Reader's Digest UK Dec 2018

On Love Lessons, Luck And LSD Christmas Trees

8 A NNIVE R SARY ED I TION 80

Roger Daltrey Cities Breaking With Tradition

Yours Sincerely… THE LOST ART OF LETTER WRITING

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70

Tuck into some of the most delicious festive feasts that Britain has to offer

80 CATFISHING

Fiona Thomas warns of the trials and tribulations of falling for someone online

TRAVEL & ADVENTURE

90 CHRISTMAS TREES

Discover some of Europe’s most unusual festive displays

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LETTERS ON THE OCTOBER ISSUE

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Letter of THE MONTH

“The Joyful Gardener” (October 2018) could have been written yesterday, rather than in 1955. For me, gardening has been less a hobby and more a lifesaver. From relieving work-related stress to feeding us during times when money was tight, my little vegetable garden provided us with an abundance of tomatoes, strawberries, raspberries and herbs. It has been there for me when my anxiety was so bad that I was physically sick, or when I lost my job due to depression.

If it were not for my garden, I truly believe I would never have been able to leave the house. Watching seeds turn into flowers or food is magical and helps put life into perspective. The wildlife it encourages keeps me grounded and makes me think about what is really important in this world and our

fleeting time upon it. While others may talk about their expensive cars and holidays abroad, I only have to look out my window to be transported into another world, a world of beauty.

Like Agnes Rothery so eloquently stated, those who work in their garden are blessed.

THE CURSE OF THE SMARTPHONE

Jenny Agutter has the right idea when she says she would reverse the trend for smartphones. They’re so dehumanising—instead of striking up conversations, we pull out our phones and disengage. Just imagine how much richer our lives would be if we lifted our heads to look at the world and the people around us—how much more we would notice, how many more people we’d meet. We’d learn so many new things and we’d actually end up feeling more connected—the irony is that the smartphones promising to “connect us” just force us further apart. So, I wholeheartedly agree that smartphones should be kept in their place—generally a pocket—until they are really needed!

Jennie Gardner, Bath

BURIED TREASURES

RE-LIVING HISTORY

The dedication of the “Time Travellers” is awesome. It’s more than a hobby because although they enjoy it they’re prepared to endure the hardships of the times they represent. However, if time travel was actually possible it would be frustrating and upsetting to realise that—according to logic— nothing could be changed. The tyrannical reign of King John, the princes murdered in the Tower, the Holocaust... The events of the past are set in stone; the shocking, victorious and the valorous cannot be erased. It has been said that history repeats itself and the time travellers are doing just that—but in a good way!

Philippa Sampson, Devon

I read with interest your Fashion and Beauty feature, “Crystal Healing”. It reminded me of when my daughter was young and had an obsession with buying crystals. I remember her choosing two yellow crystals, one for her and one for me, which were supposed to attract money into your life if placed in the corner of a room. I did exactly as instructed. Did it attract money into my life? Well, when I recently found the crystal, some years later, in the corner behind a bookcase, covered in dust, there was money with it—10p!

Esther Newton, Berkshire

THE SWEET DECLINE?

I was horrified by the article about “sugar dating,” as trendy psychologists seem determined to use specious arguments to justify what’s no more than prostitution. As a churchgoer, but by no means a puritan, I believe that a society which imagines that unbridled hedonism has no dire consequences,

is on the road to destruction.

The novel When the Kissing Had to Stop by Constantine Fitzgibbon warns of the fate of a Britain without a moral code, while anyone who knows the history of the Roman Empire is aware that such decadence inevitably leads to ruination.

IN PRAISE OF MRS HAWKING

I really liked the interview with Jane Hawking in October’s edition. As a family, we had enjoyed watching the film, The Theory of Everything, as a birthday treat for my daughter. While watching, our sympathies were definitely with Jane as it’s shown how she was left for another woman by Stephen.

I hadn’t realised that the film was based on Jane’s book. It was fascinating to hear that Jane felt Felicity Jones had captured her “movements, gestures, speech patterns [and] voice” and that when she saw Eddie Redmayne, she thought, Oh, that’s Stephen. It must be very sobering to watch someone else playing you on camera and getting it right. It shows the skills of the actors.

Although Stephen rightly attained all the plaudits for his scientific achievements, Jane deserves her own tribute. Her story is inspirational as she sacrificed everything to let him take the limelight. And yet, she still remains modest, unassuming and full of praise for Stephen.

Kevin Briggs, Shetland

Colin Bullen, Kent

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See

Polar bears are widely known to be excellent swimmers, but their endurance surprised even the experts at the Alaska Science Centre in the US. They equipped several females with GPS transmitters to track their activity and were surprised to find that the lady-bears often swam distances between 30 and 120 miles. One female swam over 215 miles in one stint! Such behaviour is not for fun however, polar bears generally hunt on the sea ice, but global warming has so dramatically reduced the frequency of such ice that the animals are forced to swim great distances to find adequate hunting “ground”.

The Lazy Mann’s Load

This month Olly Mann takes a stand against his own tendency towards laziness…

Iam lazy. Given the choice between going out for a run, or sitting on the sofa endlessly consuming police procedurals, I invariably choose the latter—even though my body really could do with some exercise, and, as a connoisseur of cop drama, I can see the twists coming 20 minutes before the end.

The realities of self-employment, of being a dad, of social media and many other factors mean I don’t actually sit around all day—I’ve learned to motivate myself, to be proactive in business and to call my mother regularly—but if I weren’t serially self-correcting, inertia would be my default mode. Let’s put it this way: I’m not one of those guys who

Olly Mann presents Four Thought for BBC Radio 4, and the award-winning podcasts The Modern Mann and Answer Me This!

gets restless on holiday. Last summer, we had three weeks away, and I would have doubled it, happily. As I knocked back my third piña colada, I did not feel my fingers twitching to get back to the keyboard.

I presume the psychological engine of this laziness is simply short-term convenience: I don’t want to clean the kitchen, so I won’t. (N.B. my wife has made it unambiguously clear to me that actual “won’t” is unacceptable, if I wish to remain married to her. The reality is, I’ve had to settle for “won’t do it for an hour, until after pudding”. But I still get the small adrenaline rush of “won’t”, as I walk away from dirty plates. “Won’t” is how I narrate the voiceover, in my head.)

But recently I found myself wondering: is instant gratification truly my friend? Wasn’t that Faust’s undoing—signing a pact with the Devil, just so he could mince around at a couple of parties? Wasn’t that David Cameron’s fatal error—

promising a referendum, so he could win an election, without considering what might happen to his career, or the country? I don’t want to be Faust! I don’t want to be Cameron!

So, I embarked upon a thought experiment: I stopped being lazy. If an invoice landed on my desk, I paid it. Each time I came in from the garden, I locked the back door behind me. Whenever I went to fetch my shoes from the cupboard under the stairs, and a dustpan fell on my head because it hadn’t been put back on the hook, I didn’t just curse and impatiently slam the door as I clumsily retrieved my shoes; I took a deep breath, moved the dustpan out the way, got hold of my shoes, then carefully placed the brush back on the hook so it wouldn’t fall down

again. The first time I did this, it felt like an absolute Herculean effort. I was in the trenches. With every fibre of my being, I resisted my instinctive laziness.

But it was worth it. The knowledge that I’d paid all my invoices, that the back door was locked, and that the bloody broom wasn’t going to fall on my head again, outweighed the thrill of deferring the problem to another day. Marginally.

This might seem like simple stuff to you. Perhaps you’re not beleaguered by short-term selfishness. But it was revelatory to me. Maybe because I’m an only child, so, when I was a kid, I got mostly what I wanted. Or maybe I drink too much coffee. Or not enough coffee. Or maybe we’re all a bit like this, chasing immediate rewards, because evolution incentivises us to prioritise that pleasure over any long-term satisfaction we may not live to see. I don’t know. I just know that being un-lazy felt surprisingly good.

I extended the experiment. I no longer waited to be prompted by events. I went around all day actively thinking: Don’t be lazy! Be proactive! I did a little audit of my sock drawer, chucking out the odd ones, so they no longer stared back at me each time I got dressed. I began a shopping list on my phone, and each time I observed an ingredient missing from the kitchen cabinet, I

“

I presume the psychological engine of this laziness is simply short-term convenience: I don’t want to clean the kitchen, so I won’t”

noted it down. I started to rub my wife’s feet whilst we were watching television, WITHOUT HER EVEN HAVING TO ASK, and deliberately kept the massage going for four times longer than the 90 seconds I would usually consider sufficient because my wrists were hurting a bit. I felt like a new man.

Then, winter came. Nights drew

in. Wine flowed. Ashes clogged the fireplace. Party detritus stained the carpet. Honestly, it was a mite harder, in the cold and dark, to convince myself it really was worth venturing out in the rain to shove each individual nappy sack in the dustbin, rather than piling them up by the front door like a dirty protest. A hot bath felt more urgent than putting my clothes in the laundry basket beforehand. I became lazy again.

When spring returns, I firmly intend to clamp down on the laziness once more. Indeed, you could say I’m anticipating the seasonal change quite fervently.

Perhaps, in my own way, that’s proactive enough.

CHRISTMAS CAROL CURIOSITIES

These strange facts will have you listening to your favourite Christmas songs in a whole new light…

Thurl Ravenscroft, the singer responsible for the classic song from How the Grinch Stole Christmas, “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” also voiced Tony the Tiger, the mascot for Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes.

Irving Berlin hated Elvis Presley’s version of his song “White Christmas” so much that he tried to prevent radio stations from playing Presley’s cover.

Jay Livingston and Ray Evans’ Christmas classic “Silver Bells” was originally titled “Tinkle Bells.” They changed it when Livingston’s wife explained that “tinkle” was often a synonym for urination.

“The Christmas Song” was written in the summer of 1945, on the hottest day of the year, as a way for Bob Wells and Mel Tormé to try and psych themselves into cooling off.

SOURCE: BUZZFEED.COM

Simon Callow “I Take Nothing But Pleasure In Looking Back ”

The British actor, writer and theatre director beloved for playing Gareth in Four Weddings and a Funeral, Simon Callow, opens up to Vicki Power about love, childhood and why he found it hard to land leading roles in Hollywood

The deeply coloured walls of Simon Callow’s Highgate flat—blue study, burgundy lounge, vivid orange anteroom—say a lot about the man. “There’s nothing beige about me,” concurs Callow, 69, with a chuckle. “You might have guessed that from my work.”

The actor still may be best known for his turn as the ebullient Gareth in Four Weddings and a Funeral, but Callow is something of a polymath with an incredibly diverse body of work. He’s

You can’t really expect anyone to do anything for you—just get on with it” “

crammed several careers into his seven decades—alongside acting he’s directed plays, operas and film, and penned more than a dozen nonfiction books on subjects from Wagner to Orson Welles to his beloved Charles Dickens.

“I get to indulge all my passions and I like the idea of myself as a person who’s written a book about Wagner—it’s vanity,” admits Callow candidly in that uber-plummy voice. “But my undoing is that I always think that I have more facility than I do and so everything turns into much more work than I expected it to be.”

UNDAUNTED, CALLOW IS ADDING to his work-mountain with a revival of his critically acclaimed one-

man show, A Christmas Carol. He’s embarking on a limited run of the show at The Arts Theatre in London as well as a cinematic film adaptation, ahead of a new year already chockfull of projects; starring in Noël Coward’s A Song at Twilight, finishing his fourth volume on Welles, writing a play and directing a film.

His output is one to rival that of Dickens himself, who remains Callow’s biggest hero; much about the Victorian author’s life and career resonate with him. “I can’t think of another person in history for whom I feel more affection or more solidarity,” says Callow. “I’m not identifying with him at all, nobody can, but I can understand his huge productivity—his energy is something I’ve always had. I also feel very

With Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in Waiting for Godot; (Top right) With Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura

JEFF GILBERT

If your friends and partners are dying all around you, what do you care about whether the public approves of you?” “

passionately that you can’t really expect anyone else to do anything for you—just get on with it and do it for yourself the best you can.”

IT MAY BE A LEAP TO SUGGEST that Callow also identifies with Dickens’ deprived childhood, but there are similarities. Callow, the only child of separated parents, barely knew his father and was moved to Africa and back again by his stern, often disapproving mother, Yvonne, who died four years ago.

“I wouldn’t describe my childhood as loveless because I had two remarkable grandmothers,” says Callow. “But my relationship with my mother was difficult—we really had a personality gap between us.”

“She only really got happy when I started writing books. I was going to dedicate my first book [1984’s Being

An Actor] to her and I sent it to her in proof and didn’t hear anything. Finally, I rang her and she said, ‘It made me angry because here he is; he can write very well and he’s intelligent and he wastes his life on being an actor of all the stupid things!’ So I removed the dedication from the book. I did dedicate another book to her later.” It says a lot about Callow’s sense of duty that when Yvonne needed nursing care, he sold his London home to pay her bills.

He rents now, and got permission from the landlady to paint the grey walls dark. He shares the flat with his husband of two years, Sebastian Fox. When he came out as gay in Being An Actor, he was one of the first public figures to do so.

“I’m rather proud that I did come out in that way and was a bit of a trailblazer to people, but as I always say to Ian McKellen, I was John the Baptist to his Jesus,” quips Callow. “I paved the way, because when Ian came out a year or so later, he was a natural leader and I’m not, in that way. There he was with John Major at 10 Downing Street and that really made a huge difference.

“When AIDS came along, people began to lose their inhibition. If your friends and partners are dying all around you, then what do you care anymore about whether the public approves or disapproves of you?”

The example of his parents’ unsuccessful relationship convinced

Callow that neither civil partnership nor marriage would suit him, until he fell for Fox, 35, a German management consultant. They met at The Royal Festival Hall when Fox saw Callow playing Prokofiev and asked the orchestra’s managing director to introduce him.

“It was a nice, slow courtship and it all felt utterly right from the beginning. My relationships hitherto had been dramatic; it’s not so dramatic with Seb—it’s less a cataract than an underground river. Now I love using the word ‘husband’ and I feel much more grounded, solid.

“Seb is half my age, but I never really think about it, to be honest, not for a second.”

AFTER A CAREER OF MORE THAN four decades, Callow’s biggest disappointment has been in failing to land lead roles in film, even after that scene-stealing turn in Four Weddings. “I went to Hollywood and was treated like royalty, but it was quite clear when I met all these people that the question on their minds was, ‘What other roles for fat, bearded men in kilts do we have?’ ” he recalls. “It didn’t lead to anything else except being the villain in a Jim Carrey vehicle, Ace Ventura Pet Detective 2: When Nature Calls. That was not a joyful experience. That kind of comedy is a

Based on the performances of A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens himself gave throughout the UK and the US, Simon Callow’s one-man show embodies the very heart of this holiday classic

terrifically mechanical thing and Jim was not in his best humour while making it.

“In film, I haven’t ever managed to get out of that little ghetto of being a senior cameo player.”

So Callow followed his passions and created his own work, following myriad interests wherever they took him. “There were all sorts of things that could have happened that didn’t happen, but I’ve had such an interesting life,” says Callow, emphatically. “I take nothing but pleasure in looking back on it.”

I met all these people and the question on their minds was, ‘What other roles for fat, bearded men in kilts do we have?’” “

And the secret of Callow’s extraordinary energy in his seventh decade? When it comes to gruelling performances of A Christmas Carol, it’s unpalatable food.

“I eat a plate of liver every day before I do the two shows,” says Callow with a bark of laughter. “That is the secret of my existence!”

A Christmas Carol is on at The Arts Theatre from December 8, 2018 to January 12, 2019. For tickets, see artstheatrewestend.co.uk. The film, A Christmas Carol starring Simon Callow is in cinemas nationwide on Tuesday, December 11. Visit cinemalive.com for screenings.

I RE MEMBER…

Roger Daltrey, 74, is the legendary frontman of one of the world’s biggest rock bands, with a career spanning more than half a century. He’s also been an actor and film producer and raised more than £2.5 million for the Teenage Cancer Trust

…I WAS LUCKY TO HAVE BEEN BORN AT ALL. My mum, Irene, ended up contracting polio when the doctors removed one of her kidneys. She spent two months in an iron lung. For the next few years she was in a wheelchair and the doctors told her she would never have children. When war broke out, my dad, Harry, who was a clerk, went to France with the Royal Artillery. He was given regular compassionate leave to see Mum.

Against the odds, I was born in Hammersmith Hospital, London, on March 1, 1944.

…16 PERCY ROAD. lived in rented rooms at number 16

Percy Road, Shepherd’s Bush. Aunt Jessie and Uncle Ed were downstairs with my cousins, Enid, Brenda and Margaret. Me, Mum and Dad were upstairs. We had two bedrooms, a lounge and kitchen, which became a little cramped when my sisters came along.

…RATIONING THROUGH MY CHILDHOOD. It’s no coincidence that everyone born in my year was stunted. The rationing went on for most of my childhood. We had sugar sandwiches for tea. Twice a year, we’d have a stringy little roast chicken. Everything was second-, third-, fourth-, sixth-hand. We wore our shoes till we had holes in them and then Dad showed us how to mend them.

