The thing is there, slowly or swiftly approaching, but for the most part he is mercifully spared the full realization that it must and will come.

In tiny interiors pioneer families and visitors bonded over home cooking, while around campfires, hard-riding cowboys dug into their chow with abandon - though we were mercifully spared the culinary details.

Thanks to its healthy coral reefs and mangrove swamps, this part of the Indian Ocean was mercifully spared by the tsunami in December.

"I was mercifully spared," Mr. Gore said.

Mr. Lawrence has mercifully spared us the terrible details of her illness; it is only her "tortured eyes" we see, and her children's grief and horror.

Clegg may be confusing all this with a failure to take his advice in 1999 to 2002 and join the eurozone, a flawed project from which we were mercifully spared thanks to Gordon Brown's realism.

So far, the Circle Line has been mercifully spared.

I may say, in passing, that at least in this instance we are mercifully spared the hypocrisy of the white man's burden and civilising mission.

Open daily, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., 6 to 10 p.m. Restaurants Key West, which was mercifully spared this autumn's hurricanes, eats early and parties late.

Most people are mercifully spared any awareness of the operating system inside their phones, but Microsoft wants to change all that.