tensings of the muscles

Too healthy: her skin was entirely ungrey, her nose sharp and whole.

The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudo-science and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

He was an extraordinary old aristocrat, who swore like a costermonger, and had the manners of a farmer.