Life

High life

High life | 17 March 2016

   Gstaad Going up on a chairlift with the town’s doctor, I asked him, ‘How’s business, doc?’ ‘Never better,’ said the kind medical man. It seems the richer we get the more medical help is needed. ‘I get calls 24/7 for all sorts of ailment relief, especially coughs and colds,’ said Dr Mueller. ‘Rosey students,

Low life

Low life | 17 March 2016

I walk into the King Bill at eight o’clock and the usual young Friday-night crowd is in and the spirit is already moving. Whether this is due to the fatness of the moon or the availability and quality of the drugs on sale this evening, I couldn’t say. Whatever the cause, everyone is lit up

Real life

Real life | 17 March 2016

Diamonds are for ever. Plumbers take a lifetime. They never finish. No job is too big or small for them to not finish it. All I wanted was a new kitchen tap unit. The hot tap needed a washer fitting but, according to Tony the plumber from over the road, there is no point fitting

More from life

Long life | 17 March 2016

My time as a duck-keeper seems to have come bloodily to an end. I have had ducks on my pond for some years now, and I have kept buying new ones to replace those that have got murdered. This stretch of South Northamptonshire may look rather cosy and suburban, but it’s ruled by the law

Farewell to Fergie

Writing a Turf column before the Cheltenham Festival, as the Spectator schedule requires, which you are reading only after the four-day jump-racing bacchanal has concluded, was a problem. I could neither revel in the moments of glory some equine fighter pilots will have enjoyed nor reveal hard-luck stories behind others who did not make it.

The miracle of Michaela

It was like being on the set of an inspirational Hollywood film about a visionary teacher who transforms the lives of disadvantaged African-American and Hispanic children in a run-down part of Los Angeles. The young woman leaping about at the front of the class, who had somehow got a group of 12- and 13-year-olds speaking

Sport

Jones the dragon-slayer

The return heavyweight bout between England and Wales lived up to its billing as the most thumping rugby match of the Six Nations. It was also the perfect result for both sides. England’s win brings the Grand Slam in sight, but Wales get to feel smug that they could have won if they had played

Dear Mary

Dear Mary | 17 March 2016

Q. I have a deep crush on an army officer I’ve met through work. He is decisive, practical and doesn’t waste a word. I am charmed. How can I hint that I’m interested and would like to be asked out? We are due to meet in about a month’s time. I am almost 40 and

Food

Marco Pierre, why?

Wheeler’s is such a dreadful restaurant that I wonder if Marco Pierre White even knows his name is on it. I suppose, for legal reasons, we must assume he does, and was not held hostage in a cellar while they built and fretted and hung inflated photographs of their prisoner all over it, like the

Mind your language

Cock

On the Radio 4 news at 11 o’clock last Saturday morning there was a joky report about roosters in Brisbane. The cocks, it said, were annoying people with their crowing. The news at noon called them not roosters and cocks, but cockerels and fowls. I wrote here in 2005 about the advent of the ‘Year of