As summer approaches my meagre garden begins to yield harvest. My tomatoes have been recalcitrant and I am still waiting tetchily for both Roma and Grosse Lisse varieties to bear viable fruit. (My jealousy of Sticky's reports of tomatoes weeks ago therefore remains.) The story is different for my snowpeas and strawberries, thank goodness.

Something interesting is going on at The Age newspaper in Melbourne. In the space of eight days, the newspaper has published two pieces about slavery in the West African cocoa growing industry. In September it also published a piece about this issue by a prominent Christian activist and anti-slavery campaigner from Britain. Why now?

Australian book retail chain Angus & Robertson (A&R) has got itself in the poo. The mainstream media (Fairfax) ran stories briefly (08 August) about A&R attempting to screw its suppliers by demanding payments to cover their 'gap' in profitability.

It's old news, but for a moment last week newspapers and cafés were abuzz with speculation about the future of restaurant reviewers. A ruling by the High Court of Australia appeared to establish that a now-defunct Sydney restaurant had been defamed by a newspaper reviewer. In fact, reviewing is not yet an endangered art, for the case is by no means over.

This is what a good negative restaurant review should look like. London restaurant Suka gets a drubbing at the pen of Jay Rayner.

Man. Woman. Curdled custard. Authors have made millions exploring the differences between sexes. We've all heard the clichés about the separate universes that males and females inhabit. I thought I was immune to this stuff until wikiHow served up an eye-opening tip for under-clad women. The earnest tip seems terribly misplaced. You just have to look around…

The train that thinks it's a plane seems to have a sense of humour. Putting to one side Eurostar's once unenviable reputation for tardiness and its legacy-airline pricing model, one can't help being impressed by this touch of humour on the company's website.