Reader's Digest UK May 2019

Britain’s Best Opera Festivals SOUNDS

Bonnie Tyler

“I CAN’T GO OUT OF FASHION”

Prostate Cancer 3Stories Of New Hope For Men HEALTH

Features

16 IT’S A MANN’S WORLD

Olly Mann reflects on his former television career and getting recognised on the streets

ENTERTAINMENT

20 INTERVIEW:

BONNIE TYLER

The Welsh singer on making music, her love of botox and what keeps her young

30 “I REMEMBER”: TERRY WAITE

We chat to the humanitarian and author about religion and his captivity in Beirut

HEALTH

39 PROSTATE HEALTH

Find out about the improved diagnostics that give new hope for men with prostate cancer

INSPIRE

58 BEST OF BRITISH: OPERA FESTIVALS

Get your binoculars and fix your bow tie—we round up the best country house operas

68 A BRUSH WITH DEATH

The fascinating phenomenon of near-death experiences

78 LIFE AFTER A CULT

How one woman not only survived a cult, but used her experience to help other people

TRAVEL & ADVENTURE

88 ANTARCTIC ADVENTURE

Discovering the wonders and mysteries of the South Pole

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...what a way to make a livin’

LOUISE REDKNAPP AMBER DAVIES and BRIAN CONLEY

Music & lyrics by DOLLY PARTON

Book by PATRICIA RESNICK

NATALIE M c QUEEN

Directed by JEFF CALHOUN

Based on the 20th Century Fox Picture. Originally produced on Broadway by Robert Greenblatt, April 2009

In This Issue…

If you’re anything like me, our May issue is sure to leave you full of inspiration. On p30 humanitarian and author Terry Waite recalls his remarkable life, from negotiating with some of the world’s most infamous dictators to the five years he spent held hostage by Hizbollah in Beirut. Speaking about his time in captivity, Terry professes that he never had a bad dream, and occupied himself by trying to see the funny side of life and writing books in his head. Meanwhile on p88, Himraj Soin travels wildly off-the-beaten-track to explore the wilderness of Antarctica. His tales of the white continent evoke a land of mystery and extreme vulnerability that needs to be protected at all costs.

Anna

If you only associate opera with stuffy theatres, uncomfortable clothes and stale buffet sandwiches, perhaps it’s about time you took a trip to the countryside? Opera festivals are a much loved summer tradition that puts this grand, dramatic art form in the unlikeliest of places: sprawling green fields far away from the hustle and bustle of the city—and on p58, we take a tour of some the most unique festivals around. With a diverse, exciting repertory, they’re the perfect opportunity to experience your all-time favourite Mozart piece, or introduce yourself to a little-known Baroque gem in between picnicking in the sun, or taking a stroll through opulent country house grounds.

Eva

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BOOST YOUR BUDGET WITH A LIFETIME MORTGAGE

Your home could change the outlook of your retirement

Low interest rates, increased cost of living. As a result, many retirees are finding that their pension savings just aren’t enough. More and more homeowners over the age of 55 are finally using their property wealth to give themselves a welcome boost in disposable income. If your budget is being constrained, then a lifetime mortgage could change your later life outlook.

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If you’re looking to gain more joy from retirement with an income boost, why not see how equity release could benefit you today? Contact Reader’s Digest Equity Release for your free guide to releasing equity with a lifetime mortgage. n

Over To You

LETTERS ON THE MARCH ISSUE

We pay £50 for Letter of the Month and £30 for all others

ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE

I must admit that the last time I thumbed through a copy of Reader’s Digest I would have been in my teens. Now that I’m in my mid-thirties and claim to be a “proper” adult,

I find myself

enduring many lengthy hospital stays owing to idiopathic chronic pancreatitis. I’ve spent hours flicking through the usual weekly rags, and have never feeling satisfied by reading any particular publication, until very recently.

Among the scores of often crass, glossy offerings sat a small pile of the neatly-sized Reader’s Digest. March’s colourful cover appealed to me, and I returned to my hospital room to set up camp in bed again, to read.

What a fascinating publication, absolutely crammed

with excellent writing and musings. I couldn’t put it down and actually fell asleep sitting up, magazine in hand, on several occasions.

I’ve read every single article with great enthusiasm and interest.

Letter of THE MONTH

And, as a result, my sleeping patterns have dramatically improved and my recurring horrific nightmares have dwindled to softer offerings. As a result, I feel more refreshed and happier when I wake in the mornings.

Thank you so much for making my time fly by with inspiring writing and some hilarious moments interspersed with some deeply serious material. I’m easily bored by reading, unless the plot thickens quickly, and Reader’s Digest satisfies my every ocular whim! Lee Peters, Gloucestershire

A HIGHER PLACE

Your article “Planting the Seed of a New Legal High” struck a chord with me. We should be welcoming studies into drugs. Research is being carried out in countries with more relaxed drug policies than the UK and scientists are increasingly finding out that some illegal drugs have significant medicinal uses.

MATERIAL WORLD

I read with interest, Alfie Boe’s views on controlling how much we consume and recycle.

The UK should not get left behind. Of course, these drugs should be prescribed by doctors or be readily available to the general public, but we need to move with the times and realise that some currently illegal drugs can actually help sick people to get better.

I’ve heard of terminal cancer patients using cannabis and living well past the time they had been told they had left on this earth. My brother was one of them.

Gilly Hollands, Hertfordshire

DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?

I feel very inspired from having read such a thought-provoking article called “The Wisdom of Hearing”. For some time, I’ve had total faith in my ability to make life choices based on my sense of sight and my gut instinct. I had no idea that I was missing out on so much. While reading the article, the first thing that came to mind was the calming sound rain makes, and just how relaxing listening to those splatters can be. Now, I wonder how many other sounds are waiting for me to explore. Thank you for writing such an interesting article.

Angela Couzens, Somerset

Recycling is only one part of the overindulgent and wasteful world we live in, and I agree that we should think much more about our consumption in the first place. For the past 12 months I have reconsidered which gifts I buy for loved ones; rather than material items I have purchased experiences. My daughter and I enjoyed a cookery school day together, my son and husband went quad biking and my father and motherin-law experienced trips to the local theatre. Shortly, a group of friends and I will enjoy lunch and a floristry class for my 50th birthday.

We need to remember that reduce, reuse and recycle go hand-in-hand and can prove to be an inventive mindset.

Sandra Keith, Yorkshire

PHOTO: © PAULPRESCOTT72/ISTOCKPHOTO

…differently

Jodhpur—the Blue City with over a million inhabitants, is the second largest city in the Indian state of Rajasthan. In earlier times, only members of India’s elite Brahmin caste were allowed to bluewash their houses, but now everyone is free to dye their dwellings this way. Not only does the city’s historic centre profit from the beauty of this unique azure glow, but the colour is also said to be effective at repelling insects.

PHOTO: © GETTY IMAGES/HUW JONES

Having A Butchers

This month Olly Mann comes up against the drawbacks of his short-lived television career

Picture the scene. I’m at the butcher’s, standing by the tills. I’m sort of in the queue, but I’m also waiting for some chicken thighs to be marinated, and it seems likely I’ll reach the cashier before my order is ready. This is a stressful scenario because, when I get to the front, I’ll have to step out of line, hanging awkwardly at the counter, half-smiling at my fellow shoppers, establishing sufficient rapport to step back into the queue once my meat is packed.

The shop is silent, save for the tap of the cash register and the rustle of plastic bags. Then, without warning, an elderly woman ahead of me spins round and says, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

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

My heart sinks—not just because I don’t know her from Adam, but also because I detect in her tonal amusement, her twinkly eyes and conspiratorial grin that she, too, knows we’ve never met. In a flash, I’m sure: she vaguely recognises me off the telly, but has no idea who I am.

Here’s the issue. If I respond in the affirmative—forge a kindly smile, and mutter, “Oh, I used to be on TV…”—I know, from previous experience, that this will not be the end of it. She will assume that I’m a TV presenter, or at least a reporter or correspondent, which I’m not, and start harassing me for showbiz gossip. Or she might leap to some insane conclusion that I’ll struggle to politely dismiss, like that time a Yorkshirewoman in Bodrum insisted I was “the guy from the Boots ad”, wouldn’t take no for answer, told all her friends, and tried to buy me a drink.

Or she’ll be honest, and say she

can’t quite place my face, but she knows she knows me from somewhere—and ask me to remind her which programme she might have seen me on. Delivering an appropriate answer, in the fraught and heavy silence of this butcher’s queue, as the rest of the patrons prick up their ears, is something I simply do not have the stomach to do. I will not be able to say, with a straight face, and without feeling the weight of her disappointment, “Erm, perhaps you saw me review the papers on Lorraine in 2011?”

So, instead, I say: “No—sorry. I don’t know you.” She looks deflated, and I feel bad.

This happens perhaps five times a year, and it’s disconcerting, every time. It’s distinct, by the way, from the rare occasions when an actual fan of mine—someone who listens regularly to one of my podcasts or radio shows, or even reads this very column—stops me in the

street because they genuinely know who I am, enjoy my work, and want to meet me. That’s flattering, and delightful. What’s weird is this “being recognised” just because I have “one of those faces”—when the recogniser doesn’t even know why they recognise me,

and clearly credits me with far greater fame than I possess.

It’s tedious, I appreciate, when anyone in the public eye complains about being recognised. Big celebrities, for instance, work exceptionally hard to bolster their profiles precisely so the world does recognise their talents, then get well paid for their jobs; so when they then seem peeved to be pointed at, that’s grating. But I’m not exactly Lady Gaga, am I? I’m not even Eamonn Holmes. I’m someone who, ten years ago, went on This Morning to show Eamonn Holmes a clip of a farting dog.

I haven’t even been on telly for three years! During my most productive stretch, 2009-2015, I’d be invited on to daytime TV, or latenight news programmes, around twice a week. I’d review the papers, debate a topical issue, or—in my role as this publication’s technology columnist—comment on the release of a new gadget.

I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t my day-job: it was just a fun little side-hustle of mine to boost audiences to my audio work. But one appearance begat the next: BBC Breakfast, The Alan Titchmarsh Show, The

“When I was about 25 I appeared to be part of the nascent Zuckerberg generation but as I got older my novelty wore off”

Wright Stuff… and I accidentally became a “pundit”. A semi-pro Gob-On-A-Stick. I got good at understanding the formula: smile a lot, look relaxed, don’t say anything too challenging, wear clothes.

Then, the invites stopped coming, and because I wasn’t particularly

bothered about being on TV, I didn’t particularly pursue them. I sensed that my niche in the commentariat had been my youth: when I was 25, and wheeled out to talk about blogging, or social media, or digital journalism, I appeared to be part of the nascent Zuckerberg generation I was discussing. But, as I got older, my novelty wore off. It’s not as if there aren’t other straight, white, middle-class men in their late thirties working in the media. The producers of the shows must have felt I was too indistinct. Fair enough.

Yet here, in the butcher’s shop, the public never forgets a face. Next time, I’ll just order the plain chicken. n

RIDDLE ME THIS…

Can you solve these cryptic dingbats?

SOURCE: BUZZFEED.COM

ANSWERS (L-R): AN INSIDE JOB, ALL FOR ONE AND ONE FOR ALL, A PLAY ON WORDS, HALF BAKED.

Bonnie Tyler

The husky songstress behind such hits as “Holding Out for a Hero” and “Total Eclipse of the Heart” talks to Simon Button about her new album, her heroes and what keeps her young

“I

Couldn’t Give

A Monkey’s About Fame”

Bonnie Tyler is nothing if not honest. Asked what the secret is to looking great at 67, the singer states, “Well, the business keeps you young” then adds with refreshing candour: “That and botox of course. I have botox twice a year. I also keep pretty fit and I’ve got loads of energy.”

With a laugh that’s every bit as husky and powerful as that distinctive rock-chick singing voice of hers, and a Welsh accent that’s still very much intact, Tyler says: “People say to me, ‘For God’s sake, Gaynor, walk a bit slower because I can’t keep up with you’. And I can’t drink coffee. My God, if I have just one cup I’m climbing the walls.”

“I bloody hate making music videos. There was snow on the ground and I was running through it barefoot. It was bloody freezing!”

The Gaynor she’s referring to is Gaynor Hopkins, the name she grew up with in the Welsh village of Skewen. Starting out as a backing singer, she briefly changed it to Sherene Davis (so as not to be confused with fellow Welsh singer Mary Hopkin) then switched to Bonnie Tyler when she landed her first record contract.

At her home in North Wales, or in Portugal, where she and husband Robert Sullivan spend their downtime, she’s Gaynor. But at work she’s Bonnie, seller of 6 million-plus copies of both “It’s a Heartache” and “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and a four-decades-and-counting survivor in a notoriously fickle industry.

Seventeen studio albums into her career, Tyler’s busier than ever. Calling me from Wales to chat about that 17th album Between the Earth and the Stars and with 24 live shows in her diary and more to come, she sounds a little breathless as she says: “I’m on a roll. The diary’s manic, absolutely manic, but I love it.

I didn’t come into the business to be famous, I came into it because I love making music and performing.”

It all began in the late 1960s when the coalminer’s daughter entered a talent contest, came second and thought she’d give singing a go professionally. She did backing vocals for a local band, then formed her own group and was eventually spotted by a talent scout for RCA Records.

Released in 1976, her first solo single was called “My! My! Honeycomb” and (perhaps not surprisingly with a title like that) it flopped. Follow-up “Lost in France” made the UK top ten but then she discovered she had nodules on her vocal cords and, after an operation to have them removed, feared she wouldn’t get her singing voice back.

Bonnie needn’t have worried. The voice came back, much huskier than before, and she put it to good use on “It’s a Heartache”—scoring the first of her two 6 million-plus sellers, topping the charts in ten countries and cracking the top five in both the UK and the US.

Her career lost a little steam after that, but then along came the

Bonnie with Chris Norman and Suzi Quatro

“I didn’t come into the business to be famous, I came into it because I love making music and performing”

almighty “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and, with it, another 6 million-plus smash. Sounding genuinely thrilled rather than boastful, Tyler notes: “It’s still selling, and the video has reached nearly half a billion views. It’s really incredible.”

The video shoot wasn’t without its dramas. The schoolboy featured in it was only wearing underwear when Bonnie arrived on set. “And I said, ‘No way, it’s not going to happen, he’s got to be dressed’ so they put him in a uniform.” That was

just as well because it was filmed on a very cold day in and around an old asylum near London. “There was snow on the ground and I was running through it barefoot. It was bloody freezing.”

Bonnie laughs again. “I bloody hate making videos anyway but the great thing is that it got nominated for a Grammy. It lost out to Michael Jackson for ‘Billie Jean’ but if you’re going to lose that’s the way to do it.”

I ask the woman whose subsequent hits include the equally

“People in this business come and go, you know?

Even after I had all of those hit records in the 1970s, I thought, This is fabulous, but it won’t last ”

anthemic “Holding Out for a Hero” who her hero is in real life. Her answer: “I have to say I wouldn’t be in the music business if it wasn’t for a heroine and that’s my mother. She wasn’t professional but she’d sing opera around the house and she was incredible.

“And my hero? My husband,” she adds, then draws a line under the subject. “That’s all I’ll say about my private life. I never talk about that. There’s enough rubbish written about that stuff and half of it is not true, so I don’t talk about it.”

Bonnie drops her guard a bit when I ask about her pleasures in

life. “Family, family, family.” She and Robert don’t have children of their own but she has three sisters, two brothers, 16 nieces and nephews and 14 great nieces and nephews. And she’s an ardent supporter of the Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospital Charity in Wales, saying: “Children are a priority and we should be looking out for them.”

When she’s not working she loves being home. “Staying in the house with my dressing gown on, loafing around, sorting out things I don’t always get time to do. Right now I need to get my roots done and my nails.”

Her longevity has been a very

pleasant surprise. “People in this business come and go, you know? Even after all those hits in the 1970s I thought This is fabulous but it won’t last.”

I tell her I love the new album and she says, “Tell the readers, please!” It’s very raw and very her and she’s assembled an all-star supporting cast that includes Status Quo’s Francis Rossi and a trio of Sirs— namely Rod Stewart, Cliff Richard and Barry Gibb.

Often dubbed the female Rod Stewart, Tyler didn’t get to work with him in the studio for the album because of scheduling clashes but

she has met him before (“Though I doubt he’ll remember,” she laughs about an event they both attended together many years ago) and Sir Cliff is a close friend whom she and husband Robert spend time with whenever they find themselves in Portugal at the same time.

The couple also own farmland in Portugal and New Zealand, more than 20 houses in England and 65 stables. “But it’s all about good investments,” Bonnie points out. “I don’t do drugs so [the money] doesn’t go up my nose. I do love red wine but I’m trying to lay off it because it’s fattening. Well, when I say lay off it I mean it’s been two days so far!”

Presumably she doesn’t have to work but has no plans to retire anytime soon. “I haven’t been in the charts since the 1980s,” she admits, “but it’s not about that—it’s about the love of music and the love of singing. I have a fantastic band who’ve been with me for over 20 years and we just love performing live. It’s not about being famous. I couldn’t give a monkey’s about being famous, it’s about enjoying what I do.”

She laughs again. “Plus I’ve never really been in fashion so I can’t go out of fashion.” n

The album Between the Earth and the Stars is out now. For more information and tour dates visit bonnietyler.com

that can threaten your sight after 40 eye conditions

Our eyes are windows to the world. When these windows become blurry and visual clarity is at stake, it can feel isolating.

Sadly, there are approximately 2 million people living with sight loss in the UK today.

Age can play a big role in the onset of conditions that threaten eyesight. Here we explore five common causes of sight loss for individuals after they pass the 40 year milestone.

Cataracts

Cataracts affects roughly 30% of the population aged 65 and over in the UK and is often described as looking through frosted glass.

The formation of a cataract is gradual and if left untreated can cause complete sight loss.

Age is usually the culprit; however there are a few additional contributing factors such as diabetes, family history, smoking, over exposure to ultraviolent light and severe inflammation of the eye.

Treatment is available. In fact cataract removal is the most commonly performed procedure in the world.

Refractive Lens Exchange is where the natural lens is replaced with an artificial one; removing the cataract with it. This procedure can also correct long-sightedness, short-sightedness, astigmatism and presbyopia.

