India A crowded bus station. A lady monkey with a baby clinging to its neck sidled past me, eyeing the banana I was eating. I barely noticed them. A moment later, claws dug into my back. A skeletal hand darted forward to grab my banana. The baby monkey was on my shoulder. I leapt up and
My father was discharged from hospital with a plastic bag containing 13 boxes of pills and a vague promise that a nurse would turn up at his house to help him. ‘He’ll have a package of care put in place,’ yawned a hospital functionary, who didn’t sound at all interested. But after he got home,
I will admit to having been dismissive of red velvet cake in the past, considering it to be bland in flavour and garish in colour. It tended to come in cupcake form with towering hats of super-sweet buttercream, which made it unpleasant and difficult to eat. The cult love for red velvet, inspiring scented candles
The boiler has been on the blink for days and I’m tired, cold and grumpy. Mrs Ray, too, is being unnaturally scratchy. Don’t worry, she never reads this. To cheer ourselves up and to keep out the chill, I suggested that she join me in tasting a dozen or so Burgundies from Honest Grapes, not
Scarcely a day passes without a newspaper story about some absurd ‘language guide’ issued by a public body. This week the Daily Mail reported that Wokingham Borough Council had told its staff not to use the phrase ‘hard-working families’ in case it offended the unemployed. Other verboten words included ‘blacklist’ and ‘whitewash’, and staff were
Q. At the age of 50 my brother-in-law has discovered a talent for acting and singing. He has joined a local amateur dramatics society and often takes a leading role. This new dimension in his life has meant the world to him and his self-confidence has soared. Theatre is not our thing, but as my
Riches, ancient cities, great architecture, splendid landscape, agriculture to match, trade routes, romance. Records of human settlement stretching to the dawn of civilisation, recurrent conflicts and invasions, dynastic struggles which lasted for centuries, wars of religion followed later by revolutionary conflicts. We are contemplating Provence, a region with a glorious history but which has often
‘Here’s a piece of filth for you,’ said my husband encouragingly. He was ‘helping’ me, as a cat might help wind wool. He’d come across a letter to the Guardian from 2015, in which Pedr James, who had directed a television dramatisation of Martin Chuzzlewit, drew attention to the name in the book for the
Her flat is on the fourteenth floor. String handles make his fingers burn. Both lifts are out again. Sod’s law. He stops half way. A giddy turn. More staggered flights. Encaustic tiles. Glass cladding visible for miles. She’s in of course. Unsnibs the Yale, shrinks back into her chilly hall then, shushing him, don’t tell
The cocktail umbrella surprises me. Its scalloped orange and blue pierces the lemon slice angled on the glass. The barman pulling pints smiles. Everyone’s making an effort tonight. Enter the women in glitter tops, it’s legs out although summer, if it ever was, has gone. Autumn doesn’t only happen in New York. We shimmer here
at arm’s reach, side by side, more than twenty-five feet up our treble extension ladders, shuddered by artics and buses thundering up and down Newcastle Street. But Stanway won’t lend me his scraper. It would take seconds, less than a minute, to run it around the window frame where wood meets glass, scrape off the
A few years ago, my old school magazine featured a pupil’s brief account of a geography field trip. Before the magazine was mailed out, someone had noticed a jokey reference to a minibus being driven erratically after the teacher had visited the local pub, and worried that this might be libellous. The school could have
