FEAST OR FAMINE

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

Ornamental cabbage and kale ( Brassica oleracea ) are a feature of the National Botanical Garden of Georgia in Tbilisi. Ornamental cabbages are native to western Europe and, although their flowers are insignificant, their leaves are broad and colourful. They have large rosettes with flat leaves. Kale has curly leaves. The colours range from green to white, pink, rose, red, and purple. They are easy to grow requiring low maintenance. In botanical gardens they are grown mainly for foliage plants to add to the ground cover or as border plants, rather than as vegetables. This means that the shape and colour of the leaves are more important than the taste and flavour. Brassica oleracea are in the same species as Brussel sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, and kohlrabi. MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Com...

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (2005) is set in England from 1996 to the 2000s. Nikolai Mayevskyj is an 84-year-old Ukrainian who has lived in England since 1946 – 50 years. His wife Ludmilla has been dead for two years. He now wants to marry a 36-year-old Ukrainian woman, Valentina, with a 14-year-old son, Stanislav, whom he has known for only three months. She doesn’t speak English, but she looks like Botticelli’s Venus. Nikolai begins researching tractors in Ukraine to ‘write his great work.’ Nikolai has two daughters – 57-year-old Vera with two children and 47-year-old Nadezhda with one child. The sisters have been feuding for years. Nadezhda is the author of the story. She has found out that her father wants to marry a gold-digger who would stop at nothing for Western wealth. Nadezhda wants to stop the marriage. Ending their feud, the sisters try everything to dissuade their father from marrying Valentina, everything from ringing the Home Off...