Presbyopia

As the eyes age, the lens gradually hardens and loses its elasticity. This process is known as presbyopia and typically starts to develop after the age of 40.

Imagine a balloon that is blown up and deflated. Over time the balloon will gradually lose its springiness. The same thing happens to the lens.

Those living with presbyopia will experience difficulty focusing on objects up close and tend to hold objects at arm’s length to be able to focus better – sound familiar?

There are several options to treat presbyopia including the use of reading glasses, bifocals, and contact lenses. For those looking for a permanent fix, Refractive Lens Exchange is recommended.

Glaucoma

Glaucoma occurs when there is a high amount of pressure inside the eye due to the eye’s drainage system becoming clogged. This stops the eye’s fluid from draining effectively and can result in complete vision loss.

Symptoms include intense eye pain, nausea, sore red eyes, headaches, sensitivity in and around the eyes, seeing colour rings around bright lights and blurry vision.

Treatment will not reverse any loss of vision, but it can prevent vision from regressing further. This includes eye drops, medicines, laser or surgery.

Diabetic retinopathy

Age-related macular degeneration

Age-related macular degeneration refers to the deterioration of the central part of the retina (light sensitive tissue at the back of the eye) called the macula.

It is one of the leading causes of vision loss in individuals aged 60 and above; accounting for roughly 600,000 people in the UK. Symptoms include decreased quality of vision, blurry central vision and reduced colour distinction.

There are two types of macular degeneration, wet type and dry type. Whilst there is no cure for dry type, the wet type can be treated with injections, Retinal Laser Photocoagulation, Implantable Contact Lenses or Monofocal Lens Replacement.

According to charity Diabetes UK, one in ten people aged 40 and over have Type 2 diabetes. Diabetic retinopathy is a complication of diabetes, caused by high blood sugar levels damaging the back of the eye (the retina).

Symptoms of diabetic retinopathy include blurred vision, trouble with night vision and dark spots in central vision. It can take several years for diabetic retinopathy to reach the point where it threatens your sight.

The main treatments for Diabetic Retinopathy are laser treatment, eye injections and surgery to remove scar tissue. ■

CONTACT INFORMATION

0800 988 6385, enquiries@ultralase.com

www.ultralase.com

I REMEMBER… Terry Waite

Humanitarian Terry Waite (79) attracted the world’s attention through his work as a hostage negotiator—work that led to his capture by Hezbollah and subsequent five-year imprisonment

…GROWING UP IN A VILLAGE WHERE THE INDUSTRY HAD SHUT DOWN. I was born in Cheshire and spent most of my formative years in Styal, a village which was built around a spinning mill. A pioneer of the factory system in the early Industrial Revolution, Samuel Greg, developed a rural industrial community with cottages, a school, a chapel, but it was already pretty derelict when I was a boy and I remember seeing the last workers go to that mill. Now it’s one of the

leading industrial museums in the UK. It attracts an enormous number of people, and is largely owned by the National Trust.

…BEING THE SON OF THE LOCAL POLICEMAN TAUGHT ME HOW TO NEGOTIATE. We lived in the police house, which was fairly large and had a garden. They gave policemen gardens in those days of some considerable size, to make up for the small salary. We had very little money, but we grew our own fruit

(Opposite); Terry Waite appears third from left, back row during a school holiday to the Lake District

and vegetables. My father was there to keep the peace and to maintain some degree of order and stability in the community. He did on occasion, of course, have to prosecute people, too, but mostly he was a sort of a conciliatory figure in the community.

…I GOT MY URGE TO HELP PEOPLE FROM MY FATHER.

I’ve often wondered where that came from. I don’t think I knew at the time, but reflecting back on my life now, I think it was because of my father. He was a young man at the time of the Great Depression. His father’s business failed, and he left home to try and seek his fortune. For some time, he was actually homeless. I didn’t know all this until later on in life. I learned a few years ago, that he had really quite a hard time until he eventually joined the police force in Chester and that became his lifelong occupation.

He was highly intelligent, should have gone on to high school, and if he’d had the opportunity, to university, but all that was denied because there wasn’t any money in the family. Subconsciously, I think that built sympathy within me for those who find life difficult, or end up on the margins of life for one reason or another, either in prison or on the streets, or in distress overseas. So I think my father’s struggle was a prompting factor for that.

Above; Terry’s father in his uniform and his parents on their wedding day in 1938. (Opposite page); Terry’s grandparents and their children—his father is seated

…MY GRANDMOTHER DEVELOPED MY LOVE FOR MUSIC, WHICH HAS LASTED FOR LIFE. I would cycle to see my grandparents who lived in Staffordshire, some 20 or 30 miles away, where my grandmother was a music teacher. They had a piano and she often said she’d like me to learn how to play, but we couldn’t afford a piano. I never did learn. After my grandfather’s business failed during the years of the Depression, my grandmother had to go out to work. She used to play in the local cinema for the silent movies.

…I’VE ALWAYS HAD A DEEP DESIRE TO TRAVEL, but as we were poor when I was young, I thought I’d never realise it. How mistaken can

you be? I remember one occasion when the school sent my class on a trip to Paris, and the cost—I can still remember it—was £15. We didn’t have that spare, so I couldn’t go. I remember sitting in the classroom, seeing the coach pull up outside and watching those who were lucky enough to go off to Paris. I thought to myself then, There goes my chance, I shall never see the world now.

…AFTER SCHOOL, I MOVED TO LONDON FOR COLLEGE, AND MET MY WIFE, FRANCES. I had an apartment in London, where I lived on the top floor, and she lived on the ground floor. We just met on the stairs, and that was it for me. We’ve been married since 1964, and have three daughters and one son.

…WE MOVED TO UGANDA IN 1969, AND WITNESSED THE IDI AMIN COUP. It was my first experience of violence and having near-death experiences. I went over to Uganda to help with some adult leadership courses for the church, not realising the volatile situation we were walking into. I had my real first experience of absolute brutality, misery, and getting people out of difficulty. I had to negotiate with the gentleman who had locked up people from the church unwarranted.

…MY

TRIP TO UGANDA OPENED

MY

EYES TO SUFFERING OUTSIDE OF THE UK. I learned one very important lesson from that: when

law and order in any community breaks down, all hell breaks loose. I’m glad to have gone back to Uganda several times, and still have friends there. However, when there are no consequences, some people behave in the most appalling ways. Minority groups come under attack. The Asian community in Uganda were treated terribly, and then expelled from the country.

…WE COULD’VE EASILY DIED IN UGANDA. My wife and I were held up twice by arm gangs, one holding machine guns. I remember one person I knew in Uganda who said, “Oh, if I was held up, I wouldn’t give them the keys to my car, I would

throw the keys in the bush.”

I said, “You mustn’t do that. You must give them the keys.” One day, this person was held up, and did throw the keys into the bush. He was immediately shot dead. Whereas on the two occasions that we were held up, I handed the keys over, and lost two vehicles. Another time, a random young man walking past a village was murdered, because he’d been mistaken for a thief. They tied him to a tree and beat him to death with sticks.

…BACK IN LONDON, I WAS RECRUITED BY ROBERT RUNCIE, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.

I became his advisor on international affairs for the Anglican Communion.

This meant that we would be travelling the globe together. It’s the period of time covered in my rereleased book, Travels with a Primate: Around the World with Robert Runcie, 1979-1987. Runcie, his chaplain and myself had a lot of adventures together.

…I’VE LEARNED HOW TO NEGOTIATE WITH DICTATORS. I’ve dealt with Idi Amin, Muammar Gaddafi, Revolutionary Guards in Iran, with the Islamic Jihad Organisation in Beirut, who ended up kidnapping me. What I’ve tried to do more in all these situations, is understand what’s motivating people. To ask myself the question,

(L-R); Meeting George Bush Snr in the White House prior to captivity in Beruit; Meeting Colonel Gaddafi in his low-hung tent

Why is it that they’re behaving as they’re behaving? What are the reasons for that? To find a common humanity and the source of the fear, because there’s always fear there.

…THOSE YEARS OF TRAVELLING WITH RUNCIE KEPT MY MIND ALIVE IN CAPTIVITY. For those five years of captivity I was in strict solitary confinement most of the time, without books and papers. I had to put a blindfold over my eyes when anyone came into the room. So for five years, sitting on the floor, I had to try and keep mentally alive. I wrote my first book in my head there because I never had pencil and paper, apart from two occasions when I thought I was going to die. They were

actually just mock executions. They gave me pencil and paper then, but otherwise I just didn’t have it.

…DURING MY YEARS HELD HOSTAGE IN BEIRUT, I TRIED TO SEE THE FUNNY SIDE OF LIFE.

Oddly, in those years, I didn’t have bad dreams. Sometimes I would wake up and I’d be laughing because my dreams were quite funny, and I think they were compensating in some ways for my daily existence. I would wake up from a dream and it felt so real—then I’d remember, Oh, no, I’m still here.

…WHAT I DEVELOPED IN THOSE YEARS WAS INNER CONVERSATION. We all talk to ourselves. I extended

(L-R); Wearing the robes of one of the many doctorates he’s been awarded over the years; With wife Frances; Meeting with the Pope in the Vatican following the release of Father Lawrence Jenco

mine to having conversations with other people in my imagination. Something creative can emerge from suffering; one only has to look at the great works of art. It can be utilised.

…WHEN I WAS RELEASED, THERE WERE HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF PRESS PEOPLE. An absolutely remarkable number of people showed up for me as I came out, having been all those years

alone. Before I was released, I thought, Well, people will have totally forgotten about this. I took the advice that I should give one main interview, and then withdraw for a long period of time, not to give any more interviews, or not to do anything in public for at least a year.

…I’VE ALWAYS HAD FAITH, BUT IT’S CHANGED OVER THE YEARS. When I was young, I had too much of a closed mind believing that I had the claim on truth. My thinking on it now is that God remains a great mystery, which we can never fully comprehend. The various religions are like handrails, to guide us toward that mystery. The difficulty between religions is that people spend their time arguing and disputing about the handrails. n

As told to Suchandrika Chakrabarti

Terry Waite’s book,Travels with a Primate: Around the World with Robert Runcie has been re-published by SPCK Publishing, £9.99

SPACE BY NUMBERS

During the Mariner 4 Mars mission in 1964, scientists were so keen to see the first ever images of another planet that instead of waiting for a processed image, they printed out the available numerical data and hand coloured it with crayons in the style of a painting by numbers picture.

SOURCE: SOLARSYSTEM.NASA.GOV/RESOURCES/693/FIRST-TV-IMAGE-OF-MARS-HAND-COLORED/

Improved diagnostics and new treatments for prostate cancer mean Jean-Luc was offered a new experimental treatment with good results

by Lina Zeldovich

Once you turn 50, your risk for prostate cancer begins to increase—more than 80 per cent of men diagnosed are over 65, with northern Europe and North America leading the trend. Even a few years ago, prostate cancer patients had limited options, essentially choosing between mere surveillance and intervention that involved removing or destroying the entire prostate gland.

The former risked letting cancer progress too far while the latter brought prolonged side effects that left men miserable—incontinence, erectile dysfunction, loss of libido. And while less invasive treatments did exist, many clinicians were skeptical about their effectiveness.

“It’s been pretty stark,” says Dr Mark Emberton, professor of interventional oncology at University College Hospital, London (UCHL). “We either don’t treat you or we treat you maximally.”

But now some experts are reconsidering this view. With the latest technologies, onceexperimental methods may prove advantageous in some cases. New drugs have been approved, and studies have found that some novel drug combinations expand lifespan in patients whose tumour is aggressive. Some trials have had success in treating prostate cancer with immune vaccines.

These options offer more hope and less suffering, but they also present patients with more choices than ever. Even being screened for prostate cancer is now a choice—and a very

debated one. And even if you are diagnosed, it doesn’t mean you need to be treated because many prostate cancers are so slow growing that men would succumb to other causes first.

“You’re very unlikely to die from a low-risk prostate cancer within ten years of the diagnosis,” says Dr Henk van der Poel, a urologist at the Netherlands Cancer Institute.

While the debates continue, here’s what patients should know.

THE SCREENING CONUNDRUM

It used to be that if your PSA (prostate-specific antigen) was elevated on an annual blood test recommended for men over 50, doctors would order a biopsy. If your biopsy showed a high Gleason score (a measure of malignancy and aggressiveness), doctors suggested interventional treatment.

But some people may have higher PSA levels due to a benign enlargement of the prostate or other reasons, and biopsies sample tissues randomly, so they sometimes found low-risk tumours but missed the aggressive ones. Studies found that nationwide PSA screenings weren’t

PHOTO, PREVIOUS SPREAD, BY MICHEL LABELLE

“There’s a treatment out there for you!”

“I was 79 when my GP asked if I wanted to check my PSA. It was slightly elevated and my prostate was slightly enlarged, but after researching the side effects of biopsies, I chose active surveillance,” says Harry Paice, a retired insurance broker, now 84. “For the next four years my PSA kept climbing so I researched my options again and chose an MP MRI. The picture showed some benign growth and a small node that was cancerous. But there was no spread outside the gland itself.

“I really wanted to avoid surgery so I decided on cryotherapy—freezing the tumour. Because I have a pacemaker some techniques like the NanoKnife wouldn’t be safe to use. I had it done in August 2018, and I’m happy about it. I had no side effects and I’ve even played golf a few times. I just received my MRI results and I am told the tumor is gone, so I am all clear.

“The motto of my athletic club is NilDesperandum (don’t despair). There is a relevant treatment out there for all prostate sufferers—tailor-made!”

PHOTO BY STUART FREEDMAN

Harry Paice, 84, Lincolnshire

saving enough lives but instead upped the risk of over-diagnosis and over-treatment.

One study found that doctors had to screen 1,400 men and treat nearly 50 in order to prevent one from dying. But biopsies and treatments caused pain and suffering, so doctors questioned whether this was

“A new drug combo improved my life expectancy”

“I went to see a urologist because I had problems with urination and erectile dysfunction. When he did the exam, he said ‘Ooh la la.’ He could feel a big bump under his finger,” says Jean-Luc Girard, a retired 66-year old computer consultant. “Before that, my PSA level was very high on blood tests, but my doctor wasn’t concerned. So I went to the Gustave Roussy Institute in Paris to get a second opinion. The doctors confirmed it was a fast-growing cancer. It was too late for surgery.

ethical. Ultimately, experts advised against nationwide screenings. Today, doctors won’t run a routine PSA test unless they feel a growth during the prostate rectal exam or if patients complain of urinary or erectile problems.

But there are serious downfalls to not testing for the cancer. The UK

“They offered me a new experimental treatment because it could improve my life expectancy. I agreed. My wife had a cancer with life expectancy of less than 24 months but she lived for 15 years, so I was ready to fight. First I had radiotherapy and chemotherapy and then a combination of two hormonal-based chemotherapy drugs— abiraterone and Zoladex, plus steroids. I got all the side effects—I lost my libido, my muscle tone and my strength—but as long I can enjoy my family, and travel, they are bearable."

“The average life expectancy for a patient in this trial was 48 months. Last September I overstepped this border. I’ve already survived longer than expected.”

PHOTO BY MICHEL LABELLE

Jean-Luc Girard, 66, Fontainebleau, France

cancer charity Orchid found that four in ten prostate cancers are diagnosed late, and at an advanced stage.

A study published in the British Journal of Cancer found that prostate cancer had become the most common cancer in men in 2014 in the UK, and is expected to remain so through 2035, with deaths increasing by an average of 2.38 per cent a year.

It is hoped, however, that new imaging technologies will change the screening paradigm once again, by adding precision. The prostate gland had been hard to image due to its location in the body (it sits behind other organs) but the new multi-parametric (MP) MRI allows radiologists to differentiate clearly between low- and high-risk prostate tumours and outline their exact location. That significantly improves biopsy results because it tells doctors where to sample tissue. However, patients’ access to this new MRI still varies between different European countries.

With no systematic screening, how do men navigate this diagnostic hurdle to assure their health? For starters, patients should inform their doctors of their symptoms or concerns (pain, discomfort, trouble urinating or urinating often— basically anything out of norm), and request a PSA test. If that proves high, they should ask for an MP MRI before having a biopsy. And if they are diagnosed, they should

thoroughly research the burgeoning list of options.

SURGERY

Aggressive cancers that haven’t spread outside the prostate are treated with prostatectomy—a surgical removal of the gland. For very small localised cancers, surgeons may do a partial prostatectomy: they remove the tumour and a surrounding margin to assure no cancer cells are left behind, leaving the unaffected part intact to preserve the nerves.

Historically, prostatectomy was done as “open” surgery, via an abdominal incision. Today, many hospitals offer robotic prostatectomy in which surgeons make small punctures in the abdominal wall and operate by manipulating tiny robotic arms and a 3-D camera from a computer screen. The methods are comparable in efficacy and side effects, including urinary incontinence and erectile dysfunction, but the robotic option limits blood loss and shortens recovery time.

RADIATION

Radiation is very effective in killing cancer and can be done in two ways. Brachytherapy, in which radioactive seeds are planted into the prostate, delivers less radiation but is more suitable for smaller cancers, says Professor van der Poel. An external

beam radiation method is used for larger or more aggressive tumours because it can irradiate an extra surrounding area to assure the cancer doesn’t spread. Compared to surgery, radiation has similar survival rates, and it may cause

“I chose robotic surgery in order to recover faster”

“I’d had my PSA test every five years since I was 45, but in 2009 when I was approaching 60, it came back slightly higher than before,” says Jukka Karhula, a retired logistics manager. “The biopsy found cancer, although not a very fast-growing one. One doctor recommended active surveillance, but two others suggested surgery. No other options were discussed. I chose to wait for three months for robotic surgery, because the recovery was two-thirds faster. They took the entire left side of the prostate and the cancer with it—but spared the right. I was back at work in three weeks.

less incontinence but longer sexual dysfunction, says Professor van der Poel, adding that age is a factor because younger men heal better. “I would have surgery, but for my father I would probably recommend opting for radiotherapy.”

“After surgery, I had incontinence problems for three months and erectile problems for four years even with Viagra. But then the nerves around my prostate began to recover and today I don’t always need pills.

