Mandela dies and everything changes

WHEN asterisks confuse. A report criticising Beyonce tells us her new album "makes frequent use of the word b*****s." Now, which b*****s would those be? Are they the poor b*****s who have had a hell of a time with the recent cull?

DID you notice how early and how often the word "ethos" popped up in the reaction to the closure of the failing Discovery New School in Sussex? As a general rule, the more a school bangs on about its ethos, the worse it is.

IN THE same way, beware of any town or city claiming to be vibrant. Vibrant, a word much favoured by well-heeled professionals in safe and leafy suburbs, means drunken thugs on every corner and streets awash with vomit and discarded knickers. Vibrant means it's a lovely place – for other people.

THE snag with going to law is that you lose all control over what is revealed. Did Charles Saatchi ever imagine his housekeeper would claim in open court that she was sent scurrying around London bookshops with cash to buy copies of Saatchi's book and push it up the best-seller lists? Saatchi's work is modestly entitled: "My Name Is Charles Saatchi And I Am An Artoholic: Everything You Need To Know About Art, Ads, Life, God And Other Mysteries And Weren't Afraid To Ask." Yesterday it was the 142,735th most popular book on Amazon's list.

ONE of the most telling moments in the post-Mandela debate came in Question Time (BBC1) when Peter Hain, the former anti-apartheid campaigner, delivered an earnest little homily to a South African audience on the subject of land reform and the importance of avoiding Robert Mugabe's "crazy" land grab in Zimbabwe. Hain clearly believes he has a special empathy with the black people of his beloved South Africa. Yet the more he told them "You have to do it in a sensible way," the more he sounded like a missionary preaching under a baobab tree and the more some sections of the audience seethed. A young black man responded with barely concealed contempt: "Sorry, sir, we don't need any European methods of doing our own land reform. We are going to do it our way . . . we are going to do quite rapid what Mugabe did." I suspect this is the authentic voice of post-Mandela South Africa, from people who kept their anger and envy in check as long as Mandela was alive. The game has changed. Wake up and smell the coffee plantations.

NEWS reaches me from a school nativity play where, to everyone's horror, the teacher chosen to be Santa was unable to squeeze his belly into the Santa costume. The crisis was fixed by grabbing a passing Year 12 pupil and press-ganging him into the role. The teenager, in a red cloak that gaped at the neck, made a slim and rather unconvincing Santa but the little dots in Reception seemed thrilled. Later, however, one four-year-old confided in her teacher: "Miss, that Father Christmas was wearing the same school tie as my brother."

AFTER the latest storms, a reader reports a sighting of an unusual black and white bird perched by a canal, looking like a kingfisher but much bigger. It appears to be a night heron which is officially described as a "scarce visitor." Something the wind blew in?

I WROTE a few days ago about the adorable 100 seal pups washed up in the tidal surge and now being cared for at an RSPCA centre in Norfolk. Up close and personal, however, these wide-eyed little chaps are not quite so charming. A visitor describes the smell of a room full of seal pups as "raw herring combined with a powerful undertow of wet dog and public convenience." Lovely.