Ibiza This island is the Spanish equivalent of the Greek sex rock of Mykonos, except its waters are murkier, its nightclubs and restaurants far more expensive. But its hookers are first-class and not to be compared to anything selling itself in Greece. Why that is so, I don’t know, but Greece gets the dregs where
Music of the Forest on Radio 4 last week was a profile of the anthropologist Colin Turnbull, 1924–1994, who achieved celebrity with his book The Forest People: A Study of the Pygmies of the Congo (1961), which presented such an inspiring vision of a prelapsarian, non-violent, egalitarian society that it became a cult classic of
‘Let me get this straight,’ I said, looking my Slovakian friend in the eye. ‘You are going to go back to your own country because the healthcare here is no good?’ ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Is no good. Is terrible. I leave job and go home and sign on. I get treatment in Slovakia.’ I shook
Of the nine chickens I used to keep here in Northamptonshire only one survived the summer, and it was the least appealing of them — broody, squawky, aggressive, and a bad layer. The others were all taken, one by one, by foxes. Unfond though I am of the only survivor, a black Sussex hen, she
Oh dear. I think I may have inadvertently contributed to the dissolution of Great Britain. I’m not claiming sole responsibility. In due course, when the blame game begins, I’ll play second fiddle to the party leaders, Gordon Brown, Eddie Izzard and successive generations of carpet-bagging aristocrats. Nevertheless, when the rise and fall of the British
Q. My problem is that an older friend, with whom I enjoy lengthy telephone chats, becomes furious when my call waiting service flashes up the number of one of my elusive children and I ask if I may put her on hold very briefly. She says it is rude to her, that I have spoilt
The Honourable Society of Odd Bottles has been mentioned in this column before. I can report that the membership is growing. We are now comfortably into low single figures. The other night, the Bottles assembled. At present, we have no lady members, although there is no rule to prevent it. That is hardly surprising. At
A little joke by Paddy, Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, turned upon something to be shunned. Conservative ministers, he said, had ‘indulged in a spasm of knee-jerking which would have made even St Vitus feel concerned’. He has, I think, got his spasms in a twist. Apart from saying ‘Aaah’, the cartoon task for a patient
I can see your teeth clench with rage at the gift I have pressed on you, which manoeuvres you into the role of grateful recipient of my unctuously offered, expensively wrapped and poisonously unwelcome offering. It’s hard to say if you are smiling or snarling as you turn to extol the wrapping paper.
I don’t know why it’s become important to me: the idea of a theatre supper at home? Maybe it’s a methodology for life that after decades of practice we can make it what we wish it to be: modest yet appetising, practical yet with an element of excitement pending? After so many supermarket visits made
My second favourite religious joke is an old Jewish joke (which I read in the Harvard Review, so I assume it has passed the political correctness test). Two Jews pass a church displaying a sign promising $1,000 to all new converts. After much debate, one of the men decides to take up the offer and
