Girls are complicated. The instruction manual that comes with girls is 800 pages, with chapters 14, 19, 26 and 32 missing, and it's badly translated, hard to figure out.

People will survive, and they will find happiness. Happiness only comes when you're not looking for it.

I am a coffee fanatic. Once you go to proper coffee, you can't go back. You cannot go back.

They, all of them, work incredibly hard to make me seem clever and heroic, neither of which I am.

Clive Dunn, as I understand it, retired to the south of Spain, where he worked extensively in watercolours. I don't own any of Clive Dunn's watercolours. I loved him in 'Dad's Army,' loved him. But not enough to actually seek out his watercolour work.

Death and disaster are at our shoulders every second of our lives, trying to get at us. Missing, a lot of the time. A lot of miles on the motorway without a front wheel blow-out. A lot of viruses that slither through our bodies without snagging. A lot of pianos that fall a minute after we've passed. Or a month, it makes no difference. So unless we're going to get down on our knees and give thanks every time disaster misses, it makes no sense to moan when it strikes.

It is the middle of December now, and we are about to travel to Switzerland - where we plan to ski a little, relax a little, and shoot a Dutch politician a little.