I had a good talk with my NBF, Owen Matthews, at The Spectator’s writers’ party, and we agreed on the two subjects we talked about: Russia and women. I won’t exaggerate the enormity of our aggregate knowledge – and the way we have deployed it in our service, especially where the fairer sex is concerned.
‘You’re only allowed one roll of packing tape per customer,’ said the lady in the local hardware store. The builder boyfriend was holding five rolls, at £2 each, thinking it was reasonable to buy a tenner’s worth, or even that she might be pleased, in line with the normal rules of commerce. But this lady
So how’s your sober October going? No, nor mine. I ticked two consecutive days off the calendar, which is more than I’ve managed since, gosh, January. Baby steps, I know, but it’s bloody difficult. Mrs Ray is not helping. One minute she’s chiding me for being a lush with no self-control; the next she’s hovering
I first realised something was wrong with my hand last Thursday evening. I’d been invited by a friend to go shooting at his grouse moor in Yorkshire and the bedroom I’d been assigned had a stiff wooden door. After a hearty supper, I returned to my room and gave the door a shove with my
Q. I have been walking my dog with a neighbour who has turned out to be a very entertaining companion. She knows masses of local gossip and is very funny when oversharing about her own dating life. I enjoy hearing all this, but she has begun fishing for the same sort of details about my
I feel old, and feelings are not always wrong, This eheu fugaces mood came on me at the Conservative party conference in Manchester. I realised that it was 46 years since I first attended this gathering, before the present Prime Minister was born and when his predecessor was barely old enough for Father Christmas. The
‘At least he didn’t say “Cut the cheese”,’ said my husband, suddenly making a barking noise like a seal, which is his attempt at laughter. He was commenting on a remark by Amol Rajan, the affable presenter on Today. An interviewee was invited to ‘cut to the quick’. Of course he meant ‘cut to the
Crabapples strewn. I knew that lure would draw our blackbirds round the trunk. What do they care the fruit is sour? I like their pluck. Let’s us devour each acrid chunk of windfall, too, before our hour lapses. I mean the fruit that’s grown to globes of rude maturity on no such
Her home, but not (she knows) her house. It is his house, his wall, his garden. She takes it hard, and means to harden So far as courtesy allows. Am I alone in feeling he Could ease things with a breezy word Or passing smile when they conferred About the rent?
Back in the 1970s, a less politically correct age, there was a standby formula for television advertising known as 2Cs in a K, which would feature two women by a washing machine engaged in unlikely conversation about some wondrous new detergent. Since The Spectator is a family publication, I shall pretend that 2Cs in a
The definition of good luck in Russia is state security knocking at your front door and demanding ‘Ivan Denisovich?’ when you are able to reply ‘Ivan Denisovich lives two doors down.’ Sometimes you just have to be thankful it is someone else’s bad day. Steaming around the M25 on Saturday towards Newmarket’s Juddmonte-sponsored Cambridgeshire Handicap
