Gstaad As everyone knows, the balder, shorter and more repellent the seducer, the more lavish the lunch he produces for the dumb blonde. Lunch is that symptom of decadence and dalliance for which there is no longer room in today’s functional world. These days, a rare civilised lunch has only two purposes: the seduction of
It’s been all go. After breakfast Treena brought a basin of warm water, a bar of soap and a face flannel into the bedroom. Not wanting to cede control of my personal hygiene, on top of all the other recent great and small losses of personal autonomy, even down to cutting up my own food,
The lady who walks her dog past my horses every day was obviously eager to tell me something. I have exchanged only a few polite words with her in the past but as she made her way slowly towards my field gate, she lingered, cutting a lonely figure. ‘Let’s go and talk to that lady,’
Mrs Ray can’t stop humming. She loves this time of year. It might be sheeting down and there might be a massive leak in our roof which none of five different builders has managed to fix, but all she notices are the daffs in full bloom, the fluffy pink cherry blossom and her treasured magnolia
On Monday, a bill was passed by the National Assembly in France that will give courts the power to prevent parents posting pictures or videos of their kids online. The courts will decide, based on the child’s age and maturity, if the consent of both parents is needed, or whether the child’s approval is sufficient.
Q. American clients emailed saying they were coming to Europe this spring and inviting us and another couple on a fantastic-sounding boat trip in the eastern Mediterranean which we rather shamelessly accepted. Last week I got a further email saying, as the holiday was approaching, it was time to sort out the financial side of
Some decades ago, there was a Tory MP called John Stokes: eventually, and deservedly, Sir John. He had no interest in holding ministerial office, which was just as well, because he would never have been on any whips’ list for preferment. John was a right-winger: a very right-winger. I once told him that he was
‘Can you read Dickens’s handwriting?’ asked a blogger. Underneath was a picture of his manuscript for chapter 23 of Oliver Twist. It looked easy enough to read: ‘If the village had been beautiful at first it was now in the full slow and luxuriance of its richness.’ No, slow couldn’t be right. Must be flow.
If I still remember the termsprotasis and apodosisfrom Latin grammar days at school, why can’t I exchange this knowledgewith its minimal relevanceto my subsequent life, in which sentences trot along quite wellunparsed and without their clausesneeding precise designations, for instant access to the namesof acquaintances approaching,all smiles, at social gatherings?
Some excellent thinking this month from the Italian complexity theorist Luca Dellanna: Two days ago, the EU parliament approved a ban on new fossil fuel cars starting in 2035. While I like the idea of greener cars, I’m not too fond of a fast and complete transition. Let me use the metaphor of the
Aficionados came to this year’s Cheltenham Festival hoping to celebrate in Champion Hurdle contestant Constitution Hill a super-horse, a horse being spoken of after only five races as a potential Arkle. We left exhilarated by the exploits of three. Looking at Constitution Hill in a field of grazers, you would not pick him out as
