HOME WANTED! Cloud

Cloud is a pretty, and very sweet 4-year-old white and grey female. She had been living as a stray for approximately six months and has been quite poorly but has recovered well and is now ready to find her forever home. Cloud is initially quite timid but once she gets to know you is a very affectionate and gentle soul. Initially she will need a bit of patience settling into her new environment, but the result will be very rewarding. She would love a home with a safe enclosed garden with no other pets or children.

If you think you could offer Cloud her forever home please call 0345 260 1387 or email enquiries@epsom.cats.org.uk. Priority will be given to enquiries in the local areas of: KT5,6,9, KT17-23, SM7 and RH3-5.

Epsom Ewell & District Branch http://www.epsom.cats.org.uk

If you cannot adopt a cat but would still like to help us please go to https://www.justgiving.com/Epsom-CatsProtection

As we have around 7,000 cats and kittens in our care at any one time, we will find you the perfect feline friend. www.cats.org.uk

Reg Charity 203644 (England and Wales) and SC037711 (Scotland)

The annual Crufts dog show will be taking place this year at the NEC Birmingham, from 9-12 March. Organised and hosted by The Kennel Club, it is the largest show of its kind in the world. Crufts is named after its founder Charles Cruft. Having no interest in joining the family jewellery business after leaving college in 1876, Charles decided instead to take employment with James Spratt who had set up a new venture in Holborn, London selling ‘dog cakes’.

Charles Cruft was ambitious and a relatively short apprenticeship as an office boy led to a promotion to travelling salesman. This brought him into contact with large estates and sporting kennels. His next career move with Spratts saw him travelling to Europe and here in 1878, French dog breeders, perhaps seeing entrepreneurial talents in Cruft, invited him to organise the promotion of the canine section of the Paris Exhibition. He was still just two years out of college.

Back in England in 1886 he took up the management of the Allied Terrier Club Show at the Royal Aquarium, Westminster. It was in 1891 that the first Cruft’s show was booked into the Royal Agricultural Hall in Islington with a total of 2437 competitors, and 36 breeds.

Crufts now attracts over 18,000 competitors alongside hundreds of thousands of visitors each year and is broadcast to an international television audience.

Clare Balding is broadcasting royalty – and her own royal connections are pretty impressive too…

To millions of TV viewers, Clare Balding is the charismatic presenter of Crufts, which returns to the NEC Birmingham this month (9th-12th March). Clare has hosted the show since 2004 (for both the BBC and now Channel 4). So, does she have a favourite moment throughout her time presenting Crufts? “Having puppies with me on the sofa is always a joy, as you never know what’s going to happen. If I can have a dog on my lap or at my feet for every link, I’m happy.”

Clare, 52, who lives in West London with her radio presenter wife Alice Arnold, was the recipient of an unexpected CBE in the late Queen’s Birthday Honours for 2022. Already with an OBE in 2013 for her services to broadcasting and journalism, Clare was given the title in acknowledgment of her services to sport and charity.

Sport has always played an important part in Clare’s life. Not only has the BAFTA-winning presenter, who joined the BBC as a trainee in 1994, led the coverage of sporting events including the Olympics and Paralympics, the Grand National, Wimbledon, Royal Ascot and the Commonwealth Games to name but a few, Clare became a champion amateur jockey in her early twenties and dreamt of winning the Grand National, or riding at the Olympics.

Clare has two other great passions in life –animals (especially dogs and horses) and writing. Her childhood was unconventional. Home for Clare and her brother Andrew was Park House Stables, 1,500 acres of land adjoining Watership Down. Her father, Ian Balding, was the Queen’s racehorse trainer. Rather inevitably, Clare took easily to horses, learning to ride almost as soon as she could walk. Her first mount, Valkyrie, a sweet-natured Shetland pony, was given to her parents by the Queen shortly after Clare was born. Valkyrie had taught Princes Andrew and Edward to ride.

Her long association with the royal family is through her grandfather, Peter Hastings-Bass, father Ian and uncle, the seventeenth Earl of Huntingdon, with all serving as trainers for the Queen’s horses.

Reflecting on their connections back in 2017, Clare said: “My dad trained for the Queen so growing up, she would come and see the horses…about once a year and sometimes he’d forget to tell us that the Queen was coming.”

“So, you’d have that situation where you came back to the house, the Queen was there for breakfast, that was really odd.”

“She loved coming to the stables because it was the one place that didn’t smell of fresh paint, it smelt of horses.”

