The current series of ‘Masterchef Professionals’ has provoked quite a lot of interaction between musicians (mostly on Twitter) commenting on how unprepared the competitors seem to be for the cookery challenges which await them. Time after time, in the ‘technical challenge’ section, chefs are asked to do a standard restaurant task like de-bone a piece of meat, prepare a […]

I have a new pair of glasses with varifocal lenses. How can glasses have become so expensive! Every few years, one seems to need new glasses, and economising on the choice of frame is neither here nor there when the lenses themselves cost hundreds of pounds. Since my last pair of glasses, lens technology has […]

The other day the Guardian published a front-page article about the startling number of people of all ages who suffer from mental health problems, such as depression, without receiving any treatment. It was suggested that the cost of drug treatments and cognitive therapies, as well as a lack of trained counsellors in certain parts of the country, were factors in why […]

I’ve just been alerted to the fact that on Saturday 19 July, from 2-4pm, Radio 3 is repeating my episode of ‘Saturday Classics’, in which I choose music of personal significance and talk about the reasons for my selections before they’re played. I seem to remember that when the programme first aired, in May last year, an […]

I went to a wine and cheese tasting session the other night in an atmospheric old building in Edinburgh. All the cheeses were made in Scotland. The evening was fun, but over rather quickly. One wine followed hard on the heels of another and I rather wished there had been some way of creating pauses between the tastings – […]