THE reader has a life. The reader wants the writer to get to the point, rather than spend time revving on the spot. The reader can be distracted by the letters down below or the leading article alongside.

NOT ONLY am I a rotten cook, but I’m never going to be anything other than a rotten cook, and if that’s not important to you, I’m sorry.

He said he preferred tinned salmon to fresh salmon because he came from an impoverished widow’s family in pre-war Leeds, where the height of posh tastiness was tinned salmon.

SOLICITOR Gerald Kean was at some high profile dinner engagement, at a table with several other people, most of them new to him.

She was at the railway station, waiting for the train back to Cork, not knowing if the meeting she had just completed in Dublin had been a success or a failure.

Not being able to LOOK sad may help to prevent you FEELING sad. Your body may have a greater say in your mood than does your brain. And a dilute poison that flattens your wrinkles also has the potential to lift your spirits.

OF COURSE we must condemn it, and we do. Whenever it is revealed that toddlers have walked out of creches or nursery schools or playgroups and headed for the M1 or whatever dangerous road is nearest to them, we rightly wonder what the hell kind of operation the people in charge think they are running.

SPRING is sprung; the daffs are up.

Aeschylus claimed that truth is the first casualty of war. Communication is the first casualty of a medical disaster.

IT WOULD have to come from Scandinavia, wouldn’t it? These days, the minute any discussion gets going about some social progress our nation or any other nation wants to achieve, up pops an expert to tell us the Scandinavians have already done it.