In Loving Memory, Alison Millar's film about the commemorative shrines you increasingly see by roadsides these days, began with a piercing recollection; a mother sitting in her car and remembering the day she opened the door to two policemen who – ominously – had all the time in the world. She wasn't about to be rushed to an intensive care ward because her 18-year-old daughter was already dead. And there was worse: "I want to go and see her because she's my daughter," Rebecca Taylor's mother remembered thinking, "and the next thing is I can't go and see her because she's burnt... beyond recognition burnt." "I just wanted to bath her and dress her and hand her on to the next person," she added a little later, her voice, as it did many times tightening to a thread that strained but never quite broke. And denied the opportunity to say goodbye that way, Nicole Taylor's grief flowed into other channels, including one of those tender little eyesores that accumulate at the site of fatal accidents.

The British view of the countryside, which stubbornly clings on in our national psyche, is clearly an idealised one: the green utopia of quiet harmony, of timeless rhythms and unchanging traditions, to which people dream of retiring, is more and more a construct of the imagination. But it's not all imaginary: we still possess, especially in England, a small-scale, mixed landscape of woods and hedges and fields and farms which is not only charming but somehow feels humane in its intimacy.

South African tribal chiefs and healers have slaughtered a cow outside Soccer City, the biggest stadium at the World Cup, as part of rituals to appease the spirits of ancestors and welcome fans.

I like to think of myself as someone respectful of the beliefs of others, especially when it comes to religion and food.

The trial of two farming brothers accused of murdering a fellow farmer over a dispute involving a stray cow began yesterday.

One of Australia's most popular tourist trains, The Ghan, derailed after hitting a cow in the Outback, bosses said today.

"He who would teach men to die would teach them to live", wrote Montaigne, quoted in "That to Philosophize is to Learn How to Die", the epigraph to Critchley's informative, entertaining if at times bewildering book. He believes that we live in terror of annihilation, and that such fear is folly, and an evasion of the real business of living.

"How does the cow go?" asks every parent pointing to the pictures in the child's first books. Well, the cow doesn't only go "moo". Sometimes it gets quite aggressive, particularly when its own offspring are concerned, as several walkers have found to their cost in recent months.

Beef tea. Strange idea, popular still at football matches. But who on earth came up with it? A Scotsman, by the name of John Lawson Johnston, though there appears to be no record of his precise thought process.

An elderly farmer who was trampled when his cows were apparently scared by a fire engine, has died, police said today.

A man was killed today after his car hit a cow.