There are no prizes for guessing what has dominated the news for the last three weeks. The newest conflagration in the Holy Land has virtually been impossible to avoid unless you have made some real effort to do so. As an avid listener to a speech radio station of high-quality journalism, I have heard arguments from both sides of the…

It started in 1990, the year when the Iron Curtain was finally dismantled, and – for perspective – I was a spring chicken at the age of twenty. It paused for four years in 2001 (when I was still young-ish at thirty-one), and it’s now been running continuously since 2005. Based on a renewed contract, it will run until 2028,…

A couple of days ago, I was struck by the vast number of pumpkins now available in a supermarket. In fact, there were so many that they had their own space on the shop floor rather than in the aisle with other fruit – where they belong – like tomatoes and cucumber. Oh, wait a minute… In most shops, those…

The official in the registrar’s office carefully removed the bubblewrap from the portrait of Queen Elizabeth and hung it on the wall (the portrait, not the bubblewrap). Then, he invited a lovely lady and me to stand in front of him and repeat the prescribed oath religiously, word by word. Seen from the side, it looked very much like a…

A group of people with a priest stood on the side of the road holding a banner that read: “You are on the way to perdition. Abandon it before it’s too late!” The priest’s frustration eventually reached boiling point as drivers completely ignored the group. “Why don’t they listen?!” – he burst out. One of the parishioners turned to him…