“If I were doing this now, I would ask about other treatments—at the time there weren’t many. I also wish I’d known to do pelvic muscle exercises while I waited for surgery, because it speeds recovery. So now I volunteer at the hospital, talking to new patients, telling them what I know. And I’m checking my PSA twice a month, even though the guidelines say every five years is enough.”

PHOTO BY JUHO KUVA

Jukka Karhula, 69, Espoo, Finland

DRUGS

Recently approved enzalutamide and abiraterone acetate extend life in late-stage cancers. The latter proved even more effective in combination with hormonal androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) in the latest trials. The combo has been approved for advanced cancers that have metastasised to bones or other organs and can’t be removed surgically. These drugs suppress the body’s production of testosterone, which tumours use for growth, but side effects include loss of libido, joint or muscle pain and weakness. Yet patients with very poor prognosis do live longer, says Dr Karim Fizazi, head of the department of cancer medicine at Gustave Roussy Institute, Paris, who has been running combination studies with abiraterone. “It’s almost a 40 per cent reduction in the risk of death.”

FOCAL THERAPY

The most debated treatment approach, focal therapy offers a range of approved cancer-killing methods. In high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) doctors heat the tumour; in cryotherapy they freeze it with liquid nitrogen or argon gas. They can also electrocute it with the NanoKnife or deliver toxic chemicals into it. The radiation treatment brachytherapy is also a focal technique.

All focal treatments destroy the tumour and spare healthy tissues,

causing significantly less sexual dysfunction and incontinence. Yet doctors had been wary of recommending them because it’s hard to tell whether all cancer cells are killed. But Professor Emberton thinks that paradigm is changing too—because MP MRI can outline the tumour precisely before therapy and verify that it’s fully gone afterwards. Once MP MRI is widely available, patients won’t have to destroy their prostates entirely.

“Men certainly place a very high utility on preserving their genitourinary functions,” Professor Emberton says. And if half the gland is preserved, they have 95 per cent chance of having erections sufficient for intercourse.

Another focal therapy method with very few side effects was approved in 2017. It injects intravenously a cancer killing drug called Tookad and activates it in the tumour by means of light.

Many experts still remain cautious in recommending focal treatments— at least until more studies confirm efficiency. But all agree that men should thoroughly research their increasingly varied options and choose the best for their specific case. “We’re moving away from onesize-fits-all approach,” Professor Emberton says, “to a world in which you tailor the treatment to the individual.” And that, he adds, “is very exciting.” n

INHERITANCE TAX PLANNING

Guy Myles is CEO of pension and investment firm Flying Colours. If you have a question for Guy email pensionsguy@ flyingcolourswealth.com he’s happy to answer your questions.

GOT A QUESTION FOR GUY?

EMAIL:

pensionsguy@flyingcolourswealth.com

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Inheritance tax planning can be complex, it is not usually one solution but a combination of options that are suited to an individual’s needs.

Mary, Solihull asks:

I’m worried about the effect of the planned increase in probate fees, funeral costs and Inheritance Tax on my estate. I have 2 grown up children, total assets of just over a £1 million and a house now worth £350,000 on top of that. I am now 75. What suggestions do you have for me?

Guy says:

I know it can be an uncomfortable subject but let’s consider your life expectancy first. This is an important factor in any financial plan, but it is particularly important with IHT because some strategies take a while to take effect. Having already reached 75 the national average for a woman today is for a further 13 years taking you to age 88. Assuming you are healthy for your age I don’t think there is a need for any drastic or unusual planning based on fear of running out of time. There is always a chance you will die sooner but this risk, for most people at your age looking at reducing IHT, is acceptable I think.

You’re right to be concerned about probate fees because the government announced a large increase last year which, is in effect, an additional tax. The

threshold at which you’ll need to pay probate fees will be £50,000 from April 2019. Below that level there will now be no fee although this is unlikely to apply to you. Estates worth between £50,000 and £300,000 will be charged £250, while the maximum charge is £6,000 for estates worth £2 million or more. Based on what you’ve told me your probate fee without planning is likely to be £4,000. This a small amount measured against the value of your estate, however, this must be paid by your beneficiaries before probate is issued and money is distributed. Depending on their financial situation finding the money before they inherit from you could be an issue for your beneficiaries.

When you think about planning for IHT you should do an analysis of your likely spending and some contingencies in case you need care or other areas of higher than normal spending. It is quite motivating to minimise your tax liability, but you don’t want to regret giving too much away. The balance needs to be right between protecting the value of your beneficiaries inheritance and your financial security.

Given that you are concerned about how to reduce tax, and with the size of your estate it is very likely you will leave a large bill, some measures should be considered. The planning can be complicated but at a high level you should consider a few potential solutions. Life assurance written in trust is a great way

to transfer money you have today to your beneficiaries tax efficiently and avoiding probate. Life assurance will pay out on death and even when you are older it is possible to get cover, this obviously comes at a price as the annual premiums will be very high. The key is the affordability as this is just a way to move money from being directly in your name and estate into a trust. As with all life assurance policies there is a risk that you live a long time and your premiums become much higher than your sum assured, however, it is possible to protect against that (for a cost).

If life assurance doesn’t work for you, don’t forget about the annual gifting exemption of £3,000. These gifts are immediately outside your estate and, although each is quite small, the value will build up over time. Another option to consider is a loan trust where you can retain access to your capital but can put any growth outside of your estate. Given the size of your estate this could still leave you with an IHT problem, but it would cap the liability.

One area I wouldn’t yet recommend is business property relief. These investments under current legislation are exempt from IHT after only two years and are appealing to people who have left their planning late. Given your age and likely life expectancy I don’t think this applies to you. The disadvantages included higher charges and the risk is probably not worth the benefits for you yet! n

Coeliac Facts

Coeliac disease affects one to two in 100 people, so the chances are that if you don’t have it yourself, you’ll know someone who does. But it’s also estimated that 70 per cent of people with the condition aren’t aware they have it. Here are some answers to the important questions:

What is coeliac disease?

It’s an autoimmune disease—a condition where your immune system attacks the body—in which the lining of the gut is damaged by gluten. This means the body can’t absorb nutrients properly.

Gluten is found in wheat, barley and rye. It’s present in cakes, biscuits, pasta, bread, breakfast cereals, pastry and so it’s a big part of the diet of most of us.

Coeliac disease isn’t an allergy or food intolerance, nor is it a fad. While it’s true that more and more people are going gluten-free in recent years; some have coeliac disease, but for others it’s simply a preference.

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

Who suffers from it?

Anyone. It strikes men and women alike (though women may be more susceptible) and can occur at any age for no obvious reason. It was thought to be a childhood condition, but it’s actually more often diagnosed between the ages of 40 and 60. And it’s a lifelong disease which you’ll need to treat with a gluten-free diet. You’re more likely to get coeliac if a close family member—parent or sibling—has it.

What are the symptoms?

Classic symptoms are chronic diarrhoea and weight loss. You might also suffer from constipation, vomiting, stomach pain, mouth ulcers, tiredness and anaemia. There are also long-term complications of living with undiagnosed coeliac disease, including osteoporosis and neurological problems (such as neuropathy—nerve damage), and a higher risk of small bowel cancer.

What can you do?

• Don’t automatically cut out gluten if you think you might have coeliac disease but try Coeliac UK’s online assessment at isitcoeliacdisease.org.uk and see your GP for a blood test.

• If your diagnosis is confirmed, see a dietitian who will help you with a gluten-free diet.

• Read food labels. There’s a wide range of gluten-free products available in supermarkets now.

• Always quiz your waiter when you eat out. While more and more restaurants have glutenfree options and by law they have to give you allergen information, it’s always wise to check there’s no crosscontamination or that there are no seasonings made from wheat in the meal, such as stock cubes, or gluten-free food fried in oil used to fry foods containing gluten. It’s a good idea to phone the eatery ahead of your visit.

• Have a coeliac-safe zone in your kitchen. This includes separate cutting boards, colanders and toasters.

• Monitor your bone health. Your GP can refer you for a DEXA scan.

Best Foot Forward

Hiking is a great work out, but it’s important to take steps to ensure your walk is as happy and healthy as possible

Do your research

Make sure you know how long your hike will take you, and how high and how steeply you’ll be expected to climb. And while you’re at it, check the weather forecast.

Take a map

Or, if you want to use your phone, download maps in advance so you can still use them when you have no signal. But beware of relying on your phone in the middle of nowhere, in case your battery dies.

Have the right footwear

Go for shoes that are designed for hiking, with good grip and support. Ideally, choose waterproof, above the ankle boots. Always break them in before a big trip.

Beat blisters

To prevent these hike horrors, wear wool or synthetic blend socks and pay attention to what your feet are telling you. Cover any problem spots with a

plaster, bandage or sports tape as soon as they develop. And don’t forget to cut your toenails before you set off.

Walk correctly

Each time you take a step, fully extend your leg so that your skeleton takes your full weight. Take small, flatfooted steps rather than big strides. This grounds your body and helps to prevent muscle strain and maintain your balance.

Watch out for ticks

To avoid these blood-suckers, wear long trousers rather than shorts and even consider tucking them into your socks. It might look silly but Lyme disease, which some ticks carry, is no walk in the park. Check yourself for ticks once you get home.

Drink plenty

Take a water bottle with you and drink from it regularly. Bring highenergy snacks, like energy bars, bananas and apples. n

Ask The Expert: Resilience

Ian Price

Ian Price is a performance psychologist, specialising in developing resilience and mental toughness

How did you become an expert on resilience?

I changed career from marketing telecoms products in order to take a Masters in organisational behaviour. I began working mostly with organisations in 2009 when the banking crisis hit. This was a personal exercise in resilience!

Why is it important to cultivate resilience in everyday life? Life brings adversity in various forms, so building your ability to manage your emotional reaction to what happens to you can make life a much more pleasant experience.

What are the main barriers?

One is that our brain is wired in the same way as our ancestors. They lived in an environment full of dangers from other tribes, predators, natural risks. Our natural tendency is to back away from anything that prompts a sense of danger or social disapproval. The other barrier is 24/7 media,

which breeds negativity, raises levels of anxiety and makes us risk-averse.

What practical tips can you offer people who want be more resilient? There’s no 45-minute skill pill, but there are three things you can do. First, go on a news fast. Turn off the news and read books that give cause for optimism. Second, try mindfulness for ten minutes a day. Building an ability to stay in the moment reduces our tendency to catastrophise. Third, change the way you think about failure and risk by trying something out of your comfort zone.

How easy is it to make the necessary changes?

It’s easier to make progress over a long period if you set small goals rather than try to make big changes.

Ian Price is the author of Head Start: Build a Resilient Mindset So You Can Achieve Your Goals. Visit headstartbook.com for more information

A Dying Wish

This month, Dr Max Pemberton recalls an incident early on in his medical career that forced him to confront his views on assisted suicide

People want clear, concise responses from doctors. When you’re ill, there’s no room for waffle, no sitting on the fence. Doctors are supposed to give opinions, but if I’m honest, sometimes I’m not sure what my opinion is. It’s easy to think that a doctor’s job is to preserve life at all costs. But sometimes, things aren’t that simple. I remember as a newly graduated doctor, meeting Mrs Fraser who had supranuclear palsy (PSP). It’s an incurable, progressive neurological disorder. Death from PSP is cruel. As your nervous system slowly fails, so too does your body, while your awareness of what’s happening remains intact. What a pitiful situation.

Mrs Fraser was in her mid-forties. She was wheeled on to the ward with her head hung awkwardly on one side and her eyes appeared to roll to and

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

fro. She’d been diagnosed with PSP five years previously. One hand hung lifelessly from out of the bed. Her night dress was damp with sweat and as I leant over her to listen to her heart, she very slowly, in barely formed words said: “let me die”. She seemed angry and frustrated and tried to turn her head away from me. A few minutes later Mr Butterworth, the consultant, appeared. And again she tried to deliver her request.

“What’s she saying?” Mr Butterworth asked.

“She wants us to let her die”, I mumbled. Mrs Fraser had been transferred to the surgical team from the medical team. She’d had repeated chest infections as her throat muscles had begun to fail. The surgical answer was to insert a tube directly into the stomach through which she could be fed, thereby by-passing the need for swallowing and its associated risks.

“Let me die”, said Mrs Fraser again. It was clearly taking considerable energy just for her to utter these few words. I stood by while Mr Butterworth explained the possible

BY FRANCES MURPHY

consequences of refusing surgery. I stood there while another surgeon tried to persuade her again to have surgery the following day. Over the next few days medical and psychiatric doctors came and assessed her. She was adamant: she didn’t want the surgery, she wanted to die. In each occasion I stood writing notes and thinking how desperately I wanted her to get her wish. What life was this, trapped in a failing body, knowing what drawn out agony awaited you but unable to end your own misery? She had tried to kill herself two years previously, before she became absolutely incapacitated, but had failed. As a doctor I’m not there to save lives, I’m there to alleviate suffering, and sometimes, I considered, perhaps that means ending someone’s life.

Part of me is a passionate advocate

for assisted suicide. I’m pleased there are places like Switzerland where people can go. It’s not in my ethical back yard so I can avoid the moral debates and respect the service they offer with impunity. But allow it in the UK? There’s a niggling, possibly illogical, feeling that persists that makes me feel uncomfortable about it. Equally, I can’t bear the idea of living in a society where someone like Mrs Fraser is forced to live a life of unbelievable suffering.

Eventually, Mrs Fraser was moved from the surgical ward back to the medical ward. She got another infection. The following week, after years of drawn out suffering, she finally died. As a doctor I really don’t know how I feel about legalising assisted suicide. But I know what I’d want if I was Mrs Fraser.

The Doctor Is In

Dr Max Pemberton

Q: I’m fed up with tearing my skin at the drop of a hat. I just need to look at a door handle and I’m reaching for the bandages. Even peeling off plasters causes bruising. I’ve had various blood tests but it’s been put down to “old age”. Yesterday I walked into a low branch and now I have a large cut on my shin. It was so bad it warranted a hospital visit. I can’t just sit all day doing nothing in case it happens again—what are my options? Gladys, 71

A: This is a very common complaint from people as they age. As we get older our skin produces less collagen—the building block that keeps skin firm, plump and tough. As collagen levels decrease, the skin starts to sag and wrinkle— and, I’m afraid, becomes thinner and less robust. This means older skin is far more fragile and knocks and scrapes that previously would have gone unnoticed suddenly cause unsightly and painful wounds. I’m sorry to say, but there’s no magic cure.

While there are various lotions that promise to increase collagen production, the reality is that most of this is just marketing hype.

It’s not just ageing that can cause thin skin though. Some medications can be responsible. Check with your GP in case you’re on something that’s contributing to your fragile skin. Medications that produce thin skin include some steroids—both topical and oral— while aspirin and other blood thinners can also cause thinning as well as bruising. Non-steroidal antiinflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen can also cause thin skin. Limiting alcohol and stopping smoking would be a great help. Sun exposure is another factor so ensure you wear factor 30 on any exposed skin and have your vitamin D levels checked. Take a supplement if necessary. Applying regular moisturiser to your body is also a good idea. n

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

Stretch Your Memory

To boost your learning you need to do a few things differently, says memory expert Jonathan Hancock

We’re creatures of habit—for good reason. Familiar routines free up valuable mental energy, allowing us to talk at the same time as we walk, for example, or think about where to drive without having to stop operating the car. It’s actually the goal of many learning processes to get so good that you can succeed without much conscious thought at all.

However, you also need to be ready for new challenges—like when you go to the supermarket and find that the layout has been rearranged. If your brain is flexible, you’ll be ready to cope, and get back home with everything on your list.

The trick is to find regular opportunities to disrupt your mental routines. The “plastic” human brain is changed by the way it’s used, and there seems to be no age limit on the benefits of challenging your thinking. Forcing your brain to re-learn a familiar task, or to do the same thing in a different way, results in new pathways being laid down and richer connections being made.

If it feels difficult, you’re doing it right. Purposefully making things harder can be unsettling and awkward, but it’s powerful braintraining, and there are plenty of ways

to shake up your thinking:

• Every so often, change the hand you use to hold your toothbrush. See how it feels as your brain and body adjust.

• If you play sport, train your nondominant side occasionally— perhaps kicking with your “wrong” foot, or swapping hands when you use a racket, bat or club.

• On days when you have some time to spare, devise a different route to or from your job.

• When you’re planning a longer journey, try to visualise the map upside down, plotting your course from a different perspective.

• At work, sit somewhere new for meetings. Leave your car at the opposite end of the car-park. Write to-do lists with your “other” hand.

• At home, carry out routine chores in a different order. Hold your TV remote face down and see if you can still make it work.

Fluency will always be valuable, and much of the most important learning in life has to be second nature. But by stepping out of your comfort zone once in a while, you can increase your brain’s strength and agility, keeping it in great shape. n

Spring in the gym...

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OPERA

Festivals

Music, nature and picnics in the sun: here are the best country house operas to catch this summer

BY EVA MACKEVIC

Glyndebourne Festival

Opera, East Sussex

One of the oldest and most iconic opera festivals in the world, Glyndebourne started off as the eccentric landowner John Christie’s passion project in the 1930s. Christie, whose wife was the renowned soprano Audrey Mildmay, had the ambition to bring world-class opera to England, and so, what began as a small purpose-built theatre which held roughly 300 people, is now one of the world’s finest opera houses accommodating 1,200 people with an exceptional repertory to match: balancing old and new, including British premieres and new commissions, Glyndebourne regularly attracts some of the world’s greatest artists.

But there’s so much more than just music to make it an unforgettable experience. The festival’s the perfect occasion to put on your flashiest outfit (black tie and evening dress are a must!), enjoy a long, lazy picnic during the 90-minute interval, stroll through the stunning country house grounds with sheep grazing peacefully in the meadow nearby, or sit back on one of the benches with a basket of strawberries and indulge in one of the best people-watching opportunities you’ll ever get. Summer festivals don’t get better than this.

May 18 to August 25, glyndebourne.com

Longborough Festival Opera, Gloucestershire

Nestled on a hillside and with splendid views over the tranquil Gloucestershire countryside, Longborough Festival Opera is an intimate 500-seat theatre, enabling audiences to experience the drama and emotion of the stage on an almost personal level.

Hailed as the “mini Bayreuth of the Cotswolds”, the theatre has long been known for showcasing upcoming Wagner singers, and achieved the impossible in 2013 by presenting a full-length production of Wagner's Ring cycle with minimal budgets.

