nickhereandnow

It strikes me yet again that one of the big differences between well-off people like myself and people who are permanently hard-up is whet...

It's conven-tional wisdom that divorce has a very bad effect on children, that it can seriously traumatise them and damage their self-...

The journalist Virginia Ironside doesn't see why old age should mean kicking bad habits and taking up healthier ones. If you're g...

Is luxury all it's cracked up to be? We're always given the impression that "luxury" experiences are a cut above the bog...

One of the dangers of being such an advanced age is that it's easy to become over-cynical. I can recall so many people who've been...

In general I don't have it in me to hate people. Such a strong, violent, overwhelm-ing, unres-trained emotion is beyond me. The most I...

Jenny and I have always shied away from major renovations to wherever we happen to be living. A bit of updating maybe but no significant s...

Apparently many parents (one in seven, according to a survey) regret the name they gave their child and want to change it. Children themse...

I've never been in favour of violence, be it political, personal or otherwise. It may occasionally bring results, but nine times out o...

It's a truism that you can never understand other people's relation-ships. If you offer any well-meaning advice, you're asking...

There are plenty of things I envy in other people - certain skills and abilities, certain personality traits, certain physical features. T...

The media and popular culture would have us believe that men go through four major crises in their lives, which they may or may not weathe...

I don't usually comment on outside controversies, but I'm so aghast at this particular trend that I have to say something about it...

It's the era of openness, of transparency, of people telling it like it is, of all those little personal quirks and oddities being bro...

When a movie or TV sitcom depicts someone as a bit hopeless - awkward, dim-witted, socially inept, accident-prone etc - I might cringe a b...

My mum was always fiercely independent, right till her death at 96. She dreaded being a burden on others, and in a difficult situation wou...

I've always been a city dweller. I lived at various London addresses until 2000 when Jenny and I moved to Belfast. I've never live...

It seems people either love or hate Valentine's Day. Either you see it as a lot of commercial and sentimental hype or you seize the ch...

My parents were obsessed with waste - or rather, avoiding waste. This was largely due to rationing, which started in 1940 after WW2 began ...

By visiting New Zealand, we were of course adding to the growing problem of over-tourism in the country. Tourists are flooding in by the t...