A wedding is a funeral which masquerades as a feast. And the greater the pageantry, the deeper the savagery.

It shouldn't come as any surprise that those who choose acting as a profession are phonies who live in a fantasy world. What is surprising is how many of them are blissfully unaware of it.

Families, generally, suck. And I say that as someone who, like my husband, had parents who proved the proverbial exception to the rule.

Knowing that the 'Sex and the City' chicks now rack up almost two centuries between them, why do some of us fuss and hiss about a bit of retouching on their forthcoming film poster?

Sadly, a lot of what passes for feminism these days is just moaning about men, congratulating ourselves on nothing in particular, and mocking them for being big kids while doing everything we can to keep them that way.

As I get older I think, contrary to modern assumption but in line with the old Lerner and Lowe song, that it would actually benefit both them and society if - to quote Professor Higgins - a woman could be more like a man.

And call me a pig, but isn't it brilliantly refreshing how early the Dutch eat dinner? When they're still laying out the cutlery in achingly hip Barcelona, they're hanging the Closed sign on the restaurant doors of old Amsterdam.