Roger Daltrey

(Clockwise L-R) As a young boy; Roger outside 1 Percy Road; The Who in their younger years; Enjoying a spot of fishing

“I wanted to disappear. I found Mum’s sleeping pills and took four or five. Mum and Dad couldn’t work out why I’d slept for 48 hours”

…FAMILY SUNDAYS PLAYING CRICKET. The whole extended Daltrey brigade would begin the day at church. I was in the choir—a little angel. After Sunday School, we’d drive to Hanwell in convoy, Dad leading in his Austin 12/4 Low Loader grand old taxicab. We [kids] were all in the back, giving the royal wave to one’s subjects. I’d spend all Sunday afternoon in a place called Bunny Park, playing cricket with my cousins, aunts and uncles as the Great Western steam trains raced past.

…BEING MISERABLE AT SCHOOL.

I passed my eleven-plus and “won” a place to Acton County Grammar. The kids were from places with trees and grass and wide pavements. Very predictably, I was bullied. My nickname was “Trog” and the older boys used to hang me from the wire-mesh fence that surrounded the playground.

…TAKING SLEEPING PILLS. One Friday it was break-time, and I was on the playground, trying not to look alone. I [knew] I had years of this to go. I walked out of school and went home, feeling empty. No one was there. I wanted to disappear. I found Mum’s sleeping pills and took four or five. Mum and Dad couldn’t work out why I’d slept for 48 hours. I never told them.

…BEING INSPIRED BY LONNIE

DONEGAN. Mum had the radio on all day. When the Scottish skiffle singer Lonnie Donegan put his head back and wailed, I thought, This is really moving me. This is what I want to do. I made my first guitar when I was 12. I copied a cheap Spanish guitar lent to me by my one of Dad’s workmates at Armitage Shanks. Within weeks I’d mastered the three chords you needed to play pretty much anything on the radio. A couple of weeks after that, I played my first gig at the youth club dance, channelling Lonnie with Elvis hair.

…BEING EXPELLED ON MY 15TH BIRTHDAY. I’d been caught smoking and playing truant. I was disruptive in class and was the unofficial school tailor. Mum had a sewing machine and my customers would come in with grey baggy trousers and leave with drainpipes. The final straw was [when] I took my air gun to school and my mate fired it. Another friend lost

the sight in his right eye. That was when the headmaster, Mr Kibblewhite, said, “You’re out. You’ll never make anything of your life, Daltrey.” The title of my book is a genuine thank you to him.

…SINGING ALL DAY ON THE

FACTORY FLOOR. I started as a tea boy for a sheet metal factory in South Acton. There were young apprentices like me and older lads, many of them back from Korea and the war in Malaya. We had adolescent angst and they had veterans’ shell shock, and we held it all together with singing. One of the guys could do a beautiful Nat King Cole. He had perfect pitch so I used to sing along with him until I had it perfect, too. We got some pretty good rhythm going with our

“I found myself living with Jackie and our newborn son, Simon, in her mum’s place—six storeys up a council block ”

improvised drum kits of hammers, presses and guillotines.

…HOW THE WHO CAME TOGETHER.

In 1957 I formed a skiffle band called the Detours. When our bass player left, John Entwhistle joined. He played in a trad jazz band with Pete Townshend and bought him to my house for a try-out. Pete was only 16 but knew all these clever chords and the way he played was unique. The two of them playing together in that bedroom was the moment we went up another gear. We were playing at a hotel in Greenford and this kid comes up and says his mate can play drums better than our session guy. And then steps forward Moonie. The session drummer chucked him his sticks and we went straight into Bo Diddley’s “Road Runner.” Halfway through, Keith started to do his syncopations. It’s all mathematics drumming, but his mathematics were from another planet.

Heather and Roger

…BECOMING A DAD AT 20. After years of slogging away in pubs and clubs, things were starting to go well with the band. In 1963, I met Jacqueline Rickman. She was wonderful but neither of us was ready to have a kid. I found myself living with Jackie and our newborn son, Simon, in her mum’s place—six storeys up a council block. A few days after I walked out on them, my dad was raving at me and then threw a punch. My behaviour was terrible for him to endure and it wasn’t something I felt good about either.

…RECORDING “MY GENERATION”. We changed our name to The Who in 1963 and made our first appearance on Top of the Pops with “I Can’t Explain”. Then Pete wrote “My Generation” after the Queen Mother got his Packard hearse towed from outside his flat in Belgravia because it reminded Her Majesty of Her Majesty’s late husband. The first two demos Pete played didn’t feel right. Then we got to the studios and Keith stuck it on the on-beat, full of aggression, which gave it the kick up the arse it needed. His genius was the absolute, utter anarchy. I tried to follow him and I stuttered on the first line. Next take, I

corrected it but our manager said, “Keep that in.”

…THE BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO ME. I met Heather Taylor in 1967 on The Who’s first trip to the US. We were both with other people. Five months later, I was in the Speakeasy Club behind Oxford Circus. I was reading a book when a girl’s voice says, “Hello”. I look up and see Heather, five foot eleven of a gorgeous redhead, and she said, “Don’t you remember me?” It frightens me to think how differently things could have turned out. Jimi Hendrix had been after her that night. Heather and I tied the knot at Battle registry office and were in the first flush of marriage when the kids started coming along: Rosie [in 1972] and then Willow three years later. We had our son, Jamie, in 1981.

…HALLUCINOGENIC

TEA AT WOODSTOCK, 1969. We were due on in the evening but by four the next morning we were still hanging around backstage in a muddy field. There was no food and even the ice cubes were laced with LSD. I’d brought my own bottle of Southern Comfort so I was fine—until I decided to have a cup of tea. That’s how they got me. We were finally onstage after 5am. The

…MAKING IT TO TINSELTOWN

Tommy was about a deaf, dumb and blind boy who experiences life through vibration. I wasn’t sure I could do it when I was cast as Tommy for the [1975] film. I got off lightly because it was all singing. The attention the film directed my way was a different level from anything I’d had in The Who. I was in some shopping mall in Texas, promoting my second solo album, and there were thousands and thousands of people. The hysteria was daunting.

…A SPECIAL FAMILY CHRISTMAS.

“In June 2015 I came down with viral meningitis. I was in tears. I was phoning people to say goodbye”

removed, to have a beano in Sussex. I remember Dad looked me in the eye and said, “Isn’t it grand?” He was happy and that really meant the world to me.

…CREATING MY TROUT FISHERY.

Apart from doing Live Aid in 1985, that was it for The Who for a decade. For me, the Eighties were about acting, solo albums and fish farming. In the Seventies, I enlisted help to dig out the silt and raise the dam in the lake below the house where we lived in. I ended up with four interconnected lakes and invited my old mates from the factory to come fly fishing for trout almost every weekend I wasn’t touring. In the Eighties, I opened Lakedown Trout Fishery to the public and met lots of people who were more monitors kept breaking [but] every time we felt like we were losing it, we dug in a bit deeper. Shortly after 6am, we got to “See Me, Feel Me” from our rock opera, Tommy, and the sun came up. Once in a lifetime.

Some of my friends in the business found it hard to re-adjust to a normal family existence after the madness on the road. Me? No problem. Christmas 1976, I brought the whole family down by coach, about 60 aunts and uncles, nieces, third cousins and nephews twice

Pete Townshend & Roger

interested in fish than they were in the rock star Roger.

…GETTING A CBE IN 2005. I took Heather, my sister, and eldest granddaughter with me. It meant so much to me because it was the final recognition that my headmaster was wrong.

…THINKING I WAS DYING. In June 2015, I came down with viral meningitis. I was in hospital having blackouts, memory loss, hallucinations. At the height of it, before the doctors worked out what it was and got me on the right drugs, the agony was unbearable. I was in tears. I was phoning people in order to say goodbye.

…EXPERIENCING ABSOLUTE

PEACE. And then, when I could hardly bear it, the pain just went away. It was sudden and stunning, like sunshine after a storm. I [experienced] a floating sensation that felt incredible, not just because the pain was gone but also because there was contentment. I was looking at my life as though I was someone else. In the middle of this strange out of body experience, I said to myself, “Would you ever imagine the things you’ve done?”

As told to Amanda Riley-Jones

Thanks A Lot Mr Kibblewhite: My Story by Roger Daltrey (£20, Blink Publishing) is out now, also as ebook and audiobook

Starring in The Who’s Tommy

80years

…have passed since the first issue of the British Reader’s Digest! That’s eight wonderful decades of uplifting, informative and inspirational stories that celebrate all the things that connect us as human beings. But don’t take our word for it. From Sir Laurence Olivier to Groucho Marx, we’ve had some high-profile fans over the years and now we’re taking a trip down memory lane to celebrate the things they loved most about the Digest.

Thank you—our readers—for joining us for the past 80 years. We hope you enjoy us for many more to come.

“ The Reader’s Digest has succeeded in maintaining its high standard through many difficult years, and is now as firmly established in reputation among readers in Britain as it is in the rest of the free world. I look forward to reading it for years to come.”

– Sir Laurence Olivier

“Most of us need something more than an occasional release of the fancy if we are not to sink hopelessly into wheel-horse routine. The kind of imagination most useful to us in our daily lives comes from some steady method of training and development. Reading, it seems to me, is one of the best ways this practice of release can be provided.

the Reader’sDigest proves this singularly in my own experience. In its pages the reader is not set upon by verbiage. Rather, he is stimulated by its thought-provoking terseness to savour, to reflect—and the result is that one’s mind works more eagerly while he reads. As a gift, I can think of nothing better than the Reader’sDigest, for who would not profit by material so well adapted to prod and encourage his imagination? Your imagination may be creaky or timid at the joints but Reader’sDigest can serve as a gymnasium for its training. The Digest amuses and informs, but at the same time its wide assortment of subjects, its selection of provocative view-points, its feeling for the unusual—all tend to limber up the mind, to give it bounce and resilience.” – Sir Walt Disney

“I saw the characteristic Reader’s Digest cover in different languages on the bookstalls of Paris, London, New York, Rome—wherever I travelled abroad. In its pages I found a fascinating variety of excitingly-written articles about every subject under the sun. Here was a magazine that told the world about the world in words that every nation can understand and enjoy.

As an actress I, too, am concerned with overcoming national barriers, for my films are shown in distant lands where, I like to think, they help people to understand the way of life of their fellow men in Europe or North America. And in the Digest I recognise another great agency that words towards that international ‘getting to know you.’ This is why I am a reader—and perhaps a fellow trouper, too.”

– Actress Deborah Kerr

“ The Reader’s Digest subjects the flood of journalism to a process of what we may call selective canalisation. Its pages filter the muddy torrent and attempt to reduce it to a manageable volume. All things considered, the attempt is remarkably successful. To those who make it I count myself each month gratefully obliged ”

– Author Aldous Huxley

“My son quickly went through the oatmeal, high-chair and three-wheel bike period, and before I knew it he was reading his own comics, smoking chocolate cigarettes and demanding a weekly allowance. Those were great days for me and my ego; I was talking to someone who was listening attentively, and even seemed impressed by what I said. It was wonderful.

The years flew past, and then one grey day I sensed he wasn’t listening any more. I realised the jig was up. Frantic, I began looking around for ways of supplementing the sketchy education I had absorbed in 25 years in vaudeville—and then I discovered the Reader’sDigest. Inside six months the pains had all disappeared—but so had my son. He, too, had discovered the fountain of knowledge and was up in his room with his own copy of the Reader’sDigest.

The complete collapse occurred one evening at the dinner table ,where I customarily sounded off on the topics of the day. As I adroitly wove each new subject into the conversation, my son would nod his head sagely and say, ‘That’s right Dad, I read that in the Reader’sDigest. ’ For a time it loked as though this would put a stop to our talks. But then something happened. We found how to turn talk into conversation. There are lots of evenings now when the facts and ideas given in a Digest article start real discussions—conversational marathons that run on and on, long after we’ve left the dinner table. The whole family joins in. We discuss this and argue that, and before we know it we have all got a new outlook on the world around us.”

– Comedian Groucho Marx

MENINGITIS

ADULTS GET IT TOO

Meningitis Now’s Adults Get It Too campaign is calling on adults to learn the signs and symptoms of the disease by ordering free signs and symptoms cards from its website at www.meningitisnow.org/adults

Popular misconception means many adults may be more concerned about their children or grandchildren contracting this awful disease. But with case numbers in the older age group on the rise, particularly amongst those aged over 65, where reported cases have doubled in five years, it’s wise to be aware of the symptoms in adults too.

One of the myths surrounding deadly meningitis is that it’s a disease that only affects babies and young children. But anyone of any age can get meningitis, with the 55+ age group more at risk. That’s why Meningitis Now, the only charity dedicated to fighting meningitis in the UK, has launched its new awareness campaign –Adults Get It Too.

KEY FACTS

• Meningitis is inflammation of the membranes that surround and protect the brain and spinal cord; usually caused by bacteria or viruses

• Some bacteria that cause meningitis also cause septicaemia (blood poisoning)

• There are around 8,000 cases of all types of meningitis each year across the UK

• In the UK, an estimated 22 people a day will contract viral or bacterial meningitis 95% of people aged over 55 do not consider deadly meningitis and septicemia to be a threat to them, despite the fact that the risk of bacterial meningitis rises in older adults

• Of those who contract bacterial meningitis, 1 in 10 will die

• Meningitis and septicaemia can affect anyone at any time

Newlyweds Michelle and Stuart Jackson were looking forward to spending their lives together but then Stuart was rushed into hospital. He had a temperature, was confused and difficult to wake. After making progress Stuart, 56, then took a turn for the worse. He had meningitis and septicaemia and died just before Christmas 2017.

“They tried to revive him but he had gone”, Michelle said. “My heart broke that day and my life has changed completely without my husband. We only got married in February 2017 –married and widowed in the same year!”

SYMPTOMS

Early signs and symptoms of meningitis and septicaemia can be similar to ‘flu, tummy bug or a hangover and include fever, headache, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, muscle pain, stomach cramps and fever with cold hands and feet. More specific signs and symptoms include drowsiness, confusion, pale blotchy skin, stiff neck, dislike of bright lights and a rash, which doesn’t fade under pressure. The charity has carried out a survey, which reveals that 95% of people aged over 55 do not consider deadly meningitis and septicaemia to be a threat to them, despite the fact that the risk of bacterial meningitis rises in older adults. 1 The study also highlights the worrying fact that three-quarters of this group are not confident in recognising the signs and symptoms of the disease. Meningitis Now is using the findings to inform and

Stuart’s story is why Michelle is supporting Meningitis Now’s Adults Get It Too campaign warning that adults get this devastating disease too.

educate adults of the risks they face and the actions they can take to look after themselves and their loved ones.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Meningitis Now is the founder of the meningitis movement and the only charity dedicated to fighting this disease in the UK. It’s working towards a future where no one loses their life to meningitis and everyone affected gets the support they need to rebuild their lives.

Call 01453 768000

or go online at www.meningitisnow.org/adults to request an awareness pack that includes a signs and symptoms card, leaflet and window sticker.

1

13 Things You Didn’t Know About the Common Cold

BY BRANDON SPECKTOR

The term common cold is a bit of a misnomer. Common implies that there’s a single ordinary pathogen to blame for your runny nose, coughing, and mild fatigue. Actually, there’s a huge array of viruses—more than 200 of them—that induce colds, each with its own means of evading your body’s defences. For this reason alone, it’s unlikely that a catch-all “cure for the common cold” will ever be found.

2

As for the “cold” part, well, it’s complicated. Scientists don’t know for sure whether low

temperatures affect a virus’s pathogenicity, but they do believe that colds are more prevalent in winter in part because we tend to spend more time indoors, in close quarters with infected people and surfaces.

3 On top of this, sucking up dry winter air dries out the protective mucus that lines your nasal cavities. When that happens, your body can’t do its job of catching potentially dangerous microbes before they reach your respiratory system. “The body fights back by secreting more

mucus to mechanically flush out the virus,” says Evangeline Lausier, MD, an assistant professor at Duke Integrative Medicine in Durham, North Carolina. So don’t blame your runny nose on the cold: that’s your own body telling you it’s fighting back! (You can help your mucus win this fight by drinking lots of fluids.)

4We get colds more often than we might realise. Adults suffer an average of two to three each year, and some children get eight or more. They’re costly too. In the US, a 2012 survey found that colds decreased productivity by a mean of 26 per cent. Another survey estimated the total cost of lost productivity to be almost £20 billion each year.

5

That said, the best cold medicine is free: rest. When you get sick, your body doesn’t want to do anything other than tackle the virus. If you do ignore the symptoms and go about your normal routine, the cold can have an even more negative impact on your health—and your brain. In a study of nearly 200 people published in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, researchers found that those with colds reported poor alertness, a negative mood, and psychomotor slowing—their thought processes were muddied, and their reaction times were slower than those of healthy folks.

6But try not to rest while lying flat on your back. That can make things worse because gravity may cause the congestion in your nasal passages to drip down your throat, making it sore and causing a cough. Coughing while lying flat isn’t very comfortable, and it can keep you awake. Instead, prop yourself upright with pillows to “reduce the cough receptor irritation in the back of the throat,” Dr Lausier says. This can also help move that mucus along and make it easier for you to breathe.

