Book yourself in, since space is limited, and book the bottle as well if it will need special handling prior to cork-pop. Then take it downstairs and drink it with a buffet of cheeses and charcuterie bought direct from France. If you got together with 25 friends, you could take over the place and have [...]

Granny Bywater flushed it out and bought it for me: 12 inches of innocuous green rubber for a very reasonable 1/9d, but I took against it and, as three-year-olds do, howled. Granny Bywater was mortified, imprisoned the snake in her bedside drawer, and expired in her sleep a week or so later
But it [...]

A quick slam of the door, a dash to the phone and security would be up in a second, wielding batons and handguns. I would be thrown into a cell, still with no clothes, and left to rot a la Midnight Express.Worse still, what if a woman answered? The scream would wake the whole hotel. [...]

The pans are then drained, and the crystals raked off and dried.But this season’s rains, says Mr Osborne, have introduced unwelcome fresh water, diluting the sea water in the marshes. His company’s attempts to make salt have been thwarted for three months “This has been the worst ever,” he says. “We installed a new salt [...]

Three elderly couples dressed in white shared my carriage on the train crossing the bridge heading for Takamatsu, the main town and port of Shikoku, the smallest and least developed of Japan’s four main islands. Each carried a straw hat, a tall walking staff inscribed with Kanji script reading “We Two Pilgrims Together” and a [...]