I couldn’t quite believe my eyes. There they both were. And it was my wife who’d put them there. Strewth. It wasn’t even that one of these dishes was left-overs from the previous day; no, she had consciously cooked both of them, set them there for the family to actually eat. Okay, it was a long time ago that she’d delivered the warning. Maybe she’s forgotten it by now. Or maybe I’m the one who misremembered. Anyway, here goes. Fish is not to be paired with sweet potato. Harmless individually, these two...

I would normally have said no. But I was all out of tea that day. Actually, I welcomed that big cup of coffee after another poor night’s sleep. The drink was ice cold, mercifully unsweetened and wrapped in the green of Starbucks’ gentle gorgon.  Among international brands, Starbucks is bucking a trend here, its China arm remaining wholly-US owned after other fast-food concerns have sold out to local firms. Starbucks has not splintered nor run away yet. So it’s logical that my foreign colleague chose this brand for his gift to the...

Chinese food was the ultimate treat for me. You may sneer at those British-Cantonese restaurant dishes which so excited me: spare ribs, crispy noodles, crispy beef with carrots, etc. I am unrepentant. In our family, we each ordered one dish. Mine was always Lemon Chicken. Sure, the take-away version usually comes in a gloopy sauce with the same lemon-ness as “lemon-fresh” bathroom cleaner. But fresh lemon (word order is important here) is always used in the best restaurants. And, thanks to BritishChinese food evangelist Ken Hom, it’s a dish...

There’s an English word that begins with “b”. It literally means “female dog”. Don’t pretend you don’t know it. The word has retained its full force during the many years since I first learnt it, while other “b” words, such as “bloody”, have lost theirs. Secularism and permissiveness have prevailed. But even as the old lexicon of oaths and obscenities fades into quaintness, there is actually a whole group of curses that retain the capacity to shock. These are the terms that will lose a broadcaster his/her job; the terms that imply/constitute...