Reader's Digest UK May 2018

Oprah Winfrey “Society Will Never Be The Same Again”

+ BEST OF BRITISH FARMERS’ MARKETS

HEALTH

RISE AND SHINE

8 Ways To Become A Morning Person

BEAT THE BLUES

HOW TO CONTROL YOUR WORRYING

14 IT’S A MANN’S WORLD

Olly Mann moves in with the in-laws

ENTERTAINMENT

20 INTERVIEW:

OPRAH WINFREY

The TV titan talks #TimesUp and those presidential rumours

26 “I REMEMBER”: HELEN LEDERER

The actress reminisces on Naked Video and Ab Fab

HEALTH

34 HOW TO CONTROL YOUR WORRYING

Scientists and psychologists reveal their top tips

INSPIRE

62 BEAT THE BURGLARS

Advice from the experts on keeping your home safe

80 THE VILLAGE THAT REFUSED TO DIE

Craig Stennett travels to the village of Hawes, where community is everything Features

70 BEST OF BRITISH: FARMERS’ MARKETS

The best places to pick up some fresh produce

TRAVEL & ADVENTURE

90 BORDEAUX RISING

A Francophile returns to the heart of France’s wine-growing region and discovers a city on the cusp of change

102 MOUNTAIN MUSEUMS

Alice Greggory scales the mountains of South Tyrol to discover a unique museum

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Times have changed, and funerals are changing too. Imagine holding your farewell in a favourite place, at a time to suit your family and friends, and in a style that truly reflects your life. Now you can. A Pure Cremation separates the practical aspects of a funeral from the farewell. It’s also 60% cheaper than a traditional cremation. Find out more about a completely new level of freedom to celebrate the life, beliefs and relationships that matter to you.

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Times have changed, and funerals are changing too. Imagine holding your farewell in a favourite place, at a time to suit your family and friends, and in a style that truly reflects your life. Now you can. A Pure Cremation separates the practical aspects of a funeral from the farewell. It’s also 60% cheaper than a traditional cremation. Find out more about a completely new level of freedom to celebrate the life, beliefs and relationships that matter to you.

In This Issue…

Taste has an uncanny way of summoning our memories, and in this issue, we’ve laid out a veritable feast. On p26, comedian Helen Lederer reminisces about childhood trips to Hampstead to sample European foods with her Czech grandparents. Meanwhile, we remember the days of a quieter mode of life as we stroll through our favourite farmers’ markets on p70. Our resident foodie, Rachel Walker, is cooking up a treat on p116 with a spread of Jamaican jerk pork and roasted pineapple with rum caramel. If you don’t have any fond memories of these flavours yet, you’re sure to create some now. Bon appétit!

Anna

It’s a daunting task to interview one of the world’s most influential talk show hosts. And yet, on p18 Oprah Winfrey proved to be generous company. She chatted to Karen Anne Overton about her illustrious career, the critical role she played in the #TimesUp movement, and the conversation around her entering the 2020 presidential race. Also in this issue, we have the pleasure of introducing our new fashion columnist, Lisa Lennkh, who’s a true force of nature when it comes to statement looks and sequins and, as you’ll soon learn, a vehement opponent of florals. Check out her punchy take on alternatives to this “sartorial equivalent of a sneeze and a headache” on p124. Happy reading!

Eva

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LETTER OF THE MONTH...

In an age when communicating with family or a friend on the other side of the country takes just a few clicks of a mouse, or a few taps on a mobile screen, it’s very sad that as a society, we’re more lonely than we have ever been; and no other age group feels the sting of loneliness more than the elderly.

It’s the thought that counts. Something as simple as bringing them a magazine, dropping off a little present of their favourite food, or calling for 30 minutes a couple of times a week goes a long way in making a senior feel loved and connected with the world. That’s why I visit my 91-year-old neighbour twice a week. It’s not a chore. I enjoy my brief time with her and I like to think I’m making her feel less lonely.

I hope Max Pemberton’s feature prompts others to give up some of their time for the elderly in their families and in their neighbourhood. Tijhana Aitchison, Wirral

I was really moved by Max Pemberton’s column, “The Loneliest Condition.” I felt for his patient, Matthew, and understood his longing to make friends. Making friends is something I’ve struggled with (loneliness has always been a friend of mine) and I know how isolating and demoralising it can feel to always be on the outside looking in, instead of feeling part of something. As Max says, friends can’t just be manufactured and yet this

doesn’t mean we should give up. The internet is now a great place to find and meet like-minded people and we should remember that quality is better than quantity.

Serendipity has a part to play too, because friends are often found in the most unlikely of places. I hope Matthew discovers this soon and is able to make loneliness a thing of the past.

Jennie Gardner, Bath

PARTY LIKE THE SPANIARDS DO

It was interesting to read Lia Grainger’s feature about locals celebrating the Fallas in Valencia. I had just visited this city and witnessed the residents begin their celebrations. My husband and I had gone for a mini break in early March but we weren’t aware of the Fallas. It was a shock to hear fireworks and gunpowder booming all day, every day, until we learned about the festival. However, seeing the locals enjoy parades and a fireworks procession every day at 2pm was fun! We also saw a ninot exhibition where quirky models that may get burned later in bonfires were featured.

Like Lia, we soon enjoyed the celebrations which climax with the festivities she experienced in midMarch. As we had left an unexpectedly snow-ridden England for our break, I hoped spring would come to us at home as well! I agree with Lia that the festival signals a fresh start for all. It was a lovely experience.

Manisa Kuinkel, Middlesex

CARPE DIEM

I really enjoyed reading Olly Mann’ s article about living in a different historical era. I’m also inclined to agree with his choice of “Right Now.” I’m sure it’s a question asked by many and after learning about the past, we can all dream about how it might have been. Sadly we have little say as to when and where we arrive. As a post-war born child, I can honestly see the pros and cons relating to any period of time.

The older we get, the better we realise how much experience we have gained over the course of our lives. Technology thrives on making life so much easier now but there will always be the unfortunate who struggle through.

We cannot predict what happens so perhaps “Carpe Diem” from the past, present, and future, with good allround balanced views might just be the best way to live.

Peter Fitzpatrick, Lancashire

CRAZY ABOUT QUINOA

Thank you for your health feature

“Home Grown Superfoods.” From quinoa to chia seeds and goji berries, I’m going to follow your good advice and make these nutrition superstars more “local” by growing them myself. I’ve long been a big fan of trendy superfoods. Why? Because they’re rich in healthy nutrients that boost my immune system, protect me against disease, keep me looking and feeling young and generally make me feel super-duper!

However, they can be expensive. So growing my own—whether on a windowsill, in my backyard or garden— makes perfect sense.

Thank you for doing my homework and helping me to get started.

Leo Seville, Prenton

CHILDHOOD MIGRAINE

It was interesting to read your article on migraines, but you omitted the very important issue of migraines in childhood.

My daughter and son had this condition, at four and six years old respectively. As a mother, it’s so hard to see young children in such pain. Having recorded their migraine history, I discovered that stress was the trigger, ie excitement or distress.

I found invaluable information by Migraine Action, which provides useful information on all types of this unpleasant condition.

Despite having been a keen reader of Reader’s Digest for over 30 years, this is the first time that I have felt compelled to write. Thank you for a fantastic magazine!

Sharon Carmichael, Bangor

ON THE TRAIL OF LOST PENSIONS

Do you know where all your pensions are? It is easy to lose track, as for many of us - retirement is no longer about simply relaxing after many decades of hard work with just one employer.

The average worker in the UK changes jobs every five years*. In the past, the norm for many people was to leave school or university and embark on a career for life with the same employer. Changing lifestyles and shifting attitudes towards work have meant that many people find themselves getting itchy feet after just a few years in the same job. Almost a quarter of employed people are currently looking for new roles.

This professional promiscuity can have significant knock-on e ects. For example, it has been estimated that every year job changes result in millions of pounds being lost in unclaimed pension savings.

people with one or more pension products are unaware of the value of their pensions. The best solution for this is to seek professional independent financial advice from a specialist adviser. Speaking to a Flying Colours adviser could help you to untangle the web of untraced pensions that you may have accumulated over the course of your career. And, help you to make the most of the benefits to which you are entitled. ■

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Since 2012, all employers in the UK have been legally obliged to provide a workplace pension scheme to their employees. Regular job-hopping can leave a trail of forgotten workplace savings schemes and pension pots in many people’s wake.

It’s easy to lose track of the pension schemes you’re involved with, let alone how much they might be worth. A recent survey has found that 40 per cent* of

Reader’s Digest has partnered with trusted pension and investment experts Flying Colours to provide you with the information you need to identify which option is best for you and help you plan successfully for retirement, or make the best choices once you get there. You can call our pension experts on 0333 241 9919. We’ll only ever recommend the best pension investment approach to suit your circumstances at the best possible cost and we o er a no-cost, no-obligation exploratory meeting at a venue convenient to you, including your own home.

See

...differently

For many Japanese people, the annual “Golden Week” is the most welcome time of year. That’s because in just seven days locals enjoy four national holidays! This means that during May there’s hardly a spot left in the country that’s not packed full of vacationers. As seen here near Matsumoto, in the heart of the Japanese Alps, hundreds of sojourners are enjoying their springtime despite having to camp in the snow.

Home From Home

This month Olly Mann discovers the highs and the lows of inter-generational living…

Let me start by saying, unequivocally, that my inlaws are wonderful people. In fact, if you forced me to spend three months living with anybody’s in-laws, I’d pick mine.

But that didn’t make it any less daunting when I realised, at the turn of the year, that our ongoing house refurbishment meant my wife, our two-year-old son and I, would need to decamp to her parents’ home in North Hertfordshire. (The alternative options, rapidly rejected, were renting a serviced apartment—which costs roughly the same as hiring a private tropical island—or colonising my mum’s house, which is 600 years old and therefore a toddler death trap.)

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

My wife’s youngest sister had also recently returned home, aged 26, to re-train as a teacher. So I was concerned, despite repeated reassurances to the contrary, that we might be unwelcome—another three mouths to feed, another three towels in the bathroom. I worried we were robbing my wife’s parents of their retirement, somehow; gatecrashing the homestead in our late thirties with our messy child and our employment anxiety and our glutenfree pasta.

Plus, it meant sharing a room with my son. We’d avoided doing this since he was two months old, because he snores and smells of stale wee. But despite the fact that my wife’s middle sister has her own dwelling, 59 miles away, her unoccupied bedroom was, nonnegotiably, sacrosanct. So, for the past 12 weeks, we’ve squeezed into close quarters: me, my wife, my son, his six teddies, two dinosaurs,

14 dinky cars and extensive collection of Peppa Pig memorabilia. I even attempted to gain access for our cat Coco, but family fears were voiced that she might clash with the resident feline, William. (Incidentally, no-one in my wife’s family thinks it’s remotely amusing that they own a cat called William, despite it being self-evidently hilarious to bestow upon any cat a bland middle-aged man’s name.)

I was also concerned that living with my in-laws might damage my relationship with them. I had been the first boy to marry into their family, and when I visited for a Sunday roast, was made to feel like the son they’d never had. I’d enthusiastically discuss politics with my father-in-law, then regale them all with half-cocked tales of my vaguely glamorous job, and not bother getting up at the end of the meal to wash the dishes, because, you know, I’m a busy guy and it’s the weekend. I realised that this modus operandi could not be sustained over three months. I had enjoyed being waited on by them, and fussed over, and admired. But now I would have to do the dishes.

As it turned out, many of these worries were misplaced. My in-laws are tolerant fellows, who seem to genuinely enjoy being on-hand

to help out with their grandson. Sleeping in one room as a family has actually been rather bonding for us (although, it must be said, a romantic turn-off). And although I’ve had to make a token effort at washing the dishes, it turns out there’s actually a secret dishwasher, discreetly integrated within their kitchen units, so really it’s only a case of preliminary rinsing. If anything, the six of us living under one roof—aged 2-65—has showcased some benefits of intergenerational living.

It’s almost been fun.

But, however you slice it, living with other adults is hard. They have their set way of doing things, their little quirks. For example, it turns out my father-in-law quietly patrols the wall sockets each night, switching off every

“ However you slice it, living with other adults is hard ”

read an article about someone’s house catching fire because they hadn’t unplugged their toaster or something. But it means that if I leave my phone charging downstairs at 11pm, it will only be 20 per cent charged when I unthinkingly stick it in my pocket on my way to work at 7am. Not useful.

Then there’s their lack of box-set etiquette. Surely it’s common sense that, once episodes one and two of any given TV show have been designated as family viewing, it follows that subsequent episodes of that series should only be consumed when the whole family is once again gathered together on the sofa?

COMMON SENSE. I can assure you, Homeland is even harder to follow when you’re forced to skip three episodes forward because your cohabitants “didn’t realise we were watching it together”.

Politics is now to be avoided. Despite progressive hearing loss, my father-in-law retains an uncanny ability to detect the trigger-words “Brexit”, “Trump” or “Corbyn” wherever they may be uttered within his property, and ensnare you in a seminar. I’ve missed trains because of the Common Fisheries Policy.

So, I’m looking forward to moving back to our own space—a place where we’ve chosen the fixtures and fittings, and are able to leave our gadgets charging overnight, and I can break wind without inhibition. But home, ultimately, is wherever you feel loved. I’ll always feel I’ve got a second home now, up in North Hertfordshire.

TAKE A BREAK: TREE-MENDOUS FACTS

A large oak tree can drop as many as 10,000 acorns per year

Earth has more than 60,000 known tree species and more than half of them only exist within a single country

For the first 90 per cent of the Earth’s history there were no trees at all; instead, our planet was home to fungi that could grow to 26ft tall

A large oak tree can consume about 100 gallons of water per day, and a giant sequoia can drink up to 500 gallons

Researchers recently discovered a 5,062-year-old Bristlecone tree in North America that has been growing since the days of the woolly mammoth

SOURCE: MNN.COM

Oprah Winfrey:

“Society will never be the same again”

2018 is rapidly becoming a milestone year for Oprah Winfrey. While the 64-year-old is clearly not short of them in a life of unimaginable purpose that’s set to take yet another 90-degree turn, it may just be that the actress, producer, television star, entrepreneur and philanthropist finally finds herself coming full circle.

BY KAREN ANNE OVERTON

This latest chapter began when Oprah took on the part of celestial being, Mrs. Which, in the new Disney epic, A Wrinkle in Time. Her performance prompted the Cecil B DeMille Award at the 2018 Golden Globes ceremony, where she delivered a speech so rousing it led to calls for her to run as President of the United States.

“It’s another situation I’ve got myself in,” she laughs, “but I care about injustice and if I get the opportunity to flag it, I will, every time. I’ll stand up there.”

Ironically, the charismatic icon is more grounded than ever. Oprah recognises she cannot do everything alone, as she once thought she could, and accepts that when it comes to real change, we all have a long way to go, and a lot to contribute.

“It’s funny because I wasn’t even supposed to be in this movie!” she laughs, referring to Disney’s recent CGI spectacular. “I’ve been friends with Ava DuVernay, the film’s director, since I worked with her on Selma. She’s a wonderful, close friend of mine, and we were talking. She told me she was planning on shooting

this movie and I said, ‘I’d love to come there with you to watch.’ And she said, ‘If you’re going to do that, would you like to read this part and see what you think?’” Oprah laughs heartily: “And it all happened from there—a job and a free vacation!”

Such accidental opportunities are commonplace in the world of Winfrey, whose ascent from depths of poverty and abuse to one of the most powerful and wealthy women in America is a screenplay in itself. Charismatic and brimming with compassion, when the luminous Mississippian heralds a call to arms, billions around the world listen. Such was the case when she took to the podium at the Golden Globes in

January, proclaiming that “A new day has come”, in reference to the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements. Within minutes, her speech had sent tremors through social media, with many predicting she was sure to be a

“

It’s a significant moment in time for all of us. Society will never revert to how it was. It can’t and it won’t ”

contender for the 2020 election. A recent National Public Radio poll in the States suggested at least half of the electorate would vote for Oprah over Donald Trump (who garnered just 39 per cent of the vote).

But while Oprah has repeatedly rubbished the notion of entering politics—“I’m not built for a career in Washington”—the chat show titan retains the right to celebrate the sea change currently swamping Hollywood and beyond.

“It’s a significant moment in history for all of us,” she utters in her famously rich tones. “Society as an entity will never be the same again, and will never revert to how it was. It can’t, and it won’t.”

The truth is, Oprah is already a leader who empowers and emboldens her supporters, so it’s understandable that she isn’t willing to risk it all for a spin of the Washington wheel. If the media is the natural successor to the power of politics, then Oprah, who owns her own cable channel, OWN, and is a special correspondent for current affairs show 60 Minutes, is already an unrivalled leader. Perhaps part of that is because—unlike the current US President and so many others at the top table—Oprah was not born into wealth; she has worked tirelessly over the past four decades to build her formidable empire.

Born in 1950s Mississippi to a teenage mother, Oprah’s early years

(Left) Oprah describes meeting Mandela as a “defining moment”

were fraught and unstable. Until the age of six she was raised by her grandmother on a farm, a woman whose highest ambition for her granddaughter was that she would be hired as a domestic worker by someone who would treat her kindly.

Eventually the young girl was sent to live with her mother, who worked long hours, leaving her vulnerable to the predatory men around her. Aged nine, she was sexually abused by a cousin, and further abuse followed. At 14, a pregnant Oprah went to live with her father in Nashville, where she gave birth to a premature son who tragically died shortly afterwards.

Rather than be broken by this, Oprah kicked back, channelling her pain into positivity, to the point that she even credits those who exploited her for making her the woman she is. “Being 14 was a very difficult time for me, it was rough. And had I had guidance at that age, my life might have been very different,” she reflects. “But I do believe, from the lowest moments in your life, the deepest pits where you don’t understand it, every single moment of emotional destitution, where you couldn’t see a way out… I believe every moment is a building block and another step in your journey to being who you are meant to be, and who you are meant to become.”

It was while living with her father and stepmother that the teenager finally found her feet. At 17, she won

As

Mrs. Which in director Ava DuVernay’s new Disney epic, A Wrinkle in Time

the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant, an event sponsored by the local radio station. Noticing her raw talent, Oprah was offered a part-time job reading the news, which led to a move to WJZ-TV in Baltimore as coanchor for the six o’clock headlines.

“ I used to go to work every day shaking with fear, saying ‘I know I’m going to be fired’ ”

Things didn’t initially work out, however. Oprah was dropped and slipped back into the relative safety of the newsroom, or so she thought. There, she met an unexpected mentor who would lead her on the path to success.

“There was an editor in the newsroom in Baltimore, and every night, he used to yell, ‘WINFREY, where’s my copy!’ And I was petrified of him,” she recalls.

“I used to go to work every day shaking with fear, saying ‘I know I’m going to be fired’. I wasn’t a great writer, I wasn’t fast enough. In the end I didn’t get fired, but I did get demoted to the talk show… which was seen as a big demotion in those

days. And that’s where it all began. So, I thank him. He was inadvertently a guiding light!”

It’s easy to see what Oprah’s legion of supporters see in the television icon, and arguably her traumatic past has played a big part in developing that special blend of empathy and courage which has become her trademark. When her Chicago-based morning talk show AM Chicago was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1986, it sparked a daytime television revolution, when Oprah, a young black woman in a white male-dominated industry, pioneered the concept of achieving personal healing through the means of a public confessional.

“SOCIETY

“ I don’t think I’ve ever gotten starstruck. I tend to live like we are all the same, because we are ”

“In my career, what I’ve always tried my best to do—whether on television or through film—is say something about how men and women really behave,” said the star in her Golden Globes acceptance speech. “It’s to say how we experience shame, how we love and how we rage, how we fail, how we retreat, persevere, and how we overcome. I’ve interviewed and portrayed people who’ve withstood some of the ugliest things life can throw at them, but the one quality all of them seem to share is an ability to maintain hope for a brighter morning, even during our darkest nights.”

