Life

High life

How Monte Carlo went to hell

I now find resorts more fun out of season. Civilised tourists are as rare as an intelligent Hollywood movie, so local talent will do nicely, and to hell with the vulgar jet set. Gstaad is perfect in June and July, March and April, as are St Moritz, the Ionian Islands, and Patmos, my next destination.

Low life

I’ve been bitten by the TikTok bug

In theory TikTok knows nothing about me. I have posted two videos: one of my grandsons kicking a football in a garden, the other of their much younger selves running through the dry desert house at Paignton zoo. They are the most unremarkable clips imaginable. The last time I looked, the football being kicked in

Real life

The Lycra louts are back

‘That will be £7.50 please,’ said the girl in the bakery to the cyclist in black Lycra after he put a sandwich and a drink on the counter. By way of reply, he slapped down a fiver. He still had his aerodynamic hat on, and the straps and flaps on his booty feet. Click clack.

Wild life

Wine Club

Wine Club: six stunning alternatives to French Chardonnay

Order today. Poor Mrs Ray finally cracked. Ever the stoic, she paid no heed to the life-challenging heatwaves and associated power cuts. She disregarded the Covid that raged through her loved ones and took hours-long delays in and out of Gatwick with her usual eudaimonic tranquillity of mind. The baggage chaos at Heathrow, the melting

No sacred cows

My Icelandic holiday with Kevin and Perry

I’m currently on holiday in Iceland. I say ‘holiday’, but I’m with my three teenage sons so it’s more like being a supply teacher on a school trip. The scenery looks like a series of illustrations in a geography textbook – volcano, tectonic plate, glacier – but so far the boys aren’t impressed. ‘Every day

Spectator Sport

I’ve seen the future of motor racing, and it’s quiet

Are petrolheads’ days numbered? I only ask because having just been introduced to the quiet, petrol-less world of Formula E, I’m rather taken by it. Apart from anything else, part of the fun of spectating is making your feelings heard, which isn’t easy against the 130 decibels generated by F1 engines. The Formula E world

Dear Mary

Food

Escaping the memory of Liz Truss: Noci reviewed

Sometimes this column has a guest reviewer: a dining companion. It was Liz Truss in late summer 2011, for the now long closed Bistro du Vin in Dean Street: a Hotel du Vin without a hotel, and so bereft. It had a bookshelf on which all the books were painted neon, and they flew out

Mind your language

The etymological ingredients of ‘flageons’

‘Don’t you know the answer?’ asked my husband with mock surprise, throwing over to me from his armchair a copy of the Daily Telegraph. The question, from a reader on the Letters page, was what Mrs Beeton meant by flageons of veal. I had no idea and nor did the Oxford English Dictionary in 20

Poems

The Station

So much steam and shafts of sooty light. The porters look like Laurel and Hardy and I like the train driver’s leathery smell, the glow of hot coals, the crowded platforms. Our mums and dads are on the move, escaping wars, seeking lost weekends, travelling somewhere sad along with the dead. When I blink whole

How It Was and Is

Earth’s moon is never new, There’s no replacing her. Either you see all her wintered face   Or she sends scraps Through bandages of shade. She doesn’t want your talk   Assuaging, failing to assuage, Only your sleepless eyes As she gropes her way   Across the cobbled stars, Clutches at sun To heal her

Please Don’t Bomb the Ghost of My Brother

He’s riding a white horse. I was going to say he was riding into the forest. It’s more like a wood, a large wood with sycamore trees and silver birch and if you look you can see a Weeping Willow. There are deer in the undergrowth watching carefully and there are a lot of small