As I came around the corner from the gents’ lavatory, head down, concentrating on rebuttoning my flies, a manual skill I’ve yet to master completely, I accidentally barged into a man with a hawk perched on his arm. He was a calm, friendly man of about my age. His hawk was magnificently liveried in brown
Three or four times a week I walk down the road and rap twice with the heavy knocker on Margery’s home-made front door. Always twice, with the same force and tempo, so that she and the dog know that it’s me. And the dog, Joe, an old fat collie, always replies with joyful, musical barking
All my life I’ve tried to acquaint myself with trees by learning which ones are which, but the task seems beyond me. Wouldn’t it be praiseworthy, for example, to be able to recognise the 32 native species of broad-leafed tree — willow, oak, lime, ash, wych elm, and so forth — and the three conifer
This morning, when I woke up, I reached out and pressed the button on my bedside radio and the first word that came out of it was the word ‘tolerance’. The radio was tuned to the Today programme. It isn’t the first time that the first word I’ve heard has been ‘tolerance’. For the past
Jeremy Clarke on his Low Life I was looking at trail running shoes in a specialist running shoe shop, intending to buy. The young woman who sprang forward to assist was fit, lean and agile. She exuded tiptop mental and physical health. Helena she was called. She was Czech. I, on the other hand, was
At the end of the affair she gathered together everything of mine that was lying about in her flat, packed it all into the suitcase I’d left behind, and left a message to tell me to come and pick it up. I didn’t return the call. When we finally met again last week, at The
Bank holiday Saturday afternoon and I’m standing in a jam-packed railway carriage bound for Cardiff in Wales. If I lift my head, my face is in my nearest neighbour’s face, so I’m contemplating my feet. A Welsh woman somewhere is holding a long and intimate telephone conversation in a voice loud enough for all in
Cass Pennant and his wife and son and son’s girlfriend came round the other day for a cream tea. Cass used to be — still is — a top ‘face’ in the world of football hooliganism. When I was a kid I used to travel all over the country to watch West Ham and would
Every day that I can, I take an elderly, obese, arthritic collie called Joe for a walk. I take him out because he’s a likeable old chap, and his owner, Margery, is too frail and bent with arthritis to take him out herself. Margery lives in a house on top of a 300-foot-high cliff and
Kate Moss was due to walk out of the door and into the arrivals lounge at Terminal 5 at any moment, the photographer said. He was ready with his camera and scanning the emerging passengers with a practised eye. He could tell that these people coming out now were just off the LA flight, he
I turned the key in the ignition. Nothing. I switched on the radio. Nothing. Flat battery. Even the clock had stopped. I checked the switches to see if I’d left a light on. Nothing. I rang the AA. ‘Someone will be with you in up to 80 minutes,’ said the controller after he’d taken down
The woman hired by the National Trust to see that nothing is pilfered from the upper floor at Clouds Hill, and to answer the visitors’ questions, knew almost nothing, she told me, about Colonel T.E. Lawrence, whose house it was from 1923 until he died as a result of a motorbike accident in May 1935.
Dartmoor, said the box ad. One-bedroom cottage. Five hundred pounds a month. I called the number and an elderly woman answered. I’m interested in renting the cottage, I said. Is it still available? Are you single? she said. I am, I said. You don’t have a girlfriend? Sadly not, I said. This was good, she said,
It’s half-past four in the morning and I’ve been sitting in the casualty department since two. I’m alone in the waiting room. Behind the glass partition two receptionists, one male, one female, are playing a video game on one of the computer screens. Earlier, when I was on the verge of losing it because we’d
I have a recurring nightmare. I’m driving or walking or cycling, I’m not sure which, up a winding, muddy country lane. At a sharp, uphill bend, I’m overwhelmed by terror of what lies beyond and can go no further. Freudians, I imagine, would interpret this as a psychic utterance of repressed homoeroticism. I know exactly
At the local swimming-pool, various sessions throughout the week are reserved for the exclusive use of women, schoolchildren, naturists, beginners, GP referrals, naturist GP referrals, youths, water-polo players and early risers. Because I happen to be none of these things, the only sessions open to me until recently were the so-called public swimming sessions, which
I can go for fortnight without a drink — three weeks at a push. After that I begin to feel disconnected. I try to ignore the feeling, hoping it’s a symptom of Seasonal Affective Disorder, or the onset of a cold, or overdoing it at the gym. But it persists and, after several days, changes
‘Whatever happens,’ said a bloke on the team at the next table rancourously, ‘we mustn’t let the students win.’ I’d not taken part in a pub quiz before and I’d always imagined them to be polite, melancholy affairs. This one, when we arrived ten minutes before the start, was noisy, chaotic and overcrowded. The students
Thinkers living in the nearest market town are anxious about something called ‘Peak Oil’. Last week they held a public meeting on the subject: To Fly Or Not To Fly? The venue was a centuries-old meeting room beautifully decorated in the Tudor style, with an elaborate moulded plaster ceiling and monumental stone fireplace. About 30
What a depressingly sunless month January was, here on this rainswept Devon peninsula! No sun, and purple sprouting broccoli for lunch every day as there’s a glut of it and not much else. The entire village is suffering from seasonal affective disorder and tortured by flatulence. And we’ve still got February and possibly March to