It wasn’t rioters
‘It wasn’t rioters. It was ruddy seagulls.’
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Wednesday
It’s getting more and more urban round here
‘It’s getting more and more urban round here... I saw a fox the other day.’
Crime books
Chefs are nice people, really
I used to think that chefs were egotistical maniacs. Some of them are. But the vast majority of chefs are hardworking individuals coping with enough stress to send a beta-blocker into cardiac arrest. I spent more years than I care to admit moonlighting as a bartender and waiter. I worked with dozens of chefs. Some were brilliant, some had trouble frying an egg. Others spent more time with cocaine than flour. One tried to drunkenly glass me in the face with a bottle of Moretti, another became a very good friend. I learnt a lot from chefs: how to shuck an oyster, how to tastefully plate a dish, how to
Seagulls are a nightmare
I’ve lived in Brighton and Hove since 1981. I’ve been surrounded by seagulls for most of my life, but somehow I’ve never really got used to them. There’s something unsettlingly prehistoric about those gnarled beaks and oversized, reptilian feet. While the feet can occasionally lend them a pleasingly comic aspect, the sheer size of the seagull makes its feelings impossible to take lightly. Their cries, so evocative from a safe distance, sound incredibly ugly at close quarters; I once lived near a nest, and it was like being trapped in an early Yoko Ono album. Granted, the place wouldn’t be the same without them – Brighton’s seagulls are its oldest and most
Are the Great Novels worth it?
To finish or not to finish? The dilemma of whether to give up on books we aren’t enjoying or plough on to the end lasts a lifetime, but as we grow older it gets easier. We not only have less time, but also the increased confidence to decide that if a great novel isn’t engaging us, it’s possibly the book’s fault. What does it really matter if Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain defeats us, or Finnegan’s Wake sends us to sleep? We’ve survived much worse than that. But in youth, such things torment you, and the more highly regarded the novel, the greater your shame in abandoning it. You still labour under the fallacy
Tuesday
Why is Britain so ugly?
Family holidays always carry a risk of dismaying revelations. Suddenly you are thrust together, 24/7, over many days, in a way only matched by Christmas (which is equally perilous). And so it was that, after ten days of driving around Provence and Occitanie, from Arles to the Camargue to the mighty Gorges of the Tarn, my older daughter this week suddenly said: ‘Why is Britain so hideous?’ The outburst was clearly prompted by the comparative beauty of France. My daughter is 18 and her only prior experience of France was grey wintry Paris in a boring school trip, so she was probably expecting more of the same dreariness. Instead, she
What happened to ‘lesbians’?
The elegant, serpentine word ‘lesbian’ had a place in the sun only briefly. In the first real novel about lesbianism, 1928’s The Well Of Loneliness, the protagonists are gloomily and somewhat puzzlingly called ‘inverts’, conjuring up an image of some sad Sapphic wondering why she was condemned to spend her life upside-down. Amazingly, Christopher Hawtree, writing in the Telegraph in 2008, noted that the word ‘lesbian’ did not appear in the Oxford English Dictionary until 1976: During the four decades it took to create the 12-volume Oxford English Dictionary, completed in 1928, Lesbian appeared only in reference to the island. During preparations for its 1933 Supplement, one lexicographer averred: “Lesbianism is
The glory of the Encyclopedia Americana
It’s a painful process many of us must go through: culling a big book collection, amassed over a lifetime, before moving home. You know it makes sense, as you’ve struggled to house all your books – thousands of them – and they include quite a few you frankly wouldn’t miss. This chore awaits me at some point in the near future, but I do know that my 20-volume Encyclopedia Americana and its sister publication, the 20-volume children’s encyclopaedia called The Book of Knowledge, will be coming with me. Everything about its concept and design was aimed at fostering curiosity They were published by The Grolier Society of New York in 1957. They take up
Monday
The two summers I was nearly killed
Summer is the season most associated with the enjoyment of life. It’s when people forget their cares, down tools, and head for the beach to enjoy sunny days and sexy nights. That’s how it was for me anyway until I came close to life’s polar opposite – barely surviving two close brushes with death. So for me summers are now indelibly associated with a sudden end that I twice narrowly escaped. Tearing off my soaking shirt, I stood bare-chested in the rain, feeling the same sense of mingled relief and ecstasy as if I were Caesar The first close encounter with Mr Death came in the Dordogne. My wife, daughter,
Vive le Supermarché!
