'Visitors young and old will be amazed when they arrive at your home and see...
Is it too soon to put up my Christmas tree? I have held off until after Bonfire Night but feel the lure of the baubles and seeing the lights going up in Cirencester and festive shop windows I am...
View Article'Ma always said that without tea the British would have lost both world...
I seem to have spent half my life sitting in bars, hotels, and restaurants gazing into the distance, a look on my face of cheerful expectancy, a smile of hope over experience, a mature woman who has...
View Article'How on earth did Gandhi manage to walk so far in flip-flops? I can't last...
WHAT does "age appropriate" mean, please? I was at Waterloo Station this week when a very striking woman probably in her 40s (though I am a poor judge of age, amongst other things) strode through the...
View Article'There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside...
It's not often I have a sleepless night but last Saturday I tossed and turned and not in a good way. There are two sorts of events that mark the passing of time. The personal ones' like birthdays and...
View Article'The trouble with the French is they have no word for entrepreneur.' George W...
IT HAS always seemed a mistake to me for a woman to show that she can cook. A man can do it (often at great expense and mess) and he will be lauded, praised and not asked to do it again. A woman, on...
View Article'The British are not good at having fun. I get overexcited if there's a...
My life is full of nonsense. I suggest yours is too. Nonsense isn't what it used to be. I look at what made us smile then and it makes me smile now. Tommy Cooper, Monty Python, Edward Heath, shambling...
View Article'Being thick isn't an affliction if you are a footballer, because your brains...
There is much in the Cotswolds to make us complacent. We are relatively privileged and can we be blamed for feeling just a tad smug? But I am back from a visit to Liverpool chastened for falling for...
View Article'When I use a word,'Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone,' it means...
Anyone have to buy a birthday present for a pedantic man? I have the perfect gift. 'The Etymologican' by Mark Forsyth, also called The Inky Fool. It is described as a circular stroll through the...
View Article'The only athletic sport I have ever mastered is backgammon' Douglas Jerrold
HAVE you heard of Beth Tweddle? Shame on you if you haven't. She has just carried the Olympic torch on its journey through Flintshire. There have been less worthy torch-bearers and none more suitable.
View Article'Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.' Lewis Carroll
I am not prepared to take lectures on morality from a politician. Show me the job description of a Prime Minister and point to the section where it says it is his brief to name an individual who, on...
View ArticleDickensian tales don't need the big-screen 3D treatment
The film 'Avatar' is receiving rave reviews from the critics.
View ArticleKeep your wits about you to deal with the NHS
IF ANY of you are thinking of being ill in the future I offer some advice: ensure that you are fit and well in advance.
View ArticleSome Things Need To Be Seen To Be Believed
This is the new column for Lesley Brain's articles
View ArticleSearch for key to being happy
'Don't forget about what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he wanted. He lived happily ever after.'
View ArticleThink before you try to help a young animal
MANY small creatures come to us as orphans but we will never be as good as a wild mum and every year we ask people not to pick up young wildlife without thinking.
View ArticleElection may as well be fought through reality TV
'Not all of you are going to be successful – but failure can be much more intriguing.'
View Article'It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.' Oscar Wilde
We are having a family gathering in London next week. These are so rare that I have notified Sothebys. Excitement is mixed with alarm since I come from a long line of people who suffer from obsessive...
View Article'The concept of two people living together for 25 years without a serious...
I am a great believer in the notion of marriage. Apart from anything else it gets rid of that ambiguous term 'partner' with which I am never entirely comfortable.
View Article'She looked a million dollars, even if in well-used notes.'
I must apologise if you have just knocked at the front door and I seem to have ignored you.
View Article'The best time to take cuttings is when no one is looking.'
It is a truism worth repeating that nothing is quite the same watched on television. Last week I went to Chelsea Flower Show and later when I watched that day on television I couldn't believe it was...
View Article'I was too scared to tell my parents I was going on Big Brother so I told...
I feel sorry for David Laws. I am sure he never meant to steal or lie. For all his cleverness, his double first, his banking directorship, his glittering future, his cocky walk he lacked one vital...
View Article'The natural state of the football fan is bitter disappointment, no matter...
I am sitting here wearing a Dutch style hat with yellow knitted plaits dangling from each side while Mr Brain, stifling in a red and white striped scarf and bobble hat, contemplates his...
