The theatre was a converted Anglican church. Was there perhaps a lingering, antagonistic Christian spirit at work here tonight? Or was there perhaps a rival medium in the audience, blocking the channels? These were very real possibilities, said Paul, barely suppressing his anger. But he rather thought that the root cause was the collective scepticism
Three hours to go before the new season kicks off and I’m sitting in the beer garden in my new claret-and-blue Fred Perry polo shirt. Three hours to go before the new season kicks off and I’m sitting in the beer garden in my new claret-and-blue Fred Perry polo shirt. I’ve got a credit-card-style match
During the wettest July since records began, I was completely dry. As usual, not drinking made me angry and withdrawn. As usual, I had homicidal urges and couldn’t read. And, as usual, cleaning and polishing was the only way I could distract myself. I cleaned and polished the floors, windows, furniture, tools, ornaments and, of
My boy’s mother’s husband was plastering a wall last week when a sack of lime fell off the scaffold and landed on his dog… My boy’s mother’s husband was plastering a wall last week when a sack of lime fell off the scaffold and landed on his dog, which was lying at the foot of
One of the main drawbacks to living on the south Devon coast is the number of drivers on the road who are over 80. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be there. One of the main drawbacks to living on the south Devon coast is the number of drivers on the road who are over 80.
The moment the announcer stated that the 9.05 to Newquay was leaving from platform four, virtually the entire crowd on the concourse at Paddington station arose like a Zulu impi and ran towards it. Platoons of young totty, hampered by pink and lilac suitcases as heavy as themselves, screamed with excitement and frustration as they
When I was six or seven I went up to London with my father in his car. As we passed through Whitechapel in the East End, he pointed out a pub called the Blind Beggar. ‘That’s where Ronald Kray shot George Cornell,’ he said. There was an element of something approaching pride in his voice,
My sister was round at our house at the weekend, trying to give up cannabis after 35 years. It’s her idea but she was absolutely furious about it and her mouth was twisted with vexation, even when she lay asleep on the sofa. On Saturday afternoon me and my boy thought it best to be well out
I’m back in the gym. I put it down to the lighter evenings and the rising sap. It’s been so long since I last worked out that I had forgotten what the gym card in my wallet looked like. ‘Sorry, sir, we don’t take library cards,’ said the woman on the reception desk. ‘Where’ve you
We love this old house and can’t imagine living anywhere else. But needs must and we’ve finally bitten the bullet — the house is on the market from today. Twenty years we’ve been here. For 15 of these it was a home for nine elderly residents run by my parents. Now everyone’s dust except me
Since my boy passed his driving test, just one month after his 17th birthday, I no longer drive the ten miles to his mother’s house to pick him up at weekends. Now he comes and goes between his parents as he pleases, and the weekly mug of tea and a cigarette at her kitchen table,
At Cheltenham this year I was once again a guest of racing tipster and bon viveur Colonel Pinstripe. The Colonel is famous for his rambling, gossipy, sexist, often libellous telephone tipster line, the avowed goal of which (seldom attained) is to send callers home with ‘bulging trousers’. Serious, high-rolling gamblers who ring up his tipster
We didn’t get to Sheffield till after dark. But when the Renault Mégane drew up as we waited beside the station taxi rank, the boredom and discomfort of the interminable train journey was instantly forgotten. Our dog-eared second-hand car-price guide stated that a 1998 Renault Mégane 1.6 Sport was worth anything between £800 and £1,500.
Supporting West Ham this season has been so full of drama and surprise, it’s been like living in the Book of Revelation. A brief summary. Last season the newly promoted team of Young Turks put together by our decent manager Alan Pardew feared no one. We finished a vertiginous ninth in the Premiership and got
During the last week of my stay in the Alpujarras, the almond trees flowered. It happened almost overnight. There was an exceptionally warm afternoon and evening, and next morning the trees were foaming with pink and white petals, and very pretty it was, too. The day they flowered was my birthday. To mark it, I went
Las Alpujarras There’s a man in one of the high mountain villages who lives with a cow and spends much of his time studying the cloud formations. By all accounts he can predict the weather for months, even years ahead with some accuracy, a skill passed down from father to son. For several months now,
Las Alpujarras When I was in Spain at Christmas, I bumped into the guide who had led the walking tour of the Sierra Nevada that I’d been on nearly a decade ago. I met him and his wife by chance in the narrow street. He recognised me and invited me to join them at a
The check-in queue was constrained by portable barriers into one of those snaking, pointless and unexpectedly intimate queues that are all the rage at British airports. Every time I made the 180-degree turn, I found myself once again face to face with these two elderly women. They were short and stout and festooned with gold
Winston Churchill’s secretary John Colville records that one of the first signs that the great man’s phenomenal memory was beginning to fail him, and that dementia was setting in, was when he made the intriguing faux pas of addressing a man by the name of Brownjohn as Mr Shorthorn. A sure sign that the mental
It must be very dispiriting to be born into this world and find that you are an intensively reared hen. But maybe, if a representative of the human race explained gently to you in chicken language that human beings are the apex of creation, and chickens commodities, and that this, in a roundabout way, accounts for