“The first step on the way to victory,” observed Corrie Ten Boom, “ is to recognize the enemy.” She should know, having been incarcerated in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Amazingly she escaped the gas chamber, she later found out, only through a clerical error. There’s a lot of talk about the enemy at the moment, not least when it comes to the Russian pointless invasion of Ukraine. And it is Vladimir Putin who is the enemy-in-chief. We pray for his downfall – alth

And then suddenly this woman, on hearing my name, embraced me warmly. There on the pavement, at the corner of Clifton Road and Church Avenue. I was somewhat taken aback, not something that happens very often nowadays. To my relief she then explained her heart-felt hug: I had visited her in hospital in Buxton, quite a journey from Rochdale, about a 70 mile round trip. We were in Rochdale on Wednesday for a friend’s funeral and as in most funerals an opportunity to meet

I stood transfixed, as I unloaded the shopping yesterday, watching the aerial dogfight above our house. The two buzzards, who nest at the other end of our back field, were being attacked by crows We often see such displays of mobbing, when the fiercely territorial crows – who live in the same tree line as their perceived predators – defend their nests by attacking the much larger buzzard, usually by force of number. But yesterday was different. There were just three cr

For those of you who did not tune into Radio 3 yesterday for the evening concert by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, you missed an unusual introduction by Stephen Maddock, its Chief Executive. He began by offering sympathy for the people of Ukraine and like all of us he condemned the use of military violence by Putin and his inner circle. He then went on to explain that that evening’s composer, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, could in no way be held responsible for the