Fattening Women up for Marriage

We know about the forced circumcision of young girls in Africa, about the foot-binding of girls in China and about the pressures that oblige girls in the western world to submit to torturous diets and surgery, but Mauritania has a different take on how best to churn out women deemed to be perfect ...

How to Annoy The Pope

Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo has gone a step too far and is now paying the price – he is no longer entitled to wear priestly vestments. The erstwhile leader of Zambia’s Catholics has ...

Accents can betray a child's home life.

Parents just can’t fool astute teachers so don’t even try. Your child will give you away as soon as she opens her mouth.

The impertinant bath attendant

Taking a bath in India - not as straightforward as I thought.

Catch me a Black Mamba.

I had to watch this TV programme last night. I have a deep-seated fear of serpents after too many nasty experiences with them, and when I know there’s a TV programme I just have to watch, maybe just to make sure the vile creatures remain inside the TV and ... read on

Balsamic vinegar - better than sex?

The small town of Modena in northern Italy is renowned for two world famous products: the robust but extinct Pavarotti and the even more robust Balsamic Vinegar which has been around for about 900 years and seems likely to keep on going. Of course it’s not truly a vinegar ..... read on

Cricifixion in Donegal

Paul Charles locates the action of his novel in a place he knows well – Donegal; and it’s a place I know well too, so I can attest to how accurate he has caught the shades of local colour.... read on

Trashing the Empire

Ronnie and Adela arrived at the Mount Soche hotel together but with vastly different expectations of the evening that lay ahead. Adela, spectacularly turned out as usual, was looking forward to a night of sparkle and glamour in the company of politicians and diplomats even though she knew .....

Notorious Island Prisons

Most movie buffs are well acquainted with the idea of prisons built on islands. Alcatraz had its birdman, Devil’s Island had Dustin Hoffman, but there are others just as well hated by inmates who never made it onto the silver screen. Here are just a few:

World's most expensive wines.

The price of alcohol is always a contentious matter. Governments want to pile on the tax to raise revenue, campaigners want a hike in prices to dissuade over-drinking, snobbish connoisseurs want to keep prices up ... read on

The Thing Around Your Neck.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short story “The thing around your neck” is one of a number of stories she publishes under that collective title. The themes she covers range far and wide, but all seem to emerge from the fact that she is a Nigerian woman who moved to the USA to study..... read on

How to purify dirty drinking water

The Indian industrial giant Tata may be in the process of shedding jobs in the UK steel industry, but it has also announced a bit of good news this week – a cheap device for purifying water. This might not be of much comfort to ... read on

There's a Snake in My Thatch!

Face your fears ... or run from them?

Rico was at Panjim docks when I got off the Konkan Shakti, that leaky old tub that plied the route from Mumbai down to Goa. It was 1978, my first time in Goa, and it was mid-morning with the sun already well heated up. The trip down had been a good one even though the boat was seriously ....

Belfast restaurants

So where's the best place to eat in Belfast?

Inis Eoghain 100

A day's drive in Donegal.

It’s not a motor cycle race, nor is it the dish of the day at a Swedish restaurant; it’s a particularly dramatic and scenic driving route in one of the wildest and most beautiful parts of Ireland, the Inishowen (Inis Eoghain) Peninsula in County Donegal. The area is remote enough, but this route leads you away from what few main roads there are to climb barren peaks and cling tightly to cliff tops and dive into deep valleys....

Self catering cottages in Ireland

Can there be any better way of getting under the skin of a foreign country than living alongside local residents? Probably not. The problem for most people however is that they don’t have the time to duck out of life for a year or so to go and live elsewhere – you can’t be a student forever! So what about those of us who have family and career responsibilities, how can we get an authentic taste of what it’s like to live in another place? .....

Bakassi: more displaced people in Africa.

It has been over a year now since the territory of Bakassi changed hands, but who really cares, who even knows anything about it or where exactly it is....

Irish school girls have to provide their own!

Is the Irish economy really this bad?

It’s common knowledge that Ireland has suffered a severe downturn in its financial fortunes over the past few years and everyone is said to be feeling the pinch. After a few years of great expansion and well-being,.....

The Snake Catcher of Swaziland.

I had to watch this TV programme last night. I have a deep-seated fear of serpents after too many nasty experiences with them, and when I know there’s a TV programme I just have to watch, maybe just to make sure the vile creatures remain inside the TV and don’t escape into my living room. It’s not a phobia I have; phobias are irrational fears, and the fear of snakes is a most rational and eminently sensible to fear to have......

Champion Rat Catcher of Bangladesh.

A Bangladeshi farmer, Mokhairul Islam, has won a colour television as the prize for being the nation’s most successful catcher of rats....

Come on baby light my pyre.

Cremation is often held as the preferred option for the disposal of bodies no longer required by their former owners – those who have passed on – for two reasons. For many the reason is one of religious preference (although for many religion is also the reason for preferring burial). For others the reason is an environmental one –

Try not to get sick in August.

Seasonal factors always have to be taken into account when looking at the statistics pertaining to illness. Everyone expects a lot of older people to be hospitalised during winter because of the prevalence of chest infections; icy weather produces .....

Wine of questionable parentage.

Eating out at Lola’s on the Lisburn Road in Belfast (yes, the one in Ireland) is always a treat, and when I was there a few nights ago I noticed a wine on the wine list that no-one could possibly miss. It’s called .....

Happy Birthday

It was my birthday. I woke up twenty years old and hungry. Everyone around me was still asleep, lulled and comforted by the gentle rhythm of the train .....

Field mouse for starters sir?