Founders Martin and Lizzie Graham started promoting opera to a

few hundred people in the grounds of their home back in 1991. Today, the festival takes place in a purpose-built opera house, and remains a family affair with Martin and Lizzie's daughter, opera director Polly Graham, acting as artistic director.

This year, Longborough launches its new Ring cycle with a brand new production of Wagner’s Das Rheingold, as well as Polly’s personal favourite, Cavalli’s striking La Calisto, of which she says: “It's a dark story of dominance, deception and sexual desire as well as an exploration of gender. We have a fantastic cast of singers and a firebrand female creative team. It will be thoughtprovoking and gripping.”

June 5 to August 3, lfo.org.uk

Garsington Opera, Buckinghamshire

A spectacular theatre sitting within the rolling landscape of the Chiltern Hills, Garsington is an affair to remember, thanks to the incredible hospitableness and attention to detail that goes into planning every step of the experience. Whether it's a warm welcome from scouts who help guests carry their picnics, a ride on a vintage bus down to an idyllic, 18th-century walled garden or a state-of-the-art dinner menu crafted by a Michelin-star chef, you're bound to feel like you're taking part in something very special.

The festival also prides itself on championing less-known Baroque

works such as Haydn’s Orlando Paladino or Vivaldi’s L’Olimpiade , while this year will see the UK premiere of Offenbach’s bright and enchanting Fantasio.

Says executive director Nicola Creed, “Fantasio promises to be great fun. It will be very colourful with lovely costumes, many of which have been hand-painted. You will come out with a skip in your step having had a truly memorable evening—just the distraction that we all need at the moment! Arrive early so you have time for afternoon tea overlooking the famous cricket pitch.” With the festival celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, it’s the perfect time to pay a visit, too.

May 29 to July 26, togarsingtonopera.org

Nevill Holt, Leicestershire

“Subtle” and “cosy” are not exactly the words you’d think of when describing a 17th century stable block—yet this peculiar setting for Nevill Holt Opera in the East Midlands exudes just that. Owned by the Carphone Warehouse magnate David Ross, the theatre was designed by Stirling Prize-winning architects with a special focus on acoustic design crafted to support young, developing voices, in accord with Nevill Holt’s mission to nurture young talent. It’s intimate and approachable but simultaneously retains a certain rustic roughness thanks to its timber and brick elements, resulting in a charming mix of old and new.

Says general manager Rosenna East, “We’re the only summer opera festival in the Midlands, so we’re very proud to be able to bring the country house opera experience to new audiences. Our theatre provides a sense of intimacy and connection between audience and performers.”

June 12 to July 2, nevillholtopera.co.uk

Opera Holland Park, London

For an eclectic mixture of urban and country house opera experiences, you can’t go wrong with Opera Holland Park. Just a short stroll from Kensington High Street, this temporary canopied theatre is erected each summer right in the heart of one of the most serene parks of London.

With the ruins of Sir Walter Cope’s 1605 mansion, Holland House, as the majestic backdrop, and a magical tarpaulin that lends the acoustics here an extra layer of richness and grandeur, Opera Holland Park offers an unmistakable, thrilling ambiance that you’ll want to come back to every year.

The seasons typically balance fresh and insightful productions of established masterpieces, with rarities by Catalani, Cilea and Mascagni thrown in for good measure, making it the perfect destination for music aficionados striving to find the hidden nooks of opera. Book early as tickets sell out fast, and remember to bring a wrap or blanket to keep yourself cosy on chillier summer evenings! June 4 to August 3, operahollandpark.com

Grange Park Opera, Surrey

Perhaps one of the most unique buildings in the English country house opera repertoire, West Horsley’s “Theatre in the Woods” was built to resemble the horseshoe shape of Milan’s famous La Scala. Glimpsed from among the trees, it appears as a cross-gartered, industrial-inspired brick drum, holding a five-tiered auditorium that’s endowed with vibrant and resonant acoustics.

Amongst Grange Park Opera’s many fans is Joanna Lumley, who describes it as a "demi-Eden," saying, “West Horsley Place is a glorious and sprawling ancient house, grand but welcoming, formal gardens with secret corners for picnickers and gazebos, a sense of history and

occasion. What happens at Grange Park is a gift to opera lovers.”

Though it’s relatively new, the opera house attracts some of the world’s top talent and this year’s edition is no different, featuring performances by one of the world’s most glamorous mezzo-sopranos, Joyce DiDonato, and the charismatic baritone Simon Keenlyside. June 6 to July 13, grangeparkopera.co.uk

The Grange Festival, Hampshire

For those seeking an awe-inspiring atmosphere, The Grange Festival in Hampshire is the place to be. The grand architectural gem that’s modelled after an ancient Greek temple, 7th Lord Ashburton’s mansion will transport you to a land of dreams and fairy tales. Surrounded by lush greenery and overseeing a picturesque lake, it’s bound to be one of the most spectacular visual feasts you’ll ever witness.

To savour every bit of this exquisite experience, arrive a bit early to take in the countryside views with a glass

of champagne until the chimes of bells beckon you into the majestic mansion for the start of the performance. This year, the programme features a vibrant selection including opera favourites by Verdi and Mozart as well as Handel’s electrifying Belshazzar.

During the lengthy interval, you’ll emerge into the glorious goldenhour light to enjoy a romantic dinner laid up at your pavilion or marquee—an essential part of the festival’s beguiling charisma. June 6 to July 6, thegrangefestival.co.uk

Is country house opera on your radar this summer? Email readersletters@ readersdigest.co.uk and let us know

Scottish master of crime fiction Ian Rankin (58) has 25 novels to his name, including his much lauded Inspector Rebus series. He was awarded an OBE for services to literature in 2002 and is a regular on BBC Two’s Newsnight Review

IF I RULED THE WORLD Ian Rankin

I’d focus on inconsiderate parking and people who make life difficult for pedestrians. It’s partly down to the fact that the younger of my two sons is in a wheelchair, so when cars park on pavements it can be very tricky for us when we’re pushing him down the street. Little things like that can make a big difference and if people were just a bit more sensible, everybody could get on a bit better.

I’d introduce life lessons to prepare kids for the adult world. As well as academic lessons, I’d focus on IT, coding and languages so young people can communicate better. The outside world is changing rapidly and the education system isn’t keeping up.

More kids would go outside and have adventures. Parents nowadays want their kids to be safe, so would much rather they were in the living

room playing computer games than outside, where it could be scary. A lot of it’s to do with the parents saying to them, “Look there’s a big wide world out there, let’s go and explore it.” Get off your phones and go and spend some time with your children.

Parents would talk to their children about social media and the fact that not everything you see online is the truth. There’s not really enough research and social media hasn’t been around for long enough for us to have a real sense of what it’s doing to us, but I think that we can now acknowledge that, as well as the benefits the internet has brought, there’s a real dark side that we need to be aware of.

I’d do away with political parties. I think that party politics is the enemy of progress. I would have a people’s parliament with lots of independent thinkers who are focused on their communities but who also have a view on the wider world problems. I think solutions would be easier and a consensus would be easier to arrive at if politics didn’t get in the way and you didn’t have to toe the party line.

Tickets to concerts would be sold in height order. This way tall people would be at the back and shorter people at the front. I’m 6ft 1in and yet, when I go to a gig there’s always a taller person standing in front of me.

You go to the cinema and there’s always a taller person sitting in front of you. There must be a better way.

Literacy would be next on my list. It’s a particular bugbear of mine. Being a writer, of course, I need a literate readership and there’s an ongoing problem with literacy. I would encourage parents to read to their kids and to be seen reading by their kids. I would also make sure libraries are well funded and celebrated as family spaces where reading is seen as a pleasure, as well as the foundation of knowledge.

Global warming and climate change are a major problem and I’d want to see world leaders tackling it head-on. That would mean focusing on the economic benefits of going green, giving incentives to companies to become more carbon neutral and designing more green technology.

I would name, shame and boycott brands who play the tax system. At the same time I would give breaks to independent shops in the hope that we might be able to repopulate the high street and regenerate neighbourhoods. n As told to Joy Persaud

Ian Rankin will appear at the 2019 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, 18-21 July. Visit harrogateinternationalfestivals.com

What started off as a delightful family trip to the south of France, resulted in a nightmarish brush with death…

BY EUGENE COSTELLO

THE LIGHT

Summer was a busy time for me. First, I went to Carcassonne, France, on a press trip with my daughter, Evie. After, we visited my brother at his holiday house in the Pyrenees, with his wife and two grown children. My parents were there also, and we flew back with them, leaving my brother and his family to do the long drive back.

I’d been experiencing severe chest pains throughout the holiday and when I arrived at Stansted, my dad insisted on driving me to the local hospital. While there, staff realised I was having a heart attack—possibly the latest of several heart attacks that I’d been having in France. They put me in an ambulance and bluelighted me to a specialist hospital in central London.

I don’t remember much more until I woke up and had to set off on another trip with Evie, this time to Dublin. It should have been a simple enjoyable journey, but I was travelling with a group who seemed to dislike me. Several times I tried to engage them in conversation but they were sullen and unfriendly. Later, one of the them finally showed some friendliness and invited me out to a stately home in Wicklow for Sunday afternoon drinks, telling me not to bring my daughter.

The house was at the end of a long, straight drive with a gravel-strewn car park at the front—a slate-grey, square, Georgian-style detached place. I rang the bell and a nurse opened the door, but slammed it behind me. She and a male nurse

pinned me against the wall as they injected me. When I came round, I was in a high-sided bed, strapped in in the front room, once a dining room, no doubt. She said, "Look, don’t resist, they only want to teach you a lesson—they’ll keep you here

"WHEN I CAME ROUND, I WAS IN A HIGH-SIDED BED, STRAPPED IN IN THE FRONT ROOM, ONCE A DINING ROOM, NO DOUBT"

"MY BODY SHUT DOWN. I WAS, AS MY SURGEON LATER TOLD ME, 'DEAD ON THE TABLE' "

for a few hours, then you’ll be free to leave late tonight."

I protested, saying “What about Evie?” but she replied, "Look, I'm just being paid to do this, just go along with it and don’t struggle."

When the nurse left the room, I managed to sit up and get out of the bed. I smashed a window and climbed out, ran down the drive and flagged down a car. I picked up Evie and we got out of Dublin.

Next, I had to go to New York, where I was shot in the abdomen by a gang member. I recovered, thankfully, and was able to take Evie to Italy where we were visited by a

beautiful woman I’d met in New York, who looked just like Evie’s mother. A few more crazy trips and imprisonments later, I headed to an Indian wedding in Jaipur, Rajasthan. My sister-in-law, Claire, appeared and told me firmly that I needed to pull myself together…

As you might have guessed, only the initial trip to France really happend. Much later, I pieced together what had transpired. I had experienced a huge coronary at the specialist hospital and they had to perform life-saving open-heart surgery. The surgeons took an ankle-to-thigh vein

and, after opening open my sternum with a circular saw, used sections of the vein as grafts in a triple bypass. My lungs were full of fluid, consistent with pneumonia; they had to be drained. I had a stroke during the surgery, and they found a blood clot on my brain. My body shut down. I was, my surgeon told me later, “dead on the table”.

What should have been a straightforward hour-long operation took five times that long and, unable to breathe, they put me on to lifesupport. I was in a coma for ten days. When I finally awoke, my sister-in law, Claire, told me to pull myself together because they were about

"WHEN I FINALLY AWOKE, MY SISTER-IN-LAW, CLAIRE, TOLD ME TO PULL MYSELF TOGETHER"

to cut a hole in my windpipe for a tracheostomy. I gave her hand the faintest squeeze. It was enough. I was coming back…

My visions were the result of postoperative delirium. It seems I was reinterpreting fragments of what my unconscious mind was experiencing. The beautiful woman from New York? Moira visited me every day when I was in a coma. The Indian wedding? In the bed next to me in intensive care, an elderly Indian gentleman played an Indian radio station all day, providing the soundtrack to my Rajasthani wedding. The incident with Claire really happened.

Valerie Page, an intensive care consultant at Watford General Hospital is recognised as one of the UK’s foremost experts on postoperative delirium. The physical trauma of invasive surgery seems to be a common factor. While postoperative delirium affects fewer than one in ten people having routine heart surgery, that rises to four or even five in an emergency, intensive care scenario.

“Opening someone up, fumbling

around inside, taking some bits out, putting some bits in and then closing them up again it’s a massively traumatic event for a body,” Dr Page explains.

“Travel, escape, and death are all common experiences,” she continues. “But most are simply a misinterpretation of their environment, creating complex delusions to try and make sense of it. People talk about seeing a white light, but that’s because as your optic nerve loses blood, a white light is what you see,” she says. For Dr Page, postoperative delirium is nothing more than a physical malfunction—the visions have no spiritually or psychologically revealing significance.

“These are simply physical neurological manifestations of the brain malfunctioning due to transmitters, blood flow, and inflammation,” she says matterof-factly. She tells me I’m unlikely to be as sharp as I was before, but with luck, my “cognitive reserve” (education, a mentally stimulating career and so on) should help me to

form new synapses to compensate for the damaged parts of my brain. I have, it seems, been lucky.

"SHAMANS WOULD VIEW MY NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE AS AN 'INITIATION, A PROFOUND SPIRITUAL AWAKENING' "

But for others, the hallucinations that come with postoperative delirium might provide evidence of a gateway to the spiritual world. Charlotte Haigh is a down-toearth health writer from southwest London—but more unusually, she’s also a priestess and shamanic healer.

“A spiritual view could be that your soul was experiencing what your body had just been through,” says Charlotte. “That is, a massive threat to your life, which you survived on both the spiritual and physical

Charlotte Haigh is both a health writer and shamanic healer

Eugene recovering with his daughter, Evie

planes. As well as pulling through physically, you were a warrior on a spiritual level.”

Shamans would view my neardeath experience as an “initiation, a profound spiritual awakening after which life will never be the same”, says Charlotte. Any mental crisis— such as my delirium—can be seen as a glimpse into another level of consciousness, or a “merging of this world with the spirit world, which can give you important messages,” she adds.

This doesn't necessarily mean everything I experienced in my delirium was relevant, Charlotte says, but while it may all seem like nonsense, “it could be worth thinking about whether any of it could be giving you messages about your life”. These messages will be symbolic rather than literal, similar to psychedelic experiences.

“In many cultures, what you've been through would be seen as a great honour, given you survived it, and a chance to bridge the gap between our world and the spiritual plane.” Whether my own delusions were indeed symptomatic of some deeper, spiritual response to what

my surgeon later called "catastrophic events" that would not have been "survivable" but for a unique set of circumstances, is—for me—doubtful. But I do understand that others will feel differently. In the ten days that I was on life support, I wasn’t conscious of anything, and had I slipped away there would have been no great "reveal" as I passed.

The first sign of awakening was a vision of gold stars on a blue background that seemed to last for hours, days even, that eventually gave way to my hallucinations. For me, it was my subconscious mind taking scraps and fragments of my reaction to being sawed open and having complete strangers tinkering around under the hood with my major organs, not least my heart, synonymous for centuries with life itself.

But whether they were indicative of something greater, something deeper, is neither here nor there. I'm alive and healthy and will be here for longer after all—with luck to watch my daughter grow and become an adult herself. I have been given a second life. And I intend to make the most of it. n

A GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING

The film The Shawshank Redemption remains one of the most valuable assets in the Warner Brothers catalogue (which has several multi-billion dollar movie franchises) and Bob Gunton (the warden) still earns six-figure residual payments a year from it.

SOURCE: BUSINESSINSIDER.COM

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A BREAKTHROUGH

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THE LIGHTBULB MOMENT

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YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT

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THE CULT KIDS

WHO GREW UP TO BE HEALERS

BY CYNDY ETLER

I spent 16 months of childhood trapped in a cult. I know what you’re thinking: ashrams. Curtain-like saffron robes. Non-denominational prayer circles. But not in my cult. We had no kumbaya, no goodwill toward men. We were trapped in a warehouse. With no windows. For a reason…

My cult was a moneymaking machine. Mel Sembler, a shopping centre salesman turned Republican fundraiser, had a brilliant idea: if he could get rid of unwanted teenagers, parents would pay him a lot of money. Enter Straight Inc., a drug rehab for troubled teens. Or, as the American Civil Rights Union described it, “a concentration camp for throwaway teens.”

Studied by the Cult Education Institute and the International Cultic Studies Institute, Straight ticks all the cult-indicator boxes, including peer

pressure used to induce shame and guilt, obsession with bringing in new members and money, as well as a belief that the (exalted) ends justify the (reprehensible) means, and punishment meted out upon dissenters.

My friends Matthew Hellrung, Kris Flannery and I were three of the 50,000 kids locked up in Straight. Most of us had abusive, neglectful parents. Most of us had barely, if ever, done drugs. But that was beside the point.

Matthew was 16 in December of 1981, when his mother signed him

MATTHEW'S PRIMARY CHILDHOOD MEMORY IS RIDING A BIKE TO THE STORE FOR A CARTON OF CIGARETTES AND A FIFTH OF A BACARDI

into Straight. His father had died in June, six months earlier. Matthew himself got the plot and arranged the funeral, because, he says, “I’m the only one who wasn’t drunk.” His primary childhood memory is riding a bike to the store for a carton of cigarettes and a fifth of Bacardi. He’d put them in his little backpack and pedal them home to his mum.

Kris was signed in at 16 as well. When her parents had divorced eight years prior, her father got custody and her mother moved away. Feeling abandoned, perceiving herself as ugly, and bullied by her peers, Kris was a lonely, depressed kid. Her stepmother saw her as a problem to get rid of. Straight promised a solution, along with a host of scare tactics. Her father fell for the lies.

My father had died when I was one, so my mother found a guy with a house and a French accent. He turned out to be an alcoholic and a molester. When I hit puberty, I started fighting back. When I turned

13, I ran away from the abuse. When I turned 14, my mother had me arrested and signed me into Straight.

