Watching Republicans in Washington is like watching lemmings, if lemmings jumped into cesspools instead of off cliffs.
Sydney's most famous beach is Bondi. At its southern end is Bondi Baths, an eight-lane, 50-meter saltwater pool built into the cliffs.
All through the night, like the tumult of a river when it races between the cliffs of a canyon, in my sleep I could hear the steady roar of the passing army.
From the top of the quarry cliffs, one could see the New Jersey suburbs bordered by the New York City skyline.
We are accustomed in England to chalk in rolling downs, except where bitten into by the sea, but elsewhere it is riven and presents cliffs, and these cliffs are not at all like that of Shakespeare at Dover but overhang, where hard beds alternate with others that are friable.
My favourite pool is located in a remote valley in the eastern Lake District, surrounded by vine-hung cliffs and slippery boulders. It has a torrential sheet waterfall at one end and is almost black in colour, so it appears bottomless, a portal to nowhere.
In Cape Town, there's a drive from Cape Point to Camps Bay where the road is hewn out of the cliffs. It's just stunning, particularly if you do it as the sun is going down.
I've succeeded as far as I'm concerned - I don't feel that I have any cliffs I could fall over anytime soon.
Guernsey itself was overcrowded, but its cliffs were utterly empty. I spent a wonderful year with a friend, climbing them. It was sheer magic: you went from this pretty, busy village of an island to the sea cliffs and heard nothing but the gulls and the waves.
Let us never forget this: since the day of the air, the old frontiers are gone. When you think of the defense of England you no longer think of the chalk cliffs of Dover; you think of the Rhine. That is where our frontier lies.
