Life

High life

Last orders

Gstaad The fin de saison feeling is like the end of term in boarding school. Bittersweet. At school, one was cocooned from the big, bad outside world; here in Gstaad, far from the crowds and bustle, one has time to ponder the melting snows and dream about one’s youth. Closing day at the Eagle Club

Low life

Village of the damned

Sea mist and a continual downpour: even the week-old lambs in the fields looked fed up. We were scheduled to meet outside the church at two o’clock. At two minutes to, I was the only person there waiting and I wondered whether the guided tour of the village, led by a local archaeologist, had been

Real life

Caught on the hop

‘What’s your call about?’ said the switchboard operator at the Department for the Environment. ‘You don’t need to know that. Just please put me through. They’re expecting me.’ ‘But I have to say what your call is about.’ ‘Well, my call is about having just spoken to the minister and him not having time to

Wild life

Shooting the breeze

Malindi, Kenya I’m at Malindi’s Driftwood beach bar, nursing a Tusker beer. I’m gazing at the Indian Ocean. The day was hot: 110 in the shade. Now at dusk, a cool zephyr rises from the sea. The moon climbs. Lateen dhow sails puff towards the fishing grounds. The bar fills with surfers and deep-sea anglers.

More from life

My father would be pleased about the launch of a British space agency

Just as a stopped clock is right twice a day, Gordon Brown’s government has finally done something worth celebrating. Britain is launching an executive space agency that will take control of the money spent on space by the different government departments and science funding bodies. It is a belated response to the surprising success of

Dear Mary

Dear Mary | 27 March 2010

Q. I am at a loss as to how to deal with a kind offer I’ve had from an artist to paint my portrait for free. Even though the artist kindly offers to arrange sittings around my schedule and work pro bono, etc, I am also pathologically impatient and the idea of ‘sitting’ at all,

Mind your language

Mind your language | 27 March 2010

This year may see the extinction of a word, like the last elephant in the Knysna forests of South Africa. The word is might. ‘If they had been wearing lifejackets,’ the radio reporter says, ‘their lives may have been saved.’ But they weren’t and they weren’t, so in our book it should have been: ‘Their

The Wiki Man

The Wiki Man | 27 March 2010

I don’t know if you have ever been to Paris, but it’s basically a kind of London for girls. I generally try to avoid the place, as you can’t get a decent curry and there’s nothing in the shops unless you are an anorexic dwarf. But a couple of times a year I used to