A little slice of heaven

For several years I lived in Canada and became unaccountably addicted to a crisp, dry salty cracker called Stoned Wheat Thins which seem to be unavailable anywhere else, and certainly not here in Britain. So I would like to shout a big thank-you across the Atlantic all the way clear to Vancouver to Nancy, Val, Ann and Sam for sending me a giant box which arrived courtesy of Parcel Force this afternoon

How not to wear black

Advice from the Times

— If the thought of orange, fuchsia and turquoise scintillating on the rails is one that gives you palpitations (black, black, wherefore art thou, black?), panic not. Dark shades twinned with primary-colour tights or a pair of jewel-hued shoes offer refuge. “If you’re scared of colour, then wear a bright pashmina, beads or choose a colourful handbag,” advises Henderson. One experienced member of the Times fashion team was spotted in a black dress with beacon-like emerald green Marc Jacobs über-wedges: a simple lesson in how vivid block colour can transform a more muted outfit.

Thought for the day

As any fleeting fashion in dress comes to be admired by man, so with birds a change of almost any kind in the structure or colouring of the feathers in the male appears to have been admired by the female. Charles Darwin