St Tropez To the once upon a time sleepy fishing village, now the focal point for Russian oligarch excess, outrageously ugly super-yachts, and what is commonly known as the scum of the earth, the nouveaux-riches of the 21st century. Yet a tiny but perfect airport for small planes and jets means the 747s that the
The barbecue was a sawn-off 40-gallon oil drum with holes punched in the sides. It stood on a rock under the spreading boughs of an oak tree. For fuel we chucked in driftwood logs and clumps of seaweed. The Old Speckled Hen was going down a treat in the evening sunshine, and the barbecue smoke
‘Dealing with a bruised soul’ is how I read the headline on the front of Horse Scene magazine. When I looked closer, the actual headline was ‘Dealing with a bruised sole’. But sometimes you see what you feel. I turned to the article anyway, because I do, in fact, have a horse with a bruised
Il Pinguaan Springs When I first saw the Pinguaan Springs they were small, fetid bogs set about with papyrus, the haunt of mercury-coloured frogs and dragonflies. I wondered why they were regarded as so important that you could find them on any half-decent map of Kenya. Without water, the farm we were building could never
When did it become a tradition to organise expensive birthday treats for your children? I don’t want to sound like a character in Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen sketch, but when I was a boy the most I could hope for on my birthday was a quick game of football with my dad in Highgate Woods.
Great wealth has always bred envy and resentment among the rest of us, which is why even in ancient times people liked to believe that it would be its possessors’ undoing. Thus one of the myths about King Midas of Phrygia was that, having sought and been granted the gift of turning everything he touched
Even if you don’t have a head for petrol, you can’t have failed to have noticed that the Formula 1 season thus far has been somewhat unsatisfactory. ‘Degradation’ and even ‘delamination’ (no, me neither but it does exist) have been the key words in Grand Prix chatter as tyres with a working life that can
Q. Is it acceptable to admit that you don’t ‘do’ anything? Or should one pretend to be writing a book or attending a course at the V&A or some such? I am afraid I just play bridge all day and sometimes I even go abroad to do it. — Name and address withheld A. So
Kaspar’s Seafood Bar and Grill is named for superstition, snobbery and avarice. At a dinner at the Savoy in 1898 there were 13 guests at dinner, and the host, a South African mining magnate called Woolf Joel, was shot dead a few weeks later in Johannesburg. This was doubtless sad for his family, but not
‘Scatter ye rosebuds while ye may,’ sang my husband, reckless of words and tune, thereby offending the ghosts of Herrick, William Lawes and my good friend standing nonplussed on the hearthrug, who had been seeking a sympathetic ear. I really wonder if these outbursts of disinhibition indicate the onset of dementia. My friend had been
Fate landed us here by mistake, set us to walk Welsh hillsides with a plodding heart or paddle Essex estuaries under duress, our talk always of somewhere else (tacked to kitchen walls a Swedish lake, a mountain range in Switzerland). See us crouch in living rooms as daylight palls, an old draught trespassing beneath the
