New York Goodbye, snow-capped peaks; hello, swampy brown East River. So long, fresh alpine air; greetings to choking diesel fumes. Adios, cows and cuckoo clocks; welcome, filthy island packed to the gills with angry, mean, squat Trump haters who live in decrepit buildings they share with rats. Yes, I’m back in the city that
I said my goodbyes and went outside with my trolley bag to wait for the taxi. While waiting, I looked across the sheep field at the sea. The wind direction had changed from due east to south-west and the surface of the sea, formerly turbulent, was placid. For the past ten weeks I’d been my
‘Don’t touch anything sharp. Don’t saw anything or drill anything or sand anything,’ said the builder boyfriend as he left the house. ‘I generally agree,’ I said, mindful of the fact that this is what the keeper used to say. ‘But I’m disappointed you include sanding, because I think I made a very good job
It is the morning after the Bercow before, and it seems pretty much certain that there won’t be a meaningful vote 3 until after the European Council. Whatever is decided there on an extension, should be enough for the government to say that the package is different enough to justify bringing it back for another
Here we go again. Another woman is facing a police investigation – and potentially, a jail sentence — because she wrote things online about sex, gender and a person who changed gender. So far, so familiar, but this tale has a significant feature. The woman is a journalist. A British police force is investigating a
A frequent complaint heard from Muslim communities in recent years has been irritation and anger over any suggestion that Muslims – as a whole – need to apologise for attacks carried out in the name of their religion. I have sympathy for this irritation, tying as it does innocent people to the actions of guilty
On Monday, the government announced that Penny Mordaunt, the Minister for Women and Equalities as well as the Secretary of State for International Development, had appointed an advisory panel on LGBT health. Needless to say, it immediately attracted criticism on social media for being insufficiently diverse: the 12-person panel is 90 per cent white, 66
Outside the rugby superhighway of the A316, linking Richmond, Rosslyn Park, the Quins and HQ, it’s hard to imagine anyone who cares about rugby not on their feet cheering Scotland’s miraculous recovery in the Calcutta Cup finale to the Six Nations. To say England are disliked by the rest of the rugby world doesn’t really
Q. My wife’s closest friend and her husband visit us every couple of months or so. Without fail he will make lewd comments and is not even deterred in public places, where he will speak loudly so that others will hear what he considers to be witty ‘end of the pier’ humour. He is never
I love the drug of television, which is slightly less awful than the drug of social media because the conversation is one way, and so I have been rewatching Whitechapel. It’s a drama series about murder, and possibly the supernatural, set in Whitechapel, and it is slightly rude to its residents because it posits the
‘Does a dark lantern give out black light?’ asked my husband as if in delirium. He was reading a book I would have been enjoying if he hadn’t grabbed it. It is called 1776, being about London in that year, when Britain was losing its Empire of America. It’s by Justin Lovill, who ten years
