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David Charters: An inner sense advises us that something is going to be romantic

YOU know, these days, the most under-rated quality in the world is romance. Its slow going is felt by us in so many ways. Read

David Charters: The world is divided between the examiners and the examined

"WOULD you believe it?" said my wife, who had tucked up her legs on our sofa and was reading the Saturday paper, with her mug of coffee steaming on the side table. Read

David Charters: There is so little time between nursery rhymes and rock and roll

THE soldier stood tall and he stood proud – his sword glistened and his moustache bristled, his legs stout and his shield defiant. Read

David Charters: And there was Perseus, son of Zeus, in combat with Medusa

IT WAS the end of our week’s holiday – a warm, brooding Sunday afternoon. The rain fell greyly from a sad sky, as I sank deeper and deeper into the armchair at the corner of the lounge, slipping into a heavy doze, dominated by thoughts of what had just been and what would be. Read

David Charters: When going to the Cavern Club one had to make careful preparations to look cool

I WAS never a regular “Cave-dweller” myself. That was the name given by the pale compere, with the pout and punning ways, to the boys and girls with dark armpits and cigarette breath, who stepped into the crush of the old fruit cellar. Read

David Charters: Rebels never grow old

"CAN we?" asked our 12-year-old son, his eyes following the question across the lounge until they met my own eyes - peeping damply over the rim of a newspaper from the armchair, in which my world- weary body puckered like a slowly deflating porpoise. Read

David Charters: Life can be very strange

TO THE keen observer, it was evident that the man himself was in contemplative mood, as he sprinkled shreds of chocolate onto the slow-sighing foam of his cappuccino coffee. Read

David Charters: Each human being is sprung differently

YOU will find after many years sniffing the air of these shores that each human being is sprung differently. Some like to soar to unimaginable heights. Others prefer the rub of solid earth under their brogues. Read

David Charters: 'Aspirins always remind me of heart failure,' she said, breezily

IT WAS to me a strange environment. I skulked along the chilled and soulless aisle to the supermarket’s cash-point with the startled and up- reaching gaze of a porcupine, who has just strayed into a balloon parade. Read

David Charters: A good cup of tea is always to be savoured

ALTHOUGH his head’s dome now shines shyly under the sun of summer holidays, his spectacles are rarely free from the dust of the basement archives from which he plucks curled photographs and crumbling words, telling of the way we were then. Read

David Charters: I have always believed in ghosts. But they haunt people, not houses

DO YOU think ghosts move from house to house on a whim like those ambitious young executives? Read

David Charters: Hope you were watching up there...

IT IS my belief that the Big Man can see anyone he chooses down here on Earth, as clear as a bride’s smile on her wedding day photograph. Read

David Charters: Do you know who has the same birthday as you?

THE telephone trilled from its perch on the table at the bottom of the stairs with the persistence of a lost child. Read

David Charters: There are many ways of dealing with strangers who call to discuss money

DARKNESS chilled the night down to the marrow of the old trees, which moaned, heaved and shuddered against the anger of the wind, sweeping from the river across the hooded town. Read

David Charters: How do they know that fish can count?

"WHAT a chump!” said my wife, as she sat at the dinette table in a rather fetching pair of pyjamas, examining the final offerings from a raspberry-red box of chocolates, which had been shaped into a romantic heart for St Valentine’s Day. Read

David Charters: The Obituarist's job is to tuck his subjects safely into Heaven

"THE job of an obituarist is to see his men and women safely tucked-up in Heaven,” I thought while sitting on the floor, sprinkling my woollen bedsocks with gently scented talcum powder. Read

David Charters: Somewhere up in the sky, I heard an angel chortle

PERHAPS, in those slow-smiling, biscuit-dunking moments of warm sighs, you can imagine the pink and blue angels in Heaven sitting at their desks with wings neatly folded, chortling behind their hands, as God shows them his design for the cocker spaniel. Read

David Charters: Endangered species rarely seen by the eyes of men. Women call it an ironing board

SWOLLEN bags of cloud, in every shade of weeping-grey, teased the sky over the village shop, where the bear-like man stood, thinking. Read

David Charters: Raise your glasses to romance

"PEOPLE with an eye for such matters say she’s a bit like Brigitte Bardot,” volunteered my pal Brian, as he drew on the cunning of a stoat to persuade me to join him and his girlfriend in a foursome. Read

David Charters: Fate places us all in profoundly embarrassing circumstances

AN EXPRESSION of limp despair settled on the face of “Pimples” Perkins, the office’s surly tea-boy, when he was told that his right leg was to be tied at the knee and the ankle to the left leg of the lightly-scented Tobias Fernley-Trout, finance director, so that they could together enter the three-legged race in the inter-departmental-bonding section of the company’s annual sports. Read