Gstaad Once upon a time clergymen saw mountain peaks as natural steeples leading them ever closer to God. Doctors considered mountains the best medicine for tuberculosis, while explorers saw them as rocks never before touched by humans. I thought of those good people while T-barring up the Eggli in way below freezing conditions but in
My grandson and I had a lovely hour-long swim at the leisure centre. We had the learner pool to ourselves for the first half an hour, during which we threw and dived for our little weighted plastic sharks. Then a stocky man, tattooed like a Maori, and his little boy entered the pool. The little
‘Hello, Vodafone customer s…, can I h…you?’ This is typical, I thought. I’m ringing to complain about them charging me £137.08 for one phone call to directory inquiries and I can’t even hear them properly because the mobile reception they provide me with is so rubbish. ‘Hello? Can you hear me?’ ‘Y… I can h…
Juba I discovered a 1954 Morris Minor parked outside the Catholic mission station in Mopoi, South Sudan. The car had been there for so long that a guava tree was growing up through the gearbox. To me it was a tragic memorial to Daniel Comboni, the canonised 19th-century missionary who set out to ‘save Africa’
I was listening to the radio the other morning to hear people complaining about the huge cuts in the number of traffic police patrolling English roads. This meant that drivers would disobey motoring laws with impunity, they said. They would babble away on their mobile phones, unfasten their seat belts, and generally break the rules
I suppose we should be thankful that Nicola Sturgeon has acknowledged there’s a problem with Scotland’s public education system, even if she’s hit upon the wrong solution. Earlier this week, the First Minister announced that the Scottish -government would be trying out its version of ‘the London challenge’, a programme carried out by the last
Q. I have a friend with multiple sclerosis. She lives alone in the countryside. There is no bus service and, due to her physical condition, she was disqualified from driving two years ago. I made my friend an open offer that should she need a lift, she should call me. Mostly I can oblige. But
We were discussing wit. I uttered a self-evident truth which proved gratifyingly controversial. Of all the people I encounter, the soldiers are much the funniest. I took no prisoners among those who tried to disagree, merely telling them to get out more and find themselves in decent company. Military humour is an abiding delight. It
What, asks Christian Major of Bromley, Kent, do I think of ‘this new, I assume American, fad for using the word likely as an adverb’, as in the great Taki’s remark that Alan Turing ‘likely won the war’ (Spectator, Letters, 31 January)? Well, I would most likely not use it in exactly that way, although
for Lucy Dallas Because they wanted to go home and some bit part, a rat in deep cover, raised the alarm (he had done harm himself, but legally, and hid his shame) or, falling in slow motion, the cashier, shot through the heart for moving a finger, reached with his last breath for the dead
Are you sitting comfortably and wearing your tinfoil hat? If so, open YouTube and watch a full-screen version of the Zapruder film, in particular the section after frame 215 where the presidential limousine passes behind the Stemmons Freeway sign. What you will see, partly obscured by the sign, is a man’s opened umbrella 30 feet
