Gstaad It is not exactly a stop all the clocks occasion, let alone cut off the telephone, but I’ve finally come to a decision. My looking-at-cows time is over. I am going to leave good old Helvetia and find somewhere nice in the green and ‘unpleasant land’ I read about in Charles Moore’s Notes last
Feeling oddly confident, clairvoyant even, I entered a bar to place a bet on Sunday’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. I had researched the internet for advice on how to place a bet in France and I knew I wanted to bet on a couplé gagnant, that is to say make a prediction of the
The pile of fly-tipping was dumped in the night as usual, right against the five bar gate. I arrived to feed the horses and found seven fridges and a pile of mattresses blocking the entrance to the field. I raised my eyes to heaven and said: ‘Thank you, God!’ The rotting mattresses and busted, filthy
The shifting sands of this blasted coronavirus — or, rather, the shifting sands of the government’s response to it — are driving us all mad. Having been lectured over the summer by Boris and co. on the importance of getting back to work, taking public transport, going to the local and eating out, we’re now
From the moment I started criticising the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis people have been urging me to start an anti-lockdown party. The idea would be to run candidates in the local elections in May, particularly in those areas that have been under almost permanent lock and key for the past six months, such
Q. Many years ago I was asked to officiate at a funeral for a family I did not know. As far as I was concerned the service went neither better nor worse than any other and afterwards I went along to what the undertaker used to call ‘the bunfight’ at the local pub. The mourners
It had been a long and no doubt fractious sea voyage. The crew would have signed up for a variety of reasons: pay, adventure, escape from domestic ties — in some cases, no doubt, escape from the authorities. After ten weeks at sea, some of them would have doubted their judgment, if not indeed their
In the First Act of Othello, just as things are getting interesting, the audience hears someone calling from offstage: ‘What ho, what ho, what ho!’ It is not Bertie Wooster but a sailor with news about the Turks (or Ottomites, as they are sometimes referred to). Yet Bertie made ‘what ho’ his own. In Jeeves
Here’s the quandary. How in future can we make the kind of rapid advances we have made during the Covid crisis without waiting for a lethal pandemic — or worse — to force our hand? We have, after all, made exceptional non-medical discoveries in the past few months. By being forced to adapt simultaneously, we
Wetumpka Racing? When your yard is running at a handsome strike rate of 40 per cent wins to runs you can perhaps afford to name your racing partnership after a natural disaster. After all, it was 85 million years ago when a massive meteorite smashed into Alabama at Wetumpka. Trainer Heather Main, based in 90