Some people are born with great expectation already bestowed upon them. Others, like Oprah, are considered lucky if they manage to carve a life that’s tolerable at best. This is what sets her apart. And having witnessed both the struggle of poverty and the exuberant and often unnecessary opulence of the rich, she is one of only a limited few in Hollywood with a greater understanding of human nature.

With that, unsurprisingly, comes a well-balanced view on the fickle beast that is celebrity.

“Fame is an interesting state of mind, because you yourself, you don’t change; it’s everyone around you who changes… you stay the same,” says Oprah, adding sagely, “It’s who you are within before the fame that becomes magnified.”

Despite an interview roster showcasing such variety of personality and talents, from Lance Armstrong to John F Kennedy Jr., Tom Cruise to Michael Jackson, the revered presenter has always remained calm, not out of arrogance, but out of a sense of equality.

“I don’t think I’ve ever really gotten starstruck or will get starstruck because I tend to live like we are all the same, because we are. But I also can’t get away from the fact that we all have heroes we look up to, and for me, I’ve had a few moments…” she says thoughtfully.

“[Meeting] Nelson Mandela was a very defining moment in the sense of what he represents for freedom and equality. Sidney Poitier too, because I had watched him my whole childhood and his winning the Oscar in 1964 was earth-shattering for me.

“And I always remember Diana Ross,” adds Winfrey. “That was an overwhelming moment, with a lot of tears, a lot of hyperventilating, because I had always dreamed of being a Supreme!”

TIME FOR NEW BEGINNINGS

step spring your in

Spring is a great time to meet new people — new beginnings are in the air and there are so many chances to get out and about, go to new places and try new things. Other people are thinking along the same lines – so the chances of meeting that special someone are pretty good.

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Helen Lederer I REMEMBER…

Known for her colourful character roles, Helen Lederer, 63, has lit up our screens since the Eighties. She looks back on her favourite roles and family memories…

…WE USED TO GO TO HAMPSTEAD AND ENJOY DIFFERENT EUROPEAN FOODS. My grandparents came to England in 1939 from Czechoslovakia. They were a very close family, which was understandable, having started their lives again in a new country. We were the first people I knew to have croissants and ham in their home. Where I grew up, in Eltham, I don’t think any of my mates had the same kind of food that we got from my grandmother.

…WE WERE ALLOWED TO DO OUR OWN THING. I had one friend at school whose mother thought we were dangerously liberal but we weren’t as liberal as my best friend because her parents allowed them to paint murals on their wall, which I thought was the bee’s knees. My

sister had frightening, bright orange walls in the Mary Quant era—oh my God, the worst colours.

…I HAD A SHELF ABOVE MY BED THAT I USED TO GRAFFITI THE NAMES OF BOYS I LIKED ON. Then, one time, my sister’s boyfriend came to stay. He had to sleep in my bedroom and he revealed all this knowledge. I was outed by my future brother-in-law of all my crushes when I was a teenager.

…LEARNING THAT MY MOTHER WORKED AT BLETCHLEY. She did quite important work deciphering intelligence and she then worked at the Board of Trade until she married. In another generation, I’m sure she would have carried on working in the civil service. She was always busy.

(Top left); Helen with her sister Janet in Austria, aged six; (top right) her parents’ wedding day in 1950; (left) relaxing in the garden aged 14

My memory is of somebody very competent, and when my father died, she had a few female friends and they would go off and do these interesting holidays. I have always been full of admiration for her.

…ME, MY SISTER AND TWO OF OUR FRIENDS—a boy and a girl of the same ages as us, would make maps of the golf course at the end of our garden and then we would taunt the golfers as they walked past. We’d usually sing “Nelly the Elephant” at them, thinking we were being very, very rude.

…AT JUNIOR SCHOOL I WROTE A SKETCH SHOW because I really wanted to be David Frost. At that point I had started to see That Was the Week That Was, and I just wanted to do sketches and interview people and I was kind of precocious with it,

“I think I’m slightly mad. I get an idea and I just go off with it and I don’t think of the consequences”

pretending to be grown-up and pompous. That programme inspired me more than anything.

…AGED 10, MY TEACHER ASKED ME TO WRITE A PLAY for the summer fête. I did it but it wasn’t very good, so from very early on I knew the highs and the lows—that you can get it right and you can get it wrong—and that’s stayed with me all my life.

…AT SENIOR SCHOOL I GOT INTO QUITE A LOT OF TROUBLE. I didn’t mean to get into trouble—this is the thing—but I just did. The headmistress had me marked out and by the third time I was told to go and see her. I just remember she said, “You… you…” And I was mortified.

I did set off stink bombs when I was 12—I was the ringleader on that—but what I’ve never been able to do is think of the consequences. I think I’m slightly mad like that, I get an idea and I just go with it. I never thought, Well if I do that, then it will blight my school career.

…I STUDIED SOCIOLOGY AT HERTFORDSHIRE UNIVERSITY.

I felt a certain pressure from my parents to do something sensible. That was a time of boys and parties and the era of Party Sevens, where you had those big cans of beer that would turn up at a party. It was a fine time and I got the hang of studying very late, so I have no regrets about that. I had a short spell as a social worker, though I don’t think I was a very good one. I did my best but I would go to bed worrying and wake up worrying.

…HAVING A LIGHT BULB MOMENT WHEN I WAS 27. I went to drama school and did a year’s postgraduate study at the Central School of Speech and Drama. That whole year was spent actually waking up happy and going to bed happy. I don’t think I have ever been as happy because, of course when you’re with students now, they have no idea what’s up ahead, do they? It’s, “I’ve got to do an essay…” but because I had already done a degree, I kind of relished the freedom to learn.

…WHEN I WAS A STUDENT, I WENT DOWN THE DORDOGNE WITH A BOYFRIEND IN A CANOE FOR A MONTH. It was just the best.

I don’t think I’ve ever been away for a month since. It was a trip where I could just completely get away from everything. We’d pack the canoe up

and it was this canvas thing; unbelievable, nobody would do it now. I’m not usually that kind of person, but if a boyfriend says they are going to do it, you tag along, don’t you? That was a time when you didn’t hear any cars or anything—I can shut my eyes and I can just see the river. It was very peaceful and we’d go into the villages to get baguettes, and then we would have those Calor gas things. We lived off hardly any rations and we were really very happy.

…I SPENT THE FIVE YEARS I WAS A STAND-UP, IN A STATE OF NERVES. Part of me thinks that perhaps I should have just stuck at it, particularly as there were so few women doing it. But I got a proper, grown-up, radio job relatively soon afterwards. It was such a joy. There

“Part of me thinks I should have stuck with stand-up, particularly as there were so few women doing it ”

was the joy of going into the BBC radio theatre and hearing people clapping for you when you hadn’t even done anything, and the joy of people just being nice to you and giving you a script that somebody else had written.

The joy of it all was so immense that I signed up to the next bit of the journey unquestioningly and made sure that I turned up at the right times and always did the best that I could.

…THE WEST END SHOW I DID WHEN I HAD JUST HAD MY DAUGHTER, HANNAH. It was called Having a Ball and was written by Alan Bleasdale. I did that for six months. I hadn’t done much theatre before and as it was set in a vasectomy clinic, I had to be on stage with a naked man. You eventually start to get used to it, of course. In this funny life, opportunities come and you take them.

…JUST SAYING AB FAB PUTS A SMILE ON PEOPLE’S FACES. That’s true even now, which is amazing because it’s endured for 25 years.

I knew Dawn and Jennifer from the stand-up circuit and they were three years ahead of me in what they had done. It was lovely to do the film recently—it was really funny just to see all those faces again. There was something special about it, maybe just because we had had the gap and we had learned to appreciate what it was, because often, one just goes and does the job.

…DOING CELEBRITY BIG BROTHER.

I just tried to be myself throughout the process, and I was always trying to find a way to have a laugh with people, because at the end of the day

(Opposite) Helen performing at her first Saturday Night Live show in the 80s; (left) with her then three-year-old daughter Hannah; (above) with Sandi Bogle after her elimination from the Big Brother House

it doesn’t really matter where you come from or what you do as long as you can have a laugh.

…MY LUCKIEST BREAK WAS NAKED VIDEO, THE BBC SKETCH SHOW. My time at Naked Video felt like having a proper job. And then, of course, there was also my break in Ben Elton’s series, Happy Families, where I played Flossie.

It was kind of exciting to get a proper job, because so much of my life is just not a proper job—writing scripts, getting rejected, or after dinner talks—everything I do, I make it up. So the joys of getting a proper,

endorsed job from somebody else have been rare in my life and I really appreciate it when I get them.

…I WAS 35 WHEN I HAD MY DAUGHTER, HANNAH. I was considered an old mum in those days, though maybe I wouldn’t be by today’s standards. I knew that I wanted a baby—some people do just know. It was absolutely the right time for me and both her father and I really wanted her…

Of course, the marriage didn’t last and we ended up getting divorced a year later, but her birth was just one

of those things that happened and we are so pleased it did.

…MY TOUGHEST TIME WAS WHEN MY FORMER AGENT WAS EXPOSED FOR STEALING MONEY FROM HER CLIENTS. I was a single mum and commuting to Birmingham to do an antiques programme at the time. I really didn’t want to be away from Hannah but I had to do it. Then, I had a sudden phone call from the agency’s accountant saying my agent had stolen money out of her clients’ accounts. She stole a huge amount from me—in the thousands. These

The cast of BBC Radio 4’s In One Ear in 1983. L-R Nick Wilton, Helen Lederer, Steve Brown and Clive Mantle

were fees that were a big deal at the time and, more to the point, were unlikely to come again for some time.

People asked, “How did you not know?” That was a low point, when I thought, I’ve done all this work and now the money that I earned has been stolen. But you just have to move on and not hold grudges. I hope she has moved on by now but it did affect my trust with other agents, which wasn’t fair or helpful.

…MY MOTHER AND MY FATHER DYING WERE TOTAL MOMENTS OF BEREAVEMENT IN MY LIFE. But however hard it might be, you just have to accept that as you get older,

these things become inevitable. And some people have more of that than others in their life don’t they?

Some people just don’t seem to have had anyone they love die on them, and that’s just the way the cards fall, and you have to deal with it. You don’t have a choice about these things. There’s that phrase: It’s not what happens in life that matters, it’s how you deal with it. As told to Joy Persaud

Helen Lederer is performing at the Edinburgh Fringe in August. Tickets available from edfringe.com. She’s also starring in ITV’s TheRealFullMonty: LadiesNight this spring

TAKE A BREAK: EGGING EACH OTHER ON

The annual festival of Els Enfarinats in Alicante, Spain sees people come together to pelt each other with flour and eggs (via sadanduseless.com).

BY SYDNEY LONEY

How Worrying Stop to

STUDYING IN HER DORMITORY ROOM alone one evening at the University of Victoria, Canada, student Jill Taylor suddenly felt a tightening in her stomach and found it difficult to breathe. “My heart was racing, my vision tunnelled,” she says. “I was scared. I didn’t know what was happening to me.” It was November 2006 and the then second-year university student phoned for an appointment with her doctor the next day.

He diagnosed her with “test anxiety”, and because she hadn’t been sleeping or eating well, he prescribed sleeping pills. Having a diagnosis—a name she could give to her frightening episodes of anxiety— and the medication helped Jill.

For the next few years, she pushed herself through university, graduation, getting a job, falling in love and getting married. For a time, things seemed to be on a more even keel. But she continued to suffer unmanaged and frequent anxiety attacks—most often when faced with tests of any kind, talking on the phone, and thoughts of the future.

Then Jill fell into a serious depression brought on by her continued and unaddressed anxiety. She could no longer function: she quit her job, stopped going out and retreated into a shell.

from General Anxiety Disorder (GAD). With this diagnosis in hand, her doctor prescribed some antianxiety medication and encouraged her to find a qualified person with whom she could work to help manage her disorder.

GAD CAN BE PHYSICALLY EXHAUSTING. SYMPTOMS INCLUDE IRRITABILITY, AGITATION AND FEAR

Finally, urged by her wife to seek help, Jill went to see her family doctor in Vancouver where she now lived. Her doctor referred her to a psychiatrist at the Mood Disorders Clinic of British Columbia. There, finally, in June 2014, Jill received an accurate diagnosis—she suffered

GAD IS A CONDITION characterised by persistent, excessive worry—even when there’s nothing concrete to worry about. “People with GAD attempt to plan for every eventuality, all of the time,” says Dr Melisa Robichaud, a psychologist in Vancouver. “It’s cognitively exhausting.” It can be physically taxing, too, with symptoms ranging from sleep problems, irritability and difficulty maintaining concentration to restlessness or agitation. At its core, anxiety is the body’s most basic survival mechanism, Robichaud explains, the fight-or-flight response you experience when you feel threatened. “Anxiety is like the body’s smoke alarm: whether there’s smoke or fire, it makes the same noise.” It can be triggered by real danger but also by anything that we simply perceive as dangerous.

People with GAD think up “what if” scenarios excessively, and this provokes more anxiety. “They can’t stop their worrying once it begins,” says Robichaud.

WHO IS AFFECTED?

While scientists aren’t sure why some people are more prone to GAD than others, part of the risk is genetic. GAD also often coincides with other illnesses, like depression, and women are twice as likely as men to be affected.

The World Health Organisation

reports that the number of people suffering from depression and/or anxiety increased by nearly 50 per cent between 1990 and 2013. Mike Ward, a psychotherapist and founder of the London Anxiety Clinic in the UK, has seen a 30 per cent increase in patients with GAD clinic-wide in the last two years alone. He says the condition is influenced by everything from gene expression and early family relationships to individual thinking styles.

“GAD is not a simple fact of cause and effect,” he explains.

As anxiety disorders go, GAD is one of the most common, especially in older adults. “GAD is more common than social anxiety disorder, panic disorder and major depression in seniors,” says Julie Wetherell, a psychologist at San Diego Healthcare System and professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego.

The condition also manifests differently in people 55 and older, whom Wetherell says, tend to worry less about work and more about personal health and family issues. “Sometimes people have a lifelong history of anxiety that they’ve coped with through distraction or workaholism,” she says. “The pervasiveness of the worry only becomes apparent when they’re no longer working or are unable to engage in previous coping strategies.”

pulmonary disease, coronary artery disease and hyperthyroidism. “It’s possible for a person to have both a medical condition and anxiety, so when the medical condition is diagnosed, the anxiety may remain overlooked and untreated,” Wetherell says.

Anxiety-like symptoms can also be caused by many medications, including blood pressure pills, hormones, steroids and antidepressants, as well as over-the-counter treatments that contain caffeine, like some cough syrups and decongestants.

“DON’T BE AFRAID TO ASK FOR HELP—IT IS OUT THERE, AND YOU ARE NOT ALONE WITH YOUR ANXIETY DISORDER”

A DIFFICULT DIAGNOSIS

Anxiety symptoms are associated with several health issues, which can make diagnosis tricky. Conditions that can cause—or mimic—anxiety include chronic obstructive

GAD sufferers will often see a medical doctor first about their physical symptoms and, unfortunately in some cases, professionals brush off both the physical and psychological concerns.

“Many people think that worry isn’t a legitimate mental health complaint because everybody frets,” Robichaud says. She’s seen patients who endured symptoms for 15 years before seeking help. Luckily, Jill’s doctor recognised the signs of a mental health issue, and referred her to the appropriate professionals.

MEDICATION VS THERAPY

Today, after three years of ongoing work with her therapist, Jill is living a full life with her wife and baby son. In addition to talk therapy, she works on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a mindfulness-based programme, to manage her anxiety. Jill still has attacks, but much more infrequently, and she’s currently not on medication.

However, if her anxiety starts to overwhelm her or she feels herself sinking back into a state of depression, she and her doctor work together on a course of medication to help her through—and she’s carefully monitored.

Medications to help treat anxiety can come with serious side effects, such as sedation, cognitive impairment (over long-term use) and sometimes even the development of tolerance, which can lead to addiction. Wetherell recommends a non-pharmaceutical approach using relaxation and meditation. “Our research team is currently using mindfulness-based stress reduction, which has no side effects,” she says. MBSR techniques include paying attention to breathing and doing mental scans of your body to increase awareness of physical sensations. “We found that MBSR reduces cortisol, a stress hormone that damages the brain’s hippocampus and frontal lobe,

so it may have beneficial effects on memory and thinking, as well as on anxiety.”

An important aspect of mindfulness is to learn to focus on present-moment experience, says Robichaud. “For GAD patients, worries involve a stream of thoughts about potential negative events that might occur in the future, so being able to focus on the present time can be beneficial.”

MANAGING GAD

For mild cases of GAD, lifestyle changes may help. One of the most important ones is exercise. Researchers at Princeton University found that physical activity reorganises the brain in a way that reduces the organ’s response to stress, making anxiety less likely to interfere with normal brain function. Ward says yoga is a good choice, as it helps relieve physical tension. Meanwhile, any type of exercise that can tire you out helps you sleep better—and sleep

Human Behaviour showed that using multiple social media platforms increases the risk of both anxiety and depression. And, Ward says, his patients often use social media as a way to distract themselves, which may provide short-term relief but is actually a cognitive avoidance of their anxiety.

There’s also evidence that what you eat may play a role in your ability to calm your mind. Jill now pays more attention to what she eats, and has cut way back on caffeine and processed foods. She cooks mostly with fresh ingredients, and also drinks more water. A 2015 study in the journal Psychiatry Research found that eating foods high in probiotics may protect against symptoms of social anxiety. And a 2011 US study found that meals high in omega-3 bear a link to lower levels of anxiety.

STAYING THE COURSE

Even though you can reduce—or even overcome—generalised anxiety, maintaining solid mental health remains an ongoing process.

Jill continues her mindfulness practice—including breathing exercises, learning to let go of anxious feelings, and when in a fullblown attack, grounding herself with sounds around her, for example. “These techniques are great, but don’t happen overnight; it’s a practice that has to be diligently worked on, but works wonders in the midst of anxiety,” Jill says.

In addition, she has found that being open and forthcoming about her condition and speaking honestly with her friends and family members—and even strangers—has been of tremendous benefit.

“The scariest part of anxiety can be the feeling you’re the only person who feels this way. When I share my story, it helps others realise it’s not just them.

“Don’t be afraid to say you need help,” she says. “You’re not alone.”

Says Jill, “I now consider my anxiety an overbearing and difficult roommate. But I don’t fight it. I manage it, rather than allowing it to manage me.”

TAKE A BREAK: COME FLY WITH ME

Amelia Earhart met Eleanor Roosevelt at a state dinner in 1933. The women quickly hit it off, and while still wearing full evening dress, snuck out of the White House, commandeered an aircraft and took an impromptu joyride, flying from Washington DC to Baltimore overnight. When Earhart disappeared, the Roosevelt administration spent more than $4m on the search effort, to no avail.

SOURCE: HISTORY.COM

Estate Planning

Property Trust Wills. What are they?

A Will is an important legal document, possibly the most important many of us will ever sign, but your Will might not be everything you imagined. A standard ‘Mirror’ or ‘Joint’ Will may appear to keep things nice and simple, but it could also fail to protect what you’ve spent a lifetime building.

While for many people these type of Wills will be fine, for others, the situation they create, where the surviving partner is left everything, could be a concern. It means that, as they grow old, the nest egg you wanted to leave to your family could be eaten into as it is used to pay for things such as care fees.

How does a Property Trust Will work?

A Property Trust Will is often suitable for co-owners of a property (often husband and wife, or unmarried couples), and is used to ringfence half the family home on the first death of a couple.