Clare is also a best-selling and award-winning author of numerous books and children’s novels. Her first book, My Animals and Other Family was published by Penguin in 2012. Her second book, Walking Home, was published in 2014, while her first children’s book, The Racehorse Who Wouldn’t Gallop, a witty book with a horse-mad heroine, followed in 2016. To date Clare has a further five books to her credit.

If you’re a foodie, you’ll know that the best part of any holiday is sampling the local cuisine. But while every city has its own exciting flavours, there are some that have food steeped in their DNA. Whether it’s Morocco’s flavourful tagine or a bowl of comforting pho in Vietnam, here are a handful of destinations known for hosting some of the best dining experiences in the world.

Tokyo, Japan

At the heart of Japanese cuisine, there’s Tokyo. With thirty Michelin-starred sushi restaurants sprawled across the city, it goes without saying that it’s home to the finest sushi you’ll ever taste. Then there’s warming ramen, soba noodles, delicious katsu curry and okomiyaki – a thick pancake filled with whatever you want, grilled on a hot plate on your table.

Marrakech, Morocco

Marrakech transforms every meal into an experience. Exotic spices and irresistible aromas fill every street, turning a simple stroll into a stomachrumbling mission to track down the finest food.

If you’re feeling daring, try a sheep’s head – a popular delicacy. Or, play it safe and order a traditional Moroccan tagine dish slow-cooked in a clay pot, or try a harira – a tasty lentil soup often used during Ramadan to break the fast.

Lima, Peru

Peru’s capital city is widely regarded as a global gastronomy destination to rival that of Buenos Aires. You can’t visit Lima without trying the nation’s signature dish: ceviche. You’ll find variations of this zesty dish, made from fresh raw fish, everywhere you go.

If you pride yourself on being an adventurous foodie, try Anticucho – a grilled cow heart on skewers. Peruvians eat guinea pig too – or cuy as it’s known locally. It’s a delicacy, but you can find it in restaurants all over the city.

San Sebastian, Spain

Famous for the pintxos – Basque tapas bars that litter its streets – the small city of San Sebastián is widely recognised as one of the world’s best food destinations. It even has one of the highest number of Michelin stars per square metre, beating the likes of New York and Paris!

However, if you’re on a tighter budget, head for the street markets to get your hands on fresh seafood and pintxos – small pieces of bread topped with a variety of ingredients.

New Orleans, USA

New Orleans is a melting pot of fantastic food. Notes from Native Americans, French settlers, Africans, Southern American culture, and Caribbean, Creole and Cajun spices combine to create a forever-changing array of flavours.

Three distinct dishes are: the po-boy, an overstuffed sandwich of seafood or roast beef; gumbo, a West African stew; and beignets, deep-fried dough dusted with powdered sugar.

Hanoi, Vietnam

Balancing salty, sweet, sour and spicy flavours, Vietnam’s cuisine blends the country’s French colonial past and its neighbouring Asian countries, while still retaining its own identity.

Hanoi is famous for its street food. Grab yourself a table and slurp up some pho. Perfect for breakfast, lunch and dinner, the banh mi is another must-try: a Vietnamese-style baguette filled with egg, pickled vegetables or meat.

You have two minutes to find all the words of three or more letters that can be made from the letters above. Plurals are allowed, proper nouns are not. The 6-letter word will always be just a normal everyday word. 3

I can pick up your bike from your home or place of work then return to you at your convenience.

From a safety check, new build to a full service, all work and repairs will be quoted prior to commencing.

Will contact you immediately if any other • defects are spotted so there will be no unpleasant surprises. Free pick up and drop off within a five mile radius of Surbiton.

The days when photos languished on half-used film canisters are long gone: today we have instant gratification when we take photos on our phones or with digital cameras. And with digital photo frames you can display your favourites just as you would with printed photos, with the extra benefits digital technology brings. You can have automatic slideshows that move between photos, sometimes with transition effects for smooth changes.

You’ll find that some smart home devices double as digital photo frames too, so for example Amazon’s Echo Show can show the photos you store on your Amazon Photos account, while the Google Nest Hub can do the same for Google Photos.

The cheapest digital photo frames are essentially a small screen with a slot for a camera memory card and/or a USB stick. Simply connect the card or USB stick containing the photos you want to display and the frame does the rest.

Slightly more expensive frames are even easier, because they can connect to your home Wi-Fi network and receive photos from your phone or tablet. Once transferred, the photos are stored on the frame and displayed according to whatever settings you’ve used. And if you go for more premium products, for example the NixPlay Smart, you can connect it to cloud services such as Flickr, Facebook, Instagram and many more.

