Anna Nicholas

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Goats from a small island-Grabbing Mallorcan Life by the Horns

The time has come to announce the forthcoming tome. Sorry dear readers but there WILL be another and this time I am taking Myotragus as my theme. My, er, WHAT???? You might well be forgiven for not knowing about this little creature, which translated from the Greek means, ‘mouse goat’. Until about five thousand years ago this dwarfed...

Shopping Frenzy

It’s a funny old thing, but whenever I enthuse about my regular shopping forays to our local town of Sóller, London friends view me with some skepticism. How, they ask, can I find the weekly grind of grocery shopping so enthralling? Well, I say, shopping in our town is not a perfunctory affair but more of a social event, an...

Miguel the Toro

Something I haven’t been aware of in the UK before but which is alive and well in Mallorca, is the parking pitch phenomenon. Driving into Palma on a busy day when parking is near impossible in any of the underground car parks or on the street, we head for the small plaça by Es Baluard museum in the hope that...

Bored Stiff

So a clever professor at Michigan University has discovered that when we are bored our brains simply disconnect. In a simple experiment, placing volunteers under an MRI scanner and showing them streams of numbers, he was able to ascertain that our self control, vision and language become greatly affected by boredom. Now this is very opportune research as far...

Thin Londoners

A record is soon to be announced by the government. Apparently Britain will shortly be able to hold its head up high and proclaim itself the world’s fattest nation. America is currently the reining king but we are fast catching up as the nation of fat. Isn’t that something to be proud of? Well when back in London recently, I...

Christmas Elf & Safety lollipop Ban

Santa’s happy elves are working 24/7 to get those presents wrapped up in time for the big day but in one part of Hampshire, a breakaway group of killjoy elves are hell bent on making Christmas a misery for locals. In festive mode, school crossing patrol officer, Kevin Simpson, decided to attach glittery tinsel to the top of his lollipop...

Dreaming of a White Christmas

A vicar in Dorset has announced that he is banning the hymn, O Little Town of Bethlehem, from his church this Christmas because it is outmoded and doesn’t reflect the conflict happening on the West Bank. Shocked by a recent visit there, Mr Coulter cannot now tolerate this festive ditty because he maintains that Bethlehem isn’t a nice little town...

CHILD’S PLAY

During the summer a Mallorcan friend begged me to teach English to her daughter. I hesitated. After all I’m not a qualified teacher and lessons with a Mallorcan speaking seven year old sounded like a bit of a challenge. Finally I agreed. After all it would only be for the holiday period. ‘That’s great’, she enthused, ‘because I now have...

Wrapping up Christmas

All being well, in a couple of days time my husband, son and I will be in Colombo, Sri Lanka, to share some Christmas spirit with 70 orphaned girls from 3 to 17 years old in a small orphanage on the perimeter of the city. What’s that got to do with sunny Spain you may ask? Nothing at all. Well,...

The Wild Woman of Borneo

Well, appallingly, I see that I have failed to submit a piece to my own website for some months. Tsk Tsk. What kind of writer am I? Still, I hope I might fall on your mercy, dear reader, given that I have just arrived back, jet lagged and grimy (40 hours in transit-4 flights and 13 hours on bumpy tracks)...

Just a Minute

For fans of the long-running Radio 4 show, Just a Minute, I hear from my friend, Nicholas Parsons, the show’s chairman, that the new series is currently being recorded and taken out on the road around the UK. Interestingly Just a Minute, which you can tune into via the BBC website began in 1967 and is now in its...

Chippies shaking with despair

Chippies across the north of England and Scotland are digging a hole for themselves-quite literally. It transpires that new regulations at Gateshead Council have put an end to salt shakers with seventeen holes being used in local fish and chip shops to cut down on salt consumption. The chippies dilemma is that the largest supplier of salt shakers in the...

A Sporting Chance

It came as no surprise that a school in the UK has banned sports day for fear of one of the children stumbling on loose mud or twisting an ankle on a random mole hill. It is indeed laughable but England has become such a nanny state that this sort of utter tosh is now the norm. Long gone are...

I'm Alright Says Tom!

Why is it that politicians never learn when to keep their traps shut? If things weren’t bad enough for our Gordie, he now has his rubber-band mouth Transport Minister, Tom Harris, lecturing the nation on how lucky they are. With food bills up, house prices sliding into oblivion, pay rises below inflation and petrol costs going through the roof, this...

A Non-Human War

Some months ago I contacted a raft of global animal charities about a story of a mistreated street dog in Brazil which countless friends had asked me to investigate. Most organisations were hugely helpful and one in particular sent me regular news and then began sending me updates on animal cruelty worldwide. It’s an outfit based in the States and...

Lonely Freedom Fighter

All hail David Davis! The man is a veritable God. For once a politician has had the guts and garters to stand up for what he believes in. I have always thought Mr Davis rather grey and mousy but no, he is a true lion in rodent clothing. May Gordon and his ghastly nannying team quake in their boots as...

Getting Crabby

Much as I rarely agree with our nannying government poking its nose in our daily affairs, I do have a little sympathy with Norfolk Coast Partnership for its concern about the plight of crabs caught by children on beaches. My sister and I used to go crabbing in Wales and we rarely caught more than a few and always returned...

Heart of Stone

There are few things worse than a fool sounding off on a subject he knows nothing about except perhaps when it comes to a Hollywood icon spouting on world affairs. Gabbling breathlessly at the Cannes film festival, actress Sharon Stone surmised that the devastating earthquake in China which has claimed countless lives, was probably due to China’s Karma. In a...

Don't Cry for Me London!

If anyone thought Ken Livingstone would be weeping with his newts having lost the mayoral race, they can think again. Within a few weeks of defeat, our Ken is happy again having managed to secure hugely lucrative after dinner speaking contracts with a top London firm. He is rumoured to have secured more than £100,000 in speaking fees already. Unlike...

Willie Won't He?

So, thumbs up to Willie Walsh, chief executive of British Airways for snubbing a ten percent bonus of £700,000, to indicate his remorse for the extraordinary fiasco that unrolled at the opening of Terminal 5. It would be foolish to imagine Willie didn’t want the dosh. His canny reasoning for not taking the money was that he’d have been eaten...

Ramsey the food tsar

It always seems incredibly bad taste for one super chef to sound off about another, and none more so than in the case of bruiser Gordon Ramsey, who as self appointed food Tsar of Britain, has lambasted Delia Smith for giving the thumbs up to tinned food, and other chefs for using vegetables and fruit out of season. Ramsey believes...

Jacqui Jobsworth

One of Gordon Brown’s biggest mistakes was awarding the post of Home Secretary to the ineffectual and dreary Jacqui Smith whose robotic voice could challenge that of a Dalek in any voiceover competition. Time and time again she has made embarrassing gaffes and naïve, contradictory statements which show just how out of touch the government really is about the state...

Boris on a Roll

It’s hard not to get caught up in the excitement of what is happening in London with bouncy Boris Johnson at the helm. Much as it’s the glorious honeymoon period for the new Mayor of London, one has to admire his shrewd early moves which are impressing Londoners across the Capital. He has already appointed a tier of bright, no-nonsense,...

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© Anna Nicholas