Life

High life

The pleasure and pain of reading

Gstaad There are lurid rumours circulating around this Alpine village that an international literature symposium has taken place, with some of the richest and more recent arrivals demanding that the arch suspect behind the alleged outrage deny it or else. ‘Say it ain’t so, Joe,’ screamed a nightclub freak at the suspect right on Main

Real life

The Co-op can keep its no claims discount

When I received an email from the Co-op telling me they had made a mistake with my car insurance, and I was owed money, I should have been pleased. I was not pleased. I was terrified. The letter included a reissued no claims discount of nine years, instead of the no years they had reduced

Wild life

The beauty of Boran cattle

The Farm, Laikipia Outside the nightjars were calling and a zebra brayed in the valley. The constellations were still bright as the dogs all piled into the Landcruiser with me for the drive out to the yards. During two years of drought we’ve been unable to sell cattle, which have cost us a fortune in

More from life

How to make proper vanilla ice cream

I could map out my life geographically and temporally in scoops of ice cream. From the oyster delights handed over in tracing-paper napkins from Minchella’s hatch in South Shields on the beachfront, to the little silver coupe bowls of ice cream we ordered every night on family holiday in France (always the same, one ball

No sacred cows

How do you solve a problem like debanking?

As I sat down to write this column, an old friend let me know he’d just been ‘debanked’. That is, he’d received a letter from his high-street bank notifying him it was closing his accounts. ‘Following a review, we’ve made the decision that you will not be able to bank with us any longer,’ it

Spectator Sport

If you thought Lord’s was rowdy, get ready for Leeds

Shouldn’t we all just calm down a bit after Lord’s? Once prime ministers decide to intervene, you know things have gone too far. Rishi Sunak has made it clear he wouldn’t want to win a match that way apparently, which feels very much like Tony Blair’s decision to wade into the case of Corrie’s jailed

Dear Mary

Dear Mary: What’s the cure for writer’s block?

Q. Do you have a solution for writer’s block, Mary? A friend is the best company in the world, but I haven’t been able to speak to her for months. I know she reads her emails but they bounce back with the generic reply that she cannot respond until she has completed an urgent piece

Food

A taste of 1997: Pizza Express reviewed

As the government withers this column falls to ennui and visits Pizza Express. As David Cameron, who left the world stage humming, said of Tony Blair: ‘He was the future once.’ So was David Cameron, and so was Pizza Express: I bet they meet often. It was founded in 1965 by Peter Boizot, who shipped

Mind your language

Poems

A Divorced Man Swimming

Are we too old for fish-‘n’-chipsToo well-dressed, perhapsTo queue in a place not found on mapsAs far from a taxi as it’s possible to beAnd whose idea was this anyway? We’ll take them back to mine; noSorry, yours. Am I staying over? EarlyRise, you say. I’d forgotten. Not thinking,And to be honest not feeling greatI’ll