A Property Trust Will protects the half of the home for the next generation. For example, it helps to stop it from being used to pay care fees. It also protects it if your surviving spouse gets re-married – something which often means that part of your inheritance goes to someone you didn’t want it to.

That wish to pass something on is about the most basic, human and natural instinct there is.

When setting up a Property Trust

Will, the legal title to the property is changed from joint tenants to what is known as tenants in common –nothing to do with renting, but it is an important change at the Land Registry that allows each co-owner to decide where their half share of the property goes when they die. This type of Will gives the surviving co-owner the use of the half of the home in trust for the entirety of their lifetime, ensuring they can continue to live in the property as if they owned it, and they could even move house if they wished.

But because half of the property is in trust, it is protected for the next generation and helps to ensure it goes to those you want it to.

Could it be right for me?

There is no ‘one size fits all’ solution to your legal planning. It is essential that the right solution is created for your personal situation, and specialist advice is essential. A starting point is the review of your existing planning, circumstances and objectives.

You can arrange for a specialist Estate Planning Practitioner to visit your home without charge or obligation. A free one hour consultation in the comfort and privacy of your own home will allow you to learn what steps you could take to upgrade your planning.

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For your free information pack

Call 0800 110 5421*, quote ‘RDL21’ or visit coop.co.uk/estateplanning

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*Calls are free from most UK landlines. Mobile networks may charge.

8 Ways To Become A Morning Person

Feel like a zombie first thing? Find it hard to get started? Try these suggestions to help you rise and shine—and be effective from morn till night

1 Get up earlier. Sleeping in can be a hard habit to break. But essentially it involves two things—going to bed earlier and getting up earlier. Start off by going to bed 15 minutes before your usual turn-in time and setting your alarm the same number of minutes earlier the next day. Gradually reset your sleep cycle until you get to your desired wake-up time.

2

Have a good stretch in bed. Before you even open your eyes, stretch every extremity for 15 seconds. Lift your arm and begin by stretching each finger, then your hand, next your wrist and then your arm. Move on to your toes, feet,

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

ankles and legs. End with a neck and back stretch that gets you out of bed. You will just have limbered up your muscles and joints and enhanced the flow of blood through your system, providing your tissues with extra oxygen.

3

Set your clothes out the night before. The fewer choices you have to make first thing, the better. Before going to bed, decide what you’re going to wear, work out which route you’ll take to work and pack your bag.

4

Have a stress-free shower. We spend an average of 12 minutes in the shower. That’s fine and dandy when you’re getting ready for a date, but in the morning you need to get in and out quickly. Try using two-in-one products like a combined shampoo and conditioner. And when you wash, just hit the hot spots—your groin area and armpits.

5 Schedule exercise for the morning. You’ll get it out of the way and it’ll leave you feeling energised for the day ahead. Not only that, research has found that people who work out in the morning are more likely to stick at it.

6 Consult your morning calendar. Hang a large whiteboard in your kitchen. On it, write down all you need to know for that particular day, from the plumber coming to service the boiler to what you’re doing with the grandchildren. Check it carefully while you sip your first cup of coffee or tea. It will help you to structure your day.

7 Sip cocoa. While a cuppa or a coffee might well pep you up first thing, cocoa might be just what you need when you tackle that first creative task of the day. Research shows that one cup of pure cocoa a day for five days can increase blood flow in the brain, hands and legs, as well as helping regulate blood pressure.

8 Create a calmness ritual. Spend a few minutes each morning reminding yourself of your blessings. Your ritual might involve you sitting outside or in a calming room in your home. Take a few deep breaths and call to mind three things or people who make life worth living. Then pledge to do one small thing that day to help someone else.

Spot On

More than 15,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with melanoma every year, according to Cancer Research UK, and more than 2,500 die from it. But it might surprise you to learn that non-malignant skin cancers such as squamous cell carcinoma and basal cell carcinoma are actually more common, with 100,000 new cases every year.

Around ten per cent of these wartlike growths turn into squamous cell carcinoma and, occasionally, basal cell carcinoma. They don’t usually spread, but they can be damaging and unsightly.

Malignant melanoma, the most deadly of the three, can start as a new or old mole. It’s crucial to catch it early. This is where your ABCDs come in. Is your mole Asymmetrical, does it have an irregular Border, is the Colour uneven, is it 6mm or more in Diameter? If in doubt, check it out!

Many spots are not cancer but could be pre-cancerous. These include actinic keratoses. These scaly growths appear on areas of skin exposed to the sun. At first you might only be able to feel them—they’re like sandpaper—but later they become rough and raised.

Basal cell cancers look like firm, flesh-coloured or reddish bumps, pimple-like growths that bleed and crust over, or small, scaly red patches.

Squamous cell cancers are usually red, scaly bumps or wartlike growths but can also look like sores or crusted skin. Very occasionally they can spread and be life-threatening.

Both are hard to spot and easy to mistake for other skin problems like eczema or warts, so be alert to the signs—it might just save your life.

Ask The Expert

Joanna Hall is the creator of Walk Active, a walking system that has been scientifically proven to improve health, fitness and body shape

How did you become an expert on walking?

I’m a sports scientist and I’ve always been passionate about bringing exercise into people’s lives. Walking is an accessible form of exercise when we’re time and motivation poor.

What are the health and other benefits of walking?

Walking ticks every health box—it reduces blood pressure, improves mental health, controls cholesterol levels and maintains mobility in a way that’s low impact. With the right technique, it can be highly effective for your posture, joint alignment and cardiovascular health. It can also trim your waistline.

What is the right way to walk?

Walk Active helps you use the right muscles in the right way, lengthening and strengthening them. You stop having a passive back foot and have

an active foot; you stop the hip slump and start to have a hip lift; you stop the head jut and instead you start to have a neck lengthen; and you stop having power walking arms and have a nice smooth pendulum arm action.

What tips can you give people who want to walk to improve fitness?

Get as much movement into your feet as you have in your hands. And think about walking out of your space rather than into it. This helps you use your glutes and lengthen your body.

How much time should people spend walking?

At the beginning, walk three times a day for ten minutes. Then build up to at least 7,500 steps throughout the day. On top of that, take three focused walks a week in trainers and kit, for greater cardiovascular benefit.

Visit walkactive.com for more information

Joanna Hall

Trying Times For Doctors

Max Pemberton explains that in the world of mental health care, gratitude is the last order of the day

Ihad a sneaking suspicion that Miss Nicholson wasn’t too pleased with me. It might have been something to do with the way I heard her scream my name down the corridor, while I sat quaking in my office and a nurse tried to pacify her. Outside I could hear more shouting. She was banging on my door, “I know you’re in there.” Gulp. When you’re a doctor, no matter how stressful it is, there’s one thing that makes it all worthwhile—the feeling that you’ve helped someone. The added bonus is their gratitude, and if you’re lucky you might even get some York Fruits. In mental health, things are a bit different, particularly for the really ill patients. There’s no “thank you”, even

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

though you’re trying to act in their best interests. Instead they sometimes hate you. But the doctor-patient relationship really starts to suffer at tribunals. These are legal appeal hearings for people that have been “sectioned” under the Mental Health Act. While a section means we can detain patients against their will, and in some cases medicate them even if they don’t want it, every patient on one is within their rights to appeal. This is when the trouble starts.

IT’S A BURDEN KNOWING that on the basis of the report I write, somebody might continue to have their rights taken away. What makes it even harder is that the patient gets to read what you write. And, traditionally, Mental Health Act tribunals are where all the up-andcoming lawyers cut their teeth. To be exact, they cut their teeth on me. “Can I put it to you…” begins the solicitor. And then the grilling begins. The

thing is, if you met Miss Nicholson, you’d want her sectioned. Not only does she pose a risk to others, she poses a risk to herself. She’s homeless, has problems with drugs and she’s tried to kill herself a number of times. But it’s important that decisions made by doctors are open to scrutiny, although I’m not sure that these grand spectacles do the patient, let alone the doctor, any good.

People like Miss Nicholson don’t think they’ve got a mental illness. They don’t think they should be detained. Of course she’s unwell. Of course she needs to stay in hospital, and as she’s not going to stay voluntarily, she should be on a section. I know it, the members of the tribunal know it and, annoyingly, so

does the solicitor. But I have to stand, read my report accompanied by shouts and screams of “I’m gonna get ya” from Miss Nicholson and face interrogation from the solicitor. I haven’t done anything wrong, except, maybe, take this job. All this does, is ensure any relationship I’d built with the patient is destroyed. The hearing adjourns and when they return, they have decided that Miss Nicholson should remain on the section after all.

“Well done”, says the solicitor as he leaves, as though it had all been some game from which I’d emerged victorious. The panel walk out, leaving the nurses and me to face the aftermath alone. And nobody, least of all Miss Nicholson, says thank you.

The Doctor Is In

Dr Max Pemberton

Q: Although I’ve enjoyed sex throughout my life, I’m worried about the way my body and sex drive may change after the menopause. What should I expect, and can I do anything to lessen symptoms?

-Gwen, Hampshire

A: This is a really common concern and the first thing to remember is that the menopause is a natural part of ageing. People are often anxious about it, but for the majority, it passes without too many problems. For some, though, the symptoms can be unpleasant and impact their day-to-day lives. Symptoms include hot flushes, night sweats, difficulties sleeping, vaginal dryness, low mood and reduced libido. The severity and longevity of the symptoms vary from person to person. If it’s becoming too much, talk to your GP as there are things that can help. In the early 2000s, concerns were raised about the safety of HRT (hormone replacement therapy), which was

widely used to treat the symptoms of menopause. New research, however, has shown that the benefits far outweigh the risks for most, and doctors are starting to prescribe it again. It’s well worth considering this if your symptoms are getting too much. Vaginal oestrogen creams or moisturisers are also often helpful if dryness is a problem. This can be used safely alongside HRT. Reduced libido can be treated with testosterone supplements. While this is usually considered a male hormone, in menopausal women it can increase sex drive. There are also some practical changes that can help, like wearing light night clothes if you have hot flushes, as well as keeping a hand-held fan to hand. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy has also been shown to help with mood changes. Giving up smoking and reducing alcohol intake will also help.

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

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Cakes, bouquets and bridesmaids— who doesn’t love a wedding?

Test your knowledge of the age-old traditions and latest trends in our quiz on the “happiest day in your life”

TyingKnotthe

BY SAMIRA AGUERGUAN

1. Tradition demands that the bride should stand to the left of the groom during the wedding ceremony. Why?

a) So that the bride is closer to her beloved’s heart

b) Because the left side symbolises weakness in the Christian tradition

Because in ancient times the groom had to keep his right arm free so he could defend his wife-to-be

Fancy having a wedding even if you haven’t (yet) found the man of your dreams? In which country can you find a travel agency that organises solo weddings for single women—with your wedding dress and photos included?

Denmark

b) Brazil

c) Japan

3.No wedding would be complete without sweets. In France and Italy, it’s traditional for guests to receive five sugared almonds, usually in an elaborate little sachet or box.

What five wishes do they symbolise?

a) Fertility, happiness, wealth, health and a long life

b) Love, fidelity, travel, wealth and health

c) Wealth, joy, feasts, health and fertility

4. The negafa plays an important part in North African weddings. Who does this term refer to?

a) Twelve men who act as the official witnesses

b) The male members of the bride and groom’s families, who negotiate the dowry

c) The wedding planner, who makes sure the ceremony runs smoothly

5. It was the wedding dress to end all wedding dresses. With around 300ft of white satin and 1,500 rhinestones and pearls, it was so heavy that its designer told the bride to eat a large meal before the wedding to make sure she had enough strength to carry its weight. Who got married in this Christian Dior creation?

a) Angelina Jolie

b) Lady Di

c) Melania Knauss

6. Which four things do brides traditionally wear on their wedding day in many English-speaking countries?

a) Something small, something old, something broken, something borrowed

b) Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue

c) Something stolen, something old, something of their grandmother’s and something yellow

7. In 1994, millions of moviegoers fell in love with the film Four Weddings and a Funeral . Who played the male lead alongside Andie MacDowell in this classic romantic comedy?

a) Brad Pitt

b) Matt Damon

c) Hugh Grant

8. At almost 33 by 23 feet, Paolo Veronese’s The Wedding at Cana is one of the largest oil on canvases ever painted. It contains several unusual details, but which one is particularly surprising?

a) The bride and groom are seated at one end of the table rather than in the middle.

b) The groom is seated between two brides.

c) The bride has fallen asleep during the feast.

9. What do brides in Tibet throw into the sky after making their marriage vows?

a) A dove

b) Yogurt

c) A multicoloured ribbon

10. What is the name of the wedding canopy that the marriage ceremony takes place under at Jewish weddings?

a) Chuppah

b) Niddah

c) Mikveh

11. Some marriages only survive a couple of weeks, while others last a lifetime. In 2014, a Canadian couple celebrated their 80th wedding anniversary. What name is given to this anniversary?

a) Oak anniversary

b) Wool anniversary

c) Maple anniversary

ANSWERS

1. c This custom dates back to the days when men would kidnap their brides-to-be and sometimes had to fight off others to hold onto her. They needed to keep their right hand free so they could draw their sword.

2. c A travel agency in Kyoto organises solo weddings for women who haven’t yet found the man of their dreams. They also cater for married women who never got to have a big wedding with a beautiful wedding dress.

3. a The fact that the number five is indivisible also symbolises the unbreakable bond of marriage.

4. c Brides in the Maghreb change their outfits up to seven times during the wedding, so they need someone to help them look their best every time. The negafa also makes sure that the wedding rites are properly observed.

5. c Melania tied the knot with Donald Trump in 2005.

6. b Something old symbolises the bride’s former life, something new represents her future life as a married woman, something borrowed from another happy bride should bring good luck, and something blue stands for fidelity and purity.

7. c The film ends with Grant’s character finding

the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with. The couple decide that they can be happy together without having to get married.

8. a Jesus and his mother Mary are seated at the centre of the table. The bride and groom are made to appear like guests at their own wedding.

9. b The bride does this to ask for the protection of the Buddha.

10. a The chuppah symbolises the newlyweds’ future home and is open on all sides to show that there will always be room there for friends and family.

11. a A marriage that has lasted 80 years really is as solid as oak!

Comedian Danny Wallace is the bestselling author of Yes Man(turned into a film starring Jim Carrey) and AwkwardSituations forMen . He’s also an award-winning presenter on radio and television, and writes a regular column for Shortlist

IF I RULED THE WORLD

Danny Wallace

I WOULD CREATE A VOTING TEST.

It’s not enough simply to be of a certain age in order to vote. People must also show a basic understanding of what it is they’re voting for. I’d create a test which, like the driving licence, must be aced before people are permitted to wield such power over their fellow citizens. It would need to be taken every decade to ensure changing political policies are understood. After passing the

test, voting would become compulsory and, in order to encourage greater engagement, be rewarded by a lovely morning off and a sandwich.

I WOULD RID THE WORLD OF RUDENESS. All confrontations would, by law, begin with the words “I’m so sorry to say this, but…” in order to mitigate the likelihood of any subsequent anger. So much can

be accomplished—and so much anger dissipated—by approaching our interactions with basic politeness.

I WOULD REWORK ALL WEBSITES, so that people would only be able to post comments underneath articles if they can demonstrate that they have read and understood the entire thing. People say that all opinions are worth the same but this is nonsense. Opinions based on facts are worth a thousand times more than those based on feelings.

I AM IN FAVOUR OF A MERITBASED SYSTEM OF IMMIGRATION. But, because countries rely so heavily on immigration, I’d judge the descendants of immigrants rather than the immigrants themselves. That way, when we have the likes of Donald Trump trying to send doctors back to where they came from, we could say, “Donald, you are yourself a descendant of immigrants, let’s look at whether you’ve earned the right to be here”. And if it turns out he hasn’t done enough to make his ancestors proud, create a positive environment and prove his worth, we could simply send him back to where he came from: the Outer Hebrides.

I WOULD BAN POMPOUS PHRASES. No longer would we be allowed to say, “Let that sink in!” after making a statement. It’s like saying “You’re too simple to understand my point

straight away. You must dwell on my wisdom!” Nor would I allow anyone to say, “Enjoy!” after handing over a coffee. You might just as well claim that “This is my masterwork! You will now enjoy”. Saying either of these phases will result in a £5 fine.

EVERY FRIDAY WOULD BE A GOOD FRIDAY. Random acts of kindness are insanely powerful. They make the stranger feel good and they make you feel good. Making one day a week particularly special would give people courage because they know they’re not acting alone. So this Friday, buy an old man a cup of tea. Make sure you hold the door open for a few extra people. Give a nun a doughnut. Perform a small act of rebellion against selfishness.

I WOULD ALLOW KIDS TO WRITE FROM THE HEART, NOT WRITE TO BE SCORED. I have literally no idea what a subjunctive coaxial adverb twice-removed is and being told I’m not allowed to write a story until I can use one properly is the death of inspiration. Kids should never be constrained by a set of rules when it comes to creating, writing, painting or thinking. The next generation should be a generation who can paint, and never one to paint-by-numbers.

Danny Wallace’s fourth children’s book, Hamish and the Baby Boom, is out now, published by Simon & Schuster.

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HOW TO BEAT

BURGLARS

BY CHRIS MENON

It was a cold October evening in Palmers Green, North London, as David and Sally* arrived back home in his car. Unexpectedly, an unfamiliar woman was parked in her own car, blocking access to their drive. They asked her to move so they could park, which she seemed surprisingly reluctant to do. Eventually she did so, and David parked his car as normal.

As David walked up the path to their Edwardian end of terrace, he thought it odd that the woman had only moved about 15ft down the road, but at 6.30pm it was already dark and getting cold so he went in and put the kettle on, glad to be home.

As soon as he entered the kitchen David noticed that the sash window in the morning room had been jemmied up four inches, the window

“ It feels extremely personal and intrusive having a stranger in the home, going through personal belongings ”

Since then they’ve improved their security, adding extra window locks, while installing an iron side gate, a burglar alarm and Hive lights that can be remotely turned on and off when they’re away.

THE EMOTIONAL IMPACT

locks having fortunately prevented easy access. There had also been an attempt to force the kitchen window.

After 40 years of living in their property, it was the first attempted break-in. The burglar had entered either via the side gate or over the back fence through the school that backs onto their property.

Talking about it today, he says: “We must have disturbed them in the middle of breaking in and the woman in the car was probably an accomplice.” The police never caught them and he admits it left them feeling vulnerable.

Sally and David were fortunate that their home wasn’t actually entered as the emotional impact of a break-in can be huge, according to Dr Claire Nee, Director of Forensic Psychology at the University of Portsmouth. “Although burglary isn’t considered an interpersonal crime as the burglar very rarely meets their victim, it feels extremely personal and intrusive having a stranger in the home, going through and stealing personal belongings,” she explains. “The majority of people feel traumatised, angry and violated for a few days to a few weeks. Twenty-five per cent continue to suffer for months and some develop Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, imagining how the burglar got in and what they did once inside.”

Certainly, Sally and David’s property isn’t alone in having attracted the attention of burglars. There were an estimated 667,000 domestic burglary offences in England and Wales for the year to June 2017, as recorded in the Office for National Statistics’ Crime Survey.

The Crime Survey for England and Wales is a face-to-face victimisation

survey in which a random sample of 35,000 people resident in households in England and Wales are asked about their experiences of a range of crimes in the 12 months prior to the interview. Estimates of incidents of domestic burglary are produced from the information collected.

Actual police figures for England and Wales over the same period were much lower, at 235,335. It’s quite a difference and a spokesperson for ONS explains why: “While burglary is typically well reported, in the case of attempted burglary and burglary resulting in no loss, many incidents will not get reported. In Scotland, the

figures were much lower, with 16,299 crimes of housebreaking recorded by the police in Scotland; in Northern Ireland police recorded a total of 6,806 burglaries for the whole of 2017.

