Life

High life

High life | 12 July 2008

I’m afraid that Pug’s Club ‘Turd of the Year’ award went unanimously to the ghastly Andy Murray, he of the centre court primal screams and primate fist pumping. Perhaps his mother, who looks straight out of central casting of a Hollywood stage mum, and then some, should file his teeth down a bit and make

Low life

Low life | 12 July 2008

I’ve not been to Pamplona’s famous week-long ‘running of the bulls’ and bullfighting fair of Saint Fermin since 2002; but every year since, on 6 July, at midday, when the town council lets off the rocket signalling the start of the festivities, I’ve felt a pang of regret that I’ve once again failed to manage

Slow life

Slow Life | 12 July 2008

I wasn’t planning to take the family on holiday. We live on a farm and there’s always something happening. It gets harder and harder to drag oneself away. Claire got quite indignant about having missed the strawberries when we arrived home today. There were only a few soggy ones left. ‘If it’s not the strawberries

More from life

The turf | 12 July 2008

I heard from a Nato general not long ago the story of two hot air balloonists in the US who got lost. They descended to check their bearings from visible landmarks and found themselves above a massive and curiously shaped building. Seeing a man crossing the car park one balloonist shouted, ‘Where are we?’ ‘In

Status Anxiety | 12 July 2008

Last Saturday, I was due to attend a garden party being hosted by one of my oldest friends, but I did not have time. After picking up four-year-old Sasha from swimming I had to take her to a party, then pick her up from that party and take her to another, then take three-year-old Ludo

Dear Mary

Dear Mary | 12 July 2008

Q. While staying in Gascony a local grandee, with a formidable brain and a château of great historical importance, was invited to dine. As dinner proceeded one of the two female houseguests seated next to him transmogrified herself from a kind, cosy, close and down-to-earth friend of mine, into a cross between Simone de Beauvoir,

Mind your language

Mind Your Language | 12 July 2008

Dot Wordsworth on the word ‘sticky’. Longfellow, in the middle of writing ‘Hiawatha’, complained to his diary one hot day of ‘Chamber-maids chattering about — children crying — and everything sticky except postage stamps, which having stuck all together like a swarm of bees, refuse further duty.’ It’s funny how Longfellow wrote better informally than

The Wiki Man

The Wiki Man | 12 July 2008

Alongside the vast fuel tank which powers the Space Shuttle into orbit are two spindly tubes known as Solid Rocket Boosters (or SRBs). Their shape is not ideal: their manufacturer, a firm called Thiokol, had intended them to be fatter, but was constrained by the width of a horse’s rear end. It appears that Roman