View Article'If at first you don't succeed then failure might be your style.' Quentin Crisp
WE LIVE in depressing times. Peeling a potato with its dull grey skin and pin-prick eyes yesterday my thoughts inevitably turned to Wayne Rooney and his lack lustre colleagues. Poor old Fabio.
View Article'How foolish to think that one can ever slam the door in the face of age....
AS WE get older it is wise to measure our activities in the light of limited time. I have just wasted precious hours on reading Martin Amis' The Pregnant Widow. At Hay recently Amis bemoaned the fact...
View Article'Her voice is quintessentially Radio 4, like someone talking down a would-be...
I AM occasionally asked to be a guest co-presenter on BBC Radio Gloucestershire's breakfast show. I always jump at the chance. My dream job would be to have my own radio show, a sort of idiosyncratic...
View Article'At worst, a house unkempt cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.' Rose...
It's the clash of the Titans this week. In one corner we have Big Brother, the daddy of all television reality shows, and in the other Daylesford Organic Farm Shop, the jewel in the crown of the...
View Article'I left home to marry a man whom no one liked, and after I married him I...
'I want a new husband. Can you find me one in the Cotswolds?' I was sitting perched on the edge of a ginormous sofa somewhere in Chelsea fighting with cushions when my friend asked this of me. I...
View Article'He chose to live in Manchester, a wholly incomprehensible choice for any...
Cheltenham and Gloucester are like an elderly, long-divorced couple. She – for Cheltenham must be a woman – has seen better days, days of parties and poke bonnets, of Dukes and dandies. As the late,...
View Article"The English like eccentrics. They just don't like them living next door."
MOST of us have speculated upon what we would do if we were rich. Suddenly wealthy, able to do as we wish, live where we like and how we like. Except it isn't like that.
View Article'My father woke me at three o' clock in the morning and said, 'Son, I've...
Fathers have been much in the news this week. I gave a reading in public which my sister declared to be 'up to Hudson standards'.
View Article'The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his...
A GREEK friend of mine has just returned to London after a long weekend in Painswick where he had hoped to shift his writer's block. He says that it was a failure as if Honore de Balzac had lived in...
View Article'In the 1960s people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world's weird...
I never liked the Beatles. I thought their tunes thin and whiny and their lyrics mawkish and sentimental. 'Hey, Jude', 'Love, love me do' and 'Mull of Kintyre' are down there in my Ten Worst Records...
View Article'I've found a way to make my wife drive more carefully. I told her that if...
Years ago I owned a Porsche 911. It was black with red leather interior and as soon as I turned on the engine you could hear it yearning for Malcolm Campbell and land speed records. Modern cars are so...
View Article'I go in and out of fashion like a double breasted suit' Alan Ayckbourn
It may surprise you to know that I receive what might be loosely called 'fan mail'. Unlike the uncritical adulation normally associated with such communications mine are of a more robust nature. One...
View Article'Buckingham Palace isn't ours. It's just a tied cottage.' Prince Philip
The raggle taggle collection of non-entities called The Government is asking the Office of National Statistics to produce a measure to gauge Britain's national mood. The timing will be critical. The...
View Article"A Portsmouth man believes he has found the way to talk to hedgehogs,...
I MAKE no secret of the fact that my home life teeters precariously on the verge of madness. It is at its most vulnerable when lulled by false serenity.
View Article'When I met President Bush he asked me what state Wales was in.' Charlotte...
Does anyone want two televisions? From the moment the huge piece of wooden furniture incorporating our television was wheeled into our sitting room in the 1950's I have been an addict. There has...
View Article'Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.'...
I confess I do not understand why, as I write this, our RAF fighter jets are bombing Libya and our UK submarine is launching missiles. Mr Cameron is convinced that it is the right thing to do and he...
View Article'What is two and two?' 'Are you buying or selling?' - Small child and Lew Grade
At a time when young people up and down the country are opening envelopes to find their exam results, prompted by Lord Jones, who was Trade Minister under Gordon Brown, I have been considering the...
View Article'A little nonsense now and then is cherished by the wisest men.' Roald Dahl
I am not fond of 'lavatory' humour.
View Article'You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements.' Norman Douglas
Television advertising is dire. Once advertisements were the best thing on television. Remember the sophisticated couple who fell in lust over an instant coffee and the little lad with the big bicycle...
View ArticleCinderford man throws hammer in road rage incident
A BMW driver threw a hammer at the back of another car in a road rage incident in Cinderford earlier this week.
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