Our collective rap sheet: Matthew had taken one sip of beer at a family dinner. Kris had drunk two-anda-half beers at a sleepover party. I was the most hardcore: I drank beer once and tried weed thrice. Straight made us all admit that we were dangerously addicted to drugs. We couldn’t speak to our parents until we said it and believed it. Those words, from our mouths, made our parents keep on writing cheques. Matthew’s experience is a snapshot of what we all experienced in Straight…and how the programme convinced us to believe its alternative facts. Today, Matthew knows that he is on the Autism spectrum. At 16, he only knew that he didn’t know how to lie. The truth was, before Straight, he had been going to school, going to work, and making sure that his three younger

Matthew Hellrung, Cyndy Etler and Kris Flannery

WHEN I GOT OUT, I WAS A 15-YEAR-OLD NUTJOB, A PSYCHOLOGICAL MUTANT

Cyndy Etler in her first-grade class picture, taken shortly after her mother married her abusive stepfather

siblings were fed. In the Straight warehouse he was surrounded by ferocious teens, continuously screaming at him that he was the cause of his parents’ problems.

He was forced to stand up and was yelled at all day. He was kept awake and yelled at all night. “You have to admit you’re a drug addict!” the group demanded, but all Matthew could say was, “I’m not. I don’t even know what drugs are. I don’t even know their names.’” He was punished with the peanut butter and water diet, but still. He couldn’t lie. He couldn’t say he was an addict.

So he was sent home with a sadistic group member, who demanded he sign a paper he

couldn’t read. Matthew refused. He was returned to the warehouse with blood in his underwear. There, he was attacked by the whole Straight group. For weeks, he hadn’t slept. He had barely eaten. He had been raped a few hours prior. Broken, overwhelmed, he fell out of his chair. He was pinned down by six guys on a hard tile floor. He gave in and signed the paper.

Kris was in Straight for almost a year and a half. She knew every rule, backwards and forwards. We all did. One of those rules was, “No dating for six months after graduating.”

Five months after graduation, her stepmother saw her holding a boy’s hand. She called Straight staff, who

© CINDY ETLER

demanded Kris be returned to Straight immediately, lest she begin shooting up heroin the next day. Though Kris was 18 by this point— legally, no longer under her parent’s jurisdiction—she was kidnapped in broad daylight from her job’s parking lot. She was wrestled, kicking and screaming, into a car, then forced back into the warehouse.

Upon graduating Straight, returning to the “real world” was terrifying for all of us. When you have seen, felt, heard, and done what we did in the warehouse, you don’t snap back to normal. When I got out I was a 15-year-old nutjob, a psychological mutant. I had to live in my mother’s

house and deal with her abusive husband. I had to attend school with the “dangerous druggies” who questioned my disappearance and laughed at my paranoia. I needed to disappear, to die. Instead, I met my English teacher.

Much like Kris’ and Matthew’s early years, my childhood had been marked by dislike and neglect. No one had ever told me I was good at anything. Straight confirmed my contemptibility and worthlessness. When I shuffled into English class post-Straight and picked up a pen, reality shifted. My teacher read my writing. She said it was really good. She read it to my peers. And they

A former Straight Inc. warehouse, which was occupied by Straight spinoff programme “Kids Helping Kids” when this photo was taken in 2005

© KRIS FLANNERY

MY ENGLISH TEACHER READ MY WRITING, AND SHE SAID IT WAS GOOD. INSTEAD OF NEEDING TO DIE, SUDDENLY, I NEEDED TO WRITE

clapped. For my writing. For me. Instead of needing to die, suddenly, I needed to write.

Now, after 17 years’ working with struggling teens in alternative schools, I am a board-certified teen life coach…and an award-winning young adult author. Through my coaching, my writing, and my presence on social media, I surrogate-parent thousands of teens.

Kris’s pivot came on a street corner. She joined a group of Straight spinoff survivors protesting a programme that continued to operate. In that group of kindred spirits—institutional abuse survivors struggling to right historic wrongs— a seed was planted. She had seen programme-survivor stories spread haphazardly across the internet. She recognised the need for empowerment, for validation.

Having trained as a lawyer, she had a vision for how to usher that process forward.

Today Kris’s website, Surviving Straight Inc., is a hub of survivor stories, reportage, and program documents. It's a source for media covering the troubled teen industry and therapists seeking guidance on how to support its victims. Most importantly, it confirms what we say happened in those windowless warehouses. It counters the lies we were forced to tell and the blame we were forced to carry.

Matthew was released from Straight after 13 months. He returned home to find that all his friends hated him. He later learned that the paper he signed had been a list of his friends’ names. It said they were all drug addicts and needed to be in Straight.

Matthew's big shift came on the heels of losing his accounting job. He moved into a stay-at-home parent role as his then-wife became the breadwinner, which allowed him time to study the classic career discovery text, “What Colour Is Your Parachute.” Each time he picked up the book, the words “I want to touch people’s lives” stood out. It took him

a while longer to realise that the message was literal.

Through his massage therapy practice, Compassionate Heart Massage, Matthew’s Autism allows him to work miracles. Noticing muscular idiosyncrasies and sensing patterns in the body that doctors and physical therapists have overlooked, he provides his client with emotional and physical release of decades-old pain.

Thousands of us were locked up in Straight because we didn’t fit the mould, socially or at home. Because we were square pegs, our parents got rid of us. But looking at the trajectory of Matthew, Kris and I, one has to wonder if perhaps square pegs were made to heal a round world. n

Cyndy Etler is the author of two memoirs about her experience in Straight Inc. She is also a teen life coach. Her work has been featured in The Independent, CNN, The Progressive, and She Knows

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INSULTS

Puff guts: a fat man

Bull calf: a great hulkey or clumsy fellow

Death's head upon a mop-stick: a poor, miserable, emaciated fellow

Hang in chains: a vile, desperate fellow

Unlicked cub: a rude uncouth young fellow

SOURCE: MENTALFLOSS.COM

Cyndy Etler

distantjourneys

Leisurely and flexible guided touring

Leisurely and flexible guided touring

Magnif icent

New Zealand

New

Magnif icent

Zealand

23 days from only £3,995 per person

23 days from only £3,995 per person

Day 1: Depart UK

Day 1: Depart UK

Fly with Qantas / Emirates from London Heathrow, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle or Glasgow. Alternatively fly with Singapore Airlines from London Heathrow or Manchester.

Fly with Qantas / Emirates from London Heathrow, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle or Glasgow. Alternatively fly with Singapore Airlines from London Heathrow or Manchester.

Days 2-4: Singapore

Days 2-4: Singapore

Enjoy a city tour including Merlion Park, Marina Bay and the fabulous orchid gardens. Alternatively, you may choose to stop in Bangkok or Dubai at no extra cost.

Enjoy a city tour including Merlion Park, Marina Bay and the fabulous orchid gardens. Alternatively, you may choose to stop in Bangkok or Dubai at no extra cost.

Days 5-6: Auckland

Days 5-6: Auckland

Discover Auckland with a tour including Waitemata Harbour, Viaduct Harbour and Mount Eden.

spurting geysers and boiling mud pools. Enjoy a buffet dinner and Maori concert.

spurting geysers and boiling mud pools. Enjoy a buffet dinner and Maori concert.

Day 12: Christchurch

Day 12: Christchurch

Christchurch is a charming city renowned for its many parks and gardens, and we take a short orientation tour of the city.

Christchurch is a charming city renowned for its many parks and gardens, and we take a short orientation tour of the city.

Days 13-14: Franz Josef

Days 13-14: Franz Josef

Travel aboard the TranzAlpine Express, arguably one of the most scenic rail journeys in the world. Descend to the west coast by coach and continue to Franz Josef, with an opportunity to walk to view the glacier.

Discover Auckland with a tour including Waitemata Harbour, Viaduct Harbour and Mount Eden.

Days 7-9: Bay of Islands

Days 7-9: Bay of Islands

A stunning cruise around the Bay of Islands; explore Red Head Passage, Cape Brett, Russell and the ‘Hole in the Rock’.

A stunning cruise around the Bay of Islands; explore Red Head Passage, Cape Brett, Russell and the ‘Hole in the Rock’.

Days 10-11: Rotorua

Days 10-11: Rotorua

Travel to the world-famous thermal region of Rotorua. Discover the Bath House and continue to Whakarewarewa Thermal Reserve, with its

Travel to the world-famous thermal region of Rotorua. Discover the Bath House and continue to Whakarewarewa Thermal Reserve, with its

Travel aboard the TranzAlpine Express, arguably one of the most scenic rail journeys in the world. Descend to the west coast by coach and continue to Franz Josef, with an opportunity to walk to view the glacier.

Days 15-16: Queenstown

Days 15-16: Queenstown

Enjoy a Freedom Day with an optional wine tour, an exhilarating ride on the Shotover Jet or a leisurely cruise aboard the vintage steamboat, TSS Earnslaw.

Enjoy a Freedom Day with an optional wine tour, an exhilarating ride on the Shotover Jet or a leisurely cruise aboard the vintage steamboat, TSS Earnslaw.

Days 17-18: Te Anau & Milford Sound

Days 17-18: Te Anau & Milford Sound

Stay in peaceful Te Anau and experience a morning cruise on Milford Sound, undoubtedly one of your tour’s many

Stay in peaceful Te Anau and experience a morning cruise on Milford Sound, undoubtedly one of your tour’s many

Our destinations: Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

Our destinations:

Terms and conditions: Special offer is £69pp in twin / double room, £138 for single occupancy and is subject to the availability of flights and accommodation. The saving of up to £552 per couple is available on Magnificent New Zealand tours departing from 27 October 2019 and is on the price of the homebound stopover. Single occupancy supplement from £1,495, (tour departing 26 April 2020, £1,195). For more details and full booking conditions, please request a brochure or visit www.distantjourneys.co.uk

included highlights. Sheer peaks rise all around and spectacular waterfalls cascade into the calm waters below.

included highlights. Sheer peaks rise all around and spectacular waterfalls cascade into the calm waters below.

Days 19-20: Dunedin

Days 19-20: Dunedin

Our city sightseeing tour takes in the city’s neo-Gothic churches, town hall, and the flora and fauna of Dunedin Botanical Gardens.

Our city sightseeing tour takes in the city’s neo-Gothic churches, town hall, and the flora and fauna of Dunedin Botanical Gardens.

Days 21-22: Christchurch

Days 21-22: Christchurch

Witness the geological curiosities known as the Moeraki Boulders, huge boulders which are scattered along the beach. Later, arrive at Christchurch for our final night in New Zealand.

Witness the geological curiosities known as the Moeraki Boulders, huge boulders which are scattered along the beach. Later, arrive at Christchurch for our final night in New Zealand.

Day 23: Arrive UK

Day 23: Arrive UK

Breakfast is served shortly before our arrival into our chosen UK airport.

Breakfast is served shortly before our arrival into our chosen UK airport.

Book by 1st July 2019 and enjoy a homebound stopover from only £69 per person (£138 for singles). Stopover choices are Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok or Dubai and include return transfers and four star accommodation with breakfast.

Book by 1st July 2019 and enjoy a homebound stopover from only £69 per person (£138 for singles). Stopover choices are Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok or Dubai and include return transfers and four star accommodation with breakfast.

An expedition to the Antarctic finds one explorer faced with a view of the world like no other

THE FINAL WILDERNESS

By Himraj Soin

"The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it"

This sentence, uttered by the first man to walk to both poles, explorer Robert Swan, echoed through my ship as I embarked on my first Antarctic expedition.

In 1989, my father—Mandip Singh Soin, a mountaineer and explorer— travelled to the North Pole with Swan. Together, they sent blimps into the atmosphere in order to study the depletion of the ozone layer. The trip led my father onto a 25-year mission to protect the environment and that dedication has made him my hero for as long as I can remember. So, 25 years later, I found myself travelling to the end of the world with the same partner in exploration, retracing my father’s steps.

I was participating in an international Antarctic expedition that aimed to bring leaders together to study the harmful effects of climate change alongside a team of global experts.

Organised by Swan’s NGO “2041”, the core emphasis of the expedition was the preservation of the Antarctic. Protected by the Antarctic Treaty, the unique region has no

government. The document, signed in 1959, ensures that the white continent is used solely for peaceful and scientific purposes.

In 1991, a new 50-year agreement was entered into which prevents any exploitation of the continent. It’s the only place on Earth where nations live together completely peacefully (on their respective research stations), often inviting each other over for Christmas dinners and costume parties. For now, this last great wilderness is protected by the common goal of scientific advancement. The year 2041—the namesake of Swan’s NGO—will mark the end of this agreement and Swan sees it as our duty to ensure that it’s extended and maintained.

TO BEGIN MY EXPLORATION,

I took a ship from the southernmost city in the world, Ushuaia, Argentina. Known as the “Gateway to Antarctica”, it has the outward appearance of a quaint film set and a population of 60,000. We spent our first two days here, preparing

THE ANTARCTIC IS THE ONLY PLACE ON EARTH WHERE NATIONS LIVE TOGETHER IN COMPLETE PEACE

for our journey and I met 80 people from over 29 different countries— researchers, environmentalists and business owners. Our ship, The Sea Spirit, felt more like a hotel from the 1970s. A glorious, seven-storey beast, it was a lot more comfortable than the vessels the early explorers travelled in—our rooms had beds and attached bathrooms, there was even a barbecue and a 1920s-style bar.

Our adventure to the Antarctic began with navigating the infamously unpredictable Drake Passage.

A treacherous channel, connecting and separating the southernmost tip of South America to the northernmost reaches of the Antarctic Peninsula, these waters are known to be the roughest in the world and waves here can reach over 33ft. As we cut through the tide, our ship rocked back and forth like a gigantic cradle, in synch with the waves.

After two days of wobbly legs, we finally saw our first iceberg. One of the most exciting moments of the Drake crossing, it signalled the proximity of

BENEATH MY FEET LAY 90 PER CENT OF THE WORLD'S ICE AND 70 PER CENT OF ALL FRESH WATER

the white continent. The first real taste of this bizarre alien planet, it took me a while to fully comprehend that beneath my feet lay 90 per cent of all the world’s ice and 70 per cent of all the world’s fresh water.

Once we reached the peninsula, we took our first zodiac [an inflatable boat] to step foot on the ice and explore the frigid, penguin-filled continent. There were strict rules now we’d reached the land of ice—

boots must be washed in sanitiser before and after entering the ship. Nothing potentially invasive was to be brought onto the continent—even something as innocent as a biscuit could potentially cause damage.

As I walked on land for the first time in 72 hours, I stumbled and felt overwhelmed with emotion. However clichéd it may sound, there was an inexplicable energy here unlike any other part of the world—a place

so pristine, pure and primal. The landscape was almost Dali-esque. A few days later, I observed a huge tabular iceberg. Over half a mile long and half a mile wide, it had broken off the Antarctic Larsen B ice shelf, floating in the Antarctic ocean. Most of the world’s largest ice shelves are in Antarctica and Greenland. Disintegration of ice shelves is directly associated with climate change, as opposed to calving, a natural event. This ice shelf completely collapsed in 2002, making it the largest disintegration event in 30 years. 1255 square miles of the Larsen B shattered which

released more than 720 billion tons of ice into the Weddell sea. Our in-house geologist explained it to us in layman’s terms—that much ice would be enough to make ice cubes for two gin and tonics for every passenger on board (well over a 100 of us)—every day for the next 30 years.

CAMPING OUT ON THE CONTINENT

as we did a few days later was the experience of a lifetime. “Survival night” as we called it, and rightfully so, was windy, snowy, and cold. However, it also brought some of the best light we had on the trip as

most days were overcast. As the sun dipped, we dug our snow trenches (we didn’t use tents on account of our guide being a sadist) to protect us from the wind, put down tarp and got into our sleeping bags. We didn’t sleep for more than five minutes, but it was utterly worth it. We got to gaze at the Milky Way all night, and also got pelted with snow, strong winds, and ominous sounds from the nearby leopard seals. The next day we heard that one of the members of our team had left his trench during the night to do his business and was approached by a curious seal. Needless to say, he didn’t finish.

THE WATER TEMPERATURE WAS -3°C. I DOVE HEADFIRST, FILLED WITH ADRENALINE

As if camping out wasn’t rough enough, our next experience was a polar plunge. By far, the coldest thing I had ever experienced— armed with nothing but a pair of boxers, a safety harness, and questionable sanity, I jumped into the Antarctic ocean. Filled with regret, adrenaline, and what felt like a deep state of unconsciousness, I took the plunge from a zodiac near our ship. The water temperature was -3°C. I dove head first (I would highly recommend diving legs first) and swam underwater for what felt like months. However, the entire ordeal lasted for less than 30 seconds.

WHEN YOU'RE AT THE END OF THE WORLD, THE REST OF THE WORLD STANDS STILL

As I clambered out, painfully numb, I was overcome with adrenaline. I didn’t feel cold anymore and neither did my coplungers. Everyone was running around the ship, high-fiving each other, with huge smiles on their faces. The next plunge was directly into the ship’s hot tub.

When you’re at the end of the world, the rest of the world stands still. Ordinary problems seem mundane. Untouched by time and humans (mostly), this southern land

is the harshest, most inhospitable continent on Earth. But it’s also the most primal, pure and peaceful. It’s the only place on Earth that exists just as it was intended—may it always remain that way. n

This expedition was made possible by the Inlaks Foundation, Ibex Expeditions, the PHD Chambers of Commerce, Chimes Group, India, Shriram group, Bhilwada Group, SWISS International Airlines, East West Rescue and the American Embassy

ANTARCTIC ADVENTURE

25 NIGHT HOLIDAY

Arrive in either the Chilean or Argentinian capitals before boarding your luxury cruise ship. Glide along the South America coastline, explore the immense glaciers and dramatic fjords of southern Patagonia, and call in at the remote Falkland Islands.

The highlight of this transcontinental voyage is the 4 days you spend exploring the ice covered Antarctic Peninsula. Stretching northwards to South America, the iceberg flanked passageways and isolated terrain shelters rich wildlife, most notably the 6 species of penguins, 6 species of seals and many varieties of whales.

No other place on Earth can compare to this white wilderness – a truly once in a lifetime, unforgettable experience.

