas treat Mary has invited some of her favourite figures in the public eye to submit personal problems for her attention. From Robert HiscoxQ. Christmas time brings the threat of having to dance at a staff party. As a chairman in my sixties I wonder how to maintain any dignity when dragged

Carpe piscem

Where are the pike, the char, the carp of yesteryear? Still in English lakes and rivers, but they are not to be found in the English kitchen. Pike, then called luce, are mentioned in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and they were on the menu at King Henry IV’s coronation banquet at the end of the 14th

Confessions of an anorak

Am I an anorak? An uncomfortable thought, like discovering that some feature you had never noticed in yourself — your Adam’s apple, perhaps, or your ears — is what people always remember about you. I wore an anorak, long ago during my teenage motor-scooter period. That comprised Lambretta 1, which cost £8, was a slow