There was an advert I rather liked. Devastated woman: "I've just seen the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse!" Husband: "Never mind, love, it's not the end of the world."

Everybody loves birdsong. It's a human need... the sound of birds gives a deep, if sometimes almost unnoticed, pleasure

Acquiring the trick of listening to birds will teach you how better to enjoy life and how better to endure it

Sport is something that does not matter, but is performed as if it did. In that contradiction lies its beauty

Behind every footballing tough guy there lurks a mincing aesthete with a love of art for art's sake, football for football's sake. A win without art is somehow less than a victory; less, almost, than a beautiful defeat. In football, the romantic and the pragmatist are ever at war in the same breast. Beauty, it must be understood here, is not Barcelona's aim but their method. And last night they were ready to use this method at every opportunity - quick-fire passing of wit and purpose in the danger areas, seeking always to produce an unlooked-for player in a position of threat.

What politician ever thinks beyond 4 or 5 years? But such thinking is hopelessly inadequate for the big questions that involve the fabric of the world we live in

Never mind, love, it's not the end of the world.