As you might expect, the regional disparities don’t end there. Price comparison site MoneySupermarket analysed more than 2 million home insurance quotes run on its website over the last two years (January 2016-December 2017 inclusive) to identify the postcodes with the highest and lowest rate of claims for home contents theft within a five year period.

Guildford postal district GU3 has

Access to David and Sally’s property was potentially made easier by the school that backs onto their property

risen to the top of the rankings with a rate of 52.31 claims per 1,000 quotes. Of the postcodes with at least one claim for theft, Bideford in North Devon (EX39) has the lowest rate with 0.78 claims per 1,000 quotes. There are also 101 postal districts with no recorded claims.

Kevin Pratt, consumer affairs expert at MoneySuperMarket, says: “This year’s claims analysis suggests

“ Signs that a dog or cat is moving around show there’s no alarm set, so you know that you can get in ”

burglaries fall into two main categories: crimes committed in wealthy suburbs, where thieves expect rich pickings and a degree of seclusion, and busy urban areas, where strangers attract little attention and burglars hope to make speedy getaways.

“We should bear in mind that many criminals are opportunists—if they see a soft target, they’ll pounce. That makes it crucial for everyone, regardless of where they live, to always be vigilant and to take the necessary steps to keep burglars at bay,” he adds.

There are a number of things you can do to avoid becoming one of these statistics.

PROFESSIONAL ADVICE

Michael Fraser, a reformed burglar, former television presenter and now security consultant, says burglars are looking for weaknesses that mean they can enter a property with relative ease. “If they can see into the property and there are no window locks, and valuables are on show, a burglar will be attracted to that. It shows that people aren’t that careful with their possessions.

“A burglar will look at the front door and see if it has only one single cylinder lock, that can be opened in seconds rather than an additional five-lever mortice lock. Even if it has two locks, they’ll test the door with a foot to see if the lock is engaged. If the door moves 2-3mm they know it isn’t engaged and they can gain entry. They will also look through the letterbox to check if there’s a letterbox cage to prevent them fishing keys with a pole.”

Fraser also blows away some common misconceptions. For example, he explains that the presence of a dog or cat in a property does not act as a deterrent. “Signs that a dog or cat is moving around shows you that there’s no alarm set in that property, so you know you can get in,” he explains. Indeed, cat flaps weaken doors and make it

easier to kick them in or fish for your keys.

Fraser says the best place to store valuables is in the loft. “A burglar will go into the loft if they’re brave but not many choose to because once they do, they’re stuck and there’s no easy escape route. It’s also a good idea to store bags and suitcases up there, so the burglar can’t use them to carry away the things you store elsewhere.”

Of course, common sense also plays a part. Lock up garden sheds and tidy away tools so they can’t be used to break into your property, don’t advertise you’re on holiday on social media or have a window-facing calendar that has your daily whereabouts on it. If you do go away for a few weeks get a trusted neighbour to remove mail. Moreover, lock up and switch on burglar alarms even if you’re just popping out for a short while.

more they know about a property, the more confident they can be about being able to burgle it,” he explains.

Fraser also points out that one thing online estate agents won’t tell you is that burglars use their sites to shop for likely targets, identifying expensive properties for further research. If your house is up for sale be careful about the level of detail and the photos you provide.

“Any burglar will tell you that the

PROTECTING YOUR PROPERTY

In Fraser’s view, security products that do actually deter burglars include: CCTV, motion-activated security lights and burglar alarms. Properties that display stickers stating that they are part of a Neighbourhood Watch scheme are also less likely to be targeted by a burglar.

Reformed burglar Michael Fraser now works in security

HOW TO BEAT BURGLARS

Similarly, fake burglar alarms are easily identified by the lack of wiring and Fraser says burglars are aware of people using fake baked bean cans and books to store cash, credit cards and jewellery.

Fraser is also not a fan of using automatic timer switches to turn on

lights while you’re away from home, as he thinks they’re too predictable.

Lastly, he recommends that people watermark their valuables and advertise this fact with a sticker displayed in their window. This will deter burglars as the stolen goods can easily be traced.

TAKE A BREAK: BEGUILING BLOCKBUSTERS

Can you name six films based on the cryptic clues below? (Via buzzfeed.com)

Answers: The Da Vinci Code, The King and I, Top Gun, Snakes on a Plane, The Dark Knight Rises and Point Break

BEST OF British

FARMERS' markets

There's no better way to spend a spring day than wandering around a picturesque market, tasty treat in hand. Here are our favourites…

BY ANNA WALKER

EDINBURGH FARMERS’ MARKET, EDINBURGH

Held each Saturday at the foot of the statuesque Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh’s farmers market is a firm favourite amongst locals and tourists alike when it comes to sampling an authentic taste of Scotland.

Nibble on samples as you pick your way through the stalls, enjoying such local fare as fresh Isle of Arran oysters, pizza from Scotland’s oldest delicatessen and “burnt to order” crème brûlée.

Says market manager Grant Rogers, “With an abundance of seasonal ingredients to behold, there’s no better place than the Edinburgh Farmers’ Market to discover the best food that Scotland has to offer. Now in its 18th year, there’s a huge variety of fresh local produce from more than 35 specialist producers. The majority of stallholders grow or rear what they sell so can answer your questions about production, offer cooking suggestions and advice.”

edinburghfarmersmarket.co.uk

THE GOODS SHED, CANTERBURY

Held in a picturesque Victorian former railway building, The Goods Shed in Canterbury opened in 2002 and now offers a popular daily farmers’ market.

This market is notable for its characters as much as its delectable food. There’s Enzo, who runs a bakery offering the perfect blend of Italian and British breads. Then there’s the staff of Canterbury’s only independent fresh fishmonger,

boasting a fresh catch from local boats and British shores. You’re sure to enjoy your conversation with these food experts as much as you enjoy the taste of their delicious produce.

If you want to make a day of your visit, the beautifully rustic onsite restaurant also offers ingredients sourced from the markets whipped up into a menu that’s a slice of gastronomic heaven. Lunch doesn’t get fresher than that! thegoodsshed.co.uk

ABERYSTWYTH FARMERS’ MARKET, CEREDIGION

Boasting an impressive variety of produce, from the usual meat and dairy through to cakes, preserves, gourmet burgers and jerk chicken, Aberystwyth Farmers’ Market is the perfect spot for a weekly shop or grabbing a quick lunch.

Says market coordinator Julie Lomas, “On a lovely sunny day there is no better place to be than the market. There’s a really friendly, buzzy atmosphere from the traders and customers and everyone is in a

really good, positive mood. The stall holders are lovely people and great fun, and they are always happy to chat to the customers about the produce. Everything that you see on the market is grown and produced locally and has been made by the person selling on the stall.

“People think that the market is just about food, but there is a great range of locally produced beers, wines, ciders and gins on the market, as well as some lovely handmade craft and gift stalls.”

aberystwythfarmersmarket.co.uk

STROUD FARMERS' MARKET, GLOUCESTERSHIRE

Come snow or shine the traders of Stroud Farmers' Market are out in force every Saturday morning to greet the punters milling around to cheery music, enjoying sugary doughnuts or rifling through jars of tempting chilli jams.

As one of the busiest farmers' markets in the UK, it’s always a bustling affair.

Says market manager Kardien Gerbrands, “Stroud is marked out for the superb range of produce available with an especially high number of primary producers selling their wares including meat, vegetables, fruits, dairy and cheeses plus a fabulous selection of street food, entertainment and—of course—the legendary laid-back Stroud atmosphere.” fresh-n-local.co.uk

LUDLOW LOCAL PRODUCE MARKET, SHROPSHIRE

Street markets have been held in Ludlow since the 12th century, so when you’re tucking into cheese from the deli or sipping on a coffee brewed from locally roasted beans, you’re also enjoying a taste of history.

A love for local produce is part of the fabric of this medieval market town, which still retains three local butchers, three bakers and two independent green grocers.

Says market manager Tish Dockerty, “There’s something truly special about Ludlow Local Produce Market. From tasty handmade vegetarian burgers to the finest lamb and beef, from spicy snacks to delicious local apple juices, I’m delighted that not only were we one of the first farmers’ markets in the UK but that we are continuing to be hugely successful in our 18th year of trading.”

Ludlow.org.uk/ludlowmarket.html

JOHN HAYWARD / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

CREAKE ABBEY, NORFOLK

Sprawled charmingly across the ruins of an Augustinian Abbey, this farmers’ market is a veritable smorgasbord of culinary delights with more than 50 stallholders armed with colourful, fresh produce. Originally founded as a hospital during the reign of Henry II, the ruins of this former abbey remain majestic, and a great spot to tour with the spoils of your market visit.

In the main barn, visitors will

discover such treats as ethnic fusion Indian cooking, an old-fashioned pudding company and a range of fresh meats. In the East Barn, sweet treats are the order of the day, while the Tin Barn covers larder essentials and artisan coffees.

The spread continues outside, meaning whatever your taste buds desire, you’ll find something to perfectly satiate them within the Abbey walls.

creakeabbey.co.uk/farmers-market

WINCHESTER FARMERS’ MARKET, HAMPSHIRE

A favourite among celebrity chefs including Rick Stein, Winchester boasts the UK’s biggest farmers’ market, held on the second and last Sunday of each month.

The market asks punters to “come hungry” to enjoy its award-winning local produce, which includes such rare finds as “Bad Boys Biltong” and Broughton water buffalo.

Their strict criteria for stall owners means that here "local" truly means

local. Everything you see on display is produced no further than ten miles from Hampshire’s bountiful borders, with nothing external bought in. Plus, the people behind the stalls are always involved in the production of the goods they’re selling, so you’ll know you’re speaking with an expert as you consider your purchases.

hampshirefarmersmarkets.co.uk

Do you have a favourite British Farmers' Market or a memorable story of your visit? Email readersletters@readersdigest.co.uk

The Village that Refused

TO DIE

Craig Stennett meets the inspiring residents of a village that fought hard not to fade away

Agrey dawn is slowly breathing light over the mountain skyline of Buttertubs and Fleet Moss into the pass between two mountains—the rural community of Hawes. It’s a frozen Sunday morning and the UK Met Weather Office has issued a yellow alert for the North of England, predicting severe and hazardous weather conditions which will affect road and rail travel. Temperatures for the day have plummeted to a bone-chilling -4°C and snow is falling heavily, swirling around the roads and lanes of this isolated town. With a population of just 1,137, Hawes finds itself secluded at the head of Wensleydale in the Richmondshire district of North Yorkshire. rail links or connections to other villages if needed.”

Dave Stephenson, 59, wrapped up tightly against the cold, pulls his 16-seat transit bus to a halt opposite The Board Hotel in the centre of town and waits for passengers to arrive. It’s the Sunday service for the Little White Bus, linking up Hawes and other villages on his route to a connecting service to the rail link at Garsdale train station eight miles away.

“This run is a rural lifeline”, says Dave. “We do this every morning, seven days a week so people can be dropped off at the station and I can pick arrivals up. I also cover the last trains of the day at Garsdale at 7pm. I have two other—what we call demand requests—today on top of my scheduled run. We’re classed as a community bus, you see,” he explains. “If it’s on our regular route we can still be booked outside the normal running times, so people can catch

Walter Head, a retired police officer and resident of Hawes for more than 20 years, is the operation manager. It’s his job to keep the community bus service open for business, ensuring the connection between Hawes and surrounding villages as well as the adjacent route from Keld to Catterick.

It’s Monday and Walter sits in a cramped but functional control room at the Upper Dales Community Partnership offices just off the Market Place in Hawes and is fielding numerous phone calls. It’s proving to be a stressful start to the week. “We’ve got three buses off the road at present,” Walter groans slightly.

“Today it feels a bit like I’m trying to keep plates spinning in the air. But I’m proud to say that we’ve never”, he repeats, “never lost a run and that’s the way I’d like it to continue.”

Previous pages: A sign for the Yorkshire village of Hawes, which is trying to make itself the most self-sufficient place in Britain

Above: The Little White Bus makes its way on its Swaledale shuttle route, this time leaving Keld for next stop Muker

Right: The Little White Bus driver Dave Stephenson waits at Garsdale Train Station for the arrival of the 10.35 Carlisle to Leeds train and the 10.45 Carlisie to Leeds train going in the opposite direction. Passengers from both trains wanting to then travel on to Hawes can do so on his Sunday service

Back in 2011, Hawes’ bus service to the Garsdale railway station was discontinued. Following an outcry from local residents and pressure from Hawes & High Abbotside Parish Council, the North Yorkshire County Council offered a subsidy of £25,000 and free use of one minibus to anyone who could restart the service. The local people of Hawes and its surrounding villages stepped up to the task and formed The Little White Bus Company. At its core that service is a reflection of the spirit of the surrounding community. A team of 60 volunteer bus drivers on call and eight paid part-time drivers have reduced the overheads drastically. It also operates a 4x4 Land Rover as part of a daily school run tackling some of the region’s most challenging driving environments to collect and drop off school children on isolated farms. Giving credence to the rustic isolation of the area, Walter outlines the difficulties: “It’s real off-road stuff along beds of rivers in parts. We sent Natasha Dinsdale, our Land Rover driver, on an off-road driving course,

“ You know that if you need help here, of any sort, the community will always come to you”

and she handles it all by herself up there now.” All in all, from a projected base of just 3,000 customers at its birth in 2011, the ten vehicles of the Little White Bus service now ferry some 65,000 passengers, locals and tourists alike, throughout the year.

Adjoining Walter’s office is the shop front of the Upper Dales Community Office—the nerve centre of Hawes. It’s a one stop shop of Post Officecum-library, resource centre, community office, internet café and police office, plus a general meeting point and hangout destination to catch up on the neighbourhood’s news for anyone. Jill McMullon, 57, is out front dealing with customers coming in at bang-on opening time to the community office, and full-time Post Office manager Ella Dinsdale, Hawes born and bred, is swiftly handling posting and parcels from the queue of early-morning arrivals. A local has brought in a lost wallet she found in one of the pubs to return it by registered post to its owner: “I googled his name and address, and

Top; A Farmer and his sheepdog travel through Muker in The Yorkshire Dales National Park

Left; Filling up at the Dale Head Petrol Station now run by the local community in Hawes

Middle; At 90 years old, Basil Allen still works in the grocery shop his grandfather and great grandfather opened in 1925

Below right; Post Office manager Ella Dinsdale serves a customer at The Upper Wensleydale Community Office in Hawes

emailed him. He said it was OK to use some of the money inside to pay for postage,” explains the honest finder to Jill. Other parishioners are using the internet or browsing the library books: “They’re changed regularly”, Ella says, “and you can also pay your council tax here or draw cash from your bank account if needed.”

The phoenix-like revival of Hawes and the adjacent Dale communities can be traced back to 1992 when the town’s biggest employer, Wensleydale Creamery parented by Dairy Crest, threatened closure. Local Parish and County Councillor John Blackie, 68, picks up the story: “The creamery had been in operation since the 1950s with the original dairy factory going as far back as 1897. There’s no other major employer in town. It was vital that it stayed open.” A rescue committee was set up, and an eightmonth campaign of naming and shaming Dairy Crest’s decision to close culminated in a management team buyout. The creamery re-opened. It has since gone from strength to strength. David Hartley, one of the original members of the management buyout and now managing director of the Wensleydale Creamery, explains the firm’s mission, which is clearly anchored into the

“ 20 years ago, this village had a Post Office, bank, local shop and bus service. They’ve all gone ”

local economy: “We have a genuine community spirit here. Thirty per cent of the parents of the children from the local school work with us. My wife works here. We still have over 40 dairy farmers that have been with us since the 1990s providing milk for the unique Wensleydale flavour.” David is also first to acknowledge that the success of Nick Park’s animated characters also helped to put Wensleydale on the map. “It was Christmas Eve 1996 when A Grand Day Out featuring Wallace and Gromit was first shown on BBC2. David Spoxton, owner of the production company, sent us a Christmas card out of the blue, saying, ‘You’ll see and hear something to your advantage by watching Wallace & Gromit.’ ”

It was of course a marketing department’s dream and the creamery hasn’t looked back. From a relaunch with 12 employees it now has 224. The name Yorkshire Wensleydale Cheese has protected status and a worldwide reputation. The creamery even boasts a visitor centre.

Top; Creamery managing director David Hartley

Bottom; John Blackie with Planning and Development Officer Richard Graham and Parish councillor John Watkin.

John Blackie is filling up his petrol tank at the Dale Head Garage in Hawes. The petrol station is the Upper Dales Community Partnership’s latest acquisition and John has been the partnership’s volunteer executive chairman for 20 years. It’s the first community-run filling station in England and allows a vital service to remain in Hawes, the next filling station being a 36mile round trip away. The rural rebate the area receives for fuel because of its isolation also helps. “We’re as cheap as Tesco in Catterick” John is quick to point out.

John is heading over the Buttertubs pass into Swaledale and then on to the small village of Arkengarthdale on the east side of the Pennines. “20 years ago, when I started as a local councillor here, this village had a Post Office, bank, local shop and bus service. They’ve all gone, one by one,” John says while

driving the twisting roads of the Dale. “It’s still got a school with 13 pupils. If that goes, it’s the death of the village. We’re hoping to develop four new houses as part of an Upper Dales Community Land Trust. They’ll be held in perpetuity by the village and never sold. Instead they’ll be rented out affordably to families with young children to keep at least one of the pillars on which a community is built alive.”

John continues, “What we strive for are local services run by and for local people. It helps that the character of the Dales has enhanced people’s selfreliance and determination.” John himself is a reflection of that fighting spirit. He’s had a heart bypass, two bouts of cancer and has been hospitalised twice with pneumonia. “I like to think I’ve still got four or five years left in me yet,” he mentions in passing, with a defiant smile.

A darts and dominoes league is taking place at The Fountain Hotel back in Hawes. Angus McCarthy, the licensee, is reminiscing while serving behind the bar. “You know I only popped in for a cup of tea 30 years ago and I ended up buying the place!”

Karen Winspear from a local farming family is helping out tonight and eloquently explains the spirit of the people of her town: “You know if you need help here, of any sort, the community will always come to you.” A heartfelt reflection on this community within the Dales.

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BORDEAUX

Now halfway through a massive development project, the sleeping beauty at the heart of France’s wine-growing region is waking up

BY PAUL ROBERT

AT A TABLE ON A SMALL TERRACE overlooking the Garonne River, I’ve just finished a classic southern French dish of scallops and shellfish. The restaurant seems to be one of the last on the block to cater to more locals than tourists. I sip from a glass of cognac with my coffee and wait for the moment when the bright sky reaches that post-sunset shade of dark blue that’s perfect for evening photography. As it nears, I finish my glass and walk 650ft to join a throng of photographers on the boulevard, across from the Place de la Bourse.

We gather at the edge of the miroir d’eau (“water mirror”). It’s a shallow pool the size of a sports field that goes through an eternal 15-minute cycle of filling with about an inch of water, then emptying out. I place my camera on a small tripod and wait. After a couple of minutes, the water has drained away, leaving a field of flat, wet stones to create a perfect reflection of the magnificent 18th-century buildings framing this elegant square. At precisely that moment, the floodlights at the foot of the building facades switch on, creating an image of instant beauty that’s received with a mix of “wows” and “ohs” and the clicking of cameras.

It’s the ultimate iconic image of the city of Bordeaux. The whole thing lasts a minute or two, then it’s gone. The sky turns black and the tiny holes between the water

mirror’s tiles start spewing a thin vapour of droplets at the beginning of its next “fill cycle”.