WHAT’S INCLUDED

• International flights from London

• Private transfers

• 22 night full board cruise

• 4 day Antarctic Experience

• 1 night 4-star hotel in Santiago or Buenos Aires

Departure on 7 & 29* Jan 2020

Aboard Zaandam FROM £3499pp

Our reader Jacqueline Townsend from Dorset discovered a positive perspective in Positano

The summer after an acrimonious separation from my husband, I felt I deserved a holiday. As luck would have it, a new friend was going to the Amalfi Coast, Italy with a small group and this coincided with a week that I had—ironically— taken off in anticipation of my wedding anniversary.

The October temperatures had looked similar to home online, but when we arrived it was around 27 degrees, a good five degrees above the UK, despite an Indian summer at home. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

I’d been looking forward to Italian food and it didn’t disappoint. The simplest meals of Mozzarella and slices of beef tomatoes were absolutely delicious. I also sampled raw shrimp on toast and, of course, enjoyed many a pizza.

Once settled in Positano, it was a short walk, all downhill, to the beaches. The main beach was dark sand and served by many cafes, all with a relaxed atmosphere. There

Peaceful Positano My Great Escape:

was an unobtrusive bar and walkways with seating.

The people were welcoming and friendly and, although the narrow streets were still teeming with tourists in October, the beaches and cafes weren’t overly crowded.

Being based away from the beach meant we could either walk up along the winding road or catch a rather crowded bus. Many of the locals had mopeds and everyone shared the road quite amicably. It was fascinating to see the lime, lemon, fig and orange trees lining the roads.

While in Positano, we enjoyed days out to Capri, with its air of exclusivity; the massive Pompei, with its amphitheatre; Amalfi Cathedral and Ravello, for a classical concert.

Our days mostly ended enjoying eating food and drinking wine, usually overlooking the glistening sea. Calm and beautiful. It was definitely a place worth visiting.

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

BOAT JOURNEYS

FOR CONSERVATIONISTS: ANTARCTICA

In February, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientists will accompany an Antarctica wildlife cruise on which passengers can help to monitor whale pods. Penguin-seeking shore landings are also promised (polar-latitudes.com).

FOR FACILITY-LOVERS: CARIBBEAN

Aboard the huge Caribbean Princess are steakhouses, chocolatiers, casinos, galleries, a putting course and much more. It makes one-week round-trips from Florida to the chill Eastern Caribbean islands all year round (princess.com).

FOR MILLENNIALS: CENTRAL EUROPE

Youthful cruiser? Float down the Danube aboard The A, a matte-black vessel with farm-to-table food, on four-country voyages via Vienna and Budapest, and enjoy mixology classes, karaoke evenings and even guided nights out on the tiles (ubyuniworld.com).

FOR ANIMALLOVERS: GALAPAGOS

G Adventures’ affordable, small-ship itineraries stop at whitesand beaches in-between observing giant sea turtles, land iguanas and blue-footed boobies, plus visiting the Charles Darwin Foundation (gadventures.co.uk).

FOR HISTORY BUFFS: NILE RIVER

Featuring three nights aboard lateenrigged felucca sailboats, Explore’s ten-day small-group cruises take in Egypt’s most famous historical sites, including the Pyramids and the Valley of the Kings (explore.co.uk). n

by Richard Mellor

Travel app of the month

ACCESS EARTH , FREE, ANDROID & IOS

Devised for travellers with disabilities, Access Earth allows users to rate hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions in TripAdvisor-style based on their accessibility for people with reduced mobility.

BOOK

7 NIGHT HOLIDAY

Bursting with Italian culture, the Sorrento peninsula in the heart of the Neapolitan Riviera is simply one of the most beautiful parts of Italy, with Pompeii, Positano and the picture postcard Amalfi Coast all within easy reach.

The Hotel Delfino is located in Massa Lubrense on the Sorrento Coast, in an area of unspoilt natural beauty and panoramic views of the Gulf of Naples and the island of Capri. Elegantly furnished and with all the amenities it is the perfect base for your full day tour of the Amalfi Coast.

WHAT’S INCLUDED

• Return flights from London, including baggage

• Private airport transfers from Naples airport to hotel

• 7 nights B&B in the 4-star Hotel Delfino, Massa Lubrense

• 3 handpicked day tours visiting:

» Capri and the famous Grottos (full day)

» The Amalfi Coast, stopping off at Positano and Amalfi (full day)

» Skip the Line Pompeii Guided Small Group Tour (half day, entrance to Pompeii is included)

From price is based on 7 Oct 2019 from London Gatwick

Other departure airports, dates and hotels available (prices will vary)

FROM £1149pp

Your Holiday Checklist

Sun cream, flip flops and camera—check. But in the giddy excitement of preparing for your next trip, have you stopped to plan your finances too?

TO DO AS SOON AS YOU BOOK Get travel insurance

Travel insurance is essential for when you go away. Cover for delayed flights, lost bags and broken cameras are all good to have—just in case. But the most important thing to arrange is medical cover. It can be incredibly expensive for care if you get ill or injured when away, even more so if you need to be flown home.

And don’t wait to arrange it. Buy your medical insurance as soon as you’ve booked your holiday. This means you’re covered for cancellation if you get sick before the trip, so long as that’s part of the policy you buy.

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

You’ll also usually save money by buying an annual policy if you plan to go away more than once during a 12 month period.

Apply for a travel friendly credit card or current account

The cheapest way to spend when you’re away is by using a debit or credit card. Though don’t think that means you’re OK to use the one in your wallet. Most of these will cost you a fortune in fees and charges.

Instead, you should apply for a specialist card. These can give you perks like fee-free spending and cash withdrawals, meaning you’re getting close to the actual exchange rate, which is better than what you’d get for currency at a bureau de change.

Among the best credit cards are the Halifax Clarity credit card and Tandem credit card. The latter will even give you 0.5% cashback on your

spend at home and abroad. You’ll be charged daily interest on cash withdrawals, but you can avoid these by paying them off straight away.

Alternatively you could look at opening a current account via new banks Monzo or Starling. These banks don’t have branches, with everything managed in an app on your phone. You don’t need to switch your bank to have these, you can simply just get one as an additional account and transfer cash across for your trip.

Check for visas

If you turn up at the check-in gate without a valid visa for your destination, you’ll be turned away. Or worse, you’ll get on the plane but not be allowed to leave the destination airport. The chances of you being able to get your visa sorted in the few hours you have before departure are slim, meaning you’ll lose out on most of the money you’ve spent on your trip. So double check now whether

you need a visa and get one sorted ASAP if you do. Post-Brexit, this could include travel to Europe.

While you’re at it, check the expiration date on your passport. Many countries require three to six months of validity for after your trip.

A WEEK BEFORE YOU GO Cancel subscriptions

There’s no point paying for things you aren’t going to use. If you can stop or pause memberships and subscriptions for while you’re away then do so, particularly if you’re on a long trip.

Work out what using your mobile phone will cost

At the time of writing we don’t know how Brexit will affect the roaming rules for your mobile. Though many of the networks have said they have no immediate plans to stop you being able use your included minutes, texts and data in Europe, there’s no guarantee. And if you’re travelling further afield then only Three allows you to keep roaming—and even then it’s not for every country in the world.

So phone your network to find out what the costs are for using your phone while you are away. There might be add-ons which make it cheaper, or caps you can add to stop your bill getting higher and higher. You can also turn off the mobile data on your phone to reduce the chances of this happening.

Order some travel money

Though you’ve hopefully ordered and received your specialist debit or credit card, I think it’s always wise to take a little currency in cash with you. Don’t just assume your bank or the Post Office will give you the best rate. And don’t get fooled by signs saying 0% commission—these places will still set their own exchange rate.

Instead get online and visit travelmoneymax.com. Here you can compare rates across multiple bureaus and choose whether you want to collect your travel money from a location near you or have it sent to you in the post.

If you do forget and leave it to the day you travel then at least pre-order to collect before you head to the airport. You’ll get a cheaper—though still relatively expensive—rate than going to the window at the departure lounge.

Decant your toiletries

An easy, and potentially costly, mistake is to pack all your toiletries for your trip without checking their size. With most flights you are limited to bottles of 100ml in your hand luggage, meaning most bottles you use every day are too big. Ideally buy some smaller ones to decant things into, or buy special travel sized options—though these will often work out more expensive.

The 100ml rule doesn’t apply for anything you buy in Duty Free on your way out—but it will if you want to bring them back with you. Of course this doesn’t apply if you’re checking bags, so it’s best to pack as much as possible in those cases.

WHILE YOU’RE AWAY

Ignore your social media

This final one on the checklist is for when you finally leave on your holiday. Try to avoid sharing snaps of you in the sun. This isn’t to stop friends getting jealous. It’s to protect your home. By advertising your absence online via social media, you’re telling prospective thieves that your property is empty. And if you do get burgled, these public posts might mean your home insurance company decides not pay out for a claim. You can always upload those photos when you get back! n

FOOD

Meatballs And Tomato Sauce

May can be something of a culinary bridging period: winter stews are a distant memory, but often a light summer salad won’t quite cut it. Classic Italian dishes are a great option during these inbetween months—they’re suited to warmer weather, yet still substantial enough to fill bellies

Serves 4

25g breadcrumbs

50ml milk

500g beef mince

1 egg yolk

2 garlic cloves, crushed 1tbsp Dijon mustard

1tbsp Lea and Perrins

1 gherkin, diced (optional, but preferable in my opinion!)

Salt and pepper, to season 3tbsp olive oil

For the tomato sauce

2tbsp olive oil

1 large onion, diced

3 garlic cloves, crushed ½ fresh or dried red chilli

2 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes

1tsp dried oregano

1tsp sugar

400g dried spaghetti, linguine or penne

Parmesan cheese, to serve

Rachel

a food writer for numerous national publications. Visit rachel-walker.co.uk for more information

Walker is

Drinks Tip…

Go traditional with the award-winning Chianti Riserva from Lidl (£6.99), a fantastic accompaniment to this classic Italian dish

BY TIM & ZOË HILL

1. Pour milk over the breadcrumbs, and set aside to soak, while you prepare ingredients for the tomato sauce.

2. Start sauce by pouring the oil into a heavy-bottomed pan and sweating the onions on a gentle heat, until soft and turning translucent—about 8 minutes. Add garlic and chilli and fry for a further minute until fragrant, then add both tins of tomatoes. Rinse the empty tins with a splash of tap water and add this to the pan, along with the oregano and sugar. Simmer, uncovered, on a gentle heat to intensify the flavours and enrich the sauce while you make the meatballs.

3. Tip the breadcrumbs into a large mixing bowl, then add the rest of the meatball ingredients. Use hands to scrunch everything together, season generously, and roll into large, walnut-sized balls—lining them up on a chopping board as you go.

4. Boil water and cook the pasta (according to pack instructions, usually 10 minutes). Meanwhile, heat the remaining oil in a shallow pan until it sizzles. Fry the meatballs for 8-10 minutes, until golden-brown.

5. Pop them in the simmering tomato sauce to finish. Drain the pasta, divide it between four bowls, top with the sauce and meatballs and finish with a generous grating of Parmesan cheese.

Cheat’s Tiramisu

Serves 6-8

1tbsp instant coffee

+ 250ml boiling water

(or 300ml of strong cafetiere coffee)

2tbsp sugar

Optional: 4tbsp of coffee liqueur

(eg, Kahlua, Tia Maria)

600ml double cream

250g mascarpone

2tbsp icing sugar

1tsp vanilla extract

200g lady fingers

75g dark chocolate, grated

2tsp cocoa powder

Making tiramisu from scratch is an art form: piping the lady fingers, gently coaxing the eggs into a glossy custard… I’m sure purists would be horrified at this speedy version—but we’re all busy, and this harnesses the sensational flavours in a fraction of the time

1. Pour the coffee, sugar and coffee liqueur into a shallow bowl, (which will fit the ladyfingers lengthways). Whisk the double cream, mascarpone and icing sugar until soft and smooth. Add the vanilla extract.

2. Now build the tiramisu. Start by briefly dipping the ladyfingers in the coffee, so they are almost soakedthrough but not soggy. Place a layer in the bottom of a (preferably glass) serving dish, top with a dusting of chocolate, then the mascarpone-cream and repeat the layers until everything is used up—finishing with a layer of mascarpone cream.

3. Cover with cling-film and refrigerate for at least an hour. Top with a final dusting of chocolate and cocoa powder and serve. n

Global Influence

Embrace far-flung craftsmanship by giving your interior an update with a fusion of tribalinspired prints and natural textures

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

his on-trend look is all about introducing an artisan appeal into your home by combining decorative ikats with an earthy colour palette. Choose tones rich in natural pigment, including terracotta and umber, for a warming scheme that will work throughout the seasons. Monochrome detailing goes hand-inhand with this look and don’t be afraid of mixing in hints of other colours, too—accents of dazzling turquoise or ruby red will lift the scheme if you prefer something that packs a little more punch.

Layering up an assortment of different textures will help give your

interior décor a more authentic feel, so don’t shy away from mixing and matching—think woven baskets, rattan furniture and tasselled Berber rugs. Choose pieces featuring ikat prints and Aztec designs, whether that’s on soft furnishings such as bedding, cushions or woven wall hangings, or furniture with intricately etched detailing. Ceramics with organic shapes and irregular textures slot perfectly into this look, oozing handmade charm, and reactive glazing on vases and crockery is seeing a surge in popularity. Combining these elements will build up a laid-back, Bohemian-inspired decor that can be adapted to suit any room in the house. This look lends itself to experimentation and it’s a wonderful way to incorporate trinkets from your own travels, to tell an interesting and personal story.

Nomadic Vibes

Cage easy-fit pendant, £45; vase, £40; Asha double duvet set, £70; Amina pink double duvet set, £60; washed cotton throw, £80; mud print cushion, £22; woven rug, £40, all Debenhams

Mowing in May

As we get ready for summer, Jessica Summers sprinkles some fun into your May garden errands

While taking care of grass may not seem like the most glamorous of outdoor responsibilities, it’s incredibly important for maintaining a uniform, well-ordered garden. Before you start hacking away at the grass blades, there are a few things to prepare first:

NOURISH THE GROWTH

Now that the blossom is out and the temperature’s up, it’s a brilliant time to start feeding the lawn. Nitrogen-rich feeds keep the grass luscious and prevent it drying up in the heat. If you have moss invading the ground, choose a brand that includes a moss killer. To make life easier, select a slow-release fertiliser to spread time between applications.

QUENCH THE THIRST

The ideal grass is bouncy and supple—if it springs back into shape

after being trodden on, you’re onto a winner. To achieve this, aim to keep the first six-to-eight inches of soil wet—one inch of water per week should maintain this level. To reduce waste, save excess water from your sinks, showers and baths and repurpose for your lawn to drink.

Now that you’re ready to cut, make sure you have the correct variety of mower for your land. If you have a large plot, consider a wheeled rotary sit-on mower. If your garden is modest, hand-push mowers are a great option with the added benefits of being quiet, environmentally friendly and advantageous in tight corners—and, if you fancy being fancy, they’re also great for achieving a striped lawn. Keep blades sharp for efficiency and avoid cutting grass when it’s wet, to prevent turf damage.

All that’s left now is to relax and enjoy the perfume of freshly cut grass. n

✓ Lowers you right to the bottom of the bath *Based on a straightforward fitting. Bathing difficulty GONE IN MINUTES with the Quick Fit MERMAID BATH BELT!

✓ Quick and easy to install

✓ Retains existing bath

✓ Supports up to 20 stone

✓ Push button or remote controlled

✓ Re-chargeable battery for safety

Green Light

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

This year, the fashion industry is finally acknowledging its problem of being the second most environmentally unfriendly industry on the planet. It's ironic that a business that primarily concerns itself with beauty causes such environmental destruction, particularly when so many designers claim to be inspired by nature.

As much as I adore fashion and style, I make an extra effort to choose well-made clothes with longevity, and avoid short-lived trendy items. This doesn't mean I wear only "classic" items; I simply ensure that I only buy items I truly love (mostly statement pieces with a few basics thrown in) that can be styled and worn various ways for many years.

Having a truly "green" or sustainable wardrobe can get very complicated. It isn't feasible for consumers to investigate international supply

chains and examine carbon footprints for every purchase. Thankfully, there are new companies, such as Positive Luxury, who make this easier and do all the investigative legwork for us. There are also apps, such as Good On You, which rate companies based on their commitment to sustainability. I expect many more of these to emerge as consumers start to ask "Who made my clothes?", "under what kind of conditions?", and "How can this garment be so cheap?"

So, what can we do now?

How do we start?

Here is what I do:

1 Wear natural fibres. Making this commitment alone cuts out almost all of fast fashion. Synthetic fibres release harmful micro plastics into the waterways when they're washed, take much longer to break down in landfills, and emit harmful substances as they break down. Natural fibres don't just feel better, they are better for the planet in the long term.

2 Buy organic. They're harder to find, but organic natural fibres are better for the earth. Organic cotton uses less water and no harmful pesticides, unlike conventional cotton. GOTS-certified cotton ensures that the labourers are paid a living wage, as nearly all cotton is grown in the developing world where

regulations are scarce. British brand Loskey is my go-to brand for cotton.

3 Buy less. Be sure to buy clothes you will wear and re-wear. Always choose quality over quantity.

4 Buy must haves. Not their must haves, your must haves. If the look and fit are amazing, and you feel fantastic in something, you will get loads of wear out of it. Only buy what thrills you.

5 Buy vintage and donate. Whether it's from eBay or a local charity shop, buying vintage gives clothes a second life. My favourite and most unique winter jumpers are Norwegian wool ski jumpers from the 1970s that I found on eBay. Also, make the effort to give your own unloved or unworn items to a charity shop. Just because you don't love it doesn't mean someone else won't. I'm shocked at the recent statistics: in the UK, 300,000 tons or £12.5 billion worth of wearable clothes are discarded and end up in our landfills each year.

6 Don't buy cheap clothes. If a price seems too good to be true, it probably is. Someone (or everyone) in the supply chain is not being paid a fair wage so that multinational brands can profit from mispriced clothing. Vote with your wallet for business ethics that you value.

The Difference SPOT

Jenessa Williams reveals the best solutions for frustrating bouts of adult acne

When it comes to beauty, there are few things more irritating than an ill-timed pimple. Adult acne can be caused by a myriad of underlying issues—hormonal changes, food intolerances, stress or the increasing concern of air pollution can all cause an excess of oil secretion which then turns into spots. Or of course, you may simply be using the wrong products. Finding a skincare regime that works for you can involve a lot of trial and error, and in trying too many "miracle cures" at once, we can often make the problem even worse.

