‘Good for you. Amazing. I should do the same.’ ‘You must feel great. Lucky you.’ This is what I hear when I tell people I haven’t touched alcohol for a year or more. Behind their bland words, I detect an air of pity and bafflement, even a hint of contempt. I know what they’re thinking
‘This is a New York strut,’ said the builder boyfriend as he wedged in place a steel bar, bracing shut our bedroom door to prevent us being murdered in our beds. We had been settling in for the night. The BB had been about to close the farmyard gates when a car swept inside them
Africa Orientale Italiana ‘Where did you get those glasses?’ a stylish Italian gentleman asked me, gesturing at the acetate L.G.R. frames I wear for my myopia. I said Nairobi. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘I make them.’ Luca Gnecchi Ruscone and I then had a conversation that brought back fond memories of adventures across the Horn of
It has been a punishing, fuzzy few days, thanks to a brace of Spectator Wine-maker Lunches, a Spectator Champagne Dinner, an uproarious Spectator Writer’s Dinner with the mighty Rory Sutherland and several vital cocktail bars to investigate. How does that song go about nights I can’t remember with friends I can’t forget? It was a
An ex-copper who blogs as Dominic Adler – not his real name – came up with a good phrase this week to describe where Britain is heading under this increasingly authoritarian regime: ‘Like North Korea, but run by David Brent.’ It echoed my own attempts to sum up the atmosphere in Keir Starmer’s Britain in
Q. I have been working in London as a receptionist in a private members’ club and consequently have had the opportunity to meet and chat to a number of single men – always while sitting safely behind my desk. Now I have left the job, one of these members has started direct messaging me and
We were assembled to taste Chilean wines assisted by magnificent Scottish food, courtesy of the Scottish embassy in London, otherwise known as Boisdale. But there was a problem of etiquette. As we were dealing with Chilean matters, I thought that we should propose a toast to a great Chilean and a staunch ally of this
I’ve heard people using back-to-back housing to mean terraces separated by back yards. But strictly, back-to-back houses are built against a party wall and face opposite ways. Byelaws after the passing of the Public Health Act 1875 prevented their continued construction. In Birmingham, four of the city’s former thousands of back-to-backs are preserved by the
For Rebecca and Hamish Along the dale to the wedding church the fields are fluffy with meadowsweet – ditches and verges foaming with it. Perhaps a tanker has overturned, and shed its load of banana milkshake? No, that’s not it; something more honeyed, more artificially confected; a familiar ingredient from your pantry at
Last night my wife and I went to Asda, And – among other things – spent eight pence on a Bag for Life. The bag is guaranteed to last us a lifetime. Every day we will look fondly at the bag, And recall that evening, All those years ago, When we held hands and strolled
The Romans never invented the stirrup. What we call a ‘chest of drawers’ was unknown before the late 17th century – before which time you had to store your valued possessions in a deep coffer or chest. The doorknob did not exist until 1878. The tea bag was invented by accident in the early 20th
