Any kid with an ounce of street cred would start planning revenge if his parents went on holiday alone and returned with just a pile of airport tat. (You've seen the T-shirt: "My parents went to Barbados and all I got...") But Alex Malhoudis was far from disappointed when his mother came back from New York in 1988 bearing baseball caps, a few programmes and the inevitable T-shirt. In fact, they changed his life.

True stories from the Great Railway Disaster; A weekly chronicle of the absurdities caused by the Government's privatisation programme

Head girls and boys - and old-fashioned leadership qualities - are back in fashion and the girls are ahead of the boys in contests to lead their schools.

Fran Abrams finds fetes and fayres now pay for a school's essentials. Meanwhile, Wendy Berliner has a ball in Bedfordshire

From Ms Sheila Sharp

Trouble on t' tours

Book:AN EXPERIMENT IN LOVE by Hilary Mantel, Viking £15

I WAS disappointed by your article "The blackstuff goes well beyond Windsor" (11 December). Your main premise misleads by implying that the issue of an exploration licence by the DTI gives carte blanche to unchecked oil and gas exploration in that area. This is not the case. Stringent local planning procedures must be adhered to for all drilling and production applications, as is indeed happening at Windsor. As far as I know, no such applications have ever been, or are likely to be, submitted for the well-known urban monuments that you list. Apart from many other considerations, most local authorities stipulate a minimum distance of 300 metres between a proposed drilling site and adjacent dwellings.

WINEMAKERS normally fall over themselves to open bottles for visiting wine writers. Not so the makers of Vega Sicilia, Spain's most expensive red wine.

WE ARE attempting to create a garden which restores a little piece of land to nature, in essence a wildlife garden which looks attractive and where we can also grow native plants, vegetables, fruit and herbs.

THOUSANDS of widows are losing money on a tax benefit just because their husbands died at the wrong time of year.

ON 3 NOVEMBER, at Tallow Chandlers Hall, Spitalfields, a dinner party will be held for a very select band of people indeed - the Cazalets.

Amanda Parr, who came top out of more than 18,000 A-level Humanities candidates yesterday, was turned down by Cambridge University earlier this year, writes Judith Judd.

KELLY HOLMES is 5ft 4in and eight and a half stone. She is quietly spoken, with a ready smile. But she has - she points out - a very loud voice when she shouts.