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

It is a truism that no row is ever about what it is about.

Nature is not horrible. Nature is not wonderful. Nature is not cruel. Nature is not beautiful. Nature only is.

We can only truly be civilised people when we have regular and meaningful contact with the wild world

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

The combination of an out-of-control tabloid press and a readership that thrills to the destruction of the England head coach is something no other country can offer. Scolari was driven out; Steve McClaren's personal life made the front pages. Neither of them even held the job. Then there was the fake-sheikhing of Sven-Göran Eriksson. That a newspaper should so brilliantly and deliberately destabilise the national head coach in a World Cup year is something no other sporting nation would consider.

If you are old and you wish to be young again, if only for a moment, try and identify a dragonfly.