What was the bridge, I was asking myself, that would aid our understanding?

An old patient of mine and her husband sought my help to make peace with their 20-year-old son.

Only one father and son have each been Lord Chancellor twice. The son is Quintin McGarel Hogg, Lord Hailsham, who retired last year on the eve of his 80th birthday.

My wife, Lyn, and I had just arrived in Fiji, where for the next five and a half years I was to teach physics and maths at a large part-boarding high school run by the Methodist Church.

It now costs a huge sum to improve the life expectancy of someone in the West by even a fraction and very little to greatly improve that of his brother or sister in the Third World.

Australia's oldest national magazine, The Bulletin, in its first issue of 1988 focussed a double page spread on Australia's oldest continuously operating mining town - Broken Hill.

There is a small but not insignificant tree newly planted in a garden in the Alpine region of northern Victoria, Australia.

At Panchgani, 4,300 feet above the plains of Maharashtra, lies a wide volcanic plateau.

Last year the Government of the Republic of China (Taiwan) for the first time allowed the establishment of political parties in opposition to the ruling National Party (Kuomintang). In December the Government lifted the prohibition of Chinese in Taiwan - provided they were not in the armed forces or government officials - from visiting relatives on the mainland.

Rajmohan Gandhi of India talks with President Corazon Aquino of the Philippines. Mr Gandhi was in Manila as part of a 22-strong Moral ReArmament group from ten Asian and Pacific nations. The President spoke to representatives of the party about the need for `a spiritual content in the new chapter found by the country'. The group, which had first-hand experience of facing up to unemployment, racial tensions, trade friction and corruption in their own regions, also had discussions with three cabinet ministers.