SATISFIED, I PACK UP my camera and cross the street to reacquaint myself with the Old City, which I last visited ten years ago, before the water mirror was built. I have fond memories of its limestone buildings and laid-back atmosphere. Although Bordeaux is some 2,000 years old, the entire Old City, with few exceptions, is made up of these limestone buildings, the result of a radical city modernisation around 1750 directed by the Marquis de Tourny, at the time the king’s governor, whose name graces a square and some shops.

I pass the imposing structures along the quai and stroll the narrow streets behind it, which are lined with restaurants, wine bars, and shops. This contrast is what I always liked so much about this city, the capital of the southwestern region of Nouvelle Aquitaine. The architecture of the Grand-Théâtre, the museums, and the town hall underlines the fact that the word grandeur is truly French.

At the same time, Bordeaux has these narrow streets that breathe a provincial—almost parochial—air that many major European cities lost decades ago.

But the city known in France as La Belle Endormie (“the sleeping

beauty”) is waking up. A massive restoration and development project are in progress. Bordeaux is now more than halfway through implementing the plan, which will continue until 2030.

One of the most visible features of this massive undertaking is at the waterfront, along the crescentshaped curve in the Garonne River that gave its name to this Atlantic port city’s Moon Harbour. Once occupied by derelict warehouses and parking lots, the riverside Quai Richelieu boasts a new tramline, bicycle lanes, and a wide boulevard. The quai is the scene of a daily parade of strollers, runners, cyclists and playing children.

A newly opened hub for highspeed trains is surrounded by a huge modern building project called Bordeaux-Euroatlantique, intended to spearhead a new economic and population boom that will ultimately spur growth from the current 750,000 inhabitants to more than a million.

The restoration of the Old City, as part of this multi-faceted project, has already led to the city’s recognition as a Unesco World Heritage Site. But will Bordeaux lose its old world charm in the process? “That’s a very important issue,” says Bordeaux’s deputy mayor Stephan Delaux when I pose the question to him the next morning.

“We have a group here in town hall that acts as a sounding board in discussions on how we can maintain the spirit of Bordeaux,” he says. Then he points out the window overlooking the square with the massive limestone St. André

Cathedral, which is being restored, and says, “But have you looked at the splendid view out my window? When Alain Juppé started in 1995, this square had five traffic lanes, full of trucks.

“Now there’s a tram, the traffic is pushed to one side, and the square is for pedestrians. This is how we approach all aspects of the project.” Juppé is the driving force behind the

PHOTO,

plan for the revival of Bordeaux. His name is on the lips of everybody I speak with. The former French prime minister and mayor since 1995 may well go down in history as the prince who kissed Aurora back to life. And his name will undoubtedly be attached to one of the grands œuvres, the huge structural works that will be finished after his retirement.

THAT AFTERNOON I meet

Veronique Baggio, a city guide who takes me on a two-hour walk to show me what’s new and what’s restored. When I was here last, much of Tourny’s Bordeaux was covered with soot.

“The property owners were told to clean the facades,” she explains. “That was an expensive operation, but worth it. Now you can see the mascarons.”

Last time I had barely noticed the intricately carved limestone heads on the keystones over the porches and windows. This was never a town that invited you to look up. But there they are: some 3,000 fascinating portraits found throughout the city.

“Is it known who they were?”

I ask Baggio. She says, “They were probably local characters, but there are also mythological figures. Some of the portraits symbolise products that were sold here.”

Wine is represented, of course, and wheat, but also humans. Baggio explains that Bordelais traders in the 18th and 19th centuries took part in the European slave trade from Africa to the Americas. She tells me about a permanent exposition dedicated to the slave trade in the municipal Aquitaine Museum.

At the museum I meet former director François Hubert, author of the book that accompanies the exposition. Mayor Juppé wrote the preface, in which he calls the

The crescent-shaped curve in the Garonne River gave its name to Bordeaux’s Moon Harbour

PHOTO, THIS SPREAD, BY PAUL ROBERT

exposition “a crucial step in the remembrance process the city of Bordeaux has embarked on.” It’s to Juppé’s credit again that coming to terms with the past is an integral part of the plans for the future of Bordeaux.

Hubert leads me through rooms filled with ship models, paintings, and the paraphernalia of suppression. We are surrounded by a group of 12-year-olds, brought here to learn of this dark history. More than 11 million enslaved Africans were traded like cattle by the British, French, Dutch, and others. “For too long we have hidden behind the notion that slavery was an American issue,” says Hubert. “It was not. It was very European.”

deal between the king and the Americans. It’s an excuse that places responsibility with the regime that was overthrown in the French Revolution. Hubert laughs out loud when I tell him this: “There was no such contract. Absolutely not.”

This mascaron with puffed-out cheeks may represent the wind

The exhibition lends a degree of honesty to the way Bordeaux wants to present itself. But there’s still a long way to go. Since I met Veronique Baggio, I’ve asked several other locals about the slave trade and found that the subject is as sensitive here as it is in my own hometown, Amsterdam. We don’t like to be reminded of the crimes of our forefathers.

A popular myth among locals has it that the Bordeaux traders were forced by law to ship slaves to America, as a result of a

AS I LEAVE the museum I’m just in time for my reservation at Racines, a small restaurant nearby, owned and run by 36-year-old Scottish chef Daniel Gallacher. He left Scotland to work with and learn from France’s most famous chefs. Racines is his first restaurant. “I don’t have a Michelin star yet,” he tells me, “but we do have a Bib Gourmand.” For tout Bordeaux that’s a good omen of stars to come. “I want a star of course,” says Gallacher after serving an elegant, modern lunch. “It would allow me to work with more exclusive ingredients. But right now, it’s also quite challenging to serve surprising menus using more common ingredients.”

After lunch I board the modern B-line tram to be taken a couple of stops north, where I get off and rent, for €1.60 per hour, a V3 public bicycle from a station on the river bank. V3 stations are found on squares around the city. I head off

through the Chartrons area, a former working-class neighbourhood that has gone through a process of rapid gentrification in the wake of the restoration of the city centre. In the narrow streets, I pass antique shops, curiosity shops and small, singlestory worker’s houses called échoppe that sell for record prices.

Through a shop window, my eye is caught by a clockmaker, bent over his workbench, peering through a jeweller’s magnifying glass at an antique brass clock. I ask him if I may look around. Master clockmaker Peter Peschel looks up and smiles. “Of course,” he says.

Peschel tells me he opened his shop 12 years ago. With so many antique shops around, he’s perfectly situated. We find common ground in our love for craftsmanship when he recognises the classic, handmade lens on my camera. He’s pleasantly

surprised at how it blends with digital technology.

Back on my bicycle, I head to the edge of the Old City, to the futuristic vertical lift bridge named after former mayor Jacques Chaban Delmas. This is the former docks district where Bordeaux is now rapidly building exciting modern housing projects as well as luxury apartment buildings.

The eye-catcher, besides the bridge, is the Cité du Vin, the brand new international wine museum in a building shaped to symbolise the swirl of wine in a glass, although a rubber duck also may come to the more sober mind.

Bordeaux, whose name is synonymous with wine, has placed itself above the market with its Cité du Vin and its biennial international wine festival. People come to the Cité du Vin for wine-tasting workshops,

The Rue de Fessets, a pedestrian zone in the Old City, has an old-world charm

PHOTOS BY PAUL ROBERT

wine-themed special expositions and the splendidly designed multimedia presentations about wine from around the globe. The spectacular round shop in the heart of the building displays wines from around the world. At the top floor bar, many of these can be tasted.

ON THE LAST DAY of my visit,

I decide to check out a more folksy part of the city that I fondly remembered. I walk south on the Rue Sainte-Catherine shopping street. The Apple Store, Galeries Lafayette, and luxury brand shops gradually make way for T-shirt shops, fast-food and tattoo parlours. At the end of the street, I turn towards the flea market around St. Michel Basilica, where standard French gives way to West African dialects and Arabic.

This is no longer the polished and shiny city of the tourist brochures, but a typical lively and colourful southern French city. Men in djellabas and women in high heels share the sidewalks. But I see early signs of gentrification. Young professionals are beginning to make their mark here, as I saw in Chartrons. Outside a corner café, children play on a small playground as their young parents enjoy their lattes, some bent over their laptops.

But I am pleased to see that the Marché des Capucins food market

still offers its splendid mix of North African herbs, tropical fruits, and French specialities, and that French, Arabic, and African dealers still peddle everything from secondhand shoes to antiques in the St. Michel flea market. As I watch two women haggling with an old man over some second-hand clothes, it strikes me that this scene could well disappear from Bordeaux as gentrification intensifies and real estate prices rise.

That would be a tremendous loss for them and for the city. I suppose I will just have to come back in ten years to check.

TRAVEL TIPS

LODGING Hotel Maison du Lierre, 57 Rue Huguerie, a small hotel in the centre, rooms from £93, hotel-maisondulierre-bordeaux.com; Hotel Mercure Château Chartrons, 81 cours Saint Louis, in the heart of Chartrons, rooms from £97, mercure.com; Hotel Yndo, 108 rue de l’Abbé de l’Épée, intimate hotel with 12 rooms, from £193, yndohotelbordeaux.fr

DINING Restaurant La Terrasse Saint Pierre, 7 Place St Pierre, local specialities, lunch menu about £12, dinner menu about £14; Restaurant Racines, 53 Rue Georges Bonnac, lunch menu from £18, dinner menu from £26, book well in advance, racinesbydanielgallacher.com

Fancy exploring the Zakynthos Trails?

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Zakynthos is the largest of the Ionian Islands with a coastline so beautiful you’d be forgiven for thinking it had been photoshopped. But step away from its long sandy beaches and you’ll find an island that’s fruitful and fertile, with plenty of forested wilderness, quaint traditional mountain villages and fertile plains.

The 4 guided walks with our tour leader will take you on beautiful routes through lemon groves and vineyards to Ano Gerakari, along the beautiful Blue Flagged beach at Tsilivi and across the Keri peninsula. You’ll get to stroll through the elegant Zakynthos Town, meander down trails to the harbour village of Limni Keri and walk through fields of wildflowers to the valley of Loucha, experiencing the essence of local Greek life and enjoying some famous Greek hospitality too. You also have the option to enjoy additional excursions such as Kayaking or a cycling tour of the traditional Riza Villages.

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My Great Escape:

Dog Sledding In Norway

Carolyn Ross from Buckinghamshire explores Norway with the help of some four-legged friends

The snow had deadened all ambient noise around us, so the only sounds were the metal hiss of the sled runners and the energetic panting of the five ill-assorted but eager dogs pulling us along.

For a glorious hour and a half, my husband and I sped through the picturesque, wintry Norwegian landscape, the snow sparkling in the low sunlight as we passed icy streams and craggy mountains.

Camp Tamok, 60 miles outside Tromsø and 250 miles inside the Arctic Circle, offers snowmobile safaris, ice-fishing, overnight camping and dog-sledding. We were unwilling to shatter the peace and beauty of the Scandinavian snowfields with the roaring of engines, but dog sledding combined the natural strength of the animals with the spectacular surroundings in an unforgettable experience.

The dogs couldn’t wait to get going. As soon as our guide led us

out of the camp, they were away, and we gasped as the cold bit our faces. Being the first to drive, I soon found I was sweating. The sled was heavy and needed considerable effort to steer, and the first time we stopped I had to hold down the brake with all the strength in my legs to stop the eager dog team from taking off. And scooting furiously up the first hill warmed me up completely. But these little discomforts were nothing. They

disappeared in the joy of whizzing past a rocky stream, the water charcoal grey against the snow, or zooming gleefully through a copse of trees, ducking to avoid the low branches, and running free and clear past the foot of a mountain, its peak soaring high to brush the iridescent clouds above.

All too soon, we found ourselves running back into the camp, and one after another all the teams came to a stop. The dogs lay down in the snow and patiently waited to be released from their harnesses. While our guide saw to the other sleds, we went to thank each of our five dogs for being so strong and so willing. They let us stroke them and pull their ears, and they licked our faces in return. Once unhitched, they were taken to their underground kennels, lined with straw and capped with snow, and given a well-earned feeding.

We too were taken away to be fed, and were shown into a vast circular

tent, a lavvu, heated by a central fire, where we were given coffee, a bowl of delicious reindeer stew (followed by another helping or two—or in some cases three!) and a sweet dessert sandwich.

Then it was all over. Sorrowfully we divested ourselves of our boots and onesies, put on our coats and made our way back to our coach.

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

5 WATER ADVENTURES YOU SHOULD TRY

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Mountain High Museum

An eccentric museum in South Tyrol reflects one man’s unique view of mountaineering

BY ALICE GREGORY

PHOTOGRAPHED BY JOËL TETTAMANTI

Corones, the sixth and latest installation of the Mountain Museum, is on top of Kronplatz mountain

IN SEPTEMBER, I FOUND MYSELF 5,000FT UP THE

Dolomite peak of Kronplatz mountain, lost, alone, and completely happy. As I edged my way up, I had to stop every 300ft and catch my breath. But whatever panic and lung-burn I experienced was mitigated by the frosted clover and edelweiss and enzian. The air smelled sweetly of manure and cut grass; the tinkle of cowbells and the call of cuckoo birds echoed through the valleys.

Waiting for me at the top of the mountain was Reinhold Messner. At age five, Messner scaled his first mountain in South Tyrol, the autonomous province of northern Italy where he was born and still lives. In the decades that followed, he went on to climb another 3,500 peaks and became one of the most celebrated mountaineers of the 20th century, wrote more than 50 books and represented the Italian Green Party in the European Parliament.

Now 72, Messner no longer climbs professionally. Instead, he has spent the past decade focusing on the Messner Mountain Museum, six high-altitude institutions devoted to mountain climbing.

The entire project is estimated to have cost £26m. The first museum opened in 1995 in the Vinschgau region. The latest, Corones, a crashed-spaceship of a building that opened in 2015, is here on Kronplatz, the nearly 7,500ft mountain that I exuberantly and somewhat stupidly volunteered to climb. Construction of the 3,300-square-feet concrete building

Like the other five museums, it recreates, in a pleasurably primitive way, the experience of scaling a mountain. The multilevel space is cool and smells faintly of snow. Making your way through the galleries’ tunnels, you often find yourself disoriented, returned almost to where you began, as if having miscalculated a switchback. Staircases are mirrored with diagonal glass vitrines filled with ice picks, boots, scrapbooks and carabiners.

“In mountaineering, there’s not only the activity, but the philosophy behind it,” Messner told me outside the museum. “Some call it a “moral,” but I’m against that because all morality is dangerous. So is all nationalism and all religions.

He urged me to look north. Below are South Tyrol’s verdant pastures

Photos, clockwise from top: Villnöss Valley on the Austrian border of northern Italy, where Reinhold Messner was born; Ripa museum, housed in a 13th-century castle in the Puster Valley; a typically idiosyncratic display; Reinhold Messner involved the excavation of more than 3,900 cubic feet of mountain.

PHOTOGRAPHED BY JOËL TETTAMANTI

and distant outcroppings. We both inhaled. “You don’t see one bad situation,” he said. Then, in a humble concession to reality, Messner pointed to a distant smokestack, and squinted with vague contempt. “Only there, I guess, a little bit.”

The sinister, toothy Dolomites, which rise up all around, both exaggerate the loveliness below and cut it with the necessary bit of harshness that’s otherwise lacking. It’s all too easy to imagine, in a fairy tale-like way, a local child growing up feeling as though his character was contingent upon a successful confrontation with these threatening peaks. Which is, of course, exactly Messner’s story.

“When I was a boy, I went beside this beautiful mountain”—Messner pointed west from the museum’s balcony towards a pleasingly round summit—“and I looked for a few days with binoculars, and invented a line I could climb. Then, one Sunday I went up with my brother and we did it. It’s like a piece of art. The same with the museum. I have an idea, I do it.”

A WEEK AFTER WE MET, Messner left for Africa to direct his first film, Still Alive, a re-creation of a near

fatal climb in 1970 by Austrian mountain climbers up Mount Kenya.*

No sport encourages the ostensibly paradoxical impulses of meditative, in-the-moment focus and past-tense memorialising quite like mountain climbing. It seems that everyone who has even dabbled in the endeavour has gone on to document it. But how to do it in a way that begins to approximate the scale of even a small hill?

For Messner, the answer has been interdisciplinary. He told me that he learned how to open and organise a museum by doing it himself, “not by going to museums.” His autodidacticism is apparent in the Mountain Museum displays, which are at once charming and confounding and weirdly ambitious.

Housed in a crenelated castle in the quaint town of Bruneck, Italy, the Ripa museum has an extensive collection of fascinating, bewildering artifacts often presented without context. There’s a room filled with models of traditional mountain homes in places like Patagonia, Peru and Kandahar. There’s a gallery devoted to international water vessels, another stocked with Tibetan musical instruments, and another for Incan weapons. There are a few human skulls (unlabelled) thrown in for good measure.

Atop a modest mountain 75 miles southwest of the Ripa museum is

Photos, clockwise from top left: A 13thcentury castle in the Vinschgau houses Juval museum, which opened in 1995; viewing platform of the Dolomites museum, in an old fort on Monte Rite; the Firmian in Sigmundskron Castle

Juval, the 13th-century castle in Vinschgau where Messner lives with his family for part of the year, and which he opens to visitors. There’s an organic farm with animals on the premises, along with a sprawling collection of Asian masks and effigies. Messner’s personal library, consisting mostly of books about Alpinism, is kept here in an ornately carved room.

Positioned at what was the highest place of the former Austro-Hungarian empire, the Ortles museum in Sulden am Ortler is “devoted to the world of ice.” What this mostly means is that it’s bone-chillingly cold inside.

There are walking sticks, ice picks, skis, reportedly 200 years’ worth of mountaineering boots, a rescue sled from 1940 and Sir Ernest Shackleton’s binoculars. But most of the museum’s contents are paintings, dozens from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and a not insignificant number of contemporary works, all of which depict ice.

Bolzano, the largest city in South Tyrol, is the site of Firmian, the largest museum. Housed in Sigmundskron Castle, which dates back to A.D. 945, it’s focused vaguely on “man’s encounter with the mountain.”

In part organised by mountain

AT A GLANCE: THE MESSNER MOUNTAIN MUSEUM

JUVAL

Location: Juval Castle, Vinschgau

Elevation: 3,300ft

Theme: The religious dimension of the mountains

ORTLES

Location: Sulden am Ortler

Elevation: 6,200ft

Theme: The world of ice

FIRMIAN

Location: Sigmundskron

Castle, near Bozen

Elevation: 1,000ft

Theme: The Peaks, mountaineering history, alpine tourism

ITALY

RIPA

Location: Bruneck

Castle, Bruneck

Elevation: 3,000ft

Theme: The mountain peoples

CORONES

Location: Kronplatz

Elevation: 7,500ft

Theme: Mountain history

DOLOMITES

Location: Monte Rite

Elevation: 7,000ft

Theme: The Dolomites: first ascents and discoveries

range, there’s an eclectic mix of exhibits and settings—Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” plays in a gallery devoted to those who died climbing, and bronze figures from Himalayan legends look down from the castle’s towers. Artifacts collected here include ancient maps; old hiking boots that were really just wooden paddles with hand-forged iron cleats hammered into footbeds made of straw; Nepalese crystals; vintage postcards; a model heart in a case; leather-strapped goggles; and a Plexiglas chamber filled with “Everest refuse” (rusty cans, discarded clothing, tarpaulins, candy wrappers, a teapot).

“This is not a classical museum; it’s not an art museum or a museum of natural science. It’s a museum where I tell stories about the mountains,” Messner had told me at Corones.

He has sworn that the Corones will be the last of the museums. The plan is for his 28-year-old daughter Magdalena, who has studied both art history and economics, to take over the project.

Standing atop Kronplatz, I asked

Messner why this museum will be the last. “There is no other issue,” he said in a throaty German accent. Issue?

