FEAST OR FAMINE

The British hedgehog is vanishing. Since 2000 the number of hedgehogs has halved. To save the hedgehog, campaigners in Solihull have established a Hedgehog Improvement Area ( The Times, November 28, 2015). Homes, businesses, and parks are encouraged to cut holes in fences to allow hedgehogs to roam freely, save rotting logs (instead of burning them) to provide a source of beetles for food, retaining autumn leaves which are good for making nests, and avoiding regular lawn-mowing to keep the grass longer for hedgehogs to hide in. Hedgehogs like scrubby areas, fallen leaves, and unmown lawns. About 6-7 years ago the British Hedgehog Preservation Society realized that they didn’t see as many hedgehogs as previous years. They are primarily nocturnal and sleep during the day, so at first it was thought that they were hiding – because they had not conducted a census of the local sightings. One estimate was that the number of hedgehogs in Britain had declined from 30 million in 195...

The Schopenhauer Cure (2005) is set in San Francisco, America, in the present day. Sixty-five-year-old psychotherapist, Julius Hertzfeld, learns he has a malignant melanoma (skin cancer) during his annual medical check-up, with a year to live. He vows to continue working as a therapist until the end. The first thing Julius does is turn to the work of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Thus Spoke Zarathustra , because ‘it was a brave book which more than any other, Julius thought, teaches how to revere and celebrate life.’ Nietzsche preaches to love your destiny and live life to the fullest. The second thing Julius does is to flip through the notes of his patients. He finds the notes of 26-year-old Philip Slate whom he treated 20 years ago. The chemist, a cold uncaring loner, was a predatory sex addict, but over three years of therapy sessions, Julius failed to cure him, and Slate ceased his treatments. The third thing Julius does is contact Slate, in...

Canberra Times published an article on November 26, 2015, with the headline ‘We hit it off: Mariah Carey opens up about James Packer.’ What does ‘hit it off’ mean? Hit what, off what? ‘Hit it off’ is an idiom. Dictionary.com defines ‘hit it off’ as an informal phrase meaning ‘to be congenial or compatible with.’ McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrases defines it as ‘to quickly become good friends with someone.’ It adds that the idiom probably developed from the Middle English word ‘hitten’ dating to the 12 th century – or the Scandinavian Old Norse word ‘hitta’ meaning ‘by chance.’ Or in more recent time, when referring to music, hit it means to ‘start playing music.’   The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms indicates that ‘hit it off’ was originally ‘hit it’ in the 17 th century and the ‘off’ was added in the mid-1800s – but also meaning ‘get along well together.’ Hit it off should not to be confused with ‘hit on’ which is slang for ‘making pers...