‘And they lived happily ever after. The end.’ ‘Again.’ My poor father, bidden to read the story of the moment over and over again. Long after I could read perfectly well for myself, at bedtime I needed to hear his quiet monotone that never failed to send me to sleep, just as, though my taste
‘I’m making a hedgehog rescue ladder,’ said the builder boyfriend, who was on his knees in the farmyard, drilling a series of mini rungs into place on two mini rails. The builder boyfriend keeps going to check but the hedgehog seems very happy, snoozing away in its comfy box I should have known. Why did
Kenya’s Rift Valley The story of Kenya’s Europeans such as the 5th Baron Delamere, who died recently, is one of hard work. In late 1897 his grandfather, the 3rd Baron, rode his horse up the Rift Valley’s eastern escarpment into the highlands. For a year he had been trekking through Somalia’s burning deserts and now
Does the United Kingdom need a First Amendment? That’s a question I’ve been thinking about a lot recently, given the government’s unrelenting assault on free speech. If Britons enjoyed the same constitutional protections as Americans, it would have been more difficult to prosecute anyone over the summer for social media posts ‘intending to stir up
Q. I have a very dear friend who lives in Scotland, so we rarely see each other. Before the internet existed, we would call each other on the landline two or three times a year for a pleasant catch-up, and meet sporadically. However, since the onslaught of social media, my friend has taken to sending
The medics would have one believe that alcohol is a depressant. That may be their conclusion drawn from test tubes in laboratories. Fortunately, however, it bears little relation to real life, which is just as well. The world has rarely been in greater need of antidepressants, in every form. One tries to tease American friends
‘This is interesting, darling,’ my husband called out from beside his whisky while I was doing the washing-up. The interesting thing was in a short black-and-white film made by John Betjeman for television in 1968 and now on BBC iPlayer called Contrasts: Marble Arch to Edgware. The camera showed him in the bare interior of
Hoi An I rock in my hammock much of the day.Scooters shoot by like dragonflies.Diesel aromas. Up in the tree they’re cutting down coconuts.The wife’s pulling noodles.Small fires in the paddy fields. The frogs are rehearsing.They’re performing Uncle Ho’s frog opera later this evening.Yellow tree viper slithers by. I dream of Lord Nandi – the
Hong Kong A fan on the ceiling. The parlour full of drapes and towels. A pianist plays behind the curtain. They call him Liverpool. The cat mooches. The woman puts her hands together in salutation. A man on the chair, legs stretched out. The woman kneads his feet. The boss takes the money. Sometimes yawning,
The legendary music producer Rick Rubin once asked me why I had never moved to the United States. The answer, I think, comes down to an important trade-off: quantity of earnings vs quality of consumption. Historically, once you had a job, there was a limit to the lifestyle choices you could make Whereas the United
