Lara Prendergast

There was much talk about the anti-austerity party Podemos when we visited Andalucía in June. It was hot and sunny, and the orange trees smelt wonderful, but at the same time, youth unemployment sat at 49 per cent, second only to Greece, and that seemed to be what people wanted to chat about. Podemos, which means ‘we can’ in Spanish, does seem to have generated some hope for bright but frustrated young things, many of whom have given up hope of ever finding a professional job. In Seville, a story was doing the rounds about a low-paid receptionist job that had received 2,000 applications, although tales like this were apparently not unusual.

More bad news for Malaysia, I’m afraid, where a group of tourists have apparently managed to trigger an earthquake simply by taking their clothes off. Last Friday, a 6.0 magnitude earthquake struck Sabah, Malaysia’s easternmost state, triggering landslides on Mount Kinabalu which killed 18 people. Tragic, and quite clearly the blame must fall on the ten tourists who reportedly posed naked for a photograph on the mountain, which is considered by locals to be a sacred site. Malaysian officials have arrested the tourists for indecent exposure and have also suggested that they angered the mountain spirits. Now it’s easy to scoff at the voodoo mindset of these funny foreigners. In the enlightened West, we know better than this.

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/panictimefordavidcameron-/media.mp3" title="Lara Prendergast and Louise Bailey, a hair extensions specialist, discuss the hair trade" startat=1622] Listen [/audioplayer]Perhaps you recall the moment in Les Misérables when Fantine chops off all her hair? The destitute young mother sells her long locks, then her teeth (a detail often excluded from child-friendly adaptations) before she is eventually forced into prostitution. It would be nice to think that her experience was no longer a reality, that the business of human hair had gone the way of the guillotine — but the truth is, it’s booming. The modern market for extensions made of real human hair is growing at an incredible rate. In 2013, £42.

A pal recently told me a story. It was about a friend of theirs who had been travelling on a train last summer, one of those old fashioned trains, with the windows that let you open the door from the outside. He was leaning on the door with his arm resting outside when another train suddenly passed by and clipped his hand. His wrist snapped. There was blood everywhere. He turned back into the carriage and was relieved to see his fellow travellers reaching for their phones. He assumed they were dialling for help. But he quickly realised he was wrong. They were in fact taking photos. I was reminded of this somewhat grim story today, after I read about a man from Telford who had committed suicide on Saturday.

There’s no better way to improve character and cure self-consciousness than to insist your child dress like a fool during their formative years. Distinct fashion tribes exist at some of Britain’s top schools and a boring old blazer simply won’t do. You can never be overdressed or overeducated, suggested Oscar Wilde. But why not at least aim for both by using this guide to school style? The Boaters Harrow insists their students wear boaters at all times while outdoors. Flouting this is cause for punishment. Entrepreneurial types make a quick bob by flogging their hats to Chinese tourists, before buying new ones at a cheaper rate from the school shop. The Witches Girls at Marlborough and Downe House wear long black skirts in the sixth form.

Syracuse is a handsome place, steeped in a rich historical broth. At the tip sits Ortygia, an island offshoot, which has been the backdrop to many Mediterranean sagas: Hellenic, Christian, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque — take your pick. By day, Via de Benedictis is filled with local men selling sea urchins, milky balls of ricotta and bunches of mint. At night, we went to the Piazza Duoma for aperitifs. The cathedral’s broken pediments and exuberant sculpture cast strange shadows on to the square and a zephyr blew. It was November and the place was empty, aside from a small boy on rollerskates and a dog. In summer it must swarm with people. An earthquake destroyed much of southern and eastern Sicily in 1693, and many of the towns were rebuilt in a Baroque style.

Props to Goldsmiths Students' Union, for taking the ‘safe space’ concept to absurd new levels. Last week, one faction of the union hosted a screening of the film Dear White People and advertised it as being 'for BME students'. BME stands for ‘black and minority ethnic’ – and the poster specifies that this screening is for students of ‘African, Caribbean, Arab, Asian and South American ethnic origin'. The union's welfare and diversity officer and education officer both reiterated this message on Facebook and Twitter, then stated that before the screening, there was a BME ONLY social happening at Cafe Natura.