If you’re struggling with tempestuous skin, try paring things back. Over-cleansing or using abrasive scrubs can dry out skin, forcing it to produce more oil to compensate. Instead, opt for a gentle, creamy cleanser as a preventative measure, and use no more than twice a week to keep skin fresh.

To respond to a serious breakout,

you’ll need a produce with salicylic acid in its ingredients. Gentle enough to use on your whole face, it draws out impurities, a sensible course of action before resorting to a benzoyl peroxide, which kills acne bacteria but can irritate if used excessively. As with all beauty, remember that it comes from within—look to make positive changes to your diet and mental health, and you may find that your skin improves too. n

HERO PRODUCTS

1 The Ordinary Salicyclic Acid 2% Solution, £4.25 for 30ml

2 Frank Body Creamy Face Cleanser, £15.95 for 100ml

3 Origins Super Spot Remover Blemish Treatment Gel, £16 for 10ml

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VOX LUX

Natalie Portman and Jude Law star in this captivating—if unnerving—portrait of a girl propelled from tragedy to fame

Having captured the world’s attention performing at the memorial for a horrific school shooting, 13-year-old Celeste (played with extraordinary sensitivity by Raffey Cassidy) soon finds herself propelled into a singing career and global stardom. Just 18 years later and now a bona fide pop sensation, Celeste (Natalie Portman) is already staging a comeback concert after a series of scandals—both personal and public—begin to threaten both her career and her grip on reality.

Portman shares a producing credit with Jude Law (who plays her gruff

manager) and Sia—and it has the punchy, at times overwhelming, soundtrack to prove it. Part social satire, part cultural think piece and part pop concert, Vox Lux is a fascinating, if somewhat disorientating, venture.

Terror is at the heart of the film, which opens with a horrifying, thinly veiled recreation of the Columbine shootings and posits 9/11 as a turning point both personal and public—this is definitively a portrait of a postmillenium world. Exploring the nature of fame, privacy, security, identity and the exploitation of tragedy in the modern age, Vox Lux asks more questions than it answers, though perhaps its greatest strength is in posing these difficult questions at all.

DRAMA: EXTREMELY WICKED, SHOCKINGLY VILE

AND EVIL Viewers concerned by a trailer that seemed to show notorious serial-killer Ted Bundy depicted as something of a likeable rogue (one played by Zac Efron of High School Musical fame no less) can rest easy. Focusing largely on the impact of Bundy’s trial on his long-term girlfriend, single mother Liz Kendall (Lily Cole), Extremely Wicked offers a surprisingly nuanced depiction of both Ted’s incredible charisma, and the unthinkable horrors of his crimes. There are stellar performances

across the board here, but Efron puts in a particularly impressive turn playing seriously against type as Bundy, able to strike both charm and fear into the viewer with a simple twist of his smile.

COMEDY: THUNDER ROAD Bridging the gap between hilarity and tragedy, indie newcomer Jim Cummings’ drama will baffle and surprise you through and through with its uncoventional tone, offbeat narrative and a striking lead character (also played by Cummings)— the neurotic, lovably infantile and unpredictible Jim who, following a divorce and the death of his mother, experiences a messy meltdown.

ADVENTURE: ARCTIC Whether it’s the sea, the desert or even space, filmmakers just love to expose their protagonists to extreme environments and have them tackle the elements head on, often reaping the benefits during the awards season. But this also makes the “survival thriller” genre a tricky one to nail. By now, we’re all so familiar with the tropes, twists and turns, that crafting an original one is no easy task, as demonstrated this time by Joe Penna’s Arctic, starring Mads Mikkelsen. The film, while beautifully shot and superbly acted, struggles to surprise us in any way, resulting in a gripping, but ultimately conventional watch. by

Eva Mackevic and Anna Walker

HOME: SERIES 1 (C4; ALL4)

What is it? One of TV’s spring gems: an immensely touching fish-out-of-water comedy about a Syrian refugee who winds up in Dorking.

Why should I watch it? Writer-star Rufus Jones weaponises the sitcom format to prick the conscience—but he does so with gentle good humour, and an exceptional cast. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you may not read the Mail ever again. Best episode? Episode two of six, in which Sami (Youssef Kerkour) has his phone snatched, perfectly blends chuckles and sob-inducing pathos.

POSE: SERIES 1 (BBC2; BBC IPLAYER)

What is it? Glee and American Crime Story supremo Ryan Murphy’s latest slice of event TV, an eight-part drama set in 1980s New York’s alternative ball scene.

Why should I watch it?

This is TV as melting-pot: Murphy recruits largely untested, ultradiverse newcomers, and uses their energies to paint a kaleidoscopic portrait of the scene best known for inspiring Madonna’s “Vogue”. Best episode? Like most Murphy endeavours, it gets issuey, but the pilot is dazzling: all colour and shade, with an unexpected soundtrack revival for Captain Sensible. Best character? You wouldn’t want to separate Dominique Jackson’s Elektra from MJ Rodriguez’s Blanca. Those nails are sharp.

by Mike McCahill

WHAT TO STREAM THIS MONTH:

AFTER LIFE (NETFLIX)

Funny-sad tale of a melancholic widower returning to humdrum local-newspaper life marks a return to Office form for Ricky Gervais.

FLEABAG (BBC

IPLAYER) Phoebe WallerBridge’s extraordinary, disruptive creation sallies forth in a second run, now with bonus Fiona Shaw and Kristin Scott Thomas.

LARRY CHARLES’ DANGEROUS WORLD OF COMEDY (NETFLIX)

The Seinfeld director’s study of global comedy mores yields four hours of eye-opening material.

ALBUM OF THE MONTH: DESIGNER

BY ALDOUS HARDING

Some vocalists are known for incredible technique and precision; others can touch our innermost selves with visceral emotion and lyricism. And then there’s a unique brand of singers who can weave a whole other universe using just their voice. The kiwi singer-songwriter Aldous Harding is one of them.

A blend of Nick Drake and Astrud Gilberto, Harding’s vocals are a thing of wonder and mystery. Quietly powerful, subdued but controlled, they have a strange, unearthly quality about them—a timelessness that makes Harding sound like she could be a modern-day reincarnation of a songstress who lived centuries ago. It’s a concoction of lilting youthful girlishness as demonstrated on the titular “Designer”, and androgynous, musky energy, hitting leathery lows on tracks such as “The Barrel”.

Designer is quirky, melodically inventive and deeply steeped in acoustic folk that’s buoyant and easy on the ears, enriched by discerning poetic lyrics that roll off the tongue beautifully. She’s one to watch.

Key tracks: “Designer”, “Zoo Eyes”, “The Barrel”

by Eva Mackevic

READER RADAR: CATHERINE LUCAS, WRITER

WATCHING: TIMELESS

AMAZON PRIME A historian, soldier and scientist travel time to save history. It has an undercurrent of the ethics of time travel, brought together with a veneer of American glamour.

ONLINE: LITERARY SITES

I don’t have much of an online life and am not on social media; I prefer to live in the tangible world.

READING: THE OVERSTORY BY RICHARD POWERS I’m an avid reader. In the past weeks I have also read Sapiens, The Language of Kindness, and The Tattooist of Auschwitz .

LISTENING: PODCASTS I can’t get enough of them! I listen while driving or doing household jobs. I like shows which are informative and intriguing. My favourites are Always Take Notes and The Extraordinary Business Book Club. n

May Fiction

Whether it’s the tensions of Nazi-occupied Greece or the romance of Victorian London, historical novels dominate our top literary picks this May…

Those Who Are Loved by Victoria Hislop (Headline Review, £20)

Victoria Hislop’s many thousands of fans will be delighted to hear that her new novel once again manages the neat trick of combining a blockbusting family saga with plenty of wellresearched history.

The main character is Themis, a Greek woman first seen celebrating her 90th birthday in 2016. But she then spends the rest of the novel remembering the often terrible events of her long and dramatic life, including the Nazi occupation and the brutal civil war that followed.

The fact that Themis fought with the Communists in that war leads to some of the book’s most memorable, if gutwrenching passages, especially after she’s taken prisoner. But it also perhaps introduces the only awkward note. For Themis to be as heroic as she’s clearly intended to be, the family-saga part of the novel needs her to have been on the side of the goodies. The historical-background sections, though, are too honest to deny that the Communists could be equally as cruel as their right-wing opponents.

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

Even so, this is an undeniably sweeping and powerful read—as well as a jolting reminder of the horrors that went on in Greece far beyond the Second World War.

The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal (Picador, £12.99)

Elizabeth Macneal’s first novel has pretty much everything you could want from a book set in Victorian London. There’s a plucky, highly appealing heroine who leaves her dull job painting dolls to hang out with the PreRaphaelites. Other characters lurking in the impeccably dark alleyways include a loveable street urchin and a properly

scary villain. One of the key settings is even an old curiosity shop.

The novel, however, proves far subtler than you might expect from these familiar elements. The characters, and the relationships between them, have such depth that you end up completely immersed in their world. We learn quite a lot about the artistic trends of the day without ever feeling remotely lectured—while Macneal’s feminist message also emerges naturally from her terrific story-telling. And all this before the heroine and villain meet in a nervejangling climax that will, I suspect, have most readers both desperately wanting to read on and desperately wanting not to.

Ever since the success of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, there’s been no shortage of good modern gothic novels. The Doll Factory might just be the best yet.

Name the author

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

1. In the 1840s, he campaigned unsuccessfully against the proposed railway line from Kendal to Windermere.

2. His former home of Dove Cottage is open to the public.

3. One of his poems begins, “I wandered lonely as a cloud”.

Answer on p126

Paperbacks

Made in Scotland by Billy Connolly (BBC Books, £8.99)

The much-loved comedian reflects on all that his native country means to him. Funny (of course), but also touching and revealing.

Normal People by Sally Rooney (Faber, £8.99)

Last year’s big word-of-mouth hit arrives in paperback. Two young Irish people negotiate the modern world in a sharp and thoughtful novel.

12 Rules of Life by Jordan B Peterson (Penguin, £9.99)

Canada’s most famous psychologist— now also a YouTube star—defies many a received wisdom in a book guaranteed to provoke discussion.

The Shepherd’s Hut by Tim Winton (Picador, £8.99)

One of 2018’s best novels: a thrillinglywritten tale of a teenager’s dark adventures in the West Australian wilderness.

How Does It Feel? by Mark Kermode (W&N, £8.99)

Before becoming a film critic, Kermode tried for years to be a popstar. This is his highly entertaining account of how he failed.

RD’S RECOMMENDED READ

Incredible Insects

Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson reveals some amazing facts about one of the animal kingdom’s most underappreciated representatives…

Extraordinary Insects is one of those books that might well change the way you look at the world. As Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson admits, insects don’t tend to feature much on most people’s lists of favourite animals. If we think about them at all, it’s generally not with a sense of overwhelming gratitude. Yet over the centuries the free goods and services they’ve given us include silk, honey, waste removal, genetic research and the plays of William Shakespeare—which have survived only because they were printed in a particularly durable ink extracted from a gall wasp. In a world without insects, by contrast, plants would go unpollenated, most birds and fish would be left unfed and they’d be nothing to recycle vital nutrients.

Extraordinary Insects: Weird. Wonderful. Indispensable. The Ones Who Run Our World

by

Anne SverdrupThygeson is published by Mudlark at £14.99

In short, human life would just be impossible.

And then there’s the sheer variety of the things, and of their ingenious methods for eating and reproducing. Sverdrup-Thygeson, a Norwegian professor of life sciences, writes with such infectious and well-informed enthusiasm that it’s impossible not to develop a new-found respect for insects (however grudging)—and you might even find yourself starting to share her whole-hearted admiration. Either way, almost every page contains some fact about their

behaviour that’s guaranteed to leave you astonished: from the ants that keep aphids as livestock to the cicadas that emerge from the earth in their millions precisely every 17 years to mate, die and leave the next generation to disappear underground for another 17.

But as you might imagine, there are still also lots of moments that make you go “Ugh!” (These are insects, after all.) And here, I’m afraid, are some of them—from a section on wasp reproduction that really isn’t for the faint of heart…

The beautiful, green-eyed Dinocampus coccinellae is a parasite wasp. The female sticks her egg-laying tube into a ladybird beetle and lays an egg. The egg hatches and over the next 20 days the wasp larva chews its way through many of the ladybird’s inner organs. Then it squeezes its way out of the ladybird’s abdomen while the unfortunate host is still alive. The larva spins itself a little ball of silk between the ladybird’s legs, where it transforms into a pupa.

Something quite remarkable happens next: the ladybird’s behaviour abruptly alters. It stops moving and just stands there, stockstill, like a living shield. This lasts for a week until the wasp hatches and flies off, leaving the ladybird to her own devices.

The big question here is how the wasp mother can control the ladybird,

More extraordinary insect facts from Extraordinary Insects

There are more insects in the world than grains of sand on every beach on Earth—and around 200 million per human being.

Insects existed long before dinosaurs— and for more than 150 million years were the only creatures who could fly.

The total weight of all the ants on Earth is equivalent to the total weight of all the humans.

According to Charles Darwin, the brain of an ant is “perhaps more marvellous than the brain of a man”.

In 2011, a new species of horsefly was given the scientific name Scaptia beyonceae, after the singer Beyoncé— on the grounds that it has a particularly striking rear.

The world’s largest flower is pollinated by blow-flies—and to attract them it emits the flies’ favourite scent: the rotting flesh of a dead animal.

Male fruit flies that have drunk fermented (and therefore alcoholic) fruit become “clingy and sex-mad, while simultaneously reducing their chances of successful mating”.

transforming her into a zombie babysitter. After all, several weeks have passed since she laid her egg and vanished. The answer is that she doesn’t just inject the ladybird with the egg but also with a virus. The virus accumulates in the brain and is controlled by a timing mechanism that paralyses the ladybird at the precise moment when the larva is squeezing its way out, so the virus enables the wasp to take over the brain of the ladybird, making it serve not just as baby food but also as a babysitter. The only good thing we can say about all this is that, unbelievably enough, the ladybird sometimes survives the whole ordeal.

The cockroaches that fall prey to the soul-sucker wasp aren’t so lucky. You probably remember the dementors in Harry Potter, those flapping black monsters that suck out people’s souls? That’s what gave the Ampulex dementor wasp its name.

Here, too, the whole process starts with a mother wielding her egg-laying stinger. First, she stings the cockroach

And the name of the author is…

William Wordsworth who thought the railway would spoil the beauty of his beloved Lake District.

“This allows the wasp to lead her prey wherever she wants— like a dog on a leash”

in the chest to paralyse its legs for a few minutes—because the next stage involves high-level brain surgery, which requires ‘the patient’ to lie completely still. Now the wasp stings the head. With extreme precision, she places a dose of nerve poison in two specific points of the cockroach’s brain, which blocks the signals that control its ability to start moving: the cockroach can still move but cannot take the initiative to set itself in motion. This allows the soul-sucking wasp to simply bite into the cockroach antennae and lead her prey wherever she wants—like a dog on a leash— straight to its death.

The cockroach allows itself to be led down into a hole in the ground; here, the wasp lays an egg, which it glues to the cockroach’s leg. Then the soulsucker wasp blocks the entrance to the hole with small stones and vanishes. Her little larva child spends the next month fattening itself up. First, it sucks the bodily fluids out of the cockroach’s leg and then it bores into the creature’s insides and gobbles up its intestines, before forming a pupa inside the cockroach, which eventually dies. n

Books

THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

David McKee is a celebrated writer and illustrator, once nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. The 30th anniversary edition of Elmer is published by Andersen Press

Winnie the Pooh

BY A A MILNE

I first heard one of the adventures read to me at school around 1942. Until then, all stories that I’d known were told to me by storytellers, this was the first time a story was read to me from a book—I loved it. There was something about the world of books which was suddenly open and I had to read the rest of the Winnie the Pooh stories. It’s a magic world that I wanted to be part of, and I suppose that later I did become a little part of. If I’m asked, I still say it’s my favourite book.

L’ Arte del XX Secolo e Oltre

BY LOREDANA PARMESANI

painters through it—people such as Matisse, Duran and Marquez— I discovered the world of colour. Elmer’s Colours is probably related quite directly with that book; colours are very important to me, more important than just if the sky is blue. I’m quite happy to have a red, pink or yellow sky.

Crocodile Tears

BY ANDRÉ FRANÇOIS

Around 1951, when I was in art college, colour printing was taking on a different quality and it was this book of paintings that enlightened me. I would go in to the library practically daily to look at it. You couldn’t take it out of the library, you could only take it out in the reference section and I discovered so many

By 1962 I was drawing cartoons for the national press. I drew regularly for Reader’s Digest actually. I looked at other cartoonists, as people do, and the one that I loved was André François, the French artist. He inspired my generation because they weren’t just joke drawings they were art. When I discovered his book, Crocodile Tears, I was already a storyteller with my friends and to myself, but when I read it, I realised that this was a way I could put the stories together and that I could actually be an author. That opened the door for me into picture books, so it was quite influential. n

Phone-Smart

Your phone isn’t just for communication and webbrowsing... it can also function as the ultimate remote control for your home. Olly Mann reveals how to smarten up your crib with the latest connected devices

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

Defend Your Castle

If you rent your property to tenants, or holidaymakers via Airbnb, consider a Lockly Secure Pro smartlock ($300, plus shipping from the US). With its companion app you can create access codes from anywhere in the world—and block previous users from entry. It’s more secure than an analogue keypad lock, because the placement of the numbers on the keypad is reconfigured each time, preventing prying eyes deducing the code from afar. And it comes with a couple of oldfashioned keys, so you personally can always get in, even if the system crashes.

LORD OF THE RINGS

If you frequently return home to be greeted by a pile of “sorry we missed you” delivery cards, Ring Video Doorbell 2 (£179) is a must-have. This easily mountable doorbell sends an alert to your phone whenever somebody rings, offering welcome amplification when you’re pottering about upstairs. But it really shines when you’re away, because (as long as you have 4G or Wifi), its built-in mic and speaker lets you speak in real-time to whomever’s at your door, via a live video link. So, tell that delivery guy to leave your shopping in the shed, whilst you finish your latte. The battery requires charging every few months, but wired-in versions start at £229, if you’d rather have it professionally installed. A marvel.

