Years ago, a friend of mine asked me to take her cousin on a hill walk to show her the best of the famous Scottish Highlands. I knew she was a capable hillwalker, so I agreed and decided on the Lairig Ghru western ridge, made up of four Munros: Braeriach, Cairn Toul, the Angel’s Peak and the Devil’s Point. The…

Last year a man in London was convicted of using a mobile phone while driving his car.  However, he then successfully appealed against the conviction using a loophole. He argued that filming or taking photos while driving does not match the wording in the current legislation, which says it is illegal to use a device “which performs an interactive communication”…

In less than a month’s time, on 11th November, the country will commemorate the contribution of British and Commonwealth military and civilian servicemen and women in the two World Wars and later conflicts. This tradition was born out of the national trauma of the Great War. The Remembrance Day is a sombre, solemn celebration, inevitably focused at the staggeringly enormous…

Recently a friend of mine tried hard to find out when my birthday is. There was a good reason for all that effort; there are rumours that soon the world will have suffered half a century of my existence. There are – admittedly few – people who think that the world has not suffered enough and there should be a…

Two weeks ago, on 23rd September, we ‘celebrated’ a special occasion: six months since a UK-wide lockdown was introduced. As we know all too well, life as we had known it stopped and we had to adapt to a ‘new normal’: no social interaction, many businesses shut down and ‘working from home’ as the default position wherever possible. From day…