The Night of the Iguana — Please forgive me if you are looking for a deep and meaningful article about the Tennessee Williams play. This is about the problem posed by a real iguana. I am a retired veterinary surgeon. Some forty years ago, at the end of a long evening surgery, a concerned client walked…

It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing — OK, so Macbeth knocked off at least six people in Shakespeare’s Play before dying at the hands of MacDuff at the Battle of Lumphanan in August 1057. These are not the deaths that are the subject of this article which is concerned with the murder of the English language by…

‘cos they ain’t necessarily so — This paraphrased quote comes from a Gershwin number in their opera, “Porgy and Bess”, in 1935. The things that you’re liable To read in the Bible It ain’t necessarily so. It’s not just the Bible that got things wrong at times; we are fed misinformation every day of our lives. …

Lies, damned lies, and life today. How much can you believe? — Statistics are so ‘last year’ — who believes them anyway? 50% of ten is five while the same percentage of 10,000 is 5000. One answer carries more significance than the other. They all seem to kill 99.9% of all known germs. Statistics are dangerous beasts in the hands of the…

Necessity is the Mother of Invention You will never know what you can achieve unless you try it. It is all too easy to say “It can’t be done”, and settle back into the established rut of your life. It may be a comfortable rut, but there is much more…

72 years to 20 minutes Many of us throughout Britain are becoming increasingly proud of our current queen, Elizabeth II. Her dignity in the face of so many trials has become even more admirable as her longevity stretches for nearly 70 years. A significant number of those admirers may consider…

Gone to early retirement, every one. — When our younger daughter was suffering from leukemia, our caring GP visited her at home. I was a young veterinary assistant at the time and I needed our one car for work. My wife had no other means of transport so it was natural, in those days, for the doctor…

Of course there is, but it might not be you. — The cells of our body are dying every minute of the day White blood cells live for around 13 days, skin cells for about 30 days, red blood cells for about 120 days while liver cells hang around for 18 months. We are all into recycling at the moment — it is the ‘woke’ movement of today. All this suggests that you are almost completely renewed…

Afghanistan — when will they ever learn? The political leaders of the 20th and 21st centuries seem to have studied history only briefly. Had they done so more thoroughly, they might have learnt that no empire, nation or caliphate has ruled the country for any significant length of time. This…