Mrs C, I learnt you’re returning home tomorrow,” I told this lady who had come with her family to spend the Christmas holiday here. It was their first time in the country and they had been invited here by a business acquaintance of her husband. “Have you all enjoyed your vacation here? Will you be visiting us again in future?”

Hateful or hurtful words cut me to the quick so I try not to cause people pain by saying things that could cause pain. Witnessing the scene between husband and wife was every upsetting to a few of us who were present because they seemed determined to tear each other apart by saying really horrible things that to be honest I’d rather not have heard.

An old school friend of my father’s, a judge, never accepted private invitations to parties, or government cocktails, so as not to be corrupted or seen to be compromised by his public associations and gestures. Judges lived intensely private lives, isolated by the burdens of their responsibility. They had moral authority.

Praise is one of the most powerful spiritual weapons, yet, many don’t know this. Those who know it have not really experienced it. It’s not just praise that works; it is high praises that work. It is ‘praise madness’ that results in strange greatness!

The English know a rascal as a scoundrel. Nothing more. And you could think of him in any other way you know, not complimentary.