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With his team eliminated, the France coach bizarrely chose a moment immediately after the end of the game to propose to his girlfriend Estelle Denis, a television presenter, live on air […]

Proving that romance is never far from the thoughts of the average Frenchman, Domenech said: “Everything was so sad, I thought life has some beautiful moments and you should tell people you love them.”

The Independent
France 0 Italy 2: Au revoir Henry […]

Not content with holding the title of Britain’s oldest worker, 101-year-old Buster Martin set off from Greenwich Park hoping to become the country’s oldest marathon runner. Mr Martin, a smoker since the age of seven who still turns up three days a week to clean vans in south London, refused to take on any water during the run and instead relied on supporters to provide him with strategically placed pints of bitter.

Jerome Taylor
The 28th London Marathon: It’s that time of Year …

It is never too late to become what you might have been.

George Eliot

Loose

It reminded me of an interview I read with Leonard Cohen a good few years ago, in which he talked about the time he had spent at a Buddhist retreat on Mount Baldy. I looked it up earlier this week: “During the day, you hear bells and they tell you to go somewhere - that’s the nature of those places. They are kind of hospitals for the broken-hearted and for people who have forgotten how to walk and talk,” he said. Later, he explained the appeal of zen meditation: “After a while, the activity of thinking, that interior chatter, begins to subside from time to time. And what rushes in, in the same way that light rushes into a room when you switch on the light, is another kind of mood that overtakes you.”

Laura Barton
Hail, Hail, Rock ‘n’ Roll

It is now to be a criminal offence in Italy for men to touch their own balls in public.

Alexander Chancellor
I Don’t Need (…)

A philosophical conversion seemed to save him. James read the works of the French philosopher Charles-Bernard Renouvier and found it an unusual solution to the problems posed by determinism. Renouvier argues that free will consists in “the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts.” One might not be able to choose which thoughts come into the mind, but an act of will can focus the mind on some thoughts at the expense of others, thoughts which then determine action.

Everything I do, really, is to try and make my mother and father proud of me.

Shaun Edwards
Everything I Do Is To Make My Mother And Father Proud