Mark Renzland, restaurateur: born Colchester, Essex 14 November 1956; died London 29 November 1995.

HIGHLANDS

Do we eat hot curries because we like them, or do we grow to like them because we eat them? A new paper "Does Exposure Enhance the Liking for the Chilli Burn" (by Richard Stevenson and Martin Yeomans, Appetite, 1995, 24, 107-20) throws some light on the question.

It was while I was on holiday in Normandy that I discovered the world's smelliest museum. My wife, Kate and I, were enjoying a gastronomic trip, walking the Route du Cidre and seeking out new cheeses in country markets. On a rainy day we decided on a long-planned pilgrimage to the village of Camembert, home of the famous cheese.

THE FIDE Candidates matches are under way in Sanghi Nagar in India, with local hero Viswanathan Anand playing Gata Kamsky and Vladimir Kramnik meeting Boris Gelfand, writes William Hartston. The third match, between Jan Timman and Valeri Salov, will begin tomorrow. The three winners - the best of eight games to decide - will join Anatoly Karpov in the semi-finals. This is the first time the champion has had to compete before the final match, and is an aftermath of the unusual circumstances surrounding last year's title matches.

Postcards cheer me up, cheques inspire something approaching a dyslexic hornpipe in the hallway and bills make me want to hit the bottle. But even the stuffy red ones telling me that I'm about to be disconnected prompt mediocre despair in comparison with a little white card.

IT WAS a mercantile triumph for the nation of shopkeepers last week when Marks & Spencer held a lunch in the British Ambassador's residence on the rue du Faubourg St Honore, a building once belonging to the Empress Eugenie and, it is said, bought for a snip by the Duke of Wellington. The occasion, presided over by His Excellency, Sir Christopher Mallaby GCVO KCMG (Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George), was to celebrate the opening in September of the second M&S store in Paris on the rue de Rivoli near the Louvre.

THE SERIES on pate recipes is seen out with terrine aux aromates from M Hughes of Washington, Tyne & Wear. It won, largely for novelty value, over Diana Bowden's pate maison - a good gutsy terrine employing pig's liver, pork belly and brandy. Mrs Hughes found her recipe in a book called French Cooking for Pleasure by Mary Reynolds. Mrs Hughes will receive a bottle of Alain Brumont's Pacherenc du Vic Bilh Octobre 1991, a late-picked Jurancon-style wine from Reid Wines, near Bristol.

BURGUNDY / PINOT NOIR: Excellent with Emmental, Gruyere and Munster; good with Caerphilly, Camembert, Chaume, Cheddar, Cheshire, Wensleydale, Cornish Yarg, L'Explorateur, goat's cheese and Reblochon; passable with Stilton.