Badminton. A 13.4 x 6.1 metre court, where lightning-quick, explosive shots and soft, careful stroke play combine to create the fastest and most-exciting racket sport in the world. It’s a popular and competitive sport played by amateurs and professional athletes worldwide, and we’ll look – here – at four of…
An excerpt from The Return, taken from New Leaves From a Madeira Garden by Tony Powell. Madeira had been a regular port of call for seaborne travellers since the seventeenth century. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Union-Castle Line’s regular mail service to South Africa found Madeira an ideal…
Dana Gillespie is one of the UK’s top Blues singers, gigging in the UK and Europe regularly, and with more than 50 albums under her belt. She has also appeared on West End stages in productions such as Jesus Christ Superstar, plus numerous movies, including the cult classic The Hound…
An excerpt from Chapter 4 of All In Your Head – "Undiagnosis..."– by Marcus Sedgwick. Click on the cover to learn more. * The full horror of not knowing had started to sink in. I was desperate to find out what was wrong with me, and should proof of this…
An excerpt from Chapter 4 of 50 Years of Hard Road by Nick Charles MBE. I considered my predicament from every angle following my meeting with the fish man. I walked for miles around the crowded streets of London, looking at various shop windows and sniffing hungrily at the different…
Chronic fatigue syndrome is a disorder of someone feeling extreme tiredness or fatigue that cannot be explained entirely by an essential medical condition. CFS is also called SEID (systemic exertion intolerance disease) or ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis). This complicated disorder worsens with mental or physical activity but does not go away…
Are you looking for the perfect Christmas gift for the Brentford fan in your life? Then here are two books that will have them writing their Boxing Day thank you letters, pronto. Just a Bus Stop in Hounslow: Brentford FC’s 2021/22 Season in The Premier League Looking back, the 2020/21…
An excerpt from Master Your Chronic Pain: A Practical Guide by Dr Nicola Sherlock Turning Up and Down the Pain Volume Dial Scientists can be heard saying that ‘our nervous system is plastic’, by which they mean that it can adapt and change. This ‘neuroplasticity’ is illustrated when a person…
An excerpt from Chapter 6 of 50 Years of Hard Road by Nick Charles MBE. I cannot begin to imagine what modern-day health and hygiene inspectors would have made of the many hostels I frequented. However, to people like me, they were an absolute godsend. Street people typically take a…
Chronic or Persistent Pain Chronic and persistent pain are both medical terms, and they essentially mean the same thing. When I started my career, chronic pain was the term that was most commonly used by clinicians to describe pain that went on for a long period of time. More recently,…