“One museum is for the ice, one is for the rocks, one is on mountain people, one is on holy mountains and this one is on the traditional Alpinism,” he says impatiently. “There is no other issue.”

“MOUNTAINS ARE NOT FAIR or unfair—they are dangerous,”

Messner wrote. Maybe that’s the real appeal of climbing one, something that books and films and museums can’t ever quite recreate. In a world that can so often feel rigged, there’s an undeniable relief to experiencing so impersonal a struggle.

Perhaps that’s why I quickly came to feel as though it were an absolute necessity that I climb to the rest of Messner’s museums, all of which are accessible by car.

Messner’s feats were to my climbing what a professional swimmer’s are to taking a bath, but I still found myself grinning with pride every time I made it to the top.

TAKE A BREAK: WORDS OF WISDOM

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness and many people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth.” — Mark Twain

SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA.ORG

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE (NOVEMBER 12, 2015), COPYRIGHT © 2015 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES CO., NYTIMES.COM

Quality Gardens | Special Interest | Scenic Scottish Tours

Highgrove & the Cotswolds 2018

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• Experience the fascinating and organic gardens of Highgrove

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• Visit the National Arboretum at Westonbirt, established in 1829

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Rome, Ninfa & Castel Gandolfo

By special arrangement step into the secret garden haven of Ninfa - rarely open to the public.

Scented roses, hydrangeas and jasmines curtain what remains of medieval buildings and Roman temples.

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Slash Your Bills And Be Hundreds Of Pounds Better Off

There are numerous ways to save money, but if you’ve only got time for a handful then tackling your bills is likely to give the biggest payout

It might take you a couple of hours to work through all of them, but the potential savings make it time well spent. And there’s no need to worry about making changes. Most of the time you’re able to get the same or very similar service just by moving companies.

HOW TO GET THE BEST DEAL

First, work out what you really need. There’s no point paying for calls, television channels and even water that you won’t use.

Then, using a comparison site such as GoCompare or USwitch, you can quickly get an idea of what you could

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

be paying. You don’t need to spend too much time poring over the results—just make sure you know the full cost you’d be paying over the length of the contract.

You’ve then got two main options. Armed with this information you can take your pick from the cheaper deals, or you can haggle with your existing supplier. If it’s the latter, tell them that you want to leave and see what they offer you. Just making that call doesn’t mean you do have to move to a different provider, but it should get you the best prices.

The top four bills to switch:

1ENERGY

Haggling won’t make a difference with energy. To save, you need to switch. When comparing energy prices, it’s useful to have an old bill with accurate figures on your

usage. Of course the price quoted is only an estimate—if you use more energy, you’ll pay more. Yet, on average people moving from a variable rate tariff to a cheap fixed deal can save £300 a year.

2 PHONE AND BROADBAND

For some unknown reason it’s cheaper to get phone and broadband together than just purchasing broadband on its own. In addition to switching supplier, you can also bring down the cost by cutting out any call packages you don’t need or reducing the speed of your internet supply if you don’t mind it being slower.

If you want only the phone, see if you can pay for the line rental upfront for a year, which often comes with a discount.

3 TELEVISION

Pay TV from the likes of Sky and Virgin can be very expensive but also one of the easiest to haggle down in price. The companies are desperate to keep you, so they often offer big discounts or free channels to get you to stay. However, the biggest saving is to go with free-to-air channels with no contract. If you want to record, you can buy a Freeview+ or YouView box for under £150—far cheaper than paying for channels you probably don’t watch that much anyway.

4 WATER

A slightly different bill here. You can’t switch provider, and rates are set according to your house size. But in England and Wales you can request a free water meter. With these you pay for what you use. If you have more bedrooms than people at home then there’s a good chance you’ll save money by getting a water meter. You can ask your water company to calculate whether you’re likely to pay more or less.

My Mum’s Money

AVOIDING AUTO-RENEWALS

My

mum’s pretty good when it comes to remembering dates. From birthdays to the next MOT, she always knows what’s happening and when. Even so, she’s still got a list of when memberships and services are due to renew, with certain dates marked on the calendar.

Why’s this important? If you gave the long number on the front of your debit or credit card to pay for a service, then there could well be a continuous payment authority (CPA) on your account. This allows companies to automatically charge you for another month or year without asking your permission. And these auto-renewal payments will often cost you more money.

Insurance is one of the worst culprits for this. You’ll be charged a huge amount more as a renewal compared to what you paid in your first year. And you’re locked in for another 12 months too. Yes, you should get a reminder in the post,

but by keeping track of the date, my mum is guaranteed not to forget or accidentally miss a letter or email. And it’s not just big annual bills. Even smaller savings count. My mum only travels by train every two or three of months. She cuts the cost of the train fare by making use of her Senior Railcard. A useful saving. Yet she’ll always be sure to cancel the card before the expiration date and she only renews it again when she’s next due to travel. You can do the same with any kinds of memberships that you don’t use week in, week out.

My mum’s money tip:

Make sure companies don’t store your credit card details, or ask your bank to cancel any CPA. This way you can’t be charged without realising.

Money Site Of The Month

Petrol keeps getting more expensive but there are a few handy websites which can help you find the lowest prices at the pumps.

Both Petrolprices.com and Confused.com will locate the cheapest petrol stations near whatever postcode you enter. Both are free to use, though there are restrictions. You can’t, for example, refine your search to less than five miles. However, you should be able to spot a place to fill up on your route.

of this site is that you’re able to check the opening times.

The free version of PetrolPrices requires you to register, and it will give you 20 searches with five results each month. I like that you can click for directions and a map will pop up from your chosen postcode to the petrol station location.

You can pay £2 a month or £20 a year to increase this to 100 searches a month with ten results.

With Confused you get one search a day with one result. But if you register, which is still free, you can increase this to 20 searches per week and get five results. A handy feature

You can also add in various filters such as brands, or sort by the nearest rather than cheapest stations, for example. And if you’re over 60 you can nab a 50 per cent discount on the Plus account—a tenner well worth spending if you’re a regular driver.

TAKE A BREAK: SWEET DREAMS ARE MADE OF CHEESE

A recent study by the British Cheese Board has revealed that the type of cheese participants consumed before bed could affect the theme of their dreams. Cheddar led to more enhanced views about celebrities while Red Leicester had participants dwelling on the past and Lancashire saw them dream of the future. If it’s a dreamless night you’re after, the winner was Cheshire.

SOURCE: DAILYREPORTER.COM

Jerk Pork And Jamaican Rice

If refrigerated, this jerk marinade will last 7-10 days and it’s easily scalable by increasing quantities.

1. Make the marinade by blitzing the ingredients in a blender. Slice the pork into six. Set in a dish and cover with the marinade. Cling film and refrigerate for ½ hour to 24 hours.

2. Preheat oven to 180°C. Sear the pork in a griddle pan—roughly one minute on each side. Transfer the pan to the oven and cook the pork for a further 20-25 minutes.

3. Heat the olive oil in a saucepan and sweat the onion for 5 minutes. Stir in the rice and cover with coconut milk. Add 400ml of water to the pan. Stir in the stock cube and kidney beans, bring up to a simmer and cook for 12 minutes.

4. Season the rice and slice each pork fillet to serve—perhaps with a green side like wilted spinach or ‘slaw.

Rachel Walker is a food writer for numerous national publications.

Visit rachel-walker.co.uk for more information

Serves 6

FOR THE JERK MARINADE

• 12tsp ground allspice

• 2tsp ground peppercorns

• ½tsp cinnamon

• 2 scotch bonnet chillies, deseeded and finely sliced*

• 4 spring onions, sliced

• 4 sprigs of thyme, leaves only

• 4 garlic cloves, crushed

• 2tbsp brown sugar

• 2 limes, zest and juice

• 60ml olive oil

• 20ml red wine vinegar

*Use 1 scotch bonnet to curb the spice, and if no scotch bonnets available use 2-4 bird’s eye chillies instead

• 1kg pork neck fillet

FOR THE RICE

• 1tbsp olive oil

• 1 onion, diced

• 300g rice

• 1 x 400ml tinned coconut milk

• 1 vegetable stock cube

• 1 x 400g tinned kidney beans, drained and rinsed

OPTIONAL GARNISH

• Salt, pepper, fresh thyme, allspice

Drinks Tip…

Nod to Jamaica with a Dark and Stormy. Load ice into a tall glass, add a shot of rum, fill with ginger beer and top with a lime wedge. Stick with ginger beer for a soft option

ROASTED PINEAPPLE AND RUM CARAMEL

This cooling dessert is the perfect way to follow jerk pork. It channels a tropical flavour and is finished with a spirited spot of rum in the caramel sauce. It’s best cooked in a griddle pan and is great for summer barbecues.

1. Cut the pineapple into 12 spears, lengthways.

2. Stir together the maple syrup, ginger and allspice in a mixing bowl. Add the pineapple and toss until it’s thoroughly coated in the glaze.

3. Meanwhile, put the sugar and water into a saucepan, and heat to a rapid simmer for 10 minutes, or until it starts to turn a light amber colour. Take off the heat and carefully stir in the cream and rum.

4. Heat a griddle and cook the pineapple for 3-4 minutes on either side, to embed deep char lines.

5. Top with crème fraiche and a sprig of mint, or ice cream, and drizzle over a tablespoon of caramel.

• 1 pineapple, peeled and cored

• 2tbsp maple syrup or heated honey

• 1tsp ground ginger

• ½tsp allspice

FOR THE RUM CARAMEL

• 200g caster sugar

• 125ml water

• 125ml cream

• 2tbsp rum

SERVE

Crème fraiche, fresh mint or ice cream

BY TIM & ZOË HILL

Coastal Chic

Give any room a summer update by introducing a relaxed, nautical vibe with splashes of blue and plenty of natural textures

It’s the time of year to channel some seaside style into your interiors as we embrace the warmer weather and brighter days of summer. No matter what style or period your home, this versatile look can be adapted to suit most spaces and is the perfect way to create a refreshing and relaxing environment, whether applied to a living room, kitchen, bedroom or bathroom.

For a pared-back feel, start your scheme with crisp white walls to act as a backdrop. Not only will white instantly brighten the room, but it gives you more flexibility when it comes to choosing furniture and accessories. However, if your inner interior designer is screaming out for colour, go for a feature wall in striking navy or choose a playful

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

printed wallpaper with coastal motifs to fully embrace the nautical vibe.

Build up the look with natural touches, such as wooden flooring and furniture, and look out for woven textures in soft furnishings and rugs. Woods including ash and oak are better suited to this look than darker, heavier materials, as their lightcoloured finish will complement the open, airy feel. Consider whitewashing wooden floorboards to make small rooms appear larger and choose window dressings that will allow plenty of natural daylight to filter into the room.

Have fun accessorising with ornaments, lighting and artwork to pull together the scheme and introduce different shades of blue, from duck egg to indigo. Hang a salvaged ship’s wheel or porthole mirror above the mantelpiece or, for a more relaxed take on the trend, look for subtler pieces with rope detailing and arrange a coffee table display of decorative beach pebbles and driftwood.

Into The Blue

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EQUITY RELEASE

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Do you want to release the money tied up in your home?

Be sure to read our trusted guide

Your home could be the biggest asset you own. Increasing numbers of UK homeowners over 55 are turning to equity release in order to take advantage of their property wealth without having to move or downsize.

For equity release information you can trust, request your free copy of the Reader’s Digest Equity Release Guide.

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To request your FREE guide and instant calculations:

0800 029 1233

This is a Lifetime Mortgage. To understand the features and risks, ask for a Personalised Illustration. 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 £1,295.

FASHION

Allergic To Fashion’s Florals

As much as I adore flowers (and look forward to them ushering in spring each year), I’m completely allergic to floral clothing. From Liberty’s heritage prints to Cath Kidston’s retro florals, they all give me the sartorial equivalent of a sneeze and a headache. If you’re of a certain age, floral prints can easily go very wrong. I don’t own a single floral print in my entire wardrobe, and I have no plans to change that.

So, how did florals come to be such a spring staple in the first place? It’s because in ancient cultures, flowers acted as a mode of communication, sort of like primitive emojis. Flowers held meanings which were hard to express but easily understood.

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

To the ancient Chinese, peonies and cranes signified wealth and good fortune. The Japanese used cherry blossom to symbolise kindness. Persians and Hindus used the lotus to represent peace and transcendence. The historical language behind flowers and their meaning on textiles has mostly been lost over time, but many people still find them beautiful.

Designers are perennially inspired by florals and know that many women love wearing them, so stores are suddenly blooming with floral clothing at this time of year.

I, however, happen to agree with Miranda Priestley’s deadpan line in The Devil Wears Prada: “Florals? For spring? Ground-breaking.”

In terms of style, the romantic and girly feeling of florals doesn't represent me, so how do I make spring-like sartorial choices if I’m skirting florals rather than wearing a floral skirt? Mostly, I’m inspired by the colours I see in nature at this time of year; the cerulean blues of the sky worn with cloud white, the intense wild-azalea pink I seek in a lipstick, or a cheerful pair of daffodil heels to liven up a muted outfit. I might be allergic to florals, but I'm not immune to the the colours of the flowers that inspire them. To paraphrase Edna St. Vincent Millay, “I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick (or wear!) one.”

Three Steps To Spring Skincare

With the British weather darting between rain and sun at a day’s whim, it can be difficult for your skin to keep pace, explains

Jenessa Williams

Changing temperatures, humidity and city pollution can all play havoc with our pores, but as spring rolls around, it’s important to remember less is often more. We all know the benefits of "clean eating" but why not clean skincare? Paring things back puts less stress on your face, your bathroom cabinet and your bank balance, maintaining a much fresher feel.

Many brands have caught onto our desire to simplify by providing multipurpose formulas. Micellar water is a great place to start—removing make-up and dirt while hydrating and soothing, it lets pores breathe.

Cold snaps leave behind dry lips and wind-chapped skin, so it’s important to exfoliate to release your spring glow. Lush and Bare Minerals offer a great range with natural ingredients (no microbeads here) that gently buff away any dryness. Rub in slow, circular motions, and avoid particularly delicate areas— nobody needs to cleanse their eyelids.

Moisturiser is the final trick in your arsenal, but tread carefully. It's been argued that oily skin types should avoid thick formulas, as oil and water don’t mix. Whatever your needs, look for products that include SPF—it’s a popular misconception that the sun only affects us when it’s blazing. Quite the opposite; save yourself the cost of anti-ageing serums by sunscreening. No fuss, no clutter. It’s all down to the power of three.

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Column Fruit Trees

‘The Pride of Buckingham Palace Gardens’ Yours from only £7.48 each*

Look forward to watching delicious fruit grow from the comfort and convenience of your own garden. Our Column Trees were first developed for Queen Elizabeth and her children by a gardener working for the British royal family. It took 20 years of development by the Agronomy Institute - the paradise of gardens - to turn their fruit trees into simple, resilient shrubs for planting. Thanks to their marvellous efforts you can now bring the delight of the Column Fruit tree to your garden at home.

Succulent fruits of superior - batch harvested - quality Advances in agronomic research have allowed our professional growers to cultivate a more natural tasting fruit, one that has all the flavour of fruit as it used to be, before mass production and over farming changed things. Our column fruits are crisp, juicy, sweet and fragrant.You’ll be pleasantly surprised to see the jealousy on the faces of your neighbours and relatives. They’ll see column after column of succulent zesty flesh growing right on your balcony, terrace or garden – and those irresistible bright colours - all year round. Children (or grandchildren) will love watching your fruit grow, checking them for ripeness, choosing which ones to pick fruit then filling up their baskets. Give your garden a little kiss from nature.

For patios, gardens or terraces - casual or professional gardeners alike. Just add water! Making the most of your garden with luxurious Column Fruit Trees couldn’t be easier. They don’t require any special knowledge to plant or keep, all you have to do is add water! What’s more they’re 100% organic, growing fruit you can share safely with the whole family. It really is child’s play! And the cherry on the cake is that they don’t require maintenance. Of course if you wish to, you can restrict the height of your 70cm shrub by cutting it regularly: 1 metre, 1.5 metres, 2 metres - you decide.

How are we able to sell our trees from £7.48 when outlets and online retail up to £39 per tree? The answer is twofold 1) We’re driven by the passion that every superior Column Fruit Tree sold makes happier customers and smarter gardens. 2) Once we learned grower’s secrets from 20 years of Agronomical research - how to cultivate these beautiful garden shrubs – we then secured our own supply chain. As a result of keeping resellers or separate distributors out of the equation, we can happily offer you our award winning Column Trees at an unbeatable price. Don’t waste a second The planting period runs from January to April, so don’t delay! Buy today and you could be harvesting your fruit very soon - just a few months after planting.

INTRODUCTORY OFFER FROM ONLY £7.48*each

10 reasons why tens of 1000’s of customers choose our Column Fruit Trees over others

1) Pick fruit all year round

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3) Harvest in bunches straight from the trunk

4) Large harvests produced very quickly, no need to wait for years

5) No size limit except as you choose to restrict the height

6) Resistant to disease and frost

7) A joy for children and adults alike

8) Lifetime guarantee, you don’t risk a penny

9) Up to 79% off, highly cost-effective fruit

10) Takes up little space (ideal for balconies, terraces, small gardens)

LEAN ON PETE

A young boy and his horse travel through America in search of love and belonging in Andrew Haigh’s tearjerker

Young Charlie (Charlie Plummer)

doesn’t have an easy life: his mother left when he was a baby, his father is a flaky drunk who’s never there for him and he doesn’t go to school because they’re always on the move. To kill time and earn some money, Charlie gets a job helping a cranky old racehorse trainer, Del (Steve Buscemi). There, he befriends a racehorse past his time named Lean on Pete, who’s about to get sold for slaughter, prompting Charlie to take drastic measures to save his new friend’s life. It takes a while for the pure awe at 18-year-old Plummer’s deeply

expressive, honest performance to sink in—the slightest quiver of his lip conveys an avalanche of emotion. But once it does, Lean on Pete takes you on a soulstirring journey along the beautifully hostile, rugged landscapes of the Pacific Northwest, and gets you choked up at the lessons in kindness and resilience it’ll teach you along the way.

A poignant and delicately composed masterclass in wistful Americana, Lean on Pete will disarm anyone with a love for the poetry of solitude, road movies and tender friendships between human and animal.

With equally strong, full-bodied supporting performances from Steve Buscemi, Chloë Sevigny and Travis Fimmel, it’s one heartbreaker of a film.

DRAMA: ON CHESIL BEACH

Love, sexual tension and intimacy issues collide on one fateful wedding night in this stifled, low-key drama. Florence (Saoirse Ronan) and Edward (Billy Howle) are the young couple on the verge of a blissful new chapter of life as a married couple—or so he thinks. She, on the other hand, is crippled by deep-rooted fears threatening her love for Edward. It’s a gorgeously shot, idyllic portrayal of 1960s Britain, with the understated drama unravelling through meaningful looks and slightest touches. The film

tackles the most awkward matters of sexuality with an unrelenting thirst for authenticity, resulting in an uncomfortable watch that will chafe your skin for days.

MUSIC: HOW TO TALK TO GIRLS AT

PARTIES What starts off as a Sid and Nancy-like love story rapidly mutates into a trippy potpourri of latex, aliens and Jodorowsky-inspired imagery—and it’s a blast to keep up. Based on a short story by Neil Gaiman, and starring Nicole Kidman, Elle Fanning, plus goofy cameos from Simon Amstell and Matt Lucas, it’s a standoffish and fresh homage to punk rock in 1970s London.

