I have mentioned the BBC 4 programme, Soul Music, before. This week I listened to Landside by Stevie Nicks. She wrote the song when she was 26 and was struggling with her relationship and what to do with her life. She refers to being afraid of change but also realises that she is becoming bolder as she gets older. The lyrics of a song will be interpreted differently by each person. The significance of the words will lie in our experiences and how we have reacted to them. We can take...

To enter a book is to escape to another world, to meet another set of people - some you may like, others not so much. Some of us need to read, for some it is a chore. But how wonderful to have the option: the choice of all of those titles, ideas, stories, theories, lives, whether it is a biography, science, history, self-help, or fiction in all its forms. We are in a time when most of us when alone go to our phone for that distraction, entertainment, killing time while we wait for an...

Most of us are now addicted to using our phones. We take them out when in a queue, when waiting to meet someone, when eating at a restaurant, even at the theatre (see Rosamund Pike's recent call for a ban on phones after she was distracted by an audience member texting during her performance). Checking our phone may be the first thing we do upon waking, it may be the last thing we look at before going to sleep at night (or in the early hours of the morning). We dare not leave the house...