Life

Low life

Happy eating

To get to the nearest main road from here, you have to drive for five miles along a cow-shit-covered country lane. Two-thirds of the way along, where the lane is joined by a farm track, stands a wooden hutch on legs. More often than not, there are new-laid eggs inside. The eggs, lovely brown eggs

Wild life

An end to a way of life?

In our bad old days there used to be the joke of the Nigerian and Kenyan ministers. The Kenyan visits Abuja, is impressed by the wealth of his counterpart and so asks how he does it. ‘Look out that window,’ says the Nigerian. The Kenyan sees a skyscraper rising out of the jungle. ‘Ten per

More from life

Your Problems Solved | 18 January 2003

Dear Mary… Q. Can you suggest an original birthday present for a novice gardener who is not yet very experienced?S.B., Aldeburgh, Suffolk A. Yes, you can buy 1,000 worms for £35 from the Green Gardener at Rendlesham. Curiously, you can freeze worms, then bring them back to life – rather like those little magic fish

Mind your language

Mind Your Language | 18 January 2003

The vogue word of the year so far is extreme. It has been around for centuries, deriving from the Latin superlative extremus, ‘outermost’. But for the English word recently a flavour of danger and convention-breaking has developed. ‘Extreme’ sports are those like mountaineering or paragliding that offer physical risks. Now extreme is taking on a