It’s 7.54 a.m. and we are waiting for the doors of the Intermarché St Remy de Provence to open. A vast sense of excitement is building within our group that spans the ages of nine months to 68 years. My mother wants espadrilles, my husband wants wine, my brother-in-law wants cheese, the children want toys, et moi? Just the experience, the delicious joy of the French supermarché. And possibly some soap. I was even asked to show the bottom of my baby’s buggy to the cashier to check that we hadn’t stolen anything As the hour draws closer, we keep saying how civilised it all is: the plane trees that
I’m accidentally dating my wife
My wife and I have only ever dated by accident. After our third date a decade ago (well, what I thought was our third date) that she texted me asking, ‘So was that just dinner and theatre, or was it “dinner and theatre?”’ To this day, she insists that she had no idea what was going on (despite my sudden interest in her after two years of just being acquaintances, the Skype calls, the hand-painted postcards… actually, I’d better not start). A few years later, early on in our marriage, when we were still childless, young professional Londoners, we thought we’d wildly treat ourselves to dinner out on a Thursday.
Friday
Four tips for Glorious Goodwood
Glorious Goodwood has hopefully saved the best until last with two fabulous days of racing still to come. The detractors will point out that too many races on this undulating, turning track have hard-luck stories and the draw is often all-important as well. However, when the sun shines, this meeting is hard to beat in terms of highlighting flat racing at its best. I am already heavily invested in the Coral Golden Mile (today 3 p.m.) in which it’s a huge advantage to be drawn in single figures. Johan bucked the trend on soft ground last year when he won from stall 18 but the previous seven winners were from
Avant garde is boring
Of all the places to witness the circus parade of modern French history, you can do a lot worse than the tiny town of Espalion, in the beautiful department of L’Aveyron, in the south of France. Because there are few destinations more unchanged than L’Aveyron, and this extremely French place is where I saw the opening of the French Olympic Games, in an al fresco brasserie. And this is where I sensed a weird unease. No one booed, no one catcalled, no one mocked. They sat there, sipping cold bière, and at times they vehemently cheered and laughed. Yet they also appeared a touch confused, and, I suspect, this is
The National Trust’s abuse of language
‘Remember to bring your childrens bikes with you so you can all enjoy the estate,’ the National Trust’s website says, inviting visitors to its parkland site at Crom beside the shores of Upper Lough Erne in Northern Ireland. If, like me, you think omitting the apostrophe in ‘children’s’ is a bad look for an organisation that claims to raise ‘the standard of presentation and interpretation’ at the places it looks after, then steel yourself; it gets much worse. The National Trust can’t even be bothered to make sure its pronouncements are written in correct English You see, the National Trust may ‘look after nature, beauty and history for everyone to
I am a birthday dictator
I am never allowed to forget that at my fourth birthday party I made clear my expectation to my mother and the gathered guests that I expected to win all the games. The logic was clear and to my mind (still) fair: it was my birthday and so I should win. When this wasn’t passed into law, there was some anger on my part. Why should Kelly and Kate take home the pass-the-parcel first prize, and gain recognition for being fastest at eating donuts hanging from a string? Apparently in my pretty white swirly dress with its pink satin sash, wielding a wooden spoon for a game of blind man’s
Wednesday
I’ve looked at our finances
I bring diversity to your women’s gathering!
‘I bring diversity to your women’s gathering!’
Liberty cat