7Another cost-free way to get better quicker? Find a caring friend to nurse you. A 2009 study from the University of WisconsinMadison showed that patients who rated their doctors with a perfect score on an empathy questionnaire were sick one day less than patients with less sensitive doctors. Patients with the most empathetic doctors also showed double the levels of IL-8, a protein molecule the body releases to fight colds.

8 Although your body needs rest, Dr Lausier says an excellent way to boost your immune system is with a bit of light exercise. It’s not a surprise that regular exercise helps you fight back against germs. One study from the University of Washington in Seattle showed that overweight or obese

post menopausal women who exercised got fewer colds than those who didn’t. A 2014 review showed that regular moderate-intensity exercise may help prevent a cold, but more research is needed. One explanation, according to the US National Library of Medicine, may be that exercise helps flush germs out of the lungs and airways.

9 Chicken soup might really work though your mum’s special recipe isn’t the reason. In fact, most any clear soup helps because the warm liquid may ease congestion and increase mucus flow. “I think chicken soup is great for hydration—hot liquids, salt, and electrolytes,” Dr Lausier says.

10 Don’t rely on vitamin C. In a 2013 review of 29 separate trials, regular vitamin C supplements failed to reduce cold incidences across the board. Huge doses to ease symptoms had small effects in some but not all studies.

11 Zinc, on the other hand, may reduce symptoms. According to a post by Brent A Bauer, MD, on mayoclinic.org, recent studies have shown that zinc lozenges or syrup can reduce the length of a cold by one day, especially if taken within 24 hours of the onset of

symptoms. “Zinc is necessary for the immune system to perform, so yes, you can definitely up the dose during the onset of a cold,” says Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS. Of course, you should check with your doctor first to make sure it won’t interfere with any of your medications.

12 The cold virus can survive up to 24 hours or longer outside the human body, so give your hands a good scrubbing after touching that door knob or kitchen tap at work. In fact, a small 2011 study showed that people infected with rhinovirus, the most common cause of colds, contaminated 41 per cent of the surfaces in their homes—including door knobs, TV remotes, and faucets. An hour after touching those infected surfaces, the fingertips of nearly 25 per cent of people still tested positive for a cold virus.

13Nan was right: gargling can help, maybe even as a preventative. In a study from Japan, some volunteers were asked to regularly gargle with water while others weren’t. After 60 days, the gargling group had a 40 per cent decrease in colds compared with the control group. To soothe a sore throat, gargle with one quarter of a teaspoon of salt mixed with eight ounces of warm water.

Why doctors are finally paying attention to it

Fibromyalgia Explained

BY SAMANTHA RIDEOUT

Still poorly understood by medical scientists but at last an area of widespread research, fibromyalgia is the name for a cluster of symptoms that affects an estimated two to three per cent of the world’s adults.

The most prominent of these symptoms is a pain that’s spread widely around the body. The pain is usually described as dull, constant and without apparent cause. Sufferers might also experience muscle stiffness, headaches, brain fog or fatigue.

Most patients are diagnosed in middle age, although their symptoms often start earlier. On average, it often takes more than two years to get a diagnosis, in part because there are no lab tests to confirm it. Your doctor might still order some to rule out other issues, such as rheumatoid arthritis or multiple sclerosis.

Fibromyalgia’s exact cause remains unconfirmed. One popular theory suggests that it’s a disorder of the central nervous system—ie, something’s gone wrong with the way the brain processes pain signals from the nerves. Scientists are also exploring the possibility that hormone levels or abnormal sleep cycles may play a role.

Because patients show few or no external signs of their suffering, some doctors have chalked fibromyalgia up to overactive imaginations. However, this position is becoming less common as more studies show that the condition is fairly frequent. Many medical authorities, including the World Health Organisation, now recognise fibromyalgia.

Unfortunately, there’s no known cure; existing treatments are aimed at relieving symptoms. Patients are typically encouraged to try non-

pharmaceutical measures first, then add drugs (muscle relaxants, painkillers) if necessary.

To date, the most effective method of tempering pain seems to be graded exercise. This involves starting at an appropriate level—which can sometimes be quite modest—and gradually working up, says Dr Gary Macfarlane, lead author of the European League Against Rheumatism’s recommendations for managing the condition.

improving sleep or increasing blood flow to the muscles.

For unknown reasons, women develop fibromyalgia significantly more often than men

Another common fibromyalgia treatment is cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). It won’t eliminate your pain, but this approach will give you tools for coping with it. CBT will teach you to pace yourself and remain somewhat active, even on highly symptomatic days.

Exercise brings at least modest relief to the great majority of sufferers, possibly by boosting endorphins, reducing stress,

It’s important to have realistic expectations for current treatments, since they tend to bring moderate improvement at best. “There’s still a great need to understand this condition better and bring optimal care to these patients,” Macfarlane says.

TEST YOUR MEDICAL IQ

Extrinsic ageing is ...

A. toxic mould growth on old food.

B. when ultraviolet radiation damages the skin.

C. cellular degradation due to chronic stress.

D. the overall effect of ageing on quality of life.

Answer: B. Extrinsic ageing is skin damage caused by environmental factors, primarily UV radiation, as opposed to the unavoidable changes related to genetics and passing time. On exposed skin, up to 90 per cent of ageing can be caused by the sun or tanning booths. To see the extent to which this may be happening to you, compare regularly exposed areas (the face and neck, for example) to areas that are usually covered. Unlike natural skin aging, extrinsic aging can cause a leathery texture, spider veins, freckling, discolouration and deep wrinkles.

10 Ways To Boost Your Immunity

The cold season is upon us, but there are plenty of tricks you can try to help keep those bugs at bay

1 Get the juicer out

Both turmeric—the yellow spice used in curry—and ginger are reputed to have antimicrobial properties and enhance immunity. They also make delicious juices. Try a homemade carrot, apple and fresh ginger juice or one made of courgette, apple and fresh turmeric.

2 Plunge into cold water

Sounds like torture? Maybe, but there’s evidence that daily cold showers or baths (not for too long, mind), can boost your immune system. Giving yourself a few blasts of cold water during a hot shower might be a more comfortable approach.

3 Relax in a sauna

Hot air might fight viruses too, an

Susannah Hickling is twice winner of the Guild of Health Writers Best Consumer Magazine Health Feature

Austrian study found. Volunteers who regularly used a sauna had half as many colds over six months as those who didn’t take one at all. You can find them in many gyms and public pools.

4 Reduce sugar

That could be a tall order over the festive season, but sugar diminishes your immune system function, making you less able to fight a cold.

5 Sit in a dimly lit room

Stress can increase your susceptibility to the sniffles, according to research. What’s more, stressed people have as many as twice the number of colds as relaxed folk. So unwind once a day by sitting in a quiet room in low light and focusing on one word. Meditation is a proven way of reducing stress.

6 Use your knuckle to rub your eye

It’s less likely to be contaminated with viruses than the tip of your finger. The eye is an entry point for

germs, and most of us rub our eyes or nose or scratch our face 20 to 50 times a day.

7 Don’t play the blame game

Believe it or not, beating yourself up can make you more prone to a cold. At least, that’s what researchers found when they studied more than 200 workers over three months. When people lacked confidence or blamed themselves when things went wrong, they were more likely to start sneezing and wheezing. It could be that they were more stressed, which compromises your immunity.

8 Turn down the thermostat

Lower the heat by a degree or two.

The dry air of an overheated home is the perfect environment for the lurgy to lurk. When mucous membranes (in your nose, mouth and tonsils) dry out, they’re less able to trap germs.

9 Put out boxes of tissues

Make sure there are tissues close to places people sit in your home or workplace. That way, if they need to cough,

sneeze or blow their nose, they won’t be so likely to spread the germs.

10 Take a garlic supplement

When 146 volunteers received either one garlic supplement a day or a placebo for 12 weeks over winter, those who took garlic were less likely to catch a cold and, if they did, it disappeared sooner.

Help For Hangovers

It’s the morning after and you feel dreadful—what to do?

Start by rehydrating yourself with water and, if you can, an electrolyte. These rehydration sachets, available at chemists and more usually used to treat diarrhoea, help replace the minerals you’ve lost. Keep drinking water throughout the day and forget about hair of the dog—it really doesn’t work.

Make sure you eat too. If you feel sick, opt for a bland food such as plain toast, to help settle your stomach. Meanwhile, sugary foods might help you feel less shaky. Surprisingly, perhaps, asparagus might alleviate your hangover. A Korean study suggested it could help speed up the metabolism of alcohol.

Another option is to sleep it off, but other people prefer to get moving, though exercising to sweat it out is unlikely to make you feel better. Got a splitting headache? Painkillers —in particular, paracetamol or ibuprofen—should do the trick.

If you want to avoid getting a sore head in the first place, there’s one sure method—don’t drink too much. But because this is easier said than done, you will benefit from having a strategy. Limit yourself to a set number of alcoholic drinks over the evening and move on to nonalcoholic beverages when you reach it. Make sure you’re not dehydrated before you start on the booze.

Never drink on an empty stomach. The French always serve snacks with an aperitif, so make sure you do the same if you’re not drinking with a meal. Keep food in your stomach throughout the evening, so your body absorbs the alcohol more slowly.

The colour of your tipple can make a difference too. Steer clear of dark drinks, such as whisky, red wine and dark beer, if you want to have a clear head the next day. These are higher in congeners, a compound thought to lead to hangovers.

Ask The Expert: Family Relationships

Linda Blair

Clinical psychologist Linda Blair specialises in family relationships. She is the author of five books, including The Key to Calm

How did you become an expert in family relationships? During my training I became fascinated with relationships within families, especially those with teenagers, and they became my specialties.

Why does Christmas put a strain on families? There’s the least amount of natural light during the Christmas period and light is really important for sparking a positive mood. We’re exhausted because we pile two thirds of the year’s social events into three weeks before Christmas. We crowd indoors in confined spaces—studies show that when you crowd mammals, they become more aggressive. Finally, we are trying to maintain multiple roles—a child to our parents, parent to our kids, sibling, partner—and we can’t do it all simultaneously.

What tips can you offer to cope with a festive family gathering? Plan ahead and communicate clearly. The host should ask for arrival and

departure times, who’s coming, and any special diets. Have a “time-out” room to calm down. Get everyone outside for 20 minutes a day—it will refresh and invigorate. Share the workload: have a hat filled with jobs on pieces of paper and get your guests to pick one as they arrive.

What should people not do? Make comparisons, especially about children or earnings. Try not to crowd too much or drink too early.

What can people do in the long term to improve their family relationship? Reach out in unexpected ways. After Christmas write handwritten thank-you notes for any good thing you can think of during your time together. Send letters regularly, writing about something good that’s bubbled up, without asking for a reply. Boy, would that change things!

Visit lindablair.co.uk for more information

Smoke And Mirrors

This month Dr Max Pemberton contemplates just how free his patients really are…

Iwant a fag. NOW!” bellows Mr Morris. From the way that he’s throwing furniture around the room, and the fact that security have called for back-up, I think now might not be the best time to discuss the hospital policy on smoking. I try it out in my head first: For your own health and the health of those who work here, this hospital is a smoke free area. Probably best to keep quiet. Breathing in other people’s smoke might be bad for your health, but so is having someone throw things at you. Mr Morris has been brought into A&E because he’s become psychotic and paranoid. I’ve already assessed him and think he needs to come into hospital but as he’s not willing, he’s being detained in the interview room until a mental health assessment team arrive so he

Max is a hospital doctor, author and columnist. He currently works full time in mental health for the NHS. His latest book is a self-help guide to using CBT to stop smoking

can be placed on a “Section.” This will result in him being kept in a hospital, against his will, until he is better. He thinks I’m part of a government conspiracy that’s trying to kill him and his family. It won’t surprise you to hear that this is not the case. In fact, I want what’s best for him, and at this precise moment, I think that includes the right to smoke a cigarette. His family have been getting progressively worried about him over the past week, culminating this evening when he barricaded himself into the bathroom and smashed the window to try and escape. It took his wife an hour to persuade him to come to A&E.

“Can’t you just let him have a cigarette?” she asks, standing outside drinking a cup of tea. “It will help him calm down.” It seems to me like a sensible suggestion, but the NHS has decided that all its premises must be “smoke free” so there’s a ban on smoking in hospital grounds.

Now, as a doctor I know that smoking is bad for you but people are free to make decisions about

their health—including smoking— even if I wish they chose differently. But what about people whose freedom has already been taken away? By introducing a blanket ban on smoking on NHS grounds, patients have to go out on the street. But Mr Morris isn’t allowed out of the hospital as it’s too much of a risk. Doctors are there to inform people about the risks that their actions pose to their health. They are not there to act as health-police.

This isn’t an issue about the rights or wrongs of smoking, but rather a question of whether patients with mental health problems—who have already had their liberty curtailed— should be further restricted in the decisions they’re allowed to make

about their own lives. This group of patients are vulnerable to having further choices taken away from them, which have nothing to do with their mental health. The sole purpose of the laws enabling doctors to detain these patients is so their mental illness can be treated. Surely it’s wrong to use the fact that these people already aren’t free to further enforce a public health agenda?

Needless to say, the people who drew up the current smoking policy aren’t there in A&E with me at 3am. They aren’t the ones telling a scared and angry Mr Morris that he can’t have a cigarette when he wants one. They are the ones, come the morning, standing on the street outside smoking.

The Doctor Is In

Dr Max Pemberton

Q: Following occasional instances of Raynaud’s over the past 20 years, I’m now experiencing problems more frequently. Last winter it occurred three or four times a day but even over our hot summer I had problems with air conditioning, chopping salads and so on. I’m dreading winter as it’s depressing and painful. I’ve tried gloves without success, and hand warmers, with some. Do you have any other advice? - Kate, 64

A: You have my sympathies— Raynaud’s disease can be debilitating. It’s a painful condition affecting circulation, where the small blood vessels in extremities, such as the hands or feet, become sensitive to changes in temperature. The blood vessels spasm and this reduces blood flow to the affected part of the body. It usually results in a change of colour to the skin—the fingers might go white, or blue, for example, and then very red. It’s very common—an estimated

10 million people in the UK experience it to some extent.

There are two types of Raynaud’s— primary and secondary. The primary type tends to develop on it’s own and people can manage it by keeping their extremities warm and limiting stress. Secondary Raynaud’s is the result of an underlying condition, usually an autoimmune disease such as lupus. This type tends to be more severe and often needs specialist help. Some people’s symptoms worsen over time. You’ve had this for many years but it sounds as though things have recently gotten worse. About one in ten people with primary Raynaud’s develop the secondary type. For this reason, you should see your GP as soon as possible. It’s likely you’ll be referred to a specialist. It’s worth knowing about the charity for sufferers, Scleroderma and Raynauld’s UK, visit sruk.co.uk.

Got a health question for our resident doctor? Email it confidentially to askdrmax@ readersdigest.co.uk

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Remembering To Remember

How do you remember the things you need to do? It can be a real struggle—so here’s a clever way of dealing with to-do lists, from our memory expert, Jonathan Hancock

It’s hard to remember things that haven’t even happened yet. We all attempt it—jobs to do, things to buy, people to meet—but this “prospective memory” is one of the trickiest recall tasks. Trying to remember an idea about the future gives your brain very little to hold onto and can cause problems.

Life’s too complicated for tying knots in handkerchiefs. Diaries and calendars are only useful if you remember to check them, and it’s not practical to write notes everywhere or have your alarm going off constantly. Gadgets are good for the important things—but for everything else, here’s a useful memory trick.

Pick a place you pass several times every day—such as your cupboard or a shop on your way to work—and turn it into a memory “storeroom”. For every task you want to remember, pick a simple image to represent it, and visualise it inside the room you’ve chosen. Imagine something strange or messy, whatever helps you to remember. Then, wherever you are, you can go back to this room in your mind, and the image-clues will be there. The beauty is that this storeroom is a real place, so it jogs your memory each time you pass it.

THE CHALLENGE: Try it out by memorising the following tasks:

BUY EGGS

CALL DOCTOR

RENEW LIBRARY BOOKS

PRINT PLANE TICKETS

FEED NEIGHBOUR’S DOG

The technique: Activate your imagination. Fill your mental storeroom with a vivid, memorable picture for each item on the list. Add emotions, too: think how you’d feel if you really found eggs smashed against the wall… your doctor sitting on the shelf... a bonfire of books in the corner… a plane flying through the door… a dog chewing the carpet…

The test: See how many of these jobs you still know tomorrow, and start using this technique for the things you really need to remember. The images will disappear naturally when you don’t need them anymore, but they’ll be there long enough to help you stay on top of your to-do list—making sure that you keep exercising your memory every day.

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• Perfect for you, or as a gift for a loved one

My grandchildren, who were the reason for my project, love the book!

PHIL KUHL – 2018

Up to 45,000 words, 60 pictures and 200 pages all in a sumptuous book and gift box

Letter Writing THE LOST ART OF

Lynne Wallis longs for the days when we communicated with our loved ones by putting pen to paper

EVER SINCE CHILDHOOD I'D LONGED to meet my uncle Jack, although it was an impossible dream. His kindness, good humour and upstanding character were legendary in our family. Jack Hollis, my mum’s only brother, was killed aged 24 serving in the Navy aboard the HMS Egret. His ship went down under enemy action in August 1943 during The Battle of the Atlantic. My mother, Madge, and her own mother, Ada, were devastated.

