Life

High life

High life | 28 June 2018

Schloss Wolfsegg   I was watching two very old men slowly approaching the open doors of the Pilatus airplane I was leaning against when it dawned on me that they were the two pilots who were about to fly me to my daughter’s wedding. The one called Willy extended his hand, as did Alex, a

Low life

Low life | 28 June 2018

I heard the last and final call for flight 6114 to Nice while shuffling forward in the unexpectedly long queue for security. My chances of catching it now looked slim. They looked slimmer still when my bag was nudged into the line of those needing to be searched, and I despaired at my rotten luck.

Real life

Real life | 28 June 2018

Finally, I got my hands on a gun. About the size of a sawn-off shotgun it was, just under 20in long, a fine specimen of a weapon. It was surprisingly light and easy to wield. I held it and thought of all that I might now accomplish. Everything I had dreamed of could now become

Wild life

Wild life | 28 June 2018

Laikipia, Kenya A minotaur head glowers at me through the bathroom window while I am brushing my teeth in the morning. It’s George the bull, who wants his ears scratched. After I get dressed, it’s time to select a cattle stick, known here as a finbo, from an umbrella stand stuffed with crooks, wands, withies,

Wine Club

Two years on: six of the worst Brexit predictions

It’s just over two years since the UK voted to leave the European Union in what proved to be a shock result that caught both politicians and commentators off guard. Unlike Lord Ashdown’s hat-eating, or Matthew Goodwin’s book eating after the two most recent General Elections, many didn’t get held accountable to their off the

No sacred cows

The problem with deciding things are ‘problematic’

A controversy has erupted in Folkestone over a forthcoming screening of Zulu, the classic British war film. A charity has arranged to show the film at the Silver Screen Cinema on Saturday to raise money for members of the armed forces and their families, but the event may have to be cancelled following a letter

Sport

Never mind VAR – this is a fabulous World Cup

Let’s talk about VAR, why don’t we? We love the World Cup though the football is getting bonkers. The scoring of a goal or a penalty decision or just a foul is merely a starting point for negotiation, as players compete to be the quickest with the ‘check the TV’ hand signals after every tiny

Dear Mary

Dear Mary | 28 June 2018

Q. A close friend is an elderly writer who has contributed, as a monthly columnist, to the same publication for many years. His powers are undimmed. However, he has not moved with the times and will not self-edit. I have had it from a mole that the much younger sub-editors on the magazine, one of

Food

A Tudor feast

Sargeant’s Mess (2018) is a tourist catcher’s net in restaurant form by the Tower of London (c. 1078). It has views of the wide, fat Thames — an old man now, like Falstaff — on its slow journey to Southend-on-Sea. The City of London grows like a glass parasite, but it can’t do anything about the

Mind your language

Azulejos

A friend sent a nice postcard from Portugal showing the outside of a church covered with old blue tiles. She said it reminded her of delft ware. That word has its own historical peculiarity. We used to call it delf, as you can find in Dickens and his contemporaries. That is because the town of