Mail on Sunday

A Little of What You Fancy

Increase your energy and wellbeing by concentrating on the good, simple things you can sneak into a busy schedule Recipes and text by Jane Clarke from Bodyfoods for Busy People, see page 57 Photographs Chris Alack for YOU

Crystal Grazing

Jewellery for the plate: Terre Exotique diamond salt (mined, they tell us, while adjusting their solar topees, in Khewra, a region of Kashmir in the Himalayas, retrieved from ancient oceans compressed beneath the mountains). Comes in big chunks rocks of visible glitter, with a huge crystal in every bag. Seems rather a waste to grind or crush it in the food, when you can just let it shine until it dissolves. 4.50 for 100g, from Harrods, tel: 020 7730 1234.

Memory Is Made of This

Memory is rather like the human sex drive: it's a case of use it or lose it. And the more we challenge our brains and keep them active, the more interconnections they make and the easier it becomes both to concentrate and remember. A poor memory can be a significant side effect of growing older. It is often caused by atherosclerosis, when an accumulation of fatty deposits in the arteries leading to the head reduces the amount of blood that reaches the brain. And in some instances loss of memo...

Health Update

FLEXIBLE FRIEND If you're bursting with Christmas scoff and good resolutions, consider yoga.

How Can I Help Ease My Son's Migraines?

Q My eight-year-old son suffers from migraines. The local hospital advised us to cut out chocolate, cheese, cola and yeast extract from his diet.

Fact or Fiction-Litery Circles

THE READING GROUP by Elizabeth Noble (Coronet, 6.99) The ideal novel for social book babes like us, as it follows the turbulent lives of a women's reading group. There's beautiful Nicole, whose perfect home is ruined by her husband's serial infidelities, and Harriet, who has the perfect husband if only she could fall back in love with him. Then there's Clare, a midwife whose once happy marriage is haunted by miscarriages, and Cressida, afraid that her rosy future will be ruined by an unwante...

Bookworm

Sheila Hancock, actress What's your favourite book? An impossible question! The Wind in the Willows? The Remains of the Day?

Poems for Life

There is something about the post-Christmas/ New Year's Eve slump which always makes me think of this glorious poem by Lord Byron. He wrote it one evening in a state of sexual exhaustion after trying everything the Venice Carnival had to offer. My pre-Christmas activities were altogether more decorous think mulled wine and mince pies with the PTA, rather than passionate encounters in gondolas with masked strangers.

Chick