The telegram arrived from the Royal Navy that September, and the loss was almost too much to bear. It followed the suicide of Ada’s husband William who took his life early in 1940—he'd been an ambulance driver in the Battle of the Somme and was damaged irreparably by the horrors he saw. He was unable to face another war.

I have felt the loss of the wonderful uncle I never knew all my life. Until now all I had were photographs. I knew Jack was handsome, that he was a top boy at his school and very good at drawing. But only now do I have a deeper insight into his psyche. My mother died in March and I'm getting to know more about who he was through the scores of letters he

(Top) Lynne's parents on their honeymoon; (Above) Uncle Jack in his navy regalia; (Opposite left) The author's brother as a baby, lifted by her mother; (Opposite right) her mother and Jack as children

"It sends a shiver down my spine to think of Jack in his cabin on the Egret writing home 75 years ago"

"My dad isn't a very open person face-to-face, but he can somehow put things down on paper"

know that he never returned. The thrill of finding a box of lost letters in a tin in the attic, or a late parent’s old writing bureau, will never be equalled by looking up archived

emails on a computer screen. Every letter is unique, written on a different typewriter or computer, from a different address, on different paper, with a different pen. Then there's the distinctive writing of the author, the signature, the opening greeting— letter writers rarely start with the impersonal "Hi" of emails.

Peter de Bolla, director of the Cambridge Concept Lab says that while emailing or texting lends itself to rapid communication, letters have a residue of formality about them. “You might ping an email across two, three, four or more times during a correspondence which is very different from a letter, which has a much longer format. All of those things change the nature of what is actually communicated.”

Stephen Barnett, professor of communications at the University of Westminster says we're losing a lot of

(Left) Lynne's mother, grandmother and Jack; (Centre) Lynne reads Jack's letters

precious insights by replacing letter writing with email, text and social media. “In a hundred years’ time there will be masses and masses of data but we’re less likely to have the kind of intimate insights into ordinary, everyday lives that letters to friends and family have traditionally given us.” Barnett describes what is being lost by the immediacy of social media replacing letters as "the things that happen under the radar."

Sarah Graham, a health writer in her twenties, comes from a long line of letter writers, and had always enjoyed the colourful missives she received from her grandfather. When he died just over ten years ago she was bereft, and then something she hadn’t expected happened. Her father, with whom she'd always had a loving but distant relationship, took over and began writing regularly.

“I was having a hard time at university,” she began. “And so Dad, who is quite a reflective person, started writing about how difficult he found it when he went away to study—we both went to Warwick and by coincidence I stayed in the same accommodation block as him. He wrote his observations

about various things, how he coped at uni, how he faced his problems and I found it incredibly reassuring. My dad isn't a very open person face-to-face, but he could somehow put things down on paper. It made me feel much closer to him, and we understood each other so much better afterwards. We couldn’t have achieved what we did by letter through Skype or mobile phone. It was a very special thing, and it changed our relationship for ever.”

According to the Write A Letter to A Friend With Cancer project, research shows that routine letter writing can increase levels of contentedness and lower rates of depression—not just for the reader but for the writer too.

Emma Haydon found a whole treasure-trove of letters after her parents died. She describes the find as "an oasis of beauty" amid her grief. The most interesting letters were written during their courtship in 1951, two years before they married. Peter travelled a lot, and his letters certainly give a flavour of his last carefree adventures as a bachelor, but he always ends up reassuring his "darling kitten" Jane of his commitment to her. They were married when they were both aged 31 and stayed so for a very happy 60 years. Peter became a

chartered surveyor, while Jane was a PA for Jaeger.

In 1951 Jane was in England and Ireland, Peter in France with three friends. Emma reflects, “The letters were confirmation that our parents were authentic people. They were interested and interesting, honest with their feelings and sincere. They always looked to the future with great hope and remembered the past with respectful sentiment. They were always doing things and planning adventures. Mum’s favourite expression right up until she died was "go for it." They did everything hard—played hard, loved hard, lived hard.”

"According to research, routine letter writing increases levels of contentedness and lowers rates of depression"

Peter’s letters to Jane usually began with, "My Darling". He writes playfully from Nice, “On arrival here we have had a spot of bother. Mike and I lost the other two in Nice and didn’t find them till Monday. We had to spend the night in a foul hotel as we had no money or clothes. As I write Mike and Pete are reading magazines and looking very opulent, sipping their drinks. I wish you could see them. And now my darling, how are you? How is life? Good I expect. Did you find a nice handsome pilot, you wicked pussy cat? I bet you made eyes at him.”

In August that year Peter wrote, “Believe my darling baby I shall think

of you a lot, not just a little. Life’s coming! We will be together”.

They continued these flirtatious, fun, loving letters throughout their marriage if they were apart, but also liked to leave each other notes around the house. Emma explained, “It would be about anything, how to cook beans, plans for dinner, what they were both doing. They were natural writers. When email arrived Dad embraced it, and to be honest, his writing style didn’t change much.”

There's still nothing quite like waiting for a letter, seeing it plop on the mat, reading the postmark

and then picking the moment to open it. And writing a letter is such a great opportunity for reflection. But sadly the art of letter writing is being lost with the advent of email and text.

Sure, emails have their uses, and texts are convenient, but there’s nothing like a letter. As Sylvia Plath once said of receiving a handwritten missive, “I must say, the best present anyone can give me is a fat typed letter.” I couldn’t agree more.

Do you still hand write letters to your nearest and dearest? Email us about it at readersletters@readersdigest.co.uk

(Above) Jane and Peter Haydon pose to the right of friends; (Right) together in later years

TICKETS

Dear Readers,

We’re approaching the time when ‘tis the season to be jolly and we’re giving you another reason to celebrate this festive season with a smile!

Reader’s Digest Tickets is your guide to some of the best winter shows from the traditional pantomime such as Snow White starring Dawn French and Julian Clary at the London Palladium to alternative shows including Circus 1903, which is fresh from the Paris Theatre in Las Vegas, making its European premiere at Southbank Centre. Featuring acrobats, contortionists, jugglers, trapeze and high wire performers and more, this show includes sensational puppetry from the award-winning team behind War Horse, captivating and transporting audiences of all ages to the mesmerising Golden Age of circus.

If your taste is a bit more tinsel-tastic, then why not book tickets for the whole family to see Danny Dyer and Jo Brand in Nativity! The Musical at Eventim Apollo. Based on the much-loved films, the story has been adapted for the stage. With all of your favourite sing-a-long hits from the movies including Sparkle and Shine, Nazareth, One Night One Moment, She’s the Brightest Star and a whole host of new songs filled with the spirit of Christmas.

For our more traditional readers, we recommend A Christmas Carol with Simon Callow at the Arts Theatre. Following sell-out seasons in 2012, 2013 and 2016 and critical and audience acclaim, Simon Callow returns in this much-lauded oneman theatrical spectacular. Intensely dramatic and profoundly heart-warming, A Christmas Carol is one of the greatest ghost stories ever written that will leave you with a festive glow. This is storytelling at its very finest.

Whether you’re embracing the Christmas period or want to try something different be sure that Reader’s Digest Tickets is your box office for the best seats in the house. Visit tickets.readersdigest.co.uk or call our dedicated team on 020 7400 1238 today.

Book now and take a bow!

Regards, Reader’s Digest

DIRECTED BY TOM CAIRNS

CHRISTMAS Dinners

'Tis the season to be jolly—and tuck into copious portions of sprouts and spuds…

BY ANNA WALKER

The Clink CARDIFF

Why not enter the spirit of generosity as you enjoy Christmas dinner this year by dining at The Clink? Staffed by prisoners working towards qualifications in food preparation and customer service, The Clink has shown a 49 per cent reduction in reoffending since it opened.

For Christmas, the prisoner cooks-in-training have worked closely with the chefs to create a special traditional menu with several modern twists, including pulled pork rillettes with apple gel, julienne of apple, crackling and homemade sage focaccia and pan-fried fillet of Scottish salmon served on champ mash and rustic ratatouille.

Not only will you come away with a belly full of good food, but a full heart too. theclinkcharity.org

Alma de Cuba LIVERPOOL

If you’re looking to escape from the cold weather outside, this unique Cuban restaurant—located in a spectacular conversion of the former St Peter's Catholic Church—is just the ticket. Friendly staff and a warm, buzzing atmosphere mean plans for that traditional post-Christmas-lunch nap might just go straight out the window.

The first church in Liverpool to be turned into a social venue, enjoy the festive surroundings of beautiful stained-glass windows, high ceilings and classical artwork, without the midnight mass.

When it comes to food, Alma de Cuba don’t do things by halves, with a Christmas Day menu that includes lobster roulade, turkey with all the trimmings and a delicious winter berry crème brûlée alongside a host of other options. alma-de-cuba.com

Ye Olde Bell

RETFORD

The picture-perfect setting for a traditional Christmas, Retford’s Ye Olde Bell boasts roaring fires, deep rich wood panelling, sparkling decorations and a relaxing, five-star Alpine spa to take its guests through the festive season.

Dating back to the 17th century, this historic hotel straddles the border between Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, leaving it perfectly positioned to welcome guests from far and wide.

On Christmas Day, you can expect Father Christmas himself to make an appearance, with staff serving up dishes including seared scallops, pheasant terrine and Christmas pudding with Baileys ice cream and brandy sauce.

If you’re feeling a little bloated after your Christmas dinner, why not book in for a spa treatment, or enjoy some fresh air at the outdoor Alpineinspired firepits. yeoldebell-hotel.co.uk

The Balmoral EDINBURGH

Opt for a classy Christmas by dining like royalty at Scotland’s most prestigious hotel: The Balmoral.

Fans of Harry Potter will delight to know that this is the hotel where JK Rowling finished the last book in the series, and the suite in which she penned the final word has since been renamed the “JK Rowling Suite”. Other famous guests have included Laurel and Hardy, Michael Palin, Oprah and the Top Gear team.

Settle in for a Michelin-quality Christmas dinner as you admire the views of Edinburgh castle. The traditional Balmoral Christmas pudding with brandy crème Anglaise is a must try and the historical surroundings would make for a picturesque after-dinner walk.

roccofortehotels.com

© RICHARD NEWTON / ALAMY STOCK

The Crazy Bear

OXFORDSHIRE

For a real taste of Christmas luxury, look no further than The Crazy Bear in Oxfordshire.

Their five-course Christmas dinner menu includes a flute of champagne upon arrival and such delectable delights as Jerusalem artichoke arancini, mulled wine poached pears, white peach Bellini sorbet, dark Valrhona chocolate tart and—of course—Cotswold, orchard-reared turkey with all the trimmings.

Don’t be fooled by the quaint ivycovered exterior—these hotel interiors are anything but traditional. Since opening in 1993, The Crazy Bear has carved a reputation for its eclectic interior design.

And if you’re in need of fresh air after chowing down at lunch, why not explore the hotel’s extensive gardens or pay a visit to the chickens in the 80-acres of working farmland. crazybeargroup.co.uk/stadhampton

Rosewood Hotel LONDON

If you prefer to enjoy Christmas day at home, London’s Rosewood Hotel offers a delightful afternoon treat every other day of the festive season. If you can find space after the onslaught of turkey and sprouts, make your way down for a charming afternoon tea on Boxing Day, complete with a visit from Father Christmas himself.

Set just away from Covent Garden’s cobbled streets, the Grand Edwardian Courtyard of the Rosewood will take your breath away with its homely Christmas spirit. Designed by executive pastry chef Mark Perkins, the afternoon tea includes freshly baked scones, mince pies and delicate finger sandwiches.

With the smell of freshly baked mince pies filling the hotel and decorations on every corner, you’re sure to leave full of good will to all men.

rosewoodhotels.com

Bovey Castle DARTMOOR

There are few locations more festive for the best meal of the year than a bona fide castle. Book in with Bovey Castle this Christmas and enjoy all the traditional trimmings in some of the grandest surroundings Dartmoor has to offer.

With sparkly, elegant decorations turning every room into a winter wonderland and stunning views over 275 rolling acres of natural beauty, Bovey Castle offers the sort of Christmas usually saved for film sets.

The festive activities on offer include a scavenger hunt and fresh guided walks—guests who choose to stay the night will also be treated to a

drink reception with traditional stories in front of the fire. Magic. boveycastle.com

Are you spending Christmas somewhere special? Email us about it at readersletters@readersdigest.co.uk

Ronan Keating, 41, is lead singer with Boyzone, who are bidding farewell with a final album and tour after 25 years together. Also a solo chart-topper, he now co-hosts the Magic FM breakfast show

IF I RULED THE WORLD

Ronan Keating

I’d ban those horrible vape things. When someone’s puffing away on one it’s like being hit by a blast of air from one of those New York subway grills and the smell of blueberries and strawberries they emit is horrible. Trying to get off cigarettes is great, but just stop smoking!

Youngsters would get off their phones. From dinner tables with their family to conversations with

each other, they need to learn how to communicate beyond texting and do old-school things like going round to a friends’ house and asking, “are you coming out to play?” I’m trying to instil that idea into my own kids although, as all parents know, it’s sometimes an uphill battle.

Time spent on phones and social media should be limited for adults as well as kids. The knee-jerk reaction is to pick up your phone and check it

every minute. There’s a new thing on iPhones now called “screen time” which tells you how long you’ve spent on each app and it’ll blow your mind seeing just how much time it adds up to.

I’d encourage more family time. Spending time with the kids is precious, especially when we’re building things together. There’s nothing more fun than putting up a tent, making a fort in the garden or playing with Lego on the kitchen floor.

Courtesy would be back in fashion. It seems to have been lost on us all because we live such very fast, individual lives that we forget about each other. Courtesy is important, whether it’s opening a door for someone, saying “please” and “thank you” or not walking over each other— little courtesies that we all seem to have forgotten.

People would pay more attention to the planet. I don’t want to sound like I’m standing on a soapbox, but we all know the problems presented by global warming and plastics. Recycling is so important and it’s been shocking to learn recently that even some of the recycling companies say they do it but actually don’t.

I’d encourage keeping romance alive. It’s really important in a relationship, and I’m not just talking

about big gestures. The smallest things can go a long way, whether that’s making breakfast for your other half or just paying more attention and listening to them.

We’d focus on health, not looks. We all want to look a certain way, with plastic surgery and all these things that are meant to make us look better or younger, but taking care of your heart and your head is really important. Likewise keeping fit. If it’s only once a week, fine, and if it’s five times a week, great, but try and do something active. I run, even if it’s lashing down with rain, and go to the gym when I can because I think it’s good for your mental as well as physical health.

I’d crack down on illegal downloading. This is me speaking as someone in the industry, of course, but illegal downloads are still a massive problem and more needs to be done to combat them and police them. Artists don’t get the revenue they deserve and people all around the world have lost their jobs, with record companies shutting down and stores being closed. It’s really sad.

As told to Simon Button

The new Boyzone album Thank You & Goodnight is out on November 16.

For details of their 2019 UK and Ireland farewell tour visit boyzonenetwork.com

Love At First Site?

Finding love online might sound like an irresistibly romantic prospect, but what happens when the person behind the screen is not who you think they are?

BY FIONA THOMAS

Have you ever wondered how many of those pesky junk emails sneak their way into your inbox every year? Well, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that an average of 49 per cent of all electronic mail is considered spam with approximately 14.5 million messages sent every single day. Among the endless stream of flash sales, special offers and discount codes you may even find evidence of something called "phishing"—a type of online communication that tries to extract your personal data without your knowledge.

HE HAD INTERESTS THAT WERE UNCANNILY SIMILAR TO HER OWN, AND UPON HEARING THAT SHE'D DONE SERVICE WORK IN AFRICA, HE 'COINCIDENTALLY' REVEALED HIS BURNING DESIRE TO OPEN AN ORPHANAGE THERE

These emails can be easy to spot as long as you know what you’re looking for. The email may initially appear legitimate because of an official logo or well-known brand name, but upon closer inspection they're often sent from a personal Hotmail account instead of a company one. As well as looking out for fake email scams you should be on alert for another online threat that takes place in a far more personal space—the world of internet dating.

In 2017, BBC news reported that the number of people defrauded in the UK by online dating scams had reached a record high, with

over 3,000 victims handing over £39m to potential love interests. In the same way that people will "phish" for personal data via email, some criminals will directly target people on dating sites using another approach called "catfishing".

The term was coined in a 2010 documentary which revealed the story of a woman named Angela who created multiple fake Facebook profiles in order to engage in a relationship online with the TV presenter Nev Schulman. Upon figuring out the truth—that Angela had posed as several different people and used photographs of a

professional model in order to attract his attention—Schulman was fortunately left with no more than a bruised ego. However, many other catfishing incidents have far more serious repercussions.

I spoke to Jules Hannaford, a 52-year-old author (Fool Me Twice) who lives in Hong Kong. She was single and looking for love on a dating app when she fell for an English man called Truman. As a single mother with a history of abusive relationships, Jules was eager to settle down and in Truman, she thought she had found someone who fit the bill. He had interests

Jules Hannaford

that were uncannily similar to her own, and upon hearing that she had done service work in Africa he "coincidentally" revealed that he had a burning desire to open an orphanage there. Truman said he was looking for love, sent her romantic songs and talked optimistically about the travel adventures they would have together as a couple.

