In this week’s Eyecatching Words:

Shamima Begum: evil or abandoned? 

The next government: A bitter inheritance or a golden opportunity?

Islamophobia? What’s that then?
Trident: Faking it

Lord of the Rings cosplay

The millennium bug - 24 years later

Bollocks to that

The last seven days and how to get over that feeling that you are an insignificant speck in the face of an uncaring universe.

7 Days, The case against Trident, Steep in Hampshire, and Yorkshire

In addition to a look back at the world over the last the week I will also be talking about the global threat from pigeons, and how a pineapple can accidentally enhance your sex life.

This week’s main feature is a reflection on maleness in an age when gender and attitudes towards it have never been more fluid and, to some extent, have never been more controversial.

Smuggling sand, Artificial Intelligence, Get Ready for War, It's not 1997, Flashback, and Capturing the Moment

45 years of travel condensed into 20 minutes. Everything from Copenhagen drug dens to meeting Bill Bryson on a train.

Carpe Diem. Easier said than done as this account of one day in my life shows.

Find out how I coped with over-enthusiastic pet food salesman, mad cats and a world gone crazy. Explore the myth of the randy milkman. And share my fantasy of being served beer by a former Colombian gunslinger whilst he wears a sparkly pink dress. And listen to a fab piece of music with a message.

Lessons in falling over. Dutch masters and 20th Century heroes. The Post Office scandal and how it could get worse. Trump's frontal assault on democracy in the US. The mouse that tidied up. Kitchen appliances with personalities. Mavis, Mammouls and the Middle East. And Elvis Costello.

Excesses of the season; the disaster that is Tory government; Hamnet; Marina Abramovic; Maestro and West Side Story.

Being happy in sad times, Time Shelter, and the ghost 1970s Christmas Past