New York With the Karamazovian hangover now only a weekly occurrence, the healthy life rules supreme. Well, most of the time. Up early, I go for a brisk 30-minute walk, then it’s breakfast in the park that stretches out two blocks away. I finish off with two sets of 20 push-ups on a park bench,
The only thing left for me now is to embrace humility and take up basket weaving. In our dog and ferret club in the 1990s we had a ferret guy called Ron. Ron was an old sweat Royal Marine and he applied Royal Marine levels of commitment and organisation to our dog and ferret shows,
‘You’re meant to be having your dental appointment now!’ barked the receptionist, bringing my lie-in to an abrupt end. Very unusually, I had left the builder boyfriend to do the horses on his way to work and I was lounging about in bed. Coffee at the luxurious hour of 9 a.m., spaniels sprawled on the
Laikipia Until I promised to slaughter a fat-tailed sheep with a goat thrown in for a feast, the farm cowhands looked doubtful about going for their vaccinations. ‘Come on, it won’t hurt you,’ I cajoled. A panther-like man I’ve seen pursuing bandits with a rifle and reckless courage announced that he was frightened. The others
I think it’s fair to say that I overshot the runway at The Griffin the other day. So excited was I to be out and about, large glass in hand, mixing with much-missed mates on the East Sussex gastropub’s fabled ‘Serengeti’ terrace, that I foolishly didn’t keep as close an eye on the speedometer as
In the introduction to an anthology of his jazz record reviews, the poet Philip Larkin imagines his readers. They’re not exactly full of the joys of spring. He describes them as ‘sullen fleshy inarticulate men… whose first coronary is coming like Christmas’. Loaded down with ‘commitments and obligations and necessary observances’ they’re drifting helplessly towards
Q. I am placed in a social dilemma due to a proposed visit on the last weekend of June by an American friend who has been hospitable to me. She is great fun. However, it is also the weekend (planned far ahead) when I have staying a recent widow who has been even more hospitable,
Freedom approaches. Should we be humming ‘Va, Pensiero’ or ‘O Welche Lust’ — perhaps both. Thinking of Fidelio reminds me of a delicious comment made about Ted Heath by the late Sam Brittan in the FT, decades ago. On this occasion, Le Grand Epicier was being interviewed about music. He declared that Fidelio was one
As his tweed jacket flapped open to one side of his stomach, my husband stood up unsteadily and arched his arm, jabbing his finger towards me and chanting: ‘Shame on you! Shame on you!’ It didn’t work, because I’ve been living with him so long that, as Berowne says in Love’s Labour’s Lost, ‘We are
You are not churchy, I feel certain of it.You do not demand a particular hat or coatOr a room filled with a particular scent.You do not only like hymns And if someone laughs you don’t mind.There is no special kind of poem for youOr single word to wrap your meanings inNor can any category contain
Back in late 2019 I met someone from Zoom who was visiting London. The company, then as now, offered free video-conferencing calls for up to 40 minutes, but charged a fee of around £10 a month to users who wanted longer calls. Towards the end of the conversation, I flippantly asked what I thought was
