Gstaad Birthdays at my age are for the birds, but always a good excuse for a party. Messages of good wishes began early on, with loyal Speccie reader Arnold Taylor ringing from South Africa, and Rosemary and Wafic Saïd texting from the English countryside. (They wished me a happy 39th. I accepted.) My great buddy
The Moulinards had inhabited the old stone hilltop house for centuries, ekeing out a hard living among the sun-baked boulders. They were peasants. In the winter of 1962 there was one Moulinard left. Henri: old, alcoholic, feeding the furniture into the fire for warmth. A delegation of relations came up the hill to persuade him
‘Hallo! You was callin’ us about appoint…MENT!’ said the lady at the scanning unit of my local hospital in broken English. Nothing wrong with that. It’s just that when I received a letter bearing the logo of a private company informing me of the details of my forthcoming MRI, I got all excited, anticipating efficiency.
Three years ago I was contacted by an official at the Department for Education to see if I was interested in becoming a non-executive director of Ofqual, the exams regulator. There have been times since when I’ve regretted turning down that offer, but this week was not one of them. Ofqual was given the unenviable
Q. My son is having his 30th birthday next weekend and has invited 50 friends to a garden party. We thought it would have been okay to host a party by now, but government guidelines say it is illegal to have more than 30 people. How does he reduce the numbers? One way to do
‘The Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day’: surely one of the most beautiful images in all writing. One might have thought that it would have softened the Almighty’s mood, so that He would have given Adam and Eve a mere ticking-off for scrumping. But no: that stroll ended in
I complained mildly seven years ago that the Court Circular, the official source for the doings of the British monarchy, referred to the Queen as ‘The Queen’. It made her look like a work of fiction. The Royal Household is at it still, referring to ‘The Princess Royal’, ‘The Royal Navy’ and even ‘The Royal
I have decided to divorce my wife after 31 years on scientific grounds. Though perfectly happy, on reassessing my original decision to enter matrimony it has emerged that at no point was that choice subject to peer review, there was no randomised control trial, the experiment could not be replicated and the data-set on which
Lester Piggott was famous for pinching other jockeys’ rides. He used his friendship with owner Ivan Allan to have Luca Cumani’s regular rider Darrel McHargue ‘jocked off’ Commanche Run in the 1984 St Leger. The disgusted McHargue said that he would spend the day playing tennis rather than watch the race, which duly supplied Piggott
