With the the rain and floods has come my first cold for almost two years. I think it is making up for lost time by taking a mallet to my brain and making me look like something off the front of a chill’d Christmas Advent calendar. (PHOTO: iStockphoto.com) I have also forgotten how rotten the rhinovirus, to give it its technical term, can make you feel. I must say though, for the “sniff sniff I’ve got the ‘flu” brigade, there is a vast difference between something that makes you feel rotten for a couple of days and something which takes you to the very gates of Hell and back. Thankfully this is just a cold. Anyway I have decided to share my misery, and maybe give some advice to anyone else out there trying to boost Kleenex sales. A plea to the Twitterati this evening for any last-minute fail-safe cold cures brought a few responses. The red nose, it appears, is here to stay, at least for a couple of days. As for the other symptoms, the streaming sinuse...

I have always loved Thailand. I first went almost 20 years ago, following an urge to discover the mystic east. From the moment I stepped off the plane into the chaotic metropolis of Bangkok, I knew I had arrived somewhere special - I was not in Kansas anymore. I can honestly say after a lot of traveling, I have never experienced a place quite like Thailand. I know it is engineered to drag in the tourists, but strip all that away and there is something about the place I have never found elsewhere else. Riding  the train from the airport into the city centre you are plunged you into lush palm trees and jungle, broken by golden spires and sparkling red, blue and emerald-tiled temples glistening in the tropical sunshine. As you approach the city, the vibrant green merges into a grey, smoky, flashing neon concrete metropolis - Bangkok, where what awaits is an assault of sights, sounds, and smells. If you can handle more than a week in the capital, well ...

Despite best efforts to kick my food obsessions into touch, read nothing  about diets or weight loss, I confess to failing - again. But it’s hard to ignore scientists when they jump up and down claiming to have discovered the ultimate eating plan -  guaranteed to make you at to make you live to100. And they have, apparently, and it is all based on the Mediterranean way of eating. This time we veer away from counting carbs and calories, proteins and pulses, fats and.....fenugreek..? Ok, a lame comparison, but not totally unlikely in the world of commercial nutritionism. We turn our attention to olive oil, fresh sun-ripened tomatoes, basil and lashings of feta cheese. Apparently, in the Sicani Mountains of Italy, where they live on such a diet, four times  as many people live to be over 100 than the national average. Scientists also said they had a relatively low-GI diet, i.e. not too many starchy, quick-release carbohydrates. All this is not t...

Two animal abusers who admitted torturing pigs at an abattoir seemingly for the enjoyment of it were this week “brought to justice”. I put the phrase in quotations because for what they did, I don’t think there is anything that can count as justice. Certainly a couple of weeks in the slammer can't compensate sticking cigarettes in animals’ faces, or battering them with clubs just for the fun of it. Piotr Andrzej Wasiuta, 30 and Kelly Smith, 40, were both secretly filmed by animal rights group Animal Aid at Cheale Meats in Brentwood, Essex. They were given 10 weeks behind bars after pleading guilty to charges of animal cruelty. That’s 10 weeks for inflicting stress, pain, and physical harm on animals just because the process of hurting them gave them pleasure. I think they got off pretty lightly. Wasiuta was seen pushing a lit cigarette onto the forehead and snout of three pigs and forcing hot ash into one of their faces. He was given six weeks. Sm...

Thousands had fun either taking part in or cheering on the runners in Sunday’s London Marathon. I was at the side of the road clapping, cheering and shouting encouragement while thanking God that once again I didn’t get round to entering. Among the cheery souls passing  the 17-mile post were more than a few genuinely exhausted faces, contorted in pain. One man stopped for a breather before collapsing on the street clutching his leg in agony. A few moments later a St John Ambulance crew rushed past carrying a stretcher with a woman who appeared to be unconscious. A little bit later an older looking man collapsed in the street before being dragged out of the way by a burly policeman. Many returned my “go on, nearly there!!!”s with “Don’t ever do this”.  Don’t worry, I won’t. It’s not just the amateurs who take a hammering running the distance. Last year I watched the elite of the running world leap past the finishing line before doubling over a...