I missed a very good friend’s 60th birthday party in the shires, but thus avoided the disgraceful anti-Pontiff showing off by the cheap, publicity-seeking and repellent poseurs that signed up to the orchestrated campaign against the wonderful Pope Benedict. New York I missed a very good friend’s 60th birthday party in the shires, but thus
The chaps thought I was mad going to Stoke. Several reasons. Number one was that the match was being shown live on telly and could be watched in the comfort of our local pub. Number two was the fact of our poor form. We’ve played four and lost four. And reason three was that it
The last time I hired a car it nearly killed me. This is because Avis Geneva, in its infinite wisdom, issued me with a 4×4 and waved me off to a ski resort cheerily insisting that the great hulking thing had snow tyres and that as such I should feel free to climb every mountain,
Rift Valley The patriarch Jacob Mukhamia Omanyo, grandfather of my friend Celestina, was born in 1888 in western Kenya. For 119 years he lived a healthy life, falling sick only once in 1964, after a spider bit him. He married five wives, the first in 1924, his last in 1975. At his death of typhoid
Are architects the new Muslims? They certainly seem to be giving the mullahs a run for their money in the sensitivity stakes. A couple of weeks ago, I had the temerity to question whether a shiny new building actually improved a school’s academic results, and as a result I have incurred the wrath of the
Your problems solved Q. I was recently at my local library with my two-year-old daughter. A woman sat next to me with a daughter of about the same age. In the spirit of polite conversation she asked me what my daughter was called. When I told her, she looked absolutely horrified and exclaimed loudly that
Sounding, in this respect alone, like a High Court judge, my husband asked: ‘What are HobNobs?’ Sounding, in this respect alone, like a High Court judge, my husband asked: ‘What are HobNobs?’ For once I felt like agreeing with the assumption behind the question: that there are names for foodstuffs that we cannot be expected
