Mary Wakefield

Every night, while my husband reads by screen-light, my mind runs like an invisible rat two miles north to the house we’re rebuilding in Islington. And there it scurries from room to room, around the rotten skirting boards, up walls, into corners: testing, considering, fretting. Carpets or wooden boards? Which doorknobs, latches, hinges? Which white for the walls? What will look best, and what (hang your head, o rat) will your friends envy and admire? Towards 1 a.m., the rat gets ideas, starts thinking: hmm, polished concrete floors? Maybe a hot tub? And I hear my mother’s voice: Oh darling, no. That won’t do. Tiles, mirrors, rails, plugs.

A few days ago I went to a talk about Syria; one of those events for the concerned layman, in which a panel of experts give a briefing. Everything sounded depressingly familiar until expert number three piped up: I hear people blame Saudi Arabia and Qatar for the Islamists in Syria, he said, but in fact, they more often come from Libya. The crowd shifted in discomfort. Isn’t Libya done and dusted? Oh no, said the expert, it’s full of al-Qa’eda training camps now, especially in Benghazi. My first thought, unusually, was to feel sorry for David Cameron. Remember how proud he was on his victory visit to Tripoli at the end of the Libyan war? There he stood in the five-star Corinthia hotel, by Sarko’s side, his arms full of flowers, his cheeks pink with pleasure.

Because I’d like to have a child, and I’m getting on a bit, my husband and I have spent time recently with consultants. They’re an odd breed with distinct and shared characteristics. Invariably, after we’ve all sat down, their first move is to tilt their chair back, or give it a little twirl (design permitting), just to signal how free and easy it is at the top of the medical tree. When they speak it’s with a sort of hurried condescension, as if giving career advice to a hopeless niece. And they scribble as they go, on some scrap of paper. Ovary, ovary, arrow, hieroglyph, arrow, ‘Got that? Hmmm?’ Follicle, scribble, circle, square.

Amazon is testing unmanned drones to deliver goods to customers — whatever next? Well, the Spec can tell you exactly what. Last year we ran a cover story on drones, predicting that: 'Quite soon, it will be impossible to ignore the fact that a revolution is taking place. You’ll look up one day and the skies will be full of flying robots: pilotless drones or UAVS (Unmanned Autonomous Vehicles) — all programmed to carry out different tasks. There’ll be security drones circling shops, streaming video back to base, Royal Mail drones flying parcels to and fro. Even the birds and bees may not be what they seem. The tiniest drones on the market right now are called MAVs (Micro Air Vehicles) and their designs are inspired by nature.

Margaret Thatcher's memory may be fading a little in England, but at least it still burns bright in Stanley. Here's a photo taken in a newsagent in the Falklands capital just this afternoon, where, six months after her death, copies of The Spectator's commemorative issue are still selling well. It does her — and us — proud.

It could be, in Sicily, there comes a time when you’ve had your fill of seaside calamari and cheap white wine. The sheer thrill of lying on a beach without goose-bumps never really fades, but by day four you may need a break from all the nakedness: Italians blackening in rows like sausages, or Brits, more lumpen, clumped in ones and twos, turning pink. If you can bring yourself to turn your back on the Med, it’s well worth it. From Palermo, take the coastal road, then turn right, inland on the A19 towards Catania. Or drive south on the world’s most surprising motorway, which leaps right over Monreale and lands on the cliffs above. Head south-east and soon the countryside will flatten into hills and plains of durum wheat baked yellow, waiting for harvest.

How pleasant it is to live in the 21st century, enlightened, no longer scared of science. We can marvel at the diversity of life with David Attenborough; face the vastness of the cosmos with Brian Cox. These days we talk of colliders and particles as casually as we shop for milk. Science is our oyster. Except of course when it comes to genetics. Just try starting an excited conversation about gene therapy, or about the young Chinese genius Zhao Bowen, who is, right now, hunting down the genes for intelligence. Faces will fall, there’ll be talk of eugenics, perhaps a sudden burst of inexplicable fury. This I know because I’ve felt it myself.

  An emergency shelter funded by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has been opened to offer a lifeline to rough sleepers in the capital whenever three consecutive nights of freezing temperature are predicted. Mr Johnson said: ‘This shelter will offer a vital lifeline when temperatures tumble to sub-zero levels and rough sleepers risk losing their lives in the cold.’ Just how and why Dave and his mother, Nancy, came to be sleeping outside, in the corner of a car park, is too complicated and surreal a story to explain. But what you need to know is that there’s no easy solution to their problem, and sleeping rough in itself isn’t alarming or even unusual for them.

Andrew Mitchell, formerly of DFID, urgently needs Coffee Housers' help. It seems he won't believe DFID wastes money, unless he sees actual, concrete examples. Last week, in the magazine, we ran a foreign aid special in which Jonathan Foreman and Justin Shaw  showed us how and why we waste so much on ineffectual aid. In principle of course aid is a wonderful idea, but it can also be a blight: propping up dictators and entrenching corruption in the countries that are struggling most. We identified two major concerns: A lack of DFID due diligence The daft ring-fence around aid ­ 0.7% of GDP ­ which means the DFID has its work cut out trying to get rid of all the cash quick enough, and has an incentive to turn a blind eye to what happens to it on the ground.