Low life

Two old carrier bags at the back of the cupboard I’d not noticed before. I dragged them out to see what was in them. It was old letters from the war and sepia photographs, hundreds of them. Detritus from Uncle Jack, whom we looked after in his last years when he couldn’t remember anything and

The emblazoned ship was just in. Foot passengers had yet to appear in the terminal’s arrivals shed, which was silent and deserted except for this wonderfully fat, moon-faced man taking up all the room on the only bench provided for meeters and greeters. He was perched at the exact centre, his legs as wide apart as they’d

Another reason why Trev should have gone on the stage instead of becoming a builder, apart from his love of the limelight, is the wonderful expressiveness of his face. Now, merely by giving me a level stare and bulging his eyes at me, he’s conveying that he is about to lose his struggle to keep the

My boy left school at the end of last term, aged 16. He can read and write after a fashion, and he knows something about the rise and fall of the Nazi party and how to make delicious scones, so all in all a good result. After he’d been at home for a week his

If ever I was passing the Courtauld Institute in London with five minutes to spare, I’d chuck the woman behind the desk a fiver, jog up the 300-year-old spiral staircase and go and look at a picture by Wassily Kandinsky called ‘Rapallo: Grey Day’. I know nothing about painting and I knew nothing about Kandinsky

The only cinema within a 30-mile radius of my home is an Art cinema in a 400-year-old barn. A thatched 400-year-old barn. If the nonsense being shown is the latest cutting-edge nonsense, cottage-based intellectuals flock there from miles around. And to see these intellectuals en masse in the bar before the film is to begin

Given all the hoo-hah surrounding Prince Charles’s decision to allow a granite stone memorial to be placed in a secret and remote spot on Dartmoor in memory of his friend the poet Ted Hughes, I expected to encounter something along the lines of Cleopatra’s needle when I went to look for it last week. The

I’ve got my ticket. I can’t quite believe how I managed it — I keep studying it under a magnifying glass and holding it up to the light to make sure it’s real — but I’ve got one. And like a lover who has to introduce the subject of the loved one into every conversation,

On Saturday morning I woke early. I was in a strange bed, in an unfamiliar bedroom, fully clothed, with my shoes on. Curled up beside me was a woman I didn’t recognise. I lifted the covers and peeked underneath to see if she had anything on. She was wearing a blue dress. Tilting my head gave me

There were four of us last week in the caravan near the beach in north Cornwall for our annual family holiday: me, my boy, my boy’s grandma and my boy’s little half-sister, Amy, aged ten. We were very excited to be bringing Amy this year. Her Mum has agoraphobia and hasn’t been out of the

I was in the gents at the Black Lion in Plaistow, east London, standing at one of the two urinals, when it hit me. I was thinking about my Mum. She hasn’t been well. First it was a chest infection, then the violence of the coughing fits put her back out, rendering her out of

I feel sorry for Gorgeous George. It was a terrific idea to go on Big Brother and turn himself into a popular icon and get his political ideas across to a young audience. Full marks for that. And it might have worked if our close scrutiny of his interaction with a random group of strangers

On the second day of the New Year, I rose, dressed, arranged myself on my crutches and hobbled down the road to the station. It was wonderful to be outside again. (Never give credence to ideas that occur to you indoors, said Nietzsche, which I think I’ll take as my New Year’s resolution.) At the

A special-needs bloke comes to our