Eventually, Jules made the journey to Manchester to visit Truman for a week-long holiday. Whilst there, Truman asked Jules for a loan of over £4,000 to help with the setting up of his new business. Jules naturally wanted to help the man to whom she had become so close, especially as he said it would help fund his plan to relocate to Hong Kong to continue their relationship. She willingly gave him the money, but as the week progressed, Jules began to sense that something wasn’t quite right. An altercation followed and she was left wounded both mentally and physically.

"I was smashed between a door and a wall and I had bruises on my head, hip arms and stomach," Jules told me. "I had headaches, which I never get, and a twitch in my eye for a couple of months afterwards."

Jules returned to Hong Kong shaken. She said that the "absolute enormity of the situation" became clear as soon as she had time to reflect from the comfort of home.

She figured out that Truman’s socalled business was a lie but when she asked for the money back, he threatened her with blackmail.

"This helped to solidify my understanding that I had been duped," says Jules.

Eventually "Truman" was arrested and it was discovered that he had over 20 assumed identities as well as a list of crimes dating back to the 1990s.

Women like Jules may be an easy target for emotional abusers, but men are at risk too even though they may not know it. One such man was Steve Bustin, a 46-year-old business communications expert from Brighton who had his personal images stolen and used to create fake

Steve Bustin

EVENTUALLY 'TRUMAN' WAS ARRESTED AND IT WAS DISCOVERED THAT HE HAD OVER 20 ASSUMED IDENTITIES AS WELL AS A LIST OF CRIMES DATING BACK TO THE 1990S

Facebook profiles. It wasn’t until he was approached by a stranger online that he found out that criminals were also using his photographs to lure in unsuspecting victims on dating sites.

The woman in question had conducted a reverse Google image search to check the authenticity of the person she was talking to online, only to find that they were using Steve’s photos to mask their own identity.

"I’m resigned to the fact that those photos are out there and I’m never going to get them back," Steve says, "but I feel for the women who are at the receiving end of the scams." Steve says that many dating sites refuse to acknowledge that catfishing

is even occurring on their platforms through fear of losing customers.

"It’s happening a lot and dating sites don’t want it to be public. They just don’t want to know because it puts people off joining the sites."

Although Steve was only affected indirectly as a result of the scam, there’s no denying that the whole affair has had a negative impact on his life. He’s now been forced to set his Facebook profile to private, something which had previously helped him find business clients. With platforms like Instagram and Facebook setting profiles to "public" by default, it’s each user’s responsibility to ensure that they alter this to protect their own data. Even then, Steve says he now approaches every online interaction with a "healthy dose of scepticism."

Sadly, the repercussions of catfishing are long-lasting and even after any monetary losses have been accounted for, the psychological effect can be significant. This was certainly true for Rebecca, a 39-yearold woman from Massachusetts who was scammed for over a year by a man she met on a popular dating site. He claimed to be a single father struggling to make ends meet and successfully scammed her out of a whopping $100,000. Once Rebecca realised what had happened, the burden of debt was so unbearable that it affected her mental health.

"Things were so far along in my

10 SIGNS YOU'RE BEING CATFISHED

1. The person you’re talking to only has one profile photo or incredibly attractive profile photos that look as though they were taken by a professional

2. Their profile photos look like they were taken in a different country to the one they claim they’re living in

3. They say they’re widowed, with or without a child

4. They give you a phone number from a different country than you expected

5. They tell you they are just about to travel overseas, so they cannot meet you straight away

6. They claim to be unable to access popular video chat applications

7. They have very few social media friends

8. They write with poor grammar or broken English

9. They tell you they love you or that you are their soul mate before they have even met you (this is known as "love bombing")

10. They are experiencing an unexpected emergency or hardship where they need to borrow money

More advice can be found in Jules Hannaford’s book Fool Me Twice, available on Amazon

financial ruin that I actually became suicidal," says Rebecca. "I felt trapped and hurt with no way out to return to a life worth living. Credit cards were suing me and I was about to be homeless."

Rebecca filed for bankruptcy, reported the crime to the FBI, and has since found solace in a Facebook support group called ScamHaters United. Even though the online world was where her problems began, Rebecca has used it to open up about her experience and also help others who might be in a similar situation. There’s arguably no way to avoid socialising online, and many of us rely on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Skype to stay in contact with friends and family all over the world. You may even have met your current partner on a dating site and experienced no criminal activity whatsoever, but as a society we need to be more vigilant or we leave ourselves open to cyber attacks.

John Mason, a Cyber Security Expert at TheBestVPN says that it’s simply a case of being more aware. He offered a few key pieces of advice

to anyone concerned about their general online security:

• Everyone should use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) when going on social media, especially when using public WiFi. This lets you access the web safely and privately by routing your connection through a server and hiding your online actions.

• Choose what information you share on social media. Maybe think twice about sharing your phone number or address. Make sure that your profile is only available to friends and not the public in general.

• If the social network you're using has an encrypted chat feature, make full use of it. End-to-end encrypted chat means that anyone intercepting your communication can't read what it says.

• When using a different device to access your social media account, remember to log out before you turn off the device. Simply exiting the tab won't automatically log you out.

If you think you’ve been a victim of cybercrime, you can report it on the Action Fraud website, actionfraud.police.co.uk

BUTLER BEDLAM

Downton Abbey has been credited with spawning a massive worldwide increase in demand for professionally trained butlers, especially British butlers, notably in China, Russia, and parts of the Middle East. Between 2010 and 2012, demand was thought to have doubled, leading to some butlers' fetching salaries as high as £150,000.

SOURCE: DAILYMAIL.CO.UK

Want to See the World?

THE BENEFITS OF ESCORTED GROUP TOURS

Explore an entire country, enjoy the local culture and experience the sights, sounds and colour of some of the world’s most wondrous places through the eyes of a local expert

If you want to explore the world, then an escorted tour with a group of like-minded travellers is often the best way to do it. With Collette you can tailor the tour to suit your needs and requirements. They now provide variety and flexibility on each destination’s itinerary to meet your demands and needs as an individual traveller.

A tailor-made holiday

Gone are the days when the itinerary was set in stone for everyone on the tour. All customers are individual so Collette has introduced more options for how an individual’s time is spent. Collette recognise that customers value the enriching experience they get when travelling with other people, but also that they have di erent expectations for what makes a perfect holiday.

Food for thought

Enjoying delicious culinary experiences in new countries is an important part of the tour for so many travellers. Gone are the days of group breakfast, lunches and dinners where you are all expected to eat at the same time, from the same menu with the same group of people. You now have options to choose where to enjoy your breakfast or dinner, enabling you to find the right local restaurant or cuisine in which to savour the delicious flavours of the destination.

Pace and Size

You can choose the pace of your tour, ranging from leisurely paced tours (which involve minimal physical activity) to a very active tour pace (which requires you to be physically fit to fully enjoy all the experiences). In addition, you can choose from larger group sizes to more intimate travel experiences. The framework for an escorted group tour is provided so you have the security and the knowledge of expert guides for each destination but you can also tailor the holiday through options to suit you.

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All prices are per person based on double occupancy, tour only and correct at time of going to print. *Mention Readers Digest for savings. O er valid on new bookings only and can expire earlier due to space or inventory availability. Call or visit www.collette.com/o ers for details. Space is on a first come, first served basis. Other restrictions may apply.

For young and old alike, visiting the Christmas tree in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius in 2015 was quite literally like entering a fairy tale—visitors could enjoy a unique storytime experience inside the tree itself! While the outside was decked out with fir tree branches, the inside comprised a cosy 214 square-feet cottage where well-known Lithuanian personalities read Christmas tales to their enchanted audiences.

PHOTO: © LUKAS JONAITIS/ALAMY STOCK

Oh Tree! Christmas

BY CORNELIA KUMFERT

 The height of festive consumerism? That may be the first impression conveyed by this London Christmas tree. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. The 2,000 toys used to build the 46-foot tree were all donated to a children’s charity.

 The world‘s largest Christmas tree is made entirely of light!

On December 7 every year, the Albero di Natale lights up the Italian town of Gubbio. More than 250 green lights trace the outline of a 2,000-foot tree on the slopes of Mount Ingino.

 You might have thought that this 100-foot Russian tree at the entrance to Moscow’s famous Gorky Park had been blown over by the wind. But as well as lying on its side, Russia’s tallest Christmas tree was also suspended in mid-air.

PHOTOS: (CLOCKWISE FROM RIGHT TO LEFT) © ESCAPETHEOFFICEJOB/

 There have been few Christmas trees more colourful than the one that lit up Rakvere in Estonia two years ago. This tree’s highly contemporary appearance was created using 121 illuminated coloured windows recycled from old houses in the town.

 Wherever would they think of building a Christmas tree out of cubes? In Brussels, that’s where! However, this light installation didn’t go down well with the public and this year the Grand Place will be graced by a traditional fir.

 It takes them four weeks to put their Christmas tree up in Dortmund. But then, this 150-foot colossus is no ordinary tree—it is actually made of 1,700 individual Norway spruce trees!

 Galeries Lafayette in Paris sought to draw attention to climate change by transforming itself into an Arctic wonderland. In 2016, all the decorations, including the more than four-floor-high tree, were made of white paper.

PHOTOS: (CLOCKWISE FROM RIGHT TO LEFT) © SANDER DE WILDE/GETTY IMAGES; © IMAGO STOCK&PEOPLE; © PETR KOVALENKOV/ALAMY STOCK

PHOTO; © RAIGO PAJULA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

My Great Escape:

The Blissful Baltic

MSharon Haston from Falkirk discovers the manifold delights of a Baltic cruise…

y husband and I had dreamed of a Baltic cruise for ages, but worried about the weather. After all, we say, “it’s Baltic” to mean “it’s freezing” and we’re from chilly Scotland! But we took the plunge and it was one of our all-time favourite holidays.

Our first stop was the charming Warnemünde in Germany. We paddled in the Baltic Sea and dined on a delicious fish sandwich sold from one of the many boats along the promenade. It was so picturesque that it could have been a Disney film set of the perfect seaside town.

Next up was Tallin in Estonia which felt like stepping into a fairy tale, with its towers, turrets and city walls. Of course, we visited a local brewery to sample a flyte of their beers.

The big hitter of the cruise was St Petersburg in Russia. Our first tour was to Peterhof Palace which is often called the Russian Versailles thanks to its opulent interiors and magnificent gardens. Gold, crystal chandeliers, sumptuous fabrics—each room was

more extravagant than the last. The gold continued into the statues in the gardens. We watched the fountains being switched on, accompanied by stirring classical music.

Our final stop was Helsinki in Finland. By this time the weather was a little drizzly but still 19 degrees. We had utmost respect for the Finnish people swimming in outside pools, not requiring sunshine to take a dip.

After exploring Helsinki Cathedral, we rewarded ourselves with some local beer by the waterfront. It was our rule that hectic sightseeing always led to a reward of local beer.

Until recently, all these fantastic places were firmly behind the Iron Curtain and it would have been difficult, if not impossible, for tourists to discover their beauty. I’m glad they’re now accessible to everyone.

The next time someone says, “it’s Baltic”, I’ll crack out the sun cream!

Tell us about your favourite holiday (send a photo too) and if we print it we’ll pay £50. Email excerpts@readersdigest.co.uk

(Clockwise L-R); Warnemunde, Tallin, Helsinki, St Petersburg,

SKI SEASON

FOR GROUPS: MORZINE

Sharing large chalets, groups of friends can split up by day then compare runs, eat fondues and sip wine together later. Alikats rents luxurious catered and self-catering options in France’s most charming resort (alikats.eu).

FOR SPY FANS: SÖLDEN

Not only does the affordable Austrian Tirol resort have 155 miles of ski runs and lots of lifts, but this summer it unveiled 007 Elements: a cinematic installation introducing fans to the world of Bond—James Bond (inghams.co.uk).

FOR NOVICES: GRANDVALIRA

Found in Andorra, a tiny Pyrenean principality, Grandvalira comprises the twin resorts of Soldeu and El Tarter: places of gentle slopes and excellent ski schools. In other words, it’s a superb place for beginners to learn (sno.co.uk).

FOR VETERANS: ICELAND

Snoworks’ new six-day ski-touring trip around Iceland’s wilderness is strictly for experienced off-piste skiers. Departing April 29, it promises descents from mountaintops to beaches atop epic, empty fjords (snoworks.co.uk).

FOR FOODIES: NISEKO

Japan’s largest resort has three chief lures. There’s reliable snow on world-class tree runs. There are hot springs. And there’s the superlative cuisine, from authentic izakayas (pubs) to gourmet pizzerias (skisafari.com).

by Richard Mellor

Travel app of the month

YUGO MOBILITY , FREE, ANDROID & IOS

Available in Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia, and plotting European expansion, Yugo users can rent eco-friendly and very cool lime-green scooters.

All medical conditions considered Unlimited medical emergency cover†

Up to £10,000 cancellation cover†

Cruise interruption up to £1,000

Unused excursion cover up to £500

6 Rules For Gift-Giving

This Christmas

Christmas gift shopping can be laborious and stressful if you don’t prepare for it well. Save yourself the trouble this year by following these six simple tips…

We’re nudging closer and closer to Christmas. You may be looking forward to getting all festive with friends and family. Or you might be full of dread at how much it’s going to cost—and it’s easy to see why.

The biggest expense for most is buying presents. Last year the consultancy firm Deloitte estimated that UK adults would spend £284 each just on Christmas gifts. To me that seems low. I know many people who will spend that just on their kids or partner. When you throw in grandchildren, friends and colleagues you can expect that total to be a lot higher. So how do you still

Andy Webb is a personal finance journalist and runs the award-winning money blog, Be Clever With Your Cash

get great gifts without breaking the bank? Here are a few tried and true rules to follow.

1It’s OK to regift

I’ll start with a potentially controversial one. How often have you received a gift from a beaming friend who’s confident it’s perfect for you? But it’s not. At best you simply don’t need it. At worst, you hate it.

So it sits unopened and unloved at the back of the wardrobe (if you didn’t take it to the tip or charity shop). It’s a complete waste, so it’s better to pass it on this Christmas to someone who will appreciate it.

Doing this isn’t ungrateful, and you’re not being a Scrooge either. You’re simply making good use of something that just isn’t for you. Of course, you do need to make sure it’s in good nick, and genuinely think that the person you regift it to would like it. And make sure you remember

who gave it to you in the first place— you don’t want to give it back to them by mistake!

2 Get them what they want

You think you’re great at giving presents? Well if you’ve received bad presents in the past then you’ve probably also given a dud gift yourself.

The simple solution is to ask people what they want. Ideally, ask them to give you a few options, and if money is tight let them know your budget (more on this in a bit). Kids in particular will have a Christmas list which should make it a lot easier.

3 Keep the receipt

Of course, many of you will want to keep the gift a surprise. So if you don’t want to ask, it helps to include a gift receipt. This way, if it’s not something the receiver wants or needs they can exchange it for

something they do want. The same goes for clothes too, in case the size isn’t right.

This gets a bit harder if you shop online, so you just need to be upfront about it. Let the recipient know you’re happy to exchange the gift yourself if it’s not right.

4 Be wary of giving a gift card

If all else fails, lots of gift givers just pick up a gift card. This lets people choose what they want to buy. But you know what gives them even more choice? Cash or cheque. Money is a far better gift than a gift

card as it doesn’t expire, doesn’t lock the purchase down to a single retailer and won’t be cancelled if the shop goes bust.

5 Know your budget

If you’re buying lots of gifts it’s easy to lose track of how much you’re spending. So the simple solution is to have a budget. Obviously there’s the total amount of money you plan to spend, but it’s also worth having a limit on each individual you’re buying for too.

This budget should be set based on how much you can afford to spend, not how much the desired

gifts will cost. Though it’s always tempting to treat our loved ones, they’d hate to know you’re getting into debt as a result.

6 Consider a “Secret Santa”

If you don’t have the money to spend on lots of gifts, there are a few alternatives.

You can agree on a price cap with friends and family to which you all adhere. This way you’re all spending the same amount. Or you could run a “Secret Santa” scenario in a small group. Rather than buying five presents of £10, you could each buy a single, more valuable present of £30.

Money Site Of The Month

TRUSSELLTRUST.ORG

ACCORDING TO THE TRUSSELL TRUST, 13 million people are living in poverty, often meaning they can’t even afford a trip to the supermarket. As a result many will need to go to food banks to pick up anything from tinned spaghetti to toilet roll.

These food banks rely on donations, with 90 per cent of the food given by members of the public. And since Christmas and New Year are particularly tough times for those experiencing financial difficulties, it’s also a perfect time for you to join those already helping out.

or funding food banks, their website has a helpful postcode checker to help you find those near you.

You can then click through to see if that food bank has details of where to donate food, which might even be at a local supermarket. You should also see a list of items urgently needed and those they have plenty of already. It’s nice to include the odd festive treat, but look for the longest use by dates possible when buying food to give. And it’s not just food that people need. Toiletries can be very expensive so these donations are often more than welcome too.

