The owner of a small Italian restaurant in Berlin spoke very little English; my German was limited to just a handful of words and simple phrases. But I noticed the non-Germanic softness in his voice, and a little later I overheard him speaking Italian. So, when he came to take my order, I dropped a couple of Italian words (out…

In the unlikely event that you haven’t yet heard: there are two elections coming your way. One, for the local Council, this Thursday, followed by a General Election a month later. The professional pollsters are busy making their predictions. You may have your own hopes and expectations if politics is of any interest to you. But the final results will…

Recently I watched a story about an American man in his twenties who’d died in an accident about a year ago. His main organs had been donated for transplantation, and many other parts and tissues of his body had been given for medical use. It was estimated that, thanks to the consent of his bereaved parents, up to a hundred…

Last Friday I visited the P2/3 pupils at St Peter’s Primary School. First of all, we had a Q&A session (with wide-ranging questions), and then I read them a simple story about Charlie the Easter Bunny and his friend Red the Squirrel. It took about 10 minutes to read out. The children were fairly attentive, although some of them were…

Last year the dramatic flood of refugees heading for Europe across the sea was a daily feature in the news. Tragic stories of those who drowned were making headlines. Reports on refugees holed up in migration centres or facing closed borders were shown on TV so often that they seemed to have become a permanent fixture in the regular schedule.…