There was little left to show of a life cut short in a £2-a-night hotel room just a stone's throw from paradise. There were some old T-shirts, a handful of undeveloped films and a battered journal filled with jottings and sketches. The rest of Michael Harvey's belongings had been taken away by police looking for clues.

Fiona Evans's play Scarborough won a Fringe First at last year's Edinburgh Festival, where it was a talking point because of its subject-matter – a dirty weekend in a Scarborough B&B involving a female PE teacher and a pupil 14 years her junior – and the uncomfortable intimacy of its staging. A tiny space was transformed into a dingy room in a faded seaside guesthouse, with the audience, turned into voyeurs, pinned against the walls.

For many people, the most rewarding aspect of travel is experiencing other cultures. However, too often those other cultures are not themselves rewarded, the tourist's money going straight into the tour operator's pocket.

The wrong kind of weather, and indeed management, may be the chief cause of delays on our own super-pricey trains, but in New York explanations for late-running trains are a little less prosaic. According to the city's Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the main culprits, after engineering problems, are "fainting dieters". Only in the land of the free and the faddy could an urgent desire to squeeze into your size-0 jeans bring public transport grinding to a halt. The supersized, wedged into seats increasingly designed for baby whales, must be furious.

A Turkishnewspaper columnist will confront the might of the state in a case which exposes the refusal of the Turkish establishment to accept European human rights laws.

A letter from John Lennon denying that the Beatles "ripped off" black music fetched £12,000 at auction yesterday.

Hoteliers are to be banned from turning away homosexual couples in a fresh drive against anti-gay prejudice. A Single Equality Act, which forbids discrimination against homosexuals in goods and services, is to be introduced by the Government, Jacqui Smith, the Equalities minister said.

Sir: Your article about the bed and bondage guest house in San Francisco made entertaining reading and did not seek to judge sadomasochists ("B&B that offers an alternative to breakfast", 15 December).

THE HOUSE on Caine Street is no ordinary B&B. It does not appear on any San Francisco accommodation agency's list. It is not in an obviously touristy part of town. There is no sign outside to advertise its services. Even the neighbours aren't too sure what goes on there, although they have an idea that it is pretty damn weird.

Ever fancied cutting a dash at the local salsa night, or dazzling your friends with your fluent Italian? Ever wanted to know more about Ancient Greek civilisation but been put off by the thought of stuffy evening classes in a draughty town hall? Well, there are now plenty of holidays on offer which combine stimulating activity with exotic locations. So go on: improve yourself. Cultivate your cultural side as well as your tan. By Pascale de Lacoudraye Harter

Brian, the proprietor of a Brighton seafood restaurant ("The Freshest Fish at Affordable Prices") was in no doubt at all on the matter: "The old style, traditional English seaside holiday - bucket and spade, yeah? Dead, mate," he assured me. We were standing at the time on his not-at- all sunny forecourt, and Brian was grappling quite bravely with an outsize parasol in the teeth of the sort of loud, ferocious and buffeting wind that threatened to lift up even the red checked and heavily weighted tablecloths and whisk them over for a cheap and impromptu Awayday to France.

GENERALLY WALES and the South-west is an inexpensive area to live in - indeed some of the smaller Welsh towns are among the cheapest in Britain. Top of the league this year must be Lampeter: mindful of increasing financial demands on students, and to celebrate the millennium, the university is offering half-price accommodation to all new undergraduate students starting in October 1999 - a saving of over pounds 700 a year.

Street Life SUZDAL