It’s very easy to do, but first you need to find a food bank near you. That’s where the Trussell Trust website comes in handy. Though they aren’t the only organisation running

Don’t leave your donation too late though. Everything you give needs to be sorted and many food banks only open once or twice a week. So, turning up on or just before Christmas Eve will likely mean it’s too late for the Christmas itself. It’s the same website for those in need of help too—it will help you work out how you can visit a food bank.

CHRISTMAS TURKEY

Turkey as a bird to eat at Christmas was first introduced into Britain in the 1520s, and Henry VIII was among the first people to eat it as part of the Christmas feast. The Tudor Christmas Pie was an extraordinary dish consisting of a turkey stuffed with a goose, stuffed with a chicken, stuffed with a partridge, stuffed with a pigeon. All of this was put in a pastry case, called a coffin, and was served surrounded by jointed hare and small game birds.

SOURCE: THECROWNCHRONICLES.CO.UK

Give the gift of a lifetime this Christmas

As the festive season approaches, you will no doubt be looking forward to spending quality time with your nearest and dearest. Watching your loved ones grow, you may wonder how you can make a positive impact on their future, going above and beyond the usual Christmas Wishlist. An early inheritance could be the gift of a lifetime.

If you’re an over-55 homeowner looking to put your legacy into action, then you may stand to benefit from controlled access to your property wealth. With a Lifetime Mortgage, the UK’s most popular form of equity release, you can access a portion of your property wealth as taxfree cash. You don’t have to worry about making monthly payments or losing your

home, as it remains entirely your own.

Lifetime Mortgages provided by Equity Release Council approved lenders also come with customer safeguards. The most important of these is the no negative equity guarantee, which ensures that you cannot pass on any debt from your Lifetime Mortgage to your estate.

Growth in the market has seen the range of plans expand, giving you more control and flexibility over how you structure your release. These can allow you to release equity in a way to suit your situation, for instance, you may want to release your money in stages as and when you need it.

The Drawdown Lifetime Mortgage, for example, lets you do just this. It enables you to store a portion of your equity in

a reserve fund. Money held in this fund does not accrue interest until it has been withdrawn, allowing you to minimise the build-up of interest long-term. It also means that you have access to tax-free cash at your convenience, say for those moments when your loved ones need your helping hand.

COMMON REASONS TO GIFT AN EARLY INHERITANCE:

• Private Education: Your financial gift

could provide your loved ones with a first-class education, giving them the best opportunity to succeed.

• House Deposit: All young birds must fly the nest one day, when they do, you could contribute towards a deposit on their dream home.

• Weddings: Watching your nearest and dearest settle down with a partner is a beautiful thing - your inheritance could help them get the most out of their special day.

• Business: Assisting your loved ones to start their own business can be a momentous occasion, your help could make all the difference.

If you would like to know more about the features and risks of a Lifetime Mortgage, then an adviser can provide you with their recommendation and a personalised illustration. It is important to take expert advice as releasing equity now may reduce the value of your estate in time and could affect your entitlement to meanstested state benefits.

If you’re looking to provide your family with an early inheritance, then releasing equity from your property could be a valuable solution. Contact Reader’s Digest Equity Release for your free guide to Lifetime Mortgages, and start putting your legacy into action today.

Reader’s Digest Equity Release is a trading style of Responsible Life Limited. Only if your case completes will Responsible Life Limited charge an advice fee, currently not exceeding £1,295. Responsible Life Limited is Authorised and Regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and is entered on the Financial Services Register (http://www. fsa.gov.uk/register/home.do) under reference 610205. Responsible Life Limited is registered in England & Wales. Company No. 7162252. Registered office: Unit 8 ABC Killinghall Stone Quarry, Ripon Road, Harrogate, HG3 2B Visit

A Handy Little Guide To Cooking

Christmas Dinner

Christmas Dinner might seem like an intimidating meal, but Rachel Walker’s basic plan will set you up for success. All these recipes are for six people, but can easily be scaled-up

What To Make The Day Before:

CRANBERRY SAUCE

Heat the juice of a clementine with 75g light brown sugar to create a syrup, then add 300g cranberries and cook uncovered until they’re soft, but still holding their shape. Refrigerate until needed and garnish with clementine zest.

PORK, SAGE & ONION STUFFING

Cook 2 diced onions in 25g of butter, and set aside to cool. Meanwhile, squeeze 800g of sausages from their skin into a mixing bowl (or use quality sausage meat). Add 120g breadcrumbs, 25g finely-sliced sage leaves, 1 egg and finally the cooled onions. Mix together with your hands and chill, to be cooked on Christmas Day.

BRUSSELS SPROUTS

Wash 500g of Brussels sprouts, remove the outer leaves and cut them in half lengthways. Bring salted water to a rapid boil and blanche for 4 minutes. Drain, plunge the sprouts into cold water until cool the whole way through, drain again and then refrigerate. To finish, bring the sprouts to room temperature, fry them in 25g of foaming butter until cooked-through and season generously with salt and pepper.

BRAISED RED CABBAGE

Shred 1 red cabbage into the biggest mixing bowl you have. Add 2 diced onions and 2 cooking apples (peeled, cored and roughly chopped), 3tbsp light brown sugar, 3tbsp red wine vinegar and 1tsp of cracked black pepper. Toss thoroughly, pack into a casserole dish, dot 25g of butter on top and cook at 150°C for 2 hours, stirring from time to time.

What To Make On December 25:

TURKEY

Leave yourself a note for when you make your morning coffee to pre-heat the oven to 180°C and take the turkey out of the fridge to bring it up to room temperature, if you’re planning for a prompt lunch.

Account for 500g of turkey per person, so a 4kg-turkey for six people (including enough for a leftover turkey sandwich). This will take 2.5 hours to cook, plus half an hour to rest, so count back three hours from when you plan to have your Christmas Dinner.

Prepare the turkey by rubbing 100g of butter into its skin and then seasoning generously with salt and pepper. Lay 200g of streaky bacon over the breast and then use extra-wide turkey foil to loosely wrap the bird. Remove the foil for the final 45 minutes of cooking, so the turkey takes on colour and baste it two or three times during the final bit of cooking.

POTATOES

Peel 1.5kg of potatoes (250g per person), and keep them in a bowl of cool water to stop them from discolouring. 1 hour before you plan to sit down, put the potatoes in a pan of boiling water. Simmer for 10 minutes, drain and then give the potatoes a firm shake. Spoon 2tbsp of goose fat in a roasting tray and put it in the oven until it has melted. Add the potatoes and cook alongside the turkey at 180°C for 20 minutes—when you take out the turkey to rest, toss the potatoes and up the temperature to 220°C for the final 25 minutes until golden and crisp.

TURKEY GRAVY

Remove all but 2tbsp of the fat from the turkey roasting tray, and then put the roasting tray over a gentle heat so everything starts to sizzle. Use a wooden spoon to stir in 4tbsp plain flour and allow the paste to cook for 1 minute until it starts to darken. Add 750ml turkey (or chicken) stock bit by bit, stirring the whole time and scraping up any bits stuck to the bottom. Bring the gravy to a rolling simmer for 3-5 minutes so it thickens, and then tip it into a warm gravy boat.

PREEMPTING

CHRISTMAS DINNER DISASTERS:

• If you have a frozen turkey, make sure that you leave at least 24 hours to thaw it out.

• Always check inside the bird for a bag of giblets before cooking it.

• No room in the fridge? Cool white wine and fizz in a bucket of ice water to free space.

BREAD SAUCE

After your morning coffee, halve an onion and stud with 8 cloves. Put it in a saucepan along with a bay leaf and cover with 568ml (1pint) of milk. Simmer for 10 minutes and then set aside until the turkey is resting. Then, remove the onion and return the infused milk to the heat, stirring in 120g white breadcrumbs. Loosen with 4tbsp double cream, 25g butter and then season with a generous pinch of ground nutmeg.

CHRISTMAS COCKTAIL

A twist on a classic:

Kings & Tonic

• One part The King’s Ginger

• Three parts premium tonic

• Serve as a long drink, with cubes of ice, a dash of Angostura bitters and orange garnish.

• No room in the oven? Cook the potatoes separately while the bird rests, and heat up plates by timing a dishwasher cycle to finish just before lunch starts.

• Feeling under-confident about gravy? Buy some as a back-up in case of disasters.

• Feeling under-confident about cooking the turkey? Invest in a meat thermometer and cook until the thickest piece of the meat reaches 75°C or 165°F.

• Keep animals out of the kitchen when cooking, to prevent any parts of the dinner disappearing.

BY DAN MITCHELL

The Stiltz Homelift makes life easier if stairs become too much. A compact, discreet and stylish homelift is the perfect alternative to a cumbersome, unattractive stairlift. Install it in the corner of your living room, hallway or kitchen. It can also be fitted in a cupboard or within the turn of your stairs*.

Whether you need a homelift now or are future-proofing, move safely between floors in your home with a Stiltz Homelift and stay in the home you love. Call us for free today.

* Depending on space available.

** Based on installing a Duo Homelift (shown) in pre-prepared aperture

I looked at moving costs and worked out that a Stiltz Lift would be cheaper. The lift has already made things much easier. It’s been the best decision. Ms. Turner, Hereford “ “ Call

Festive Decorating

Get on board with one of the hottest trends on this year’s Christmas catwalks and dress your home in an array of blush pink and metallic decorations

WHomes and gardens writer and stylist Cassie Pryce specialises in interior trends and discovering new season shopping

hile traditional tartans and shimmering silvers remain firm Christmas classics, why not try adding a little metallic magic this year with a more contemporary palette of dusky pink, paired with hints of copper and brass? This soft pink shade is perfect for creating a romantic and enchanting festive scene when it comes to decorating either your tree, table top or mantelpiece.

If you decide to opt for an artificial tree this year, look out for a more delicate design that has frosted white tips or a flocked finish for a snowcapped centrepiece. Alternatively,

spray the needles of a real tree with artificial snow to create a similar effect. Warm white fairy lights are best suited to this look and will give off a softer glow than bright white LEDs—some faux trees even have them built-in to save the annual hassle of having to untangle the twisted wires.

Glimmering rose gold and copper decorations work perfectly as part of this feminine look and can be used to balance out the pink to avoid it becoming sickly-sweet. Look out for baubles and accessories with glittering or sequined finishes to really capture the magic of this trend and help your tree twinkle. Clear glass baubles also complement this colour scheme and won’t look overly heavy on a delicate tree. Gift wrap, ribbons, garlands and even tableware can all be used to continue the theme into the rest of your festive styling, too.

Pretty In Pink

7ft flocked pre-lit Christmas tree, £85; baubles, from 75p; gold sequin stocking, £5; gold star tree topper, £7; gift bag and wrap, from 75p, all George Home

Your Very Own

Winter Wonderland

The frosty season doesn’t have to prescribe you an indoor sojourn until the spring; Jessica Summers explores the joy of a wintry garden

Before the outdoor decorations are brought out in a blaze of Christmas excitement, protecting the plants which already dwell in your garden is of utmost importance. Make sure soil is watered as the temperature starts to drop (wetter soil retains more heat) and move any particularly sensitive potted plants indoors.

Mulching will protect your plants’ roots from freezedamage but make sure to leave a little room around the plant to promote air-flow and avoid decay.

over Christmas but it’s a great place for the family to congregate around. Building your own is a cheap and enjoyable way to add some rustic charm, while chimeneas and patio heaters will easily create an area of sophistication.

Add a little winter glow to your garden by creating a fire pit—not only will the warmth tempt you outside

While you’re enjoying your newlywarmed garden, convince the robin redbreasts to visit for a traditional winter scene. Robins are ground-feeders so lay out feeding trays and lace with some yummy treats such as worms, ground nuts and birdseed. Make sure to top-up your birdbath with fresh water for the robins to drink and frolic in—then sit back and enjoy the merry show.

Your Style— Flock Pigeon or Parrot?

ALisa Lennkh is a banker turned fashion writer, stylist and blogger. Her blog, The Sequinist, focuses on sparkle and statement style for midlife women

s you know, I love statement dressing. The more challenging the statement, the better! If I have the choice of dressing like a parrot or dressing like a pigeon, I’ll choose the parrot almost every time. Of course, I have my pigeon days in jeans and a soft grey cashmere jumper; we all have to have comforting outfits when we are at home in our nest. But, I don’t feel as joyful and alive in comfort clothes as I do in something more parrotworthy. I simply have a better day in colour and sparkle. I always encourage women to push their style out of their comfort zone now and then; it pays big dividends. A style rut gives us no challenge and no delight. Style, and the confidence

that goes along with it, is like a muscle. If you don't use it, you lose it.

Take this somewhat bonkers faux hair coat from emerging Londonbased designer Krasimira Stoyneva as an example. This was love at first sight for me. I love that it's synthetic hair, but it still has the visual impact of fur (which I won’t wear). The Mondrian colour palette feels modern and fresh, and goes perfectly with all of the black I have in my closet. So, it works with what I have already. What's even better is that I can even rent things like this if I want to experiment with parrot pieces. This one came from Wear the Walk, where you can try emergingdesigner clothing for a fraction of the purchase price. It makes so much sense. If you have an event to go to but don’t want to buy something new that you might only wear once or twice, this is a perfect solution. From a sustainability perspective, you’re not buying another piece of clothing, but renting a highquality item and supporting a new designer’s business. The high street also has plenty of amazing items for you to practise being a parrot, especially at this time of year. December is the month where stores are full of colourful and sparkly pieces that can be worn throughout the year. So, are you ready to add some bright parrot style to your wardrobe?

Best Christmas Beauty Buys

Whether you’re looking for the perfect present for a loved one or bookmarking your own favourites ready for the January sales, there's no denying that the festive period sees some serious bargains hit our beauty shelves. From advent calendars to hampers, it’s a great opportunity to sample trial sizes of a brand before committing yourself fully, or a superfan’s excuse to collect limited-edition items.

For 2018, we’re coveting products that make us look (and more importantly, feel) fabulous. The 12 Planning to take advantage of the sales and update your beauty stash this Christmas? Jenessa Williams has all the best tips on which products to try…

Days of Cowshed box is a godsend for stressed-out folk looking to relax over the holidays, while the M&S beauty calendar contains an estimated £280 worth of goodies for just £35, celebrating some of the industries' best loved brands in skin protection, anti-ageing and make-up.

If you’re looking for something less calendar-committal, there's also an array of one-off products hitting December shelves. Selfridges are offering the cult Estee Lauder Advanced Night Repair serum in an exclusive festive bottle, while Charlotte Tilbury has a whole host of Yuletide treats, including a glossyformula edition of Superstar lips, and the high-glitter "Supersonic Girl" palette, perfect for party eyeshadow looks. And then, of course, there's the much-coveted Lush Christmas range; perfect for young and old, they make great novelty stocking fillers. Keep your eyes out for Puddy Holly in the Boxing Day sale—full of almond oil and tonka, it’ll stave off any winter-chapped dry skin. Dear Santa, we promise we’ve been very good this year…

TOM BENNETT IS ‘DEL BOY’ PAUL WHITEHOUSE IS ‘GRANDAD’ RYAN HUTTON IS ‘RODNEY’

THEATRE ROYAL HAYMARKET FROM PECKHAM TO THE WEST END! FROM 9 FEB 2019

THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS

A remarkable documentary about triplets who were separated at birth, that unfolds like a suspenseful thriller

Life gets stranger than fiction in this seemingly feel-good documentary. The story begins in 1980, when 19-year-old Bobby starts his first day at college. To his surprise, everyone’s unusually friendly to him: guys come up and hug him and girls kiss him on the lips, saying, “Welcome back, Eddy!” Only thing is, who’s Eddy?

It’s not until someone asks Bobby if he was adopted, that things start getting clearer: Bobby, it turns out, has an identical twin, Eddy—a student who, by a freakish coincidence, dropped out the previous year. But things just get weirder from there. With the help of media and

word of mouth, the twins soon discover their third brother, David, and learn that they were separated at birth. The trio become a media sensation, appearing on every talk show, opening a restaurant and even making a cameo in a Madonna music video—they’re on top of the world.

But their adoptive parents are not as thrilled. Outraged at the adoption agency hiding the truth from them, they demand answers. What comes next is an Inception-worthy twist that casts a dark shadow over this otherwise fortuitous tale. Transforming into a tantalising mystery, the film poses some thoughtprovoking questions about “nature vs nurture” and how much free will we have over shaping our own lives. This is how you make a documentary.

COMEDY: SORRY TO BOTHER

YOU A fresh, irreverent comedy about Cassius (Lakeith Stanfield)—a young telemarketer whose work success propels him into a twisted world of corruption, greed and vicious capitalism. Watching Sorry to Bother You is what watching the first Tarantino films back in the early 1990s must have felt like; it’s staggeringly innovative, highly stylised and bursting with ideas to the point where it finds it hard to reign them all in, resulting in a sometimeshaphazard framework. Nevertheless, it’s

a complete must-see for its phenomenal performances, a bizarre allegory about race and a display of some seriously cool earrings by Cassius’ girlfriend, played with great verve by Tessa Thompson.