In a country like Malawi (of Madonna fame) food supplies are always uncertain, conditions swinging between drought and flood. With so many people gravitating to the cities, the land becoming less productive and the population increasing, the poor are having to become increasingly inventive .....

Samoa switches sides

Samoans this week will have to learn a new trick – driving their cars on the left hand side of the road. Until now Samoans drove on the right, and not surprisingly the change is .....

Bounty Hunters

Officials in the Indian state of Orissa have come with a novel way of identifying people suffering from cholera and getting them to hospital for treatment. Given the reluctance of sufferers .....

$40,000 a day holiday for the president.

The president has gone on holiday, and after paying a visit to Nicholas Sarkozy, his French opposite number, he is said to be holed up with the wife in the Hermitage hotel
in La Baule in the south of France where the 43 rooms he has commandeered are reported to be costing a cool $40,000 a day.....

Blocked toilet or what?

Flight delays come in all shapes and sizes. I’ve been held up - they tell me - because of bad weather, birds, holes in the runway, missing crew members, missing passengers and air traffic control problems, however Biman, the national carrier of Bangladesh, has added a new twist to flight delay syndrome .....

National No-Music Day

Musicians in Nigeria have decided they have enough of people playing their music for profit without ever paying royalties. They have already staged a hunger strike .....

Stranorlar and Ballybofey - where to eat, sleep and make merry.

The towns of Stranorlar and Ballybofey sit facing each other across the River Finn in the middle of Donegal. It’s a curious arrangement that no doubt has its origins in the dim and murky mists of history, but no-one really cares about all that .....

American hypocrisy

Those who shout loudest in the USA have been greatly annoyed at the release from jail of the ailing Lockerbie bomber al Megrahi, and perhaps justifiably so. They allege that this is a victory for terrorism, an insult to the victims and .....

Migingo

So what about this ugly-looking, wart-like island protruding from the murky waters of Lake Victoria? And what’s with the shanty town that clings to the rocky nob like barnacles on the upturned hull of a capsized boat?

More inglorious bastards on the silver sceen

Okay this film is supposed to be about Coco (Gabrielle) Chanel and we all know who that is, but what it really throws into stark relief is the popular notion that adultery is fine if the two adulterers really love each other. The title of another current movie comes to mind: Inglorious Bastards.

Literary spin-offs from various pandemics.

..... but what about the books? They are fascinating and informative, but best avoided if you think you might have Swine Flu or are living next door to someone who has it. Two of my favourites are the following:....

Where to go to avoid Swine Flu.

There is one centre of population that records no incidence of Spanish Flu throughout the entire period, and it remains a bit of a mystery why this particular locale escaped – .....

Rathfran

The grey ruin of Rathfran Friary lies quietly in timeless majesty beside a hidden inlet, remote and unpeopled along the western shore of Killala Bay. Its tragic starkness only softens when .....

A new habit.

Lately I’ve grown fond of taking my first leak of the day outside; my own version of peeing in the woods I suppose. On these misty, stone-grey, summer mornings there’s nothing more beautiful than standing in the quiet, warm air .....

Leaving Tangier - the hard way.

Tahar ben Jelloun must have had to use a can-opener rather than a pen when he wrote “Leaving Tangier”, and the can he so expertly prises open for his readers to peer into is the seedy world of illegal immigration from his native Morocco, its causes and results, its victims, and the true nature of their profound suffering....

Ride to Nowhere

I got lost in two fogs at once when I left the bar that night. The first was a thick, green, dank-smelling gas that had rolled in from the sea or down from the mountains or wherever; the other was whiskey-induced, and they were compounded by the darkness of the black, starless night . . . .

I lay aside my clothes.

I lay aside my clothes:

Cap of greed
Coat of secrecy
Shirt of vanity
Shoes of hatred
Underpants of pride .....

The Monkey's Business

George W Bush was shoe-ed at a press conference in Iraq and JFK was assailed by bullets, but more bizarre than all of these was what happened to the President of Zambia this week. At a press conference after being elected to office a monkey urinated on the hapless President Ru.....

You are Me

No matter what any of us believe about the origin of our illustrious species, one thing is sure: we all emanate from one single source. We are family, we are connected. The dirt, slime or whatever that was used to make you was also used to make me, and that muck will mingle ...

Romantic Old Fool.

Back then I always arrived in the city way too early for work. I liked to catch the early train that was unfull of commuters so as to arrive when the mornings were still dark in winter. There’s something good about watching a city waken up .....

Roses for Keats.

I told Susan that Keats was buried in Rome. It was a line of course, factually true but nevertheless a line. She was already captivated by what she supposed was the romance of the eternal city ..... (more)

Moonshine

The moon - now there’s something. Universal symbol of lunacy, romance and malevolence; something far off and mysterious that can seem ominously close .....

The View from Yerevan.

Janice allowed herself a free moment to look up from her laptop and gaze out of the café onto Republic Square. She still felt resentful at being sent on yet another trip so soon, but the Minister was under pressure and needed to be seen ...

Algeria: the decision.

Enzo kicked fallen leaves and twigs away from the sparse grass and eased himself down on it. He was sweating and tired from the long, slow climb along the track that rose up from the village and his legs were beginning to hurt.....

Down and out in Algeria: A Depression.

The town thins out as it edges towards the river: the houses become poorer and shabbier till they can no longer be properly talked about as houses but as huts, shelters. No-one would ever think of trying to push the town limits any further,...

Lying on rocks near Galway.

There's a road that leads out of Galway heading west. It winds along the coast through Barna and Spiddal, on past Inverarin and finally into Clifden. Along the way the houses become ever fewer, road signs are written exclusively in Irish, and the road ...

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