COMEDY: JEUNE FEMME

If there’s such a thing as a filmic incarnation of the human Id, this erratic French comedy is most certainly it. We meet our heroine, Paula, screaming and banging her head against the door of her former lover’s flat—and things only get worse from there. While her obnoxious presence can get a bit overbearing, Paula’s ability to see the best in every situation (from homelessness to joblessness via frigid men) is ultimately absorbing. The cinematography and soundtrack match her wild energy to a tee, shaping a film that’s bursting with life even at its most miserable. by Eva Mackevic

HOMELAND: SEASON 7 (CHANNEL 4)

What is it? The globetrotting procedural, now back on home turf.

Why should I watch it? This season plugs into some compelling contemporary concerns: political divisions, fake news, even Russia’s return to prominence.

Where did we leave it? With alternaPresident Keane responding to an attempted assassination by rounding up perceived enemies.

Best episode? Episode four’s uneasy, Ruby Ridge-like stand-off, a crystallisation of where we are today.

MOZART

IN THE JUNGLE: SEASON 4 (AMAZON PRIME)

TOP OF THE POPS: 1985 (BBC4)

What is it? A twice-weekly, half-hourly nostalgia hit, care of the BBC archives.

Why should I watch it? Because we’ve reached a moment when almost anybody could break into the charts: 1985 showcases, among others, Radio 2 mainstays (Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson), German avant-gardists (Propaganda), sensitive singersongwriters (Scritti Politti, Stephen Duffy), an upstart American talent calling herself Madonna—and, erm, Russ Abbot.

Best presenters? The all-Liverpudlian duo of Janice Long and John Peel become instant favourites—not least for offering the perverse fascination of seeing droll indie guru Peel having to summon prime-time showbiz enthusiasm for, say, Shakin’ Stevens.

by Mike McCahill

WHAT TO STREAM THIS MONTH:

Good vibrations: New York’s most likable orchestra reassembles for another blithe season.

THE LOOMING TOWER: SEASON 1 (AMAZON PRIME) Absorbing, illustriously cast dramatisation of America’s attempts to catch Osama before 9/11.

LOVE: SEASON 3 (NETFLIX) Scant surprises, but Judd Apatow’s long-form romcom finally grants its lovers and viewers alike their happy ending.

ALBUM OF THE MONTH: THE HORIZON JUST LAUGHED

BY DAMIEN JURADO

If you’re the kind of person who seeks relief for existential unrest in the intimate, world-weary vocals of Leonard Cohen or John Martyn, Damien Jurado might just become your new best friend. A selection of self-contained little lullabies for adults, this is his first self-produced album in a 20+ year career. While his tenderly raspy voice and stripped-back melodies are a true ointment for the soul, the laconic, meditative lyrics (“My girl Lucy waits for me to bend my knee / But the diamond doesn’t shine /And I can barely make the payments on our telephone ring”) channel the uncertainties of the human condition that every one of us faces at some point in life.

But the true treasures on this album always lie in the small moments: the quiet hum of electric organs in the background, seamlessly elegant hooks and the subtle sways of Jurado’s whisper-like vocals—comfort music doesn’t get any better than this.

Key tracks: “Allocate”, “The Last Great Washington State”, “1973”

by Eva Mackevic

READER RADAR: IDMAN OMAR , CREATIVE WRITING STUDENT

WATCHING: CELEBS GO DATING (E4) The celebs’ ups and downs in their quest for love have been strangely addictive.

READING: TOO MUCH AND NOT THE MOOD BY DURGA CHEW BOSE

This lovely book of essays encapsulates me, and Chew-Bose has a great way of magnifying small things and making them so beautiful.

ONLINE: HAYU APP I’ve become obsessed with catching up on my reality TV shows here and I can’t get enough of The Real Housewives of Atlanta.

LISTENING: LUST FOR LIFE BY LANA

DEL REY

This entire album has a vintage sound that I love. Lana is one of my favourite singers and her songwriting is fantastic on this project.

May Fiction

This month James Walton has his eyes on two thrilling reads where the real mysteries are human relationships

Murder at the Grand Raj Palace

by Vaseem Khan (Mulholland, £16.99)

I can’t imagine anybody not enjoying this book. In the fourth instalment of Vaseem Khan’s deservedly popular series, detective Ashwin Chopra is called in to investigate the fatal stabbing of an American billionaire in Mumbai’s grandest hotel. For PR reasons, the authorities would like a verdict of suicide. But might the man have actually been murdered? (Spoiler alert: have a guess.)

What follows contains plenty of trusty whodunit elements, including a group of suspects who all have their dark secrets, but are still obliging enough to assemble in a single room for the big reveal. Yet, there’s a lot in the novel that’s far more quirky and unexpected than that—not least

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

Chopra’s sidekick: a shamelessly scenestealing baby elephant. Along the way, we also get a vivid and not always flattering sense of today’s India, with its mix of the ancient and brashly modern.

The result has the same winning blend of thrills, charm and local colour as Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. It would make a great Death in Paradise-style TV series as well— although, of course, the makers would need an unusually skilful elephant handler.

Whistle in the Dark

by Emma Healey (Viking, £12.99)

Lana, a troubled 15-year-old, disappears while on holiday with her mother Jen. Four days later, she returns sporting a few minor wounds, but is either unable or unwilling to explain what happened. In this eagerly-awaited successor to Healey’s all-conquering debut Elizabeth Is

Missing, we do eventually find out. Nonetheless, though the book is initially structured like a thriller, its real interests lie in the dynamics of family life.

Jen and Lana’s relationship is at heart a heightened but recognisable version of that between many parents and their teenage children. Jen’s main reactions to her increasingly mysterious daughter are bafflement and anxiety, with moments of slightly pathetic gratitude whenever Lana says something pleasant. Healey is also extremely good on Lana’s struggle to seem like a grown-up: a struggle, it turns out, in which she’s not alone—because Jen is trying pretty hard to seem like one too.

Admittedly, fans of flat-out thrillers may occasionally wonder where the plot’s gone. But even they will surely be impressed by Healey’s sharp and sympathetic depiction of the whole strange business of having a teenage child—and of being one.

Name the author

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

1. One of his main characters has the same first name as Britain’s Prime Minister, 1951-1955.

2. Another has the same name as the emperor of France, 1804-1815.

3. His real surname was the same as that of Britain’s prime minister, 1997-2007.

Answer on p138

Paperbacks

A Legacy of Spies

by John le Carré (Penguin, £8.99)

Le Carré returns triumphantly to his old Cold-War stamping ground for what feels like the final farewell to George Smiley and the Circus.

Dear Cancer, Love Victoria

by Victoria Derbyshire (Trapeze, £9.99)

The broadcaster—and mother of two— has written an affectingly honest diary of her treatment for breast cancer.

The Break

by Marian Keyes (Penguin, £7.99)

Amy’s husband takes a six-month break from marriage and fatherhood “to find himself” in another thoughtful and very funny novel by the much-loved Keyes.

Sir Matt Busby: the Man Who Made a Football Club

by Patrick Barclay (Ebury Press, £8.99)

Brilliant sports journalist tells the definitive story of the miner’s son who became one of the great football managers.

Bill Bailey’s Remarkable Guide to British Birds

by Bill Bailey (Quercus, £19.99)

Beautifully illustrated and entertainingly written guide from the comedian—and, we now know, highly knowledgeable bird-watcher.

RD’S RECOMMENDED READ

To Catch A Thief

A bizarre and yet utterly gripping tale of an unlikely museum theft is the topic of this month’s choice read…

In June 2009, Edwin Rist broke into the Natural History Museum in Tring, Hertfordshire. Which mightn’t sound like the obvious starting point for a gripping work of non-fiction—except that in The Feather Thief that’s exactly what we get.

Growing up in New York, Edwin was a brilliant student, and such a good flautist that, at 17, he won a place at the Royal Academy of Music in London. But by then he’d developed another obsession: with tying exotic feathers to hooks for use in fly-fishing (although, like many obsessive tiers, he himself didn’t bother with the fishing part).

Once in Britain, Edwin vowed to leave this obsession behind. But that was before he heard about the priceless collection of bird skins

The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession and the Natural History Heist of the Century

by Kirk Wallace

Johnson is published by Hutchinson at £20

locked away in Tring—many of them gathered by the great Victorian naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace. Posing as an academic researcher, Edwin got permission to photograph the collection. Soon afterwards, he decided to steal it.

The subsequent theft and hunt for the culprit make for a genuinely thrilling true-crime yarn. Yet, as Kirk Wallace Johnson fills us in on the historical context, everything else proves fascinating too: from Wallace’s hair-raising jungle expeditions to the “feather fever” of the late 19th century when hundreds of millions of birds were slaughtered to decorate women’s hats—leading to the

founding of the RSPB. When Edwin starts to sell his booty, we’re also plunged deep into the surprisingly shadowy world of modern fly-tying, where trade in illegal feathers is widespread. The upshot is perhaps the only book about a flautist stealing birds from a museum that you can imagine being made into a hit movie.

We join Edwin here as he’s planning the robbery…

‘‘

As he ducked in and out of class and rehearsal rooms, he thought through the details of the plan. How would he get inside? What route would ensure he remained inside the museum for the minimum amount of time? Should he start with the Birds of Paradise, the Blue Chatterers or the Indian Crows? How often did the guards make rounds? How many guards were there? Where were the security cameras? If he entered through a window, how would he climb back out with a suitcase full of birds? Would one suitcase suffice?

He created a Word document titled ‘PLAN FOR MUSEUM INVASION’ and started compiling a list of tools he’d need: grappling hooks, a laser glass cutter, latex gloves to conceal his fingerprints.

Sometimes an inner voice would say This is ridiculous!, but it was always drowned out by the other voice pushing him forward.

The moment Edwin’s plans

Feather Fever: More From The Feather Thief

“In the final decades of the 19th century, nearly one hundred million pounds of feathers were imported into France.

In the auction houses of London’s Mincing Lane, 155,000 birds of paradise were sold in a four-year stretch, part of a $2.8 billion industry that imported 40 million pounds of plumage over the same period. One British dealer reported selling two million bird skins in a single year.

The American feather industry was no different—by 1900, 83,000 New Yorkers were employed in the millinery trade, for which some 200 million birds were killed each year.

As the number of birds in the wild dwindled, the value of a feather doubled, tripled, then quadrupled. By 1900 a single ounce of the snowy egret’s finest plumes fetched $32. An ounce of gold was worth only $20.

When the Titanic went down in 1912, the most valuable and highly insured merchandise in its hold was 40 crates of feathers.”

emerged from the realm of fantasy transpired during a routine check-up at a doctor’s surgery. While he was waiting in the examination room, his eyes fell on a box of latex gloves. I’m gonna need a pair of those, he thought, pocketing them.

And so Edwin’s preparations began in earnest. On 11 June 2009, he ordered an 8mm diamond-blade glass cutter. To protect the spoils from insects, he ordered 50 mothballs.

He transferred the photographs from his camera to his computer and studied the proximity of one cabinet to another, assessing how long it might take to cover each of his coveted species. He went online and studied maps of Tring. The train station was east of the town centre, a good two miles of dimly lit country road away. It would be easy enough to slip into the town, but once he arrived at Akeman Street for the final quartermile to the museum, he’d be face to face with the police station.

But he had already discovered a less conspicuous approach: an alleyway running parallel to

And the name of the author is…

George Orwell: whose real name was Eric Blair.

(Winston Smith was the main character in Nineteen Eighty-Four , and Napoleon the pig in AnimalFarm.)

“There was a wall, but he could easily scale it. There was barbed wire, but he could easily snip it…”

Akeman, weaving behind the houses and restaurants. The path would deposit him directly behind the Ornithology Building.

There was a wall, but he could easily scale it. There was barbed wire, but he could easily snip it. There was a museum window on the first floor, just a few feet from the wall, but he could reach it.

All that remained was to select the optimal date. If he was to do it before the Royal Academy of Music’s term ended on 1 July, when he would return home to New York, he was running out of time. The morning of 23 June, Edwin woke up ready, confident. He performed at the academy’s ‘London Soundscapes’, a day-long tribute to composers who had left their mark on the city. In his concert hall locker, he stashed an empty suitcase, a miniature torch, wire cutter, the gloves and the glass cutter. After the performance, he swapped his flute for the suitcase, made his way to Euston Station, and boarded an evening train to Tring.

Books

THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

The fashion journalist and presenter Susannah Constantine has written her first novel, After the Snow, which is out now, published by HQ

Delta of Venus

BY ANAÏS NIN

Sex wasn’t a subject we discussed when I was growing up, so I was lucky to discover this extraordinary book in my late teens. Now considered a modern classic, this anthology of erotic short stories explores the essence of female sexuality and makes it acceptable and beautiful. Nin’s exquisite descriptions of emotion and sensation opened up an adult world for me.

The Map of Love

BY AHDAF SOUEIF

I’ve long been fascinated by the Middle East; the mysticism, culture and creativity of that part of the world is easily overlooked because of its many troubles. But the history and politics of both the first decade of the 20th century and the present day are clearly and brilliantly brought together

by parallel love stories in this book. Soueif’s novel reminds us that we are all the same. It doesn’t matter if we’re from different times or countries, we’re all looking for the same things and struggling with similar feelings.

Winterdance

BY GARY PAULSEN

Snow has always appealed to me. I also have a passion for adventures, both reading about them and taking part myself, so I was thrilled to immerse myself in Paulsen’s heroic tale of the iconic Alaskan dogsled race, the Iditarod. His tales of preparation and misadventure are really funny, while his relationships with his dogs and the outdoors are moving and exhilarating. Paulsen inspired me to take part in a 300-mile dogsled expedition in 2016. Whenever I had to push my sled or felt the effects of the extreme cold I reminded myself that the Iditarod is 1,180 miles! As told to Caroline Hutton

Be Smart With Your Old Smart Phone

Technology now improves faster than you can say “upgrade” but getting a new handset doesn’t have to render your old one useless…

Screen resolution, processor speeds and camera quality have improved substantially in the past five years, so, at some point, you’ve probably upgraded your smartphone. But what to do with your old handset? Retailers offer discounts for trading in used models, but I’d argue against saving £50 in the short-term for the long-term gain of retaining a standby device. But this needn’t result in your old phone gathering dust in a drawer…

TURN IT INTO A SAT-NAV.

Use the TomTom GO Mobile app (subscription, £17.99 per year) to download full maps of Britain and/or

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

Europe, and your old phone becomes a fully-functional offline navigator (albeit you’ll still need a SIM to get live traffic info). There’s no danger of distraction from incoming calls and texts, and TomTom’s maps are the clearest available.

USE IT AS A SECURITY CAMERA.

Get a phone-stand on eBay (decent ones sell for around £10), then download Manything (free)—an ingenious app that turns your spare smartphone into a security camera.

If it detects movement in a room, it activates and live-streams video to your current handset, so you can monitor your home from anywhere. For a fee, you can save footage to the cloud and add additional cameras.

GET GAMING!

Touchscreen gaming isn’t as fun as button-bashing, which is why portable consoles like Nintendo

Switch still sell. But with a Bluetooth peripheral such as DJI’s Gamevice Controller (£79 for iPhone, from £28 for Samsung Galaxy series), you can dock your old device into a satisfyingly chunky, PlayStation Portable-style controller. Download the retro title of your choice (Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog and Capcom’s Street Fighter are both available in app stores…), and emulate the day you nicked your mate’s Atari Lynx. Except with better graphics.

DESIGN A “DIGITAL BABYSITTER”.

Got little ones around? Then why not customise your old phone for their (monitored) use? Wipe your web access, install trusted apps such as CBeebies Playtime Island (free) or Fisher-Price Laugh & Learn Smart Stages (99p), and adjust parental settings so there’s no option to buy inapp purchases. Presto: a truly terrific toy for toddlers. (Though it might be worth investing in a heavy-duty phone case, too!)

‘YouGarden firmly believe that Gardening is for Everyone! That’s right; you don’t even need a garden to start growing. Many of our plants can be grown on balconies, small patios and decking, so you can catch the growing bug, and even grow your own freshest fruit and vegetables too.

They speak in plain English. Sometimes gardening can be a confusing maze of Latin names and strange words and can be confusing or off-putting - they simplify all and remove all the jargon, and give you down to earth advice on what to grow - and how! Readers Digest and YouGarden have selected plants that are easy to grow and will give successful results guaranteed. We have done the sifting and choosing for you, to bring you the best. Happy gardening!’

Stunning ‘Standard’ Oleander!

A Pretty Profusion Of Hot-Pink Blooms

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Give your front door, conservatory, patio or balcony a sunny uplifting Mediterranean feel with these breathtaking 3ft tall winter hardy Oleander. Easy to grow, Oleanders thrive on neglect – they can easily survive in hot, dry weather AND in winter temperatures too, as low as -5ºC ... no wonder it’s one of the UK’s favourite hardy exotics!

We have a limited number of these mature, well-established plants available. Supplied at 3ft tall in 5 litre pots, they can be seen at over £40 each in garden centres.

Take advantage of this limited time offer and buy one for just £19.99. Or SAVE AN EXTRA £10.00 and buy two for only £29.98... that’s just £14.99 each! Delivery from mid-April 2018 - the perfect time to plant.!

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Lush evergreen foliage for year-round interest

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Introducing... The “Hawaiian Palm” The Rarest House Plant In The World

Introducing... The “Hawaiian Palm” The Rarest House Plant In The World

The rare, fascinating Brighamia insignis – “The Hawaiian Palm” – is a critically endangered species, and with just seven plants left in the wild, we’ve managed to get a limited stock of specially-cultivated examples this exotic specimen.

he rare, fascinating Brighamia insignis – “The Hawaiian Palm” – is a critically endangered species, and with just seven plants left in the wild, we’ve managed to get a limited stock of specially-cultivated examples of this exotic specimen.

Having nurtured the seeds over the last few seasons, we are delighted to be able to offer the Hawaiian Palm for sale in the UK - and you’ll find it’s perfectly happy being the centre of attention in your living room or conservatory.

Having nurtured the seeds over the last few seasons, we are delighted to be able to offer the Hawaiian Palm for sale in the UK - and you’ll find it’s perfectly happy being the centre of attention in your living room or conservatory.

Lush green leaves are formed from the centre, and exquisite, yellow flowers are produced in autumn. Play your part in the conservation of this critically endangered plant, and enjoy a real talking point in your family home!

Lush green leaves are formed from the centre, and exquisite, yellow flowers are produced in autumn. Play your part in the conservation of this critically endangered plant, and enjoy a real talking point in your family home!

Your chance to own the rarest house plant in the world!

Your chance to own the rarest house plant in the world!

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SAVE £5.00 when you buy today!

Lush, bright green foliage

Lush, bright green foliage

Ornamental trunk forms over many years

Ornamental trunk forms over many years

Easy to grow and care for

Easy to grow and care for

“Hawaiian

From Our Archive

January 1983

THE SECRETS OF SOUP

By Jack Denton Scott

“Soup not only transforms leftovers and inexpensive ingredients into imaginative meals, but also lights inner fires, fights the common cold and holds down weight. In addition, it is one of the most easily digested foods we can eat.

“Historians are uncertain when soup was first served. But according to language historian Marco Pei, the oldest reference to a cook-book involves a Chinese work dating back 4,700 years. This includes several soups, the star of which is one made with pigeon’s eggs called “Golden Moons on a Silver Sea”.

“The earliest evidence of soupmaking comes from the Near East where, around 7,000 or 8,000 BC, cultivated grains were boiled in crude pottery vessels. At the ancient Greek Olympic games, so it is said, each contestant brought to the altar of Zeus a goat or a calf, which was ritually killed, and placed in a huge cooking cauldron. The resulting soup was drunk

by the athletes for strength.

“The word “soup” probably derived from the German sop, the bread over which a liquid such as broth or pottage was poured. “Soup” also may have come from the sound of sipping or slurping hot liquid. La Soupe has been the name of the evening meal in parts of rural France for centuries, giving rise to our word “supper”.