DRAMA: WHITE BOY RICK

“It’s fragile this thing, family.” So says Detroit dad Rick Snr (Matthew McConaughey), as he struggles to cope with his drug-addict daughter and drug-dealing son (who, at 14, also happens to be the FBI’s youngest ever informant). Though overambitious, the film is at its strongest when it studies family, and the quiet devastation of loving an addict. Watch out for a show-stealing performance from Brit, Bel Powley.

CRIME: THE OLD MAN AND THE GUN

According to Tucker, the secret to a good life is to “find one thing you love doing, and do it as long as you can.” For him, that’s robbing banks. Now 76, he’s made a career of pulling off outrageous heists and audacious prison breaks—and he’s not about to stop. This natural-born charmer who robs with gentlemanly grace and a smile on his face is portrayed by screen legend Robert Redford in his final role before announcing retirement. He’s joined by a stellar cast including Sissy Spacek, Casey Affleck and Tom Waits (!), in this ebullient and surprisingly quaint comedy drama.

by Eva Mackevic

A CHRISTMASSY CROW (BBC2)

What is it? Our festive comedy pick: a second Yuletide special for Ben Elton’s Shakespearian sitcom Upstart Crow. Why should I watch it? Crow’s third run was superbly written and played but it also became intriguingly complex, slipping its creator’s once-signature “little bit of politics” amid the elaborate wordplay, and ending with the death of the Bard’s son. This one-off will likely be a far lighter affair.

Best character? We’re promised Kenneth Branagh, no stranger to Stratford, as “a mysterious stranger”…

WOULD I LIE TO YOU? (BBC1)

What is it? David Mitchell—the BBC’s drollest imaginable Santa— returns, this time in his guise as team captain of the ever-lively panel show. Why should I watch it? Now approaching TV adolescence, Would I Lie to You? continues to serve as the stalwart Have I Got News for You’s unruly younger brother, encouraging guests to elaborate and fabricate, in often hilarious fashion, as much as the half-hour format will allow. Best guest? Seasoned viewers will know to watch out for Bob Mortimer’s annual appearance: this year, he’s been put upfront in Episode One, spinning a truly extraordinary yarn about the singer Chris Rea, a bath, and an egg.

by Mike McCahill

WHAT TO STREAM THIS MONTH:

THE

GOOD PLACE (NETFLIX)

The world’s new favourite sitcom shakes things up, relocating its formerly lost souls to Australia hoping to find redemption…

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE (NETFLIX)

One of the year’s best ghost stories: a handsome, sharply-cast, ten-part adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel.

13 NOVEMBER:ATTACK ON PARIS (NETFLIX)

A compelling account of the 2015 terror attacks that shook the French capital, as told in gripping fashion by the brave survivors.

CHRISTMAS ALBUMS THROUGH THE DECADES:

Elvis’ Christmas Album by Elvis Presley (1957)

Spend some quality time with The King this Christmas, revelling in such playful, danceable numbers as “Here Comes Santa Claus,” sipping eggnog to the bluesy “Blue Christmas” or enjoying precious family time to the dulcet sounds of “Silent Night.”

Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas by Ella Fitzgerald (1960)

Jazz it up with this charmingly old-school record from The First Lady of Swing. Perfect for creating a warm, laid-back, open-fire-kind of atmosphere, it features homey-sounding horns, smooth vocal improv and an addictively swinging percussion.

A Motown Christmas by Various Artists (1973)

If you like your Yuletide funky, however, this festive compilation album will really hit the spot. With songs from Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, Stevie Wonder and many other soul trailblazers, it’s one sultry, shimmering record, that’ll get your hips a-shaking.

Merry Christmas by Mariah Carey (1994)

Let’s face it, it’s not Christmas without Mariah and “All I Want for Christmas

Is You”. This light and bouncy festive classic with tasty R&B and gospel licks is just the thing to put on in the background as you’re peeling potatoes and stuffing the turkey.

by Eva Mackevic

READER RADAR: MAGGIE COBBETT, WRITER AND TV EXTRA

WATCHING: UPSTART CROW (BBC TWO) It’s hilarious and very, very clever.

READING: THE HARRY VIRDEE SERIES BY A A DHAND

They’re set among the Bradford Asian community and the twists and turns keep me on the edge of my seat.

ONLINE: THE GUARDIAN AND DAILY MAIL For a balanced view of what’s going on in the world at the moment.

LISTENING: BOB PEGG AND ANDY HAMILTON Bob Pegg’s The Last Wolf and Andy Hamilton’s Old Harry’s Game.

December Fiction

Suspense abounds in these two thrilling reads —perfect for a cosy night in away from the cold…

The Rumour by Lesley Kara (Bantam Press, £12.99)

If there’s a single dominant theme in all the big-hitting psychological thrillers of recent years, it’s one that the narrator of Lesley Kara’s hugely promising debut sums up in just six words: “How well do we know anyone?”

The narrator in question is Joanna, who’s recently moved back from London to her hometown with her young son, Alfie. Then, one morning at the school gates, she hears the title’s rumour—that a woman, who as a ten-year-old in the 1960s stabbed another child to death, is living in their midst under a new identity. To her increasing shame, Joanna passes the rumour on, so that soon the whole town is pointing fingers. She also starts getting

James Walton is a book reviewer and broadcaster, and has written and presented 17 series of the BBC Radio 4 literary quiz

The Write Stuff

sinister texts threatening to harm Alfie…

In the traditional way, all the townsfolk turn out to have their secrets— and while Kara is extremely good on the politics of small-town life, she perhaps slightly overdoes the false alarms (the equivalent of those horror-movie moments where it’s only the wind). Once it hits its stride, though, The Rumour proves both ingeniously plotted and overwhelmingly tense. And that’s before it reaches its unguessable reveal and thunderously big finish.

Shakespeare’s Sword by Alan Judd (Simon & Schuster, £7.99)

This short novel might well be the perfect read for a winter’s evening. To begin with, admittedly, it doesn’t look all that exciting. The narrator, Simon Gold, is a Sussex antiques dealer first seen selling an Edwardian roll-top desk to a Mr and Mrs Coombes. Yet, already there’s

something menacing about his buttoned-up writing style which suggests he isn’t quite the trustworthy plodder he appears. His constant assertions that he’s not “an obsessive”, meanwhile, bring to mind the fact that it’s only drunk people who ever say “I’m not drunk”.

On a visit to Coombes’ heirloomcluttered home, Simon then spots a sword he thinks may have belonged to Shakespeare—who did indeed leave his sword to a “Mr Thomas Combe”. But, given Mr C’s reluctance to sell anything, how can he get his hands on it? Luckily, he seems to have an ally in Mrs Coombes, whose flirtatiousness leads Simon to “anticipate a modest revival of those carnal pleasures that had once been my principal preoccupation”. (See what I mean about his writing style?) What follows is like classic Hollywood film noir transposed to the Home Counties.

Name the author

Can you guess the writer from these clues (the fewer you need the better)?

1. She worked as a nurse in the American Civil War.

2. Her most famous book begins, “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents…”

Children’s Books

Gift Guide

Under 3s: Where’s Mr Unicorn? by Ingela P Arrhenius (Nosy Crow, £6.99).With plenty of flaps to lift, stuff to find and a mirror on the final page: what’s not to like? And if you’ve had enough of unicorns (it’s possible), there are plenty more in the series, including Where’s Santa Claus?

Ages 3-6: Snowball by Sue Hendra (Macmillan, £11.99; £6.99 pbk).

The funny, charming and rhyming tale of a runaway snowball.

Ages 5-8: Mummy Fairy and Me by Sophie Kinsella (Puffin, £5.99).

Ella’s life is pretty normal—except that her mother is a secret fairy. First children’s book from the bestselling rom-com author.

Ages 6-10: The Awesome Book of Space by Adam Frost (Bloomsbury, £6.99). An entertaining and fact-packed guide to the cosmos.

Ages 5+: The Puffin Book of Fantastic First Poems edited by June Crebbin. (Puffin, £9.99).

Unlike the other book on our list, this isn’t from 2018—but, speaking from experience, years of bedtime entertainment are guaranteed.

Answer on p126

3. Its main characters are the sisters Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy.

RD’S RECOMMENDED READ

Christmas Past

Christmas at War tells the heartwarming real stories of how Britain celebrated Christmas on the Home Front throughout our years at war…

These days, Christmas can be thrown into crisis by a shortage of the latest musthave toys—or even of sprouts. But, as Caroline Taggart’s enthralling book reminds us, during the Second World War, Britain was faced with shortages of almost everything Christmassy: food, alcohol, cards, decorations, crackers and, with former toy factories making armaments, children’s presents. In fact, thanks to the government’s evacuation policy, lots of families were faced with a shortage of their children too. And of course many dads were away fighting.

Yet somehow Christmas survived, with people following recipes for such things as “mock duck”—sausage meat, apples, onions and herbs—and

Christmas at War: Heartwarming True Stories of How Britain Came Together on the Home Front by Caroline Taggart is published by John Blake at £8.99

“mock goose”—like mock duck, only with potatoes instead of sausage meat: ie, with no meat at all. (Still, it could have been worse. It could have been “mock crab”—margarine, dried eggs, cheese, salad dressing and vinegar.) The same resourcefulness also extended to other aspects of Christmas. Homemade crackers, for example, were nearly as good as the real thing, except that you had to shout “BANG!” when you pulled them.

Throughout Christmas At War Taggart supplies just the right amount of background information,

before allowing the people who were there to speak for themselves through diaries, letters and oral accounts. Despite the subtitle, she ranges widely too, bringing us tales— not all of them heartwarming—of Christmas at sea, at the front and in prison camps.

The main focus, though, remains firmly on British home life, where not everything we hear is heartwarming either (some of it’s too poignant for that). Nonetheless, it does add up to a rich and absorbing portrait of a country doing its best to keep Christmas alive—and even to have some fun—in the most unpromising of circumstances.

Here’s the point in the book where people began to realise just how different wartime Christmases would be…

Food rationing didn’t begin until 1940, so from that point of view Christmas 1939 didn’t differ much from the Christmases that had gone before. In Good Housekeeping magazine’s cookery pages, a 1939 article headed ‘The Festive Roast’ gave no indication that turkey would be in short supply; it suggested accompanying the poultry with a ‘lavish quantity’ of sausages or ham and adding a few mushrooms or the liver of the bird to veal stuffing—and gave a recipe for chestnut stuffing that included more sausage meat, without suggesting that any of these things might be remotely profligate.

CAROLINE TAGGART’S Favourite Christmas Writing

Christmas Pudding by Nancy Mitford (1932).

A wonderfully frivolous account of Christmas among the “bright young things”—with names like Amabelle Fortescue and Philadelphia Bobbin.

A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas (1952).

Can you imagine a child saying, “One Christmas was so much like another”? What a miserable so-and-so Thomas was. Beautiful poetic prose, though.

Remembrance of Christmas Past by Judith Viorst (1970).

Viorst always has funny things to say about day-to-day life: in this poem she and the kids try to put together their “easy-toassemble” toys. A hilarious nightmare.

The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories

edited by Martin Edwards (2018). What better time than Christmas for a house party? Or a murder? This anthology of tales from the Golden Age of crime writing is lots of ghoulish fun.

A Snow Garden by Rachel Joyce (2015).

Linked short stories that include “Christmas Day at the Airport”, where a birth in an airport loo takes on heartwarming seasonal symbolism.

But the following year was, of all those in the war, the one of greatest change—from more or less normality to considerable deprivation. In 1940, Good Housekeeping’s cakes were decorated with ‘oddments out of the store cupboard’ and the accompanying text contained expressions such as ‘as near the traditional as possible’ and ‘a cake that will keep well and taste good but not be extravagant’. In the same year, Woman’s Weekly decorated its Christmas cake with desiccated coconut and a few marshmallows, while Woman’s Own made a virtue out of necessity: ‘Do you know, I wouldn’t be a bit sorry if this Christmas wakes up the people who have never associated this merry season with anything but food… After all, who’s to say you can’t make merry as well on stuffed rabbit as stuffed turkey?’

Roy in Ealing, whose parents ran a hardware shop, remembers big changes between those two Christmases, when he was nine and ten: ‘Christmas [1940] was approaching, but this was

And the name of the author is…

Louise May Alcott, author of Little Women

“Who says you can’t make merry as well on stuffed rabbit as turkey?”

hardly a season of goodwill to all men. We could think of a few exceptions! It was to be a very austere occasion. Mum was fretting about what she could organise for Christmas dinner. Then one day Dad came in, swinging a dead rabbit by its ears. We never did find out where he got it from, although we knew he had a friend who was a bit of a poacher.

‘Mum was horrified. “What have you got there?” she said. “I’m not skinning that thing! You’ll have to do it.” Dad was a bit squeamish about it, too, so eventually he took it down to the local butcher and got him to do it in exchange for a big chunky bar of carbolic soap from the shop. So we had a skinned rabbit, and that was our Christmas dinner.

‘A few days earlier, to our surprise, Mum announced, “I’m going to make a cake.” We all looked at each other.

“A what… what with?” our Dad had exclaimed.

‘Not being involved, I have no idea of the ultimate ingredients, but I do know that carrots, powdered egg and National Wholemeal breadcrumbs featured strongly. It certainly looked good. Taste? Well, debatable is the word, but we scoffed the lot.’

Books

THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

Bestselling author Barbara Taylor Bradford has sold more than 88 million novels worldwide. Her new book, Master of His Fate, is out now, published by HarperCollins UK

Wuthering Heights

BY EMILY BRONTË

I first read this when I was about ten, and was captivated by Catherine and Heathcliff’s love affair. A few years later I understood it wasn’t simply a love story, but a novel about revenge and retribution. Haworth, where the Brontë sisters grew up and wrote their books, wasn’t too far away from Leeds. I pestered my mother to take me there, and finally, riding on three different buses, we arrived in the village, and visited the vicarage which had become a museum. I was fascinated by their early writings and their memorabilia.

David Copperfield

BY CHARLES DICKENS

What a revelation this novel was to me. Firstly, I was grabbed by the first few pages, and pulled into the book at once. Secondly, I was held by the attention to detail, the sense of time and place which

Dickens seemingly created so easily. And thirdly, I understood how the protagonist of a novel could hold the reader’s interest right up until the last page. I believe that I learned a lot about writing from the many books by Dickens which I read.

Gone With The Wind

BY MARGARET MITCHELL

This book had a great influence on me. I was pulled into the book by Scarlett O’Hara, captivated by the female protagonist, but also intrigued by the male characters, in particular Rhett Butler. This novel is character driven, as all of mine are, and I feel certain I picked up that technique very early in my writing career. It was Graham Green who said “character is plot,” and that is true. When I read that line, I translated it to “character is destiny”—your own character tells the story of your life.

Christmas Toys For Connected Kids

Stuck for gift ideas for the little ones? Olly Mann has you covered—these gadgets are sure-fire winners

AGE 2+

Educational toys for toddlers typically focus on reading and counting, but the Lego Duplo Steam Train (£59) teaches coding, too—sort of. This battery-powered train responds to the “action bricks” you place between its tracks; for instance, coming to a halt on red, or sounding the horn on yellow. By tinkering with the sequence, you learn the concept of computer programming—and all without a screen in sight. A companion app, however, does enable you to vary the commands associated with each brick, offering further possibilities.

AGE 3-12

I shudder slightly at the idea of my son having his own tablet, but, if you’re overcome by pester power, the Amazon Fire HD 8 Kids Edition (£99) is a solid choice. The “kid-proof” case means it’ll survive routine bashings and accidents, and the interface, featuring beloved characters like Dora and Mickey, is intuitively designed so even young kids can visually search for books, games or videos. Mum and Dad, meanwhile, get a corresponding dashboard on their smartphone, which allows them to monitor what’s being watched, sets educational goals, and offers discussion points for later.

Olly Mann presents Four Thought for BBC Radio 4, and the award-winning podcasts The Modern Mann and Answer Me This!

AGE 6+

Tech-based toys don’t always entice you away from the sofa, but Laser X (£50 for a twoplayer pack) is an exception. This shooting game provides two blasters (they’re never called “guns” anymore, are they?) and two receiver chest plates which vibrate when targeted from up to 200ft away. Having spent numerous childhood Saturdays dashing about neonpainted Quasar and Laser Quest courses in various grim industrial estates, I can scarcely believe I’ve lived to see an affordable version of this game that works outdoors, and in daylight. That’s progress, eh?

FOR TEENS

The teenage dream of becoming a rockstar still burns bright, but the tedious reality of attending long lessons puts a lot of young musicians off, especially when they’d much rather be on their smartphones. A subscription to Fender Play (£9.99 per month) provides unlimited access to short, multi-camera 4K videos from world-class tutors right to your phone. Hundreds of classic tracks,

from The Who to Green Day, are featured—just tap the screen to see the chords and tabs, and progress at your own pace. And, yes, Dad can have a go, too.

You Couldn’t Make It Up

Win £30 for your true, funny stories! Go to readersdigest. co.uk/contact-us or facebook.com/readersdigestuk

I THINK MY HUSBAND was getting irritated by my boasting about the maid service in our holiday hotel. They always made something out of the clothes we left lying around.

“My nightie was turned into a lovely flower on top of the bed and Steve’s trousers were displayed in the shape of a dog. They would make something different every day with different clothes… so clever.”

