David Vost News Today

MODERN medical laboratories are crammed with high-tech, sleek machines, automatic analysers replacing technicians. The doctor decides which tests…

THE thought of running a restaurant began when I worked during the summer breaks from medical school as a barman and night porter at the Covenanters

IN pursuit of Africa’s Big Five – elephant, lion, buffalo, rhino and leopard – camera-toting tourists and gun-carrying “hunters” spend small fortunes. Uncle Opie and my son, Matthew, his apprentice, pursue the small edible six around us with homemade equipment, clear eyes and sharp hearing. Wild game is still an important part of the diet in our parts of rural Africa, far from the expensive and tasteless protein offerings in supermarkets. They recently updated me on local trends and s...

The law for us kids in the 1950s and 1960s meant the local police. They walked their beats and turned up in awkward places. They knew everyone and took no nonsense. Worse yet, many were my father’s patients or in his St John Ambulance first aid class, so they had a vested interest in his offspring not going off the rails. In my fifth year at Stirling High School, my parents were made aware that possible expulsion was in the air. There had been continued absences from cross-country runni...

IN Scotland, the nearest thing to do-it-yourself surgery was squeezing a spot. The afflicted in many parts of Africa are more ambitious, clinics…

SIX decades down the line, the abiding memory of Christmas at our home in Stirling was of half a dozen middle-aged uncles asleep and snoring in front of the dining room’s coal fire. The thick curtains were drawn. In this post-prandial phase, which lasted about two hours, the air was thick with cigarette and pipe smoke plus methane gas. There had been only brief conversation prior to their collective coma while the table was cleared, the women retreating upstairs to the sitting room and kids l...