Supporting West Ham this season has been so full of drama and surprise, it’s been like living in the Book of Revelation. A brief summary. Last season the newly promoted team of Young Turks put together by our decent manager Alan Pardew feared no one. We finished a vertiginous ninth in the Premiership and got
I don’t like fish. I don’t like their scales and bones. I don’t like the way they eyeball you from a restaurant plate and I particularly resent the size they grow to if left unfilleted and grilled. Oh, I realise nobody was actually eaten during the making of that film, but I saw Jaws at
Sydney is an opium den for lifestyle junkies, a hotbed of food-loving, sun-seeking sport enthusiasts. I realised this the first time I went to Bondi Beach. Unless you’re armed with a soya latte, yoga mat, designer bikini or designer in a bikini, you won’t make it past the BMW-filled car-park. I had none of these
Taking a gap year at 40 did not initially seem like a very sensible idea. I had a good business, a nice flat and everything was relatively rosy — so it still beats me why I chose to jeopardise it all. I suppose I should blame my cousin’s girlfriend, for it was she who largely
‘Excuse me, madam, you are writing for a Buddhist priest?’ For a moment, I was confused — but then enlightenment struck. No, I assured the waiter, whose smile was, indeed, like the Buddha’s, the pieces I was writing were for the British press. After a few days in Sri Lanka, however, I could see how
Spain doesn’t smell the same any more. At the airport, the very first impression used to be of bitter black tobacco smoke, more acrid than Balkan Sobranie, a harbinger of stronger smells beyond Customs. That smoke would follow you wherever human activity was to be found. It was the cantus firmus in the polyphony of
This week’s mini-bar is from a new company, titled in the modern fashion, FromVineyardsDirect.com. It’s been set up by David Campbell, who is the publisher of the Everyman Library, and Esme Johnstone, one of the founders of Majestic Wine Warehouses. They have made up a very short list — fewer than 20 choices, though this
Six Nations rugby musters for its last convulsive heaves this weekend and next. Today (10 March) in Edinburgh, the appealing Irish XV should confirm their latest Triple Crown, while victory at Twickenham tomorrow will, to all intents, settle yet another championship for France. Both their matches next Saturday, respectively against Italy and Scotland, should each
Q. I am on my gap year and looking for work as a tutor, which I understand is very well paid. The key months for Common Entrance, AS- and A-level revision are almost upon us and, although I have my details up on the noticeboards of various local schools, I have had no inquiries. I
I was baffled when I heard last month that British troops in Iraq would be ‘drawn down’. Byron’s Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, but he didn’t need to be drawn down. To me, as to George Herbert, being drawn down is the sort of thing we worry we might do to