“Yes,” my husband interrupted. “They found Dot’s knickers one day and made them into a tent!” That shut me up.

DOROTHY BEDELL, Sheffield

LAST CHRISTMAS my wife gave our son two shirts in different colours. He wore the beige one later that day.

My wife couldn't conceal her disappointment and complained, "And WHAT, might I ask, was wrong with the other one?"

DAVID TRUBY, Hertfordshire

WITH TEN NIECES AND NEPHEWS, I find choosing Christmas gifts for them all a bit daunting, especially as most of them are now teenagers with

particular tastes. Last year I decided to give them all money so that they could go out and buy what they wanted. I wrote a card out to each of them, adding a little note, "This year you can buy your own present."

At our Boxing Day family gathering I couldn't understand why they were a little off with me.

A few weeks into the new year I was tidying up the study, when I came across a pile of cheques each bearing

the name of one of my young relatives. I'd forgotten to enclose the cheques!

CAROL CASAN, Devon

WHILE ACCOMPANYING my friend to the newly opened playground in our area to watch her grandson play, I overheard him tell her a stray cat had appeared at his house the previous week and he had given it milk.

Surprised, knowing her daughter didn't like cats, she asked, "Is Mummy going to keep it?"

Smiling, he nodded and said, "Yes".

"And have you given it a name?"

"Shoo", he replied.

Thinking I had misheard I asked, "What does Mummy call it?"

"SHOO", he repeated.

MARIA URQUHART, County Cork

AN ELDERLY NEIGHBOUR ASKED ME to attend a meeting with an insurance company to get a quote for her husband's life insurance.

After explaining all the details, the salesman asked, "So, when your husband is no longer with us, what would you like to get?"

After thinking for a couple of minutes Maud answered, "I think I'd like a canary so I wouldn't feel so lonely."

CATHERINE HISCOX, Hertfordshire

OUR SIX-YEAR-OLD TWIN granddaughters, Isla and Chloe, asked their mum if they could go to the park with their cousin. Our daughter took

them aside to give them a little lecture about not talking or going anywhere with strangers while they were there.

They assured their mummy that they wouldn't go with anyone, even if they offered them money or sweets.

Then their mum asked, "Even if you were offered the most beautiful puppy in the world?"

Then Chloe piped up, "Now you are getting me really excited!"

Needless to say, Mummy had to start the lecture over again.

PATSY STAFFORD, Ayr

MY EIGHT-YEAR-OLD NIECE frightened the life out of her family when she disappeared at a caravan site recently.

Happily she was found safe and well playing with some children near the refuse bins. Everyone was naturally very relieved and her dad told her if she wanted to go somewhere again, she should ask them first.

She thought about this for a minute and then her face lit up. "Could we go to Florida please?"

LEONA HECKMAN, Sir Ddinbych

MY SON JACK READ a sign that read, "Watch Batteries Installed, £5", in a shop window as we waited on the high street for a bus.

Surprised, he exclaimed, "Why would anyone want to watch something as boring as that?"

KYM YETTON, Cambridgeshire

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IT PAYS TO INCREASE YOUR

Word Power

Whether you’re listening to Christmas carols at the shopping centre or belting out “Auld Lang Syne,” joyful music and sound abound during the festive season. So this month, a sonically inspired quiz. Answers on next page.

BY EMILY COX & HENRY RATHVON

1. raucous adj.—A: disagreeable sound. B: thin and reedy. C: with no embellishment or creativity.

2. harangue n.—A: Irish accent. B: ranting speech. C: earnest plea.

3. tremulous adj.—A: shaking slightly. B: impressively forceful. C: lyrical.

4. mellifluously adv.—A: in a slurred manner. B: smoothly and sweetly. C: in muffled tones.

5. Lorelei n.—A: story narrator. B: opera soloist. C: woman who sings with bewitching beauty.

6. a cappella adv.—A: sung spontaneously. B: sung without instruments. C: sung in a syncopated rhythm.

7. repertoire n.—A: complete list of works, as of music. B: full range of a voice. C: tune sung in a round.

8. declaim v.—A: retract an oath. B: vow. C: speak pompously.

9. dissonant adj.—A: in counterpoint. B: teasing or mocking. C: harmonically clashing.

10. timbre n.—A: tonal quality. B: accent. C: an introduction.

11. troubadour n.—A: town crier. B: strolling singer. C: choir director.

12. eulogise v.—A: lament. B: praise. C: sing a solo.

13. inflection n.—A: vocal rise or fall. B: catchy melody. C: repeat of a phrase.

14. scat v.—A: sing nonsense syllables. B: omit notes. C: speak fast.

15. soliloquy n.—A: glee club. B: pause in speaking. C: the act of talking

Answers

1. raucous—[A] disagreeable sound. I awoke to a raucous chorus of crows.

2. harangue—[B] ranting speech. One more political harangue, and I’m tossing this TV off the balcony!

3. tremulous—[A] shaking slightly. “Um, Dad, any chance of a raise in my allowance?” Tom asked in a tremulous tone.

4. mellifluously—[B] smoothly and sweetly. As expected, Eva’s aria was delivered most mellifluously.

5. Lorelei—[C] woman who sings with bewitching beauty. Many a sailor has been lured to shipwreck by a lovely Lorelei.

6. a cappella—[B] sung without instruments. Jessica asked in music class, “Is it still a cappella if we use kazoos?”

7. repertoire [A] complete list of works, as of music. The new cellist was given just two months to learn the orchestra’s repertoire.

8. declaim—[C] speak pompously. Why can’t politicians speak to us without declaiming like blowhards?

9. dissonant—[C] harmonically clashing. “Let’s run that line again,” the conductor said. “Those three notes are still a little dissonant.”

10. timbre—[A] tonal quality. Want to impress your music friends with the timbre of your voice? First make sure you pronounce the word correctly! (It’s tricky—tahn-ber.)

11. troubadour—[B] strolling singer. I was followed by a troublesome troubadour at the Renaissance Faire.

12. eulogise—[B] praise. Alex was eulogised at the ceremony for his countless acts of philanthropy.

13. inflection—[A] vocal rise or fall. The detective could tell from the suspect’s inflection that she was lying.

WORD OF THE DAY*

14. scat—[A] sing nonsense syllables. Louis Armstrong set the standard on how to scat.

INDUVIAE: the withered leaves which persist on plants.

Alternative suggestions:

“Where I like to be during the cold weather”

“A Geordie describing where he got his impressive suntan”

15. soliloquy [C] act of talking to oneself. Don’t pester me—I’m trying to memorise Hamlet’s soliloquy.

VOCABULARY RATINGS

9 & below: Strident

10–12: Dulcet

13–15: Clarion

Are you looking after your BONE HEALTH?

50% of women and 20% of men are at risk of getting osteoporosis. By the time we reach 30, our bones have reached peak bone strength. Beyond that we start to lose strength and density in our bones, particularly for women through the menopause.

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What do you need for strong bones?:

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These two key minerals are essential for bone health which is why Prime Fifty have used these nutrients in their bone strength formula.

Vitamin D

The vast majority of people, especially over 50’s, are deficient in vitamin D and supplementation is now being recommended by all health professionals. It ensures that calcium and phosphorus are absorbed efficiently from the gut.

Vitamin C, Manganese and Copper

Vitamin C has been shown to contribute to the formation of collagen which plays a key role in laying down new cartilage between bones and therefore bone movement. Whilst manganese and copper contribute to the maintenance of tendons and ligaments that are connected to the bone.

Healthy Ageing Blend

Prime Fifty have also added a blend of key nutrients relevant to the ageing process, together with enhanced absorption.

Brainteasers

Challenge yourself by solving these puzzles, then check your answers on p139

REFILL

Your patio’s been damaged, leaving a big hole. How many replacement paving stones do you need to fill the entire hole, and is it possible to do so without cutting any of them?

Subdivide this region along the grid lines into non-overlapping rectangles and squares. Each one of these rectangles or squares must contain exactly one number that indicates how many cells make up its area. Can you draw all of the correct boundaries?

(REFILL) DARREN RIGBY; (RECTANGLES) FRASER SIMPSON

Replacement paving stone

BUTTONS

Erik bought some identical brass buttons for a jacket, each for the same price. It just so happens that if you add two to the number of buttons he bought, you get the price of each button in pennies. If he spent a total of £4.83, how many buttons did he buy?

SET-FREE

Place an A, B or C in each empty cell. No three consecutive cells in a horizontal, vertical or diagonal line may contain a set of identical letters (such as B-B-B) or of three different letters (such as C-A-B). Can you ensure a set-free grid?

C A B B C

C B

× (AND ÷) FACTOR Arrange the pairs of numbers below into the marked spaces so that all the arithmetic problems yield whole numbers (not fractions) as answers at every stage. None of these whole numbers may exceed 200.

It takes 11, since there are 11 squares missing. Because there are only 10 octagons missing, one paving stone must be cut. RECTANGLES

21 buttons (for 23 cents each).

Test your vocabulary with this verbal teaser: We’ve provided four definitions for the first word, but only one is correct. The others are designed to confuse you.

The first correct answer we pick in December wins £50!* Email excerpts@ readersdigest.co.uk

Answer published in the January issue ANSWER TO NOVEMBER’S PRIZE QUESTION AND THE £50 GOES TO… Lucy Pesaro, Middlesex

Laugh!

Win £30 for every reader’s joke we publish! Go to readersdigest. co.uk/contact-us or facebook.com/readersdigestuk

SO MANY CHRISTMAS TRADITIONS sound like the behaviours of a particularly drunk man.

Some poor wife asks her husband, “Honey, why is there a fir tree in our living room?”

“I like it…We’re… we’re going to decorate it… For Jesus!”

COMEDIAN JIM GAFFIGAN

VEGANS LOVE TO SAY, “Humans are the only animals that drink the milk of other animals.”

Yup, pretty crazy. But you know what else humans do? Make movies, fly planes, call each other on the phone to talk about how awesome milk is…

SEEN ON REDDIT

Not Feline Festive

Despite their human’s best efforts, these furry friends aren’t exactly entering into the festive spirit… (via boredpanda.com)

I DROVE BY AN OFF LICENSE with my four-year-old son; he pointed and said, “That’s where Mummy takes me! She buys beer.”

So now I’m going to start driving him past local hotels. If my wife is having an affair, my little narc will let me know.

COMEDIAN NATHAN TIMMEL

DO YOU THINK THAT FATHER

CHRISTMAS regrets giving coal to all those bad kids now that global warming is threatening his habitat?

COMEDIAN JEREMY MCLELLAN

I SET A PERSONAL RECORD last Christmas. I got my shopping done three weeks ahead of time. I had all

the presents back at my flat and I was halfway through wrapping them, when I realised, Darn, I used the wrong wrapping paper.

The paper I used said, “Happy Birthday”. I didn’t want to waste it, so I just wrote “Jesus” on the end.

COMEDIAN DEMETRI MARTIN

I SAY I LOVE MY WIFE, but sometimes I’m not sure. Well, the symptoms of being in love… shortness of breath, light-headedness, the inability to concentrate…are exactly the same symptoms as carbon monoxide poisoning.

I said: “I think I love you, but shall we get the boiler serviced?”

COMEDIAN SEAN LOCK

I USED MY DEBIT CARD the other night to buy a pint I couldn’t afford.

So yup. That was an overdraft.

COMEDIAN ANTONIO AGUILER

“I DON’T WANT A LOT FOR CHRISTMAS…”

Later that same song…

“All I want for Christmas is you.”

Great work on building my selfconfidence there, Mariah.

SEEN ON TWITTER

I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S WORSE, the people who sign their cats’ names in their Christmas cards, or the cats who refuse to sign them.

SEEN ON TWITTER

WHAT I REALLY DON’T LIKE about office Christmas parties is looking for a new job the next day.

COMEDIAN PHYLLIS DILLER

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE story line of Monopoly is. Seemingly I’m a tiny dog, who repeatedly wins beauty contests and on his birthday demands £10 from everybody he can see. But then bankrupts himself to stay in a hotel when he owns four houses on the next street!

COMEDIAN JOSH WIDDICOMBE

ONE CHRISTMAS TRADITION I love is when people in the wealthier

#Festive

Fails

Tweeters reveal their biggest Christmas fails

@vitaminpea: “After our tree fell over for the sixth time, my dad decided to just lay the presents around it.”

@Amy_Kathryn: “After opening presents my little sister walked up to my parents and said, ‘I’m not complaining, but is this it?’ ”

@Kegrun: “I heard Father Christmas in the living room. Mum stopped me going in by telling me he’d throw salt in my eyes and blind me.”

@RyanCallahanAPa: “My dad made us table football and accidentally put all the players facing the same way. He told us they were just one big team.”

@MoranMandy: “One year my brother spiked the eggnog and my grandma drunkenly admitted she had a crush on the postman.”

CROSSWORD ANSWERS

neighbourhoods spend what would be my food budget for the year on their lights.

Then, in the spirit of Christmas generosity, they allow us poor people to come and look at their houses.

COMEDIAN KEITH LOWELL JENSEN

WHAT DO YOU GET IF YOU CROSS Donald Trump with a Christmas carol?

“O Comb Over Ye Faithful!”

DAVID TRUBY, Hertfordshire

I ALWAYS HAVE THE SAME EXPERIENCE WITH SOUP. At first I think, this is quite nice actually. I’m enjoying this. It’s tasty and it’s good for you, I’m gonna cut out all of that other rubbish and just eat soup.

And then you finish the bread.

You realise you don’t love soup. You love bread and butter dipped in a sauce.

COMEDIAN SEANN WALSH

TRUST ME, THERE IS NO such thing as “extra money.”

“Extra money” is money that bills haven’t found out about yet.

COMEDIAN MARON ZIOVANCE

I LOVE PLAYING MONOPOLY because it makes me feel like a magician. All I have to do is set it up and my friends disappear.

SEEN ON REDDIT

Across: 1 Gorgeous, 5 Swims, 10 Offbeat, 11 Aviator, 12 Bees, 13 Summertime, 14 Else, 16 Rhinestone, 19 Passageway, 22 Tyke, 24 Premarital, 25 Gems, 28 Radiant, 29 Concave, 30 Udder, 31 Tyrolean

Down: 1 Goodbye, 2 Rifle, 3 Eden, 4 Untruth, 6 Waitress, 7 Matrimony, 8 Carmen, 9 Breeze, 15 Suspended, 17 I o W, 18 Database, 19 Papery, 20 Evicts, 21 Anarchy, 23 Eastern, 26 Elate, 27 Undo

60-Second

Stand-Up

We laugh with notoriously funny comedian, Jarred Christmas

WHAT INSPIRES YOUR COMEDY? This show was inspired by a DNA test I had. I was expecting something really exciting and it came out pretty average, but I realised there’s quite a lot of interesting stuff about being average.

WHAT’S THE BEST PART OF YOUR CURRENT SHOW? The ending. It’s a proper surprise and no one expects it, but when they see it they go, “Oh, we should have expected it.”

DO YOU FIND ANY PARTS OF THE COUNTRY TO BE FUNNIER THAN OTHERS? No, but I love gigging in Wales. Welsh crowds are incredible and I’ve always had a good time in Scotland. I grew up in a Scottishinfluenced part of New Zealand and it could just be me thinking We’ve got a connection which influences how I do, whereas they couldn’t give a s**t.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE ONE LINER? My favourite at the moment is a Gary Delaney line where he says, “At Nandos, the bit between the front door and the back is the peri-perineum.”

WHATS YOUR MOST MEMORABLE HECKLE? It was in Croydon, in a club called Up the Creek Too. I was playing for maybe 150 people, to almost complete silence and a guy shouted out, “You have ruined my birthday”—I’m pretty sure I did.

WHICH SUPER POWER WOULD YOU HAVE? Teleportation. Then I could do [multiple] gigs in a night, all over the country and still be home early.

IF YOU WERE A FLY ON THE WALL, WHOSE WALL WOULD IT BE?

George Lucas when he was writing the awful Phantom Menance; just to see what went wrong. When he was writing the character of Jar Jar Binks I could have flown straight into his eye and forced him to change the idea.

For tour dates and more information visit jarredchristmas.com

Beat the Cartoonist!

Think of a witty caption for this cartoon—the three best suggestions, along with the cartoonist’s original, will be posted on our website in midDecember. If your entry gets the most votes, you’ll win £50.

Submit to captions@readersdigest.co.uk or online at readersdigest.co.uk/fun-games by December 9. We’ll announce the winner in our February issue.

October’s Winner

Our cartoonist was left trailing in last place this month with his caption: “I’m sorry I snapped at you.” Our witty reader Eric Bonwick managed to knock him off the top spot with his caption: “It makes me nervous when you watch programmes with Steve Irwin.” With 42 per cent of the vote, he’s our clear winner. Enter online and you could be the next reader to steal our cartoonist’s crown.

In the January Issue

Interview: Steve Coogan

The home-grown funny man on Brexit and finding peace with himself

The Real Detectorists

Exploring the delights and surprises of a metal detecting hobby

BEST OF BRITISH: ON ICE

From ice palaces to a turn on the skating rink, we marvel at Britain’s icy attractions

LAUGH

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