Reader's Digest UK October 2022

From energy and water to Council Tax and mortgage payments, our budgets are stretched as homeowners. If you are over 55, you might be looking for ways to free up some cash so that you can have the retirement you deserve. Whether your mortgage is approaching its repayment date or you’re looking to retire early, the value that you hold in your home could allow you to free yourself from the shadow of required repayments and spend on the things that really matter. How can you use your home? Downsizing is one option that homeowners consider when wanting to get rid of the burden of mortgage payments. By selling and moving to a cheaper property, the money left over is yours and can help you clear your mortgage. We understand that this option isn’t…

When I was nine, my schoolteacher had all the children in my class put together presentations on their “passions”. Over the next few weeks, I meticulously researched the thing that excited me most in the world: killer whales. For some reason, my child brain was absolutely enamoured with these mysterious creatures, not quite whale, not quite dolphin. I was left redfaced when the other children presented on more commonplace topics like “lego” and “the cinema”, but my fascination with orcas refused to be crushed. That’s why my inner child is so excited about this month’s cover story, a (quite literal) deep dive into the habitats of these majestic creatures. Turn to p92 to enter their world, down in the stunning depths of Norway’s fjords. “Treasure your relationships, not your possessions”, the…

We pay £50 for Letter of the Month and £30 for all others LETTER OF THE MONTH I couldn’t agree more with Dr Max’s belief that the empathy shown by a doctor is key in a patient’s evaluation of the treatment received. While having a colonoscopy without sedation I was working hard to keep myself calm by using techniques learned to control panic attacks. As the camera explored the twists and turns of my bowel, the specialist noticed I was quietly humming a tune to myself. He asked what the tune was and I replied, “Puff the Magic Dragon”, however I explained that I only knew two lines of the song. The specialist then started whistling along with my humming and agreed that he also only knew two lines. He asked the student observing…

MY WIFE WANTS to get a dog. My kids, also, want a dog. My inlaws, who used to own a dog, but then it died, also wish for us to get a dog (so they can dog-sit occasionally—this in marked contrast to their general stance on babysitting). My mum—a member of a website where you can borrow other people’s dogs for the day and look after them, for free, just because you like dogs so much—also, guess what, wants us to get a dog. It’s a Royal Flush. So, I’m the dog-blocker. But it’s not that I don’t want a dog. It’s that I don’t want a dog. That’s clear, isn’t it? My family appear to be having some issues with this nuanced distinction, so let me spell it out for…

IT’S NOT EASY being a legend. Just ask David Hasselhoff. “From the moment I wake up it’s like I’m The Hoff,” says the man who holds a Guinness World Record as the most watched man on TV. “I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve gotta go to work’. I have to be on all the time.” We’re meeting at the 2022 Monte-Carlo Television Festival a day later than planned, with David apologising: “I wasn’t really on yesterday. I was tired the night before and I couldn’t sleep. It’s funny because when I’m working I have to be David Hasselhoff, to be charming and funny. But sometimes I just want to stay home and watch television with my wife.” As we chat in the restaurant at the Monte-Carlo Bay Hotel, his Welsh wife Hayley…

THE VERY FIRST THING THAT I REMEMBER is seeing a snail on a gatepost when my father Hugh and my mother Joan lived in Croxley Green in Hertfordshire. I doubt if I was even three years old; it would have been around 1947. Obviously I couldn’t foresee that 20 years later in 1967 the pop star Donovan would write a song, “There Is A Mountain”, whose lyric referenced a snail on a gatepost! But it seems very serendipitous in retrospect that I grew up to have a career as a lyricist. MINE WAS A SUN-DAPPLED CHILDHOOD WITH MY TWO YOUNGER BROTHERS JONATHAN (JO) AND ANDREW. We weren’t incredibly wealthy, but we had a very nice middle-class upbringing. Dad worked for the de Havilland Aircraft Company as its Far East representative. A…