Life

High life

Greece is calling – three more years and then I move south

Porto Cheli I have been thinking about my children and my own strange boyhood as I gaze up at the clear blue skies of summer. Summers lasted an eternity back then, and by the time one got back to school there were new friends, new loves and new discoveries of things unknown the previous May.

Low life

I might have no testosterone but I do have a Fiat Barchetta

I’ve might have no testosterone. (My production is currently being stopped by injection once every three months.) But what I do have is a Fiat Barchetta, bought for a grand on a whim on eBay. It’s the prettiest little two-seater, an old-school, fun drive, with a lot of growl and it makes people smile. Left-hand

Real life

Will I end up in Belmarsh for fiddling kitten heels?

A parcel has arrived addressed to ‘Cydney Kite’. The spaniel is ecstatic. She has never received her own mail before, let alone an express delivery package. She wags her entire body frantically as I open it and is driven half demented by the heady smell that arises as I lift out the packing bubbles to

More from life

If you want real stress, move to the country

It’s much more stressful to live in the country than in a town. There are always threats of one kind or another — wind farms, housing developments, road ‘improvements’, and so on. And then there are often arguments with neighbours about this and that. If it’s not leylandii, which are not one of our problems

Wine Club

August Wine Club I – Offer now closed

It is noticeable how the nights are drawing in now, added to which the leaves in our garden are ever so slightly but definitely beginning to turn. Nevertheless, we’ve still got summer drinks on the lawn or by the poolside barbecue in mind with this lovely, typically quirky selection from The Wine Company. And I’m

Spectator Sport

Why squash deserves a place in the Olympics

Thank god for the Commonwealth Games: at least they gave us a brief respite from football transfer stories. Instead of having to read about an 18-year-old defender being bought by Overambitious Wanderers for the GDP of a medium-sized African nation, we could delight in Norfolk Island beating South Africa at lawn bowls, Kiribati and Nauru

Dear Mary

Dear Mary: Help me hunt down my priceless missing book

Q. A scholarly book of great importance to me appears to have gone missing from my library. It was heavily annotated so it is irreplaceable. I lend books all the time and I have a strong feeling I have lent it to someone, but I just cannot remember to whom. I can remember the last

Food

L’Escargot is Soho as Soho sees itself

L’Escargot, or the Snail, is a famous restaurant on Greek Street, Soho, opposite the old Establishment club; the oldest French restaurant in London, they say (1927), and who am I to argue? It is the type of restaurant that non-Londoners have heard of and used to visit. They passed photographs of Larry Olivier and Mick

Mind your language

Should you be prejudiced against ‘pre-’?

‘Pre-diabetes is an artificial category with virtually zero clinical relevance,’ said an American professor in the Times. A friend of mine has even been told by the vet that her little cat is in a pre-diabetic condition, being a little over the norm on the feline body mass index. I began to think that pre-diabetes