“Whatever we consider it—a weight whipper, a form of therapy, the hurried cook’s best friend, a satisfying supper—soup has social resonance. Wrote French chef Louis P De Gouy in The Soup Book: “Soup is cuisine’s kindest course. It breathes reassurance… to dispel the depressing effects of a gruelling day at the office or shop, rain or snow in the streets, or bad news in the papers.””

How Jealous Are You?

First run in our November 1983 edition, this quiz put our readers’ emotional reactions to the test.

Test your jealousy threshold when faced with the following situations. For each, decide if you would not be jealous, slightly jealous, somewhat jealous or intensely jealous. Then compare your answers with our panel of experts.

1. At a party, Mrs A, an excellent dancer, spends nearly the whole evening dancing with an attractive man. Mr A, who isn’t a good dancer, stays on the sidelines. If you were Mr A, how jealous would you be?

2. Mr B flirts with a pretty newcomer at a local social gathering. Ignoring his wife—who can see them—they talk animatedly, laugh a lot and exchange deep looks. How would you feel if you were Mrs B?

3. While rummaging in a drawer, Mrs C finds a bundle of love-letters that her husband has kept from an affair predating their marriage. How would you react in Mrs C’s place?

4. Mrs D’s ex-boyfriend is coming to town and has written to her to suggest they meet for a drink. She accepts,

saying to Mr D, “After all, we’re old friends.” If you were Mr D, would you be jealous?

5. Mr E has a son and daughter by a previous marriage and meets his exwife to discuss the children. At times they prolong a meeting to talk about old friends and other topics of mutual interest. If you were Mrs E, how jealous would you be?

6. At a Christmas party, Mr F notices his wife in a dimly lit bedroom kissing a man warmly. She explains that it was only an impulse, never intended to go further. If you were Mr F, how would you be

Mr G confesses to his wife that while he was away on a long business trip, not having had sex for weeks, he fell into bed

with a woman he met in a restaurant. He says it was purely physical, and only a one-time thing. If you were Mrs G, how would you feel?

8. Mr H discovers that his wife has been having an affair for months with

another man. When he confronts her she admits to it, but swears that her love for him hasn’t diminished. She says that she needs and loves each man differently and begs him to let her keep things as they are. If you were Mr H, how would you react?

ANSWERS:

1. Most panelists thought Mr A has good reason to feel slightly—or even somewhat— jealous. Mrs A’s behaviour makes him feel excluded, and look so to others. But what Mr A does with his jealousy is crucial. To be protective, jealousy should be put to constructive use. Mr A should discuss his feelings with his wife.

2. The panellists thought it would be reasonable for Mrs B to feel anything up to intense jealousy. One felt that Mr B’s interest in an attractive woman is no ground for jealousy, but his flirting with her in full view of his wife is a real offence, and suggests he’s trying to antagonise her. Mrs B’s jealousy—if properly used—may repel the threat and get Mr B to change his ways.

3 & 4. The majority opinion is that serious jealousy is not called for in either case. One panellist commented, “Relationships that predate a marriage are important parts of a person’s history; they shouldn’t be expected to discard those parts when they marry.” Everyone has a right to their past, as long as it doesn’t imperil the present.

5. One expert summed up the dilemma: from Mr E’s point of view, talking to his exwife is legitimate, and from the present Mrs

E’s point of view, jealousy is legitimate. The only solution is for husband and wife to discuss their feelings openly.

6. One panellist made the acerbic comment, “Her explanation is not credible. Either she lacks insight into her motivation or is dissembling. Once launched, sexual behaviour has a momentum of its own.” Another commented that it is hard to trust someone who acts so freely upon impulse.

7. One expert thought the explanation given—a long time without sex—was hollow. “If a pledge of sexual fidelity is taken seriously, deprivation is not an excuse.” Most people see casual sex as an act with emotional potential, and therefore as an invasion of marriage.

8. In this case, intense jealousy would be natural. As one panellist said, “This is duplicity at a classic level. The plea that the relationship continues means she needs him only in order to carry on the affair.” The unanswerable question is whether jealousy can preserve the marital relationship in this case. Even if used for thoughtful discussion, it may do no good. But to show no jealousy, would seem to say that there was nothing worth trying to protect in the first place.

You Couldn’t Make It Up

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

WHEN A NEW SUPERMARKET opened in my town I was impressed by the number of staff greeting the customers and volunteering help. On my third visit, a man was standing by the baskets holding an empty one in his hand.

I approached him with a big smile, took the basket from him and said “thank you.” He looked at me rather sheepishly but didn’t speak so I assumed he must be shy.

As I walked away I turned to see another lady approaching him and saw she was asking who I was. I then realised he had just been waiting for his wife so they could go shopping!

FIONA MCGARRY, Hampshire

MY NEPHEW’S SON WAS going through a difficult phase at school and so over-stepped the mark one day, that the exasperated teacher yelled at him, “Get out!”

Cheekily, he replied, “What’s the magic word?”

IT’S UNUSUAL TO HAVE our three adult children all home together, so when it happened just before last Christmas, my husband and I agreed to cook an old family favourite— sausages and mash.

It turned out that on this occasion the magic word was not “please,” but “detention.”

STEPHEN GEE, Bath

All went well until we started eating; our son and then one of our daughters complained of a funny taste. Initially my onion gravy got the blame, but when our son found a marble-sized piece of marzipan

swimming in his gravy we realised that my husband, who cannot bear to waste anything but has poor eyesight, had mistaken leftover marzipan from the Christmas cake for leftover potatoes.

That particular meal will now always be remembered for “Dad’s marzipan mash!”

VERONICA CALLIS, Northampton

AN EMPLOYEE AT AN employment agency looked at my name tag when I went to register with them and commented on my name being unusual. “How do you pronounce it?” he asked. “Tre-nay? Tainee?”

I was puzzled for a moment until I realised what was going on and explained. My name tag actually said “Trainee”. He was very embarrassed!

PIIA AINSWORTH, Manchester

MY DAUGHTER EMILY was at her first wedding and gaped at the entire ceremony. When it was over, she asked me, “Why did the lady change her mind?”

I replied, “What do you mean?”

“Well, she went down the aisle with one man and came back with another one,” came her answer.

MOLLY BURTON, Flintshire

WHEN MY MOTHER-IN-LAW did away with the coal fire in her living room, she decided to replace it with a modern coal-effect electric fire. When her elderly father called for his

daily chat, he sat down in front of the fire while his daughter made the tea. He called to her, “This fire needs poking up a bit” and before she could stop him he picked up the poker off the companion set and drove it through the artificial coal cover, leaving a large hole.

JOHN ROBERTS, Conwy

ON MY 50TH BIRTHDAY, I tried on the same dress that I had worn to my 40th birthday party.

“You know what that means?” I said to my boyfriend. “I have the body of a 40-year-old!”

I was feeling chuffed until he said, “Or, it means that when you were 40, you had the body of a 50-year-old.”

CATHERINE HISCOX, Hertfordshire

I WAS TALKING TO MY grandson Jack about the ages of different members of our family when he cheekily told me he thought that I was old.

I asked him rather indignantly, “Just how old do you suppose I am?”

He retorted, “The highest number I can think of!”

ANNABEL HAMMETT, Cheshire

MY YOUNG SON RHYS brought me back down to earth when he saw me cutting yet more recipes out of Reader’s Digest.

“Mum,” he said. “You’re not gonna live long enough to try all of those out.”

DEENA COLWORTH, Cambridgeshire

YES I want to subscribe to Reader’s Digest Magazine for just £3 for 3 issues (a saving of £8.37 on the shop price of £11.37 based on the cover price of £3.79 per issue). I understand that if I do not wish to continue receiving Reader’s Digest after my first 3 issues I can simply cancel my subscription by contacting customer services. If I do want to continue to subscribe after my first 3 issues I need do nothing and my subscription will automatically be renewed at the low rate of £7.50 for every 3 issues until I decide otherwise.

Word Power

Gastronomy—the art of eating—is a rich source of vocabulary in all languages (Italians have far more words for “pasta” than Eskimos have for “snow”). See how many culinary words you know, even if you can’t boil water. For answers, turn the page.

BY EMILY COX & HENRY RATHVON

1. eupeptic adj—A: perfectly ripe. B: having a peppery flavour. C: promoting good digestion.

2. dim sum n.—A: dark meat of a duck. B: made with a blended soy sauce. C: small portions of a variety of foods.

3. sommelier n.—A: wine steward. B: head chef. C: light salad dressing.

4. dredge v.—A: lightly coat, as with flour. B: grind into meal. C: bind the wings and legs of a fowl.

5. Florentine adj.—A: prepared with a cream sauce. B: prepared with spinach. C: prepared with mozzarella.

6. julienne v.—A: season with herbs. B: steam. C: cut into strips.

7. roux n.—A: spicy stew containing okra. B: bead-shaped grain. C: thickener for sauces.

8. coddle v.— A: whip. B: beat with a whisk. C: cook gently in hot water.

9. bain-marie n.—A: cheese slicer. B: double boiler’s lower pot. C: small pastry tip for icing petits fours.

10. nori n.—A: dipping bowls. B: seaweed wrapper for sushi. C: drink made from fermented rice.

11. macerate v.—A: sizzle. B: soften by steeping. C: break into crumbs.

12. tandoori adj.—A: flavoured with curries. B: sweetened with tamarind. C: roasted in a charcoal oven.

13. trencherman n.—A: hearty eater. B: salad chef. C: waiter’s assistant.

14. clabber n.—A: gristle. B: curdled milk. C: corn whiskey.

15. sapid adj.—A: flavourful. B: syrupy. C: stale.

Answers

1. eupeptic —[C] promoting good digestion. Dad claims that watching sports after a big meal is eupeptic.

2. dim sum —[C] small portions of a variety of foods. It’s not worth taking Paige for dim sum—one dumpling and she’s full.

3. sommelier —[A] wine steward. When Harry ordered a white wine spritzer, the sommelier turned pale.

4. dredge —[A] lightly coat, as with flour. Rodney dredged everything in the kitchen but the chicken.

5. Florentine —[B] prepared with spinach. We don’t use the word “spinach” in front of our five-year-old; instead we call it a Florentine dish.

6. julienne —[C] cut into strips. The puppy julienned the sofa cushions.

7. roux —[C] thickener for sauces. If the gravy won’t pour, you’ve used too much roux.

8. coddle —[C] cook gently in hot water. His punchline was “Cannibals don’t coddle their children.”

9. bain-marie —[B] double boiler’s

lower pot. I won’t make any recipe that calls for a bain-marie.

10. nori —[B] seaweed wrapper for sushi. In his wet suit, Uncle Ned looked like a prawn wrapped in nori.

11. macerate —[B] soften by steeping. For dessert, our hostess served Anjou pears macerated in 25-year-old Armagnac, but we would have preferred Vienetta.

12. tandoori —[C] roasted in a charcoal oven. The restaurant’s unrestrained menu included both steak fajitas and tandoori chicken.

13. trencherman —[A] hearty eater. Our teenage son, with his trencherman’s appetite, will eat us out of house and home.

WORD OF THE DAY*

ADOXOGRAPHY

14. clabber —[B] curdled milk. Searching the fridge shelves for a little milk for my coffee, I found only a carton full of clabber.

Skilled writing on an unimportant subject

Alternative suggestions:

“A GP’s life story.”

“The art of adding stock cubes to the ink in pens for drawing.”

“The study of Tic-Tac-Toe.”

15. sapid —[A] flavourful. This soup is about as sapid as dishwater.

VOCABULARY RATINGS

9: foodie

10–12: epicure

13–15: gastronome

SPECIAL OFFER

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Brainteasers

Challenge yourself by solving these puzzles, then check your answers on p155.

A SAFE PLACE TO LAND

There are two types of radar stations in the field of squares shown. The range that each type of station can detect is given below. Which one of the grey or white squares is not covered at all?

COFFEE ADDICTS

Kate and Faizal both believe that they need a cup of coffee every three hours to stay awake and function. They each drink their first coffee at 8am and another one every three hours thereafter until they go to sleep. Considering the following facts, who is spending more on coffee each week?

• Kate stays up until 10pm Sunday through Friday and until midnight on Friday and Saturday. Faizal stays up until 10pm every day.

• Kate pays £3 per cup of coffee. Faizal drinks higher-grade, organic coffee and pays £4 per cup.

(A SAFE PLACE TO LAND) DARREN RIGBY

STAR SEARCH

Place stars in seven cells of this grid so that every row, every column and outlined region contains exactly one star. Stars must never be located in adjacent cells, not even diagonally.

BUBBLE MATH

Assign a whole number between one and five to each of the 10 bubbles. Each number occurs twice. The sums of some of the numbers are revealed in the areas where their bubbles overlap. Can you figure out which number goes in each bubble?

MORE OR LESS

Place the hexagons into the pyramid so that each number is either greater than the sum of the two numbers below it or less than the difference between them. (For instance, if two adjacent numbers were 20 and 50, any number higher than 70 or lower than 30 could be on top of them.) You may not turn any numbers upside down.

Brainteasers: Answers

A SAFE PLACE TO LAND

The white square in the middle of the third row from the top.

COFFEE ADDICTS

Faizal. He spends £140 per week while Kate spends £111. STAR SEARCH

£50 PRIZE QUESTION

Answer published in the June issue

Which of these words means the opposite of esteem? Obtrusion

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

ANSWER TO APRIL’S PRIZE QUESTION

Laugh!

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

PEOPLE LIKE TO ACT like mimicking human speech is the most human thing that parrots do, but they also shriek at their own reflections sometimes, and that feels a lot more relatable.

COMEDIAN KY KREBS

I WAS THINKING ABOUT HOW people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older, when it dawned on me. They’re cramming for their final exam.

COMEDIAN GEORGE CARLIN

I LIKE TO THINK THAT the intention behind Pringles was to make tennis balls, but the day the rubber was

Hungry Hounds

These adorable pugs couldn’t be happier to be in sight of their dinner (via sadanduseless.com).

supposed to show up, they got a big load of potatoes instead. Pringles was probably just a laid-back company so they said, “Screw it, cut ‘em up.”

COMEDIAN MITCH HEDBERG

I SAID TO MY HUSBAND, “My breasts have gone, my stomach’s gone, say something nice about my legs.”

He said, “Blue goes with everything.”

COMEDIAN JOAN RIVERS

I FIND THE CONCEPT of twins so weird, especially the way some twins don’t even look the same.

Imagine you put two muffins in the oven, and one came out blueberry but the other came out as just some

dude named John. You wouldn’t just say, “Oh yeah, that’s just how it happens sometimes.”

COMEDIAN TOMMY JOHNIGAN

I’M PRETTY LONELY. All I want is for someone to love me the way a girl in her twenties loves a dog she’s never met before. SEEN ON FACEBOOK

I ONCE HAD A LEATHER JACKET that got completely ruined in the rain. Why does moisture ruin leather?

Aren’t cows outside a lot of the time?

When it starts raining, do cows run up to the farmhouse crying, “Let us in, let us in, we’re all wearing leather! We’re going to ruin the whole outfit!”

COMEDIAN JERRY SEINFELD

DO YOU KNOW WHAT I keep hearing is the worst part of being a parent?

Having me as a son.

SEEN ON TWITTER

IF YOU EVER GET INTO a fight with your best friend, one thing you can do to get back at her is to get a dog

and then name it whatever she was planning on naming her firstborn.

COMEDIAN JEN O’DONNELL

I COULD NEVER GO HUNTING, I can barely stand watching my phone die. SEEN ON TWITTER

I’M THINKING ABOUT STARTING a new band and calling it “Everything but Country”.

It already seems to be everyone’s favourite music. SEEN ON REDDIT

I’M THE ONLY REDHEAD in my family. My mum thinks it’s “beautiful” and “unique”.

My dad thinks it’s “proof”.

SEEN ON FACEBOOK

I WENT TO A FANCY DRESS party the other day dressed as a cactus, but I was feeling uncomfortable all the way there.

It wasn’t until I arrived that I realised that I was wearing the suit inside out. I couldn’t have felt more of a prick.

DANIEL CHILDERLEY, Somerset

The people of Twitter share stories of a time they received a little too much information:

@JeremyArt: “Once I called my mum and she asked if I was drunk dialling. I told her no and she said, ‘Well I’m drunk answering.’

@KeJade: “My grandma told me that she’d found the perfect dress for her funeral, and that she was going to give it a test run at my wedding.”

@MexicanSamoan: “Once a random man using the urinal next to me told me that he knew how to plan the ‘perfect murder.’ ”

@CamdFish: “I work at a bakery. A client once told me over the phone that I should try to ‘Make the cake as ugly as possible because I hate this woman’s guts.’ “

CROSSWORD ANSWERS

BY THE TIME A MAN realises that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks that he’s wrong.

CLERGYMAN CHARLES WADSWORTH

A GORILLA DIES OF OLD AGE at a zoo right before it opens. The gorilla is the zoo’s most popular attraction and they can’t afford to go a day without it.

The entrepreunurial zoo owner asks one of his workers to wear a gorilla suit, go into the cage and pretend to be the gorilla until the zoo can afford a new one.

After about a month, the craze for the new gorilla has started to wear off. To get peoples’ attention back, the employee decides to climb over his enclosure and hang from the ceiling above the lion den next to him.

A large crowd gather to watch the spectacle in awe and terror. Suddenly the man loses his grip and falls to the floor of the lion’s den. The man starts screaming, “Help, help!”

Suddenly the lion pounces on him from behind and whispers in his ear, “Shut up right now or you’re going to get us both fired.”

SEEN ON REDDIT

CLEANING YOUR HOUSE while your kids are still growing is like shovelling your drive before it stops snowing.

COMEDIAN PHYLISS DILLER

Stand-Up

We chatted to Canadian comedian Phil Nichol

WHAT’S THE BEST PART OF YOUR CURRENT SET?

I do a joke about crisps. It used to be that you could buy simple salt and vinegar crisps, but now everything’s trying so hard. It’s like “Irish salted potatoes with Suffolk cider vinegar”. And there’s always that sticker saying “We only use the finest ingredients”. If I cared about the finest ingredients I wouldn’t be eating crisps, I’d be eating lobster!

WHO INSPIRES YOUR COMEDY?

My mum. She’s Scottish, she’s going to turn 90 next year, and she has the most ridiculous sense of humour. She was a born-again Christian, so she doesn’t swear or say anything naughty, but she loves to laugh.

DO YOU HAVE ANY FUNNY TALES ABOUT A TIME YOU BOMBED ON STAGE?

I remember being chased from a venue in Hemel Hempstead. There had been a misunderstanding between an audience member and

another comedian and they were going to get us. The manager took us out of his office, down some stairs, into the basement and out a back door. We ran to the car and drove straight out of the car park.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE ONE-LINER?

“People say that I’m ego-centric. But enough about them.”

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

Boris Johnson, because then I could poop in his food.

WHAT SUPERPOWER WOULD YOU HAVE?

I’d be like human Siri. Whatever people asked me, I’d know the right answer straight away.

Phil Nichol will be touring nationwide from September. Visit philnichol.com for tickets

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 midApril. If your entry gets the most votes, you’ll win £100

. Submit to captions@readersdigest.co.uk or online at readersdigest.co.uk/caption by May 9. We’ll announce the winner in our July issue.

March’s Winner

It was close this month with our cartoonist coming a respectable second with his caption: “Try and drag this one out a bit, the bingo’s running late.” However, this month’s crown goes to Ruth Smith, who won just shy of 30 per cent of the votes with her clever caption: “He says he has a bad back, could he do this standing up?” A plea many of us can relate to! Congratulations Ruth, very well played.

In the June issue

Hotel Rwanda

How the country is rebuilding its tourism trade after tragedy

André Rieu

The superstar violinist opens up about his scintillating career

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