Feel The Heat

Saving money on energy bills is an ongoing quest for most of us. Here’s the dream: during your commute home, swipe your phone to toggle on the hot water and heating 30 minutes before you arrive. Presto, your rooms will be toasty, and your bath will be hot, and you haven’t wasted any gas. Google’s Nest Learning Thermostat (£279, with professional installation) takes things one step further by “learning” your preferences, maintaining optimum temperature by observing your previous behaviour at a particular time of day. It also automatically senses when you leave and reduces the temperature, and can even be activated by voice-control. Plus, it’s the nicest-looking thermostat out there.

SWITCH OUT YOUR PHONE

All this tapping and swiping and facialunlocking can be exhausting. If you want a smart home, but are fed up of constantly digging out your handset to control everything, snap up a Logitech Pop (£35 Android, £79 Apple). It’s a physical switch you mount to your wall, programmed to activate a personalised sequence of events, known as “recipes,” when you flick it. For example, you could customise it to turn on your smart lights, close your smart blinds and switch on your smart kettle, all with a single press. It can be anchored to more than one smartphone, too, so other family members can use it even if you (and your phone) aren’t at home.

You Couldn’t Make It Up

Win £30 for your true, funny stories!

Go to readersdigest.co.uk/contact-us or facebook.com/readersdigestuk

MY NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOUR was pointing out how she wanted her vegetable plot arranged to her new gardener. “We put potatoes there, cabbages there, carrots over there, onions there, spinach there... And we do our peas at the end of the garden behind the shed.”

“Okay” He said, “but should the occasion ever arise, I'll use your toilet if you don't mind.”

DAVID WEBB, Sussex

MY EARS PRICKED UP when I overheard a woman talking to her friend on the bus, because she commented, “My fantasy is to have two men at once...”

Even her friend looked shocked until she added, “one cooking, and one cleaning.”

GERALDINE BURTON, Denbighshire

WHILE ABROAD ON HOLIDAY, my parents went to a restaurant that advertised an “unusual breakfast.”

They went in, sat down and my mother asked what it was. She was told, “Baked tongue of chicken.”

She was horrified and retorted, “Do you have any idea how disgusting that is? I would never eat anything that came out of a chicken's mouth.” Undaunted, the waitress asked what she would like instead. “Omelette” replied my mother.

RACHELLE HARDING, Cambridgeshire

UNWARY DRIVERS who try to negotiate their cars over the River Skell, in Ripon, often have to be rescued by the Fire Brigade.

And one man's rueful comment really took the biscuit. When taken to task for his recklessness, he said that he didn't think the water was very deep because it only came halfway up the ducks.

MAGGIE COBBETT, Yorkshire

MY SISTER TOLD ME ABOUT A NEW APP which told her what to wear, what to eat and if she'd put on some weight.

“What's the app called?” I asked.

“The Daily Mail” she replied.

MICHA BRYN, Merseyside

I OVERHEARD MY WIFE READING a bedtime story to our daughter one evening. When she reached the end of the book I heard her say, “And then they lived happily ever after, until the prince forgot their first wedding anniversary.”

LEE SEVILLE, Merseyside

WE WERE PLANNING OUR AMERICAN VACATION and my son Connor, who’s six, was listening. When his mum mentioned we were going to Seattle he answered back, “Who is Attle and why do we have to go and see him?”

JASON DAVID, Hertfordshire

MY FRIEND AND I WENT INTO A CAFÉ for some refreshments but the soft drinks were expensive so my friend declined. I chose a small glass of fruit juice, which cost £2.80, so I

made it last. Eventually, a waitress came along to remove my glass which had a few dregs left.

When my friend saw this, she exclaimed, “Hang on a minute, there's still 80 pence worth of fruit juice at the bottom!”

PHILIPPA SAMPSON, Devon

WHEN MY GRANDSON LAST VISITED ME he revealed, “I had a bad cough last night and got out of bed to go downstairs and get a drink of water. And do you know what, Nana? I found Mummy and Daddy sunbathing in front of the gas fire.”

GABRIELLE COOPER, Hertfordshire

WE RECENTLY ASKED OUR PUPILS to bring in something new made from something old as part of a recycling project. When a child proudly presented a woollen teddy I said, “That's fantastic, did it come from an old jumper?”

“No, my nanny made it, and she's old,” came the reply.

HANNAH OAKES, Buckinghamshire

I WAS LOOKING IN THE MIRROR feeling generally dissatisfied with my appearance and I said to my husband, “I'm too fat, my face is covered in wrinkles, my hair's going grey and I'm getting a double chin.”

My husband replied cheerfully, “Cheer up love, at least your eyesight's good!”

HEATHER MARCHANT, London

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.

IT PAYS TO INCREASE YOUR

Word Power

A real safari may be out of reach, but you can still talk about the animal kingdom like a seasoned guide. Explore this menagerie of words and then scout for answers on the next page

BY EMILY COX & HENRY RATHVON

1. fauna n. A: baby deer. B: beast of myth. C: animal life in a region.

2. nicker v.—A: chirp like a cricket. B: chatter like a chimp. C: whinny like a horse.

3. savanna n.—A: grassland. B: paper fan. C: tall cabinet.

4. nocturnal adj.—A: fast moving. B: without legs. C: active at night.

5. vulpine adj.—A: like a wolf. B: like a fox. C: like a crow.

6. flews n. A: swarms of midges. B: cuckoo nests. C: droopy lips, like a bloodhound’s.

7. aquiline adj.—A: resembling an eagle’s beak. B: living in the sea. C: warm-blooded.

8. piebald adj.—A: hairless. B: spotted. C: scaly.

9. headwater n.—A: source of a stream. B: head rush caused by warmer temperatures. C: current running along a boat.

10. clutch n.—A: forepaw. B: nest of eggs. C: predator’s quarry.

11. tawny adj.—A: of a warm and sandy colour. B: having talons. C: with soft feathers.

12. prehensile adj.—A: adapted for grasping. B: developed in an eggshell. C: eats insects.

13. estivate v.—A: store water as camels do. B: change habitats. C: sleep through the summer.

14. territorial adj.—A: like a terrier. B: relating to aspecific area. C: having an ability to swim.

15. polecat n.—A: mountain lion. B: Arctic hare. C: ferret.

Answers

1. fauna —[C] animal life in a region. I studied up on Kenya’s fauna so that I would know what to look for during the safari.

2. nicker —[C] whinny like a horse. Andrew nickers so well that people feed him oats!

3. savanna —[A] grassland. The cheetah stalked its prey from the tall grass of the savanna.

4. nocturnal —[C] active at night. City dwellers joke that the nocturnal chirping of crickets is a more bothersome sound than the noise of late-night traffic.

5. vulpine —[B] like a fox. Alexa approached the deviled eggs with a vulpine lick of her chops.

6. flews —[C] droopy lips, like a bloodhound’s. When my dog Fido snores, his flews flap in the breeze.

7. aquiline —[A] resembling an eagle’s beak. Adrien Brody makes an aquiline nose look good.

8. piebald —[B] spotted. Of the many cattle breeds, I must say I like the piebald Holsteins best.

9. headwater —[A] source of a stream.

Lewis and Clark led the first expedition up the Missouri River in the US to its headwater.

10. clutch —[B] nest of eggs. Debbie defends her dinner plate almost as aggressively as a hen protects her clutch.

11. tawny—[A] of a warm and sandy colour. My favorite thing about a lion cub is its tawny coat.

12. prehensile —[A] adapted for grasping. The giraffe’s long tongue and prehensile upper lip help it strip leaves from the branches of treetops.

13. estivate —[C] sleep through the summer. Desert reptiles estivate underground to seek refuge from the strong sun.

WORD OF THE DAY*

OMPHALOSKEPSIS: Navel-gazing

14. territorial —[B] relating to a specific area. Cats are very territorial creatures; my dog has learned it’s best to keep out of my kitty’s preferred places to nap!

Alternative suggestions:

“When you no longer believe in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"

“Doubting the existance of elephants"

“Too much fake tan”

15. polecat—[C] ferret. Amy has invented a pungent perfume she ought to call Polecat. n

VOCABULARY RATINGS

9 & below: Shaky legs

10–12: Making strides

13–15: Full gallop

Oddly enough, I didn’t want to go at first

But I enjoyed myself in the end.

After losing a partner, it’s natural that you might not feel like stepping out socially again for weeks, months or maybe even longer. We understand it can be tough.

When the time is right, your local Oddfellows Branch is there to offer you a warm welcome at any of our social events, and to make it a little easier for you to take that first step.

We’re ready when you are.

Brainteasers

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

SKYSCRAPERS

This grid represents a bird’s-eye view of a city’s downtown core. Place a number from 1 to 5 (representing a building’s height in storeys) in each cell so that no two buildings in any row or column have the same height. The numbers along the periphery tell you how many buildings are visible in a row or column to an observer standing outside the grid and looking in from the direction indicated by the arrow. Higher buildings block the view of lower ones behind them. Can you determine the heights of all 25 buildings?

FOREST FOR THE TREES

A spanning tree (or just a tree, for short) is a diagram made up of dots and straight lines, where every line goes between two dots, where all the dots are connected and where there are no paths that go around in a loop.

Here are some examples:

A drawing that has several spanning trees is called a forest. If a forest has three trees and 27 lines in it, how many dots does it have?

THE MISSING LINKS

Two of the identical rings shown in this pile are actually linked together. Which two?

RECTANGLES

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

ARITHME-PICK

Place one of the four basic arithmetic operations (+, –, ×, ÷) in each box to make a correct equation. Symbols may be repeated, and you don’t have to use all four. All operations are performed from left to right, ignoring the mathematical order of operations. The result at each step must be a positive whole number. What is the equation?

Brainteasers: Answers

£50 PRIZE QUESTION

Answer published in the June issue

Which of the four words below this is the definition of the first word?

FOREST FOR THE TREES

30 dots. Any tree you can draw has one dot more than its number of lines. Therefore, you’ll need to add three (the number of trees in the forest) to 27 (the number of lines).

Keen eyed readers of our April issue will have noticed the prize question was actually unsolvable. We’ve repeated the question above (correctly this time) and all former entries will still be valid. THE FIRST CORRECT ANSWER

WE’RE SORRY!

Laugh!

Win £30 for every reader’s joke we publish!

Go to readersdigest.co.uk/contact-us or facebook.com/readersdigestuk

THE PEOPLE WHO PROCESS expired passports are so lazy. They’re always cutting corners.

COMEDIAN JOEL DOMMET

physical perfection without giving a fig about Instagram. SEEN ONLINE

THERE ARE TWO THINGS IN THIS world that I know for sure.

1. I can eat an entire tray of lasagne in one sitting.

2. I am a terrible dinner host.

COMEDIAN PHIL JOHNSON

I THOUGHT ABOUT BECOMING A FOOD CRITIC. But I would have to use a fake name. A nom nom nom de plume.

SEEN ON PINTEREST

JUST LAST WEEK I LAUNCHED A BOOK aimed at nine to 12-year-olds, and I’m pleased to say that I hit one of them.

COMEDIAN GARY DELANEY

BATMAN IS BUILT ON THE frankly unbelievable premise that a human being could train themselves to peak

Scaredy Cats

These cowardly kitties have found some not-so-imaginative places to hide from a trip to the vet (via sadanduseless.com)

I WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND WHY anybody cooks on television. I can’t smell it, I can’t eat it, I can’t taste it. At the end of the show they hold it up to the camera, “Well, here it is. You can’t have any of it. Thanks for watching. Goodbye.”

COMEDIAN JERRY SEINFELD

SOMEBODY JUST GIFTED ME A shower radio. Thanks a lot. Do you really want music on in the shower? I guess there’s no better place to dance than a slick surface next to a glass door.

SEEN ONLINE

barman originated from. I said he was an Eskimo, my friend said Native American. Turns out he was an Eskimo. Inuit all along.

COMEDIAN RICHARD GADD

I SPENT MY LAST SUMMER

HOLIDAY learning the secrets of the art of escapology. I need to get out more.

SEEN ONLINE

COMEDIAN DARREN WALSH

I’VE GOT A NEW JOB WHERE I go around collecting all the jumpers left behind in the park at the weekend, but it’s not easy. They keep moving the goalposts.

DONALD TRUMP SAID THAT HE’D build a wall, but he hasn’t even picked up a brick. He’s essentially just another middle-aged man failing on a DIY project.

COMEDIAN JUSTIN MOORHOUSE

SOMETIMES IT’S SO REFRESHING TO get off the computer and go outside and reconnect with people by telling them about what I saw on the computer.

SEEN ONLINE

MY MATE AND I WERE IN A PUB together debating about where the

SO MUCH FOR TAYLOR SWIFT. She sent back my trousers unmended.

SEEN ON TWITTER

MY SISTER’S BOYFRIEND HAS A heart tattooed on his bicep with the word “Grandad” inside it.

It looks great now, but one day he will just look like a very arrogant grandad.

COMEDIAN ADAM HESS

IT’S SO WEIRD THAT AMERICANS say “eggplant” when they’re called chickens.

SEEN ON TWITTER

MY FRIEND RECENTLY ACCUSED me of being condescending.

Come Fly With Me

Twitter users share their most face-palm inducing airport stories…

@Deanna_MAD: “I took some anxiety medication at the airport and ended up missing my flight because I was too relaxed and wanted to finish watching Bake Off.”

@_ColeenM: “I was fiddling with the side of my plane seat and grasped what I thought was the recliner handle… then I realised someone behind me had stretched out… and I’d grabbed their bare foot.”

@KatyByrneDesign: “I once sat next to a man who consumed two servings of nachos right after we’d taken off. Later when the flight hit some turbulence he started yelling, ‘This isn’t going to end well.’”

@wFord22: “I was walking to my gate when a little kid overtook me yelling, ‘The poop is coming out.’”

This from a person who has never even read Dostoyevsky!

COMEDIAN DEANNE SMITH

A MAN WALKED INTO HIS DOCTOR’S OFFICE with a piece of lettuce sticking out of his ear. The doctor said, “Well, this seems to be a small problem.”

Worried, the man replied, “You’re wrong, doctor! This is just the tip of the iceberg.”

PAULINE CRAISE, London

THE IDEA THAT MONOPOLY IS BEING turned into a live action movie is crazy. It’s only believable if it’s ten hours long and in the end destroys a family. SEEN ONLINE

MY NAME IS KEVIN, WHICH MEANS THAT if a woman ever calls out my name during a moment of passion, it just sounds like she’s quoting Home Alone.

COMEDIAN KEVIN ANGLIN

WHICHEVER PERSON NAMED THE BLOOD orange definitely didn’t want to share.

“That strange orange you’re eating looks delicious, what is it?”

“Oh this? It’s uh…a blood orange, you wouldn’t want it.” SEEN ON REDDIT

TWO FLIES ARE PLAYING FOOTBALL IN A saucer. One says to the other, “Make an effort, we’re playing in the cup tomorrow.”

COMEDIAN TOMMY TIERNAN

CROSSWORD ANSWERS

Across: 1 Two-master, 6 Brass, 9 Article, 10 Hostile, 11 Spike, 12 Transport, 13 Skeletons, 15 Flame, 16 Icily, 18 Pollutant, 20 Stalemate, 23 Tepid, 25 Ali Baba, 26 Unicorn, 27 Eject, 28 Ellesmere

Down: 1 Thaws, 2 Outside, 3 Archenemy, 4 Theft, 5 Rehearsal, 6 Bests, 7 Arizona, 8 Sweetmeat, 13 Shipshape, 14 Orphanage, 15 Fountains, 17 Imagine, 19 Approve, 21 Enact, 22 Equal, 24 Dance

60-Second

Stand-Up

We chuckle with self-professed former child, Alex Horne

WHAT’S THE BEST PART OF YOUR CURRENT SHOW? The best part is the bit that’s unplanned. In The Horne Section it’s half rehearsed and half unrehearsed and I really enjoy the spontaneous bit.

WHO INSPIRES YOUR COMEDY?

Everyone, I suppose—everything and everyone I’ve ever seen. When I was growing up it was Ken Dodd, and then Harry Hill and Bill Bailey carried on that trend of being more than just a person talking. They showed me that you can do an all-singing, all-dancing show that’s silly, family-friendly, and still grown up.

WHAT’S YOUR MOST MEMORABLE HECKLE? I was doing a gig in a club called Up The Creek in Greenwich, when I was pretty inexperienced—it wasn’t going very well and people were chatting.

I asked them to, “give me a minute” and 200 people all started counting from one to sixty in unison. Then at the end of the minute I left the stage, it was a long heckle.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE ONE LINER? It isn’t mine, but when I was a kid I liked having a joke in my pocket that I could tell people: “My gran was very ill so she covered herself in butter. Unfortunately, after that, she went downhill very quickly.”

DO YOU FIND ANY PARTS OF THE COUNTRY TO BE FUNNIER THAN OTHERS? When a place has its own character it can be so funny. I don’t think there’s one particular place in the country but the more isolated the better, for me.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE OF YOUR OWN JOKES? One joke that never goes down well—which I like—is, “My grandmother was recently beaten to death by my Grandad. Not with a stick… he died first.” n

Taskmaster Series 8 airs May 8 at 9pm on Dave. The comedy band, The Horne Section are on a 36-date tour throughout the UK in 2019. Get tickets at thehornesection.com

Beat the Cartoonist!

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

Submit to captions@readersdigest.co.uk or online at readersdigest.co.uk/fun-games by May 7. We’ll announce the winner in our July issue.

March’s Winner

Our cartoonist trailed in third place this month with his caption— “Oh Frank, what possessed you to try to order that meal in Italian?” Instead, our reader Jamie Millard takes the crown after getting the majority to vote for his witty caption, “Look on the bright side, you’ll still be out before they figure out Brexit”, which took an impressive 57 per cent of the vote. Congratulations Jamie!

In the June Issue

Interview:

Rose McGowan

The actress and feminist talks about speaking out and sparking change

Grenfell Tower: Two Years On

Stories of healing from the community affected by the Grenfell tragedy

Plus A GUT FEELING

Could that persistent knot in your stomach be a sign of something more than nerves?

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

PHIL KUHL – 2018

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