It’s worth noting that most digital photo frames aren’t as high-resolution as your phone or tablet, with most models running at 1,920 x 1,080 pixels and sometimes less. That means they look a little jaggy up close, but you won’t notice when you’re a few feet away.

If you want to give your photos the biggest possible frame, it’s never been easier to display them on your TV. Google’s ChromeCast technology – built into Android phones and many smart TVs – enables you to display your Google Photos on your TV, and the Apple TV box does the same with iCloud Photos.

Some TVs take things even further. Some Smart TVs have built-in photo modes that can display your favourites when you’re not watching a film or show, and Samsung’s The Frame TV becomes a digital art frame when it’s not being used, enabling you to display works of art or your own masterpieces.

Google

Apple TV 4K

It’s more expensive than other TV boxes, but Apple’s latest Apple TV 4K brings all the streaming services to your TV and makes it easy to get your iCloud photos. £149, apple.com

Nest Hub (2nd generation)

Google’s smart home hub is a smart speaker with a great little screen, and that makes it an ideal photo frame when you’re not using its smart home features. £44.99, johnlewis.com

Samsung The Frame smart TV

Many of Samsung’s TVs have photo modes that turn them into digital photo frames, but The Frame was designed specifically to look like a work of art. From £1099, samsung.com

Google Chromecast

There are two versions of the Chromecast: the HD model for around £25, and a 4K version that’s twice the price. Both versions plug into the HDMI port of your TV and add smart TV features including photo sharing. £24.99

Nixplay Smart photo frame

This US best-seller is nicely made, comes in a range of sizes and makes it easy to get photos from your phone or tablet, or from online storage from the likes of Facebook and Flickr.

£149, amazon.co.uk

Lighter mornings and longer evenings are starting to entice many of us back out of our winter hibernation. And if you’ve always fancied trying golf, spring is the perfect time to get started…

Why learn golf?

While it might not burn a ton of calories or build muscles, there are still plenty of health benefits to golf. For a start, golf can benefit your cardiovascular system and improve your balance. Plus, you’re on your feet almost the whole time you play (unless you hire a buggy). A

Golf is a mindful sport, involving skill and focus, which can offer great stress relief. And you can play alone or with friends.

A key benefit of golf is the fact you’re outside, usually surrounded by nature. According to one study by Exeter University, just two hours spent in nature each week has significant physical and mental-health benefits.

Who can play?

Most people can learn to play golf. It’s becoming a popular sport for wheelchair users, and specially adapted buggies are available. Visit www.handigolf.net to find out more.

How to learn

Most golf centres offer lessons for beginners and people returning to the game. You can have lessons on your own or in a small group. And some centres even offer free taster sessions.

Once you’ve learned the basics, you can book to play at your local club. This will usually cost around £25 for 18 holes, or less if you become a member.

What you’ll need

Clubs and balls will normally be provided if you book a lesson. You’ll want to wear flat, comfortable, non-slip shoes and smart/casual clothing that you can easily move in. If you sign up for a course, you may want to invest in some proper golf shoes, xwhich offer good grip and cushioning. Some golf centres will insist on golf shoes and most have a dress code, so do check before you go. Once you set out on your own, you’ll need to buy your own golf clubs and balls. Clubs are expensive, but you can often pick them up second-hand or start with a smaller set.

Intensive courses

Fancy fully immersing yourself in the game? If your budget allows, why not book yourself into a residential golf school? You’ll learn from professional golfers over two to three days and can stay onsite. Class sizes are usually small, so you’ll benefit from plenty of one-to-one support. Sedlescombe Golf & Country Club’s beginner golf courses start from just £169 for eight hours of tuition (accommodation and food are extra, see www.golfschool.co.uk).

Next steps

Tempted but not quite ready to take the plunge? Find out more about the game and how to get started at www.englandgolf.org, www.scottishgolf.org, www.walesgolf.org or www.golfireland.ie.

Codeword

Each letter of the alphabet has been replaced by a number shown in the grid, with the first few entered

Each row, column and square (4 spaces each) needs to be filled out with the colours Red, Blue, Green and Yellow without repeating any colours within the row, column or square. Focus on one row or column that already has colours filled in, and figure out what other colour could possibly fit in the empty boxes.

Early use of blue paint was so highly prized that laws existed as to what artists were allowed to paint blue. Jesus and Mary’s robes were usually the only accepted uses of the precious colour.

What’s green and sings? Elvis Parsley.

I once did an exam on rainbows. I passed with flying colours.

What’s green and purple and goes up and down? Barney in an elevator.