No matter how close we are to others, we can never truly understand what it means to be them. Although the single may envy content couples, two never completely become one. At any point, the person who felt so embraced and loved may be left alone again, be that by accident, illness or unpredictable changes in feeling. How often do we see people baffled when they find themselves betrayed by someone they thought they knew and could rely on?
ReadWhen no corner of the world has been left unexplored, and imports come with the stigma of food miles, native rare breeds and heritage fruit and vegetables have become the new exotica. But, as broadcaster and greengrocer Charlie Hicks puts it, since “there’s often a very good reason they stopped growing them in the first place” is there anything more to this new-found love of the old than nostalgia, novelty and scarcity value?
ReadAs long as something remains logically possible, some people can’t help but wonder if their dream might become a reality, given enough desire or effort. This is exacerbated by the fact that our culture encourages people to dream big and believe that “impossibility” is simply the hobgoblin of negative minds…
ReadNo civilised person is supposed to make bonfires of books. ‘Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings,’ wrote the German poet Heinrich Heine in the century before Nazism. Burning books is a sacrilegious act, and the taboo against it particularly binds writers. So what was I doing in a Somerset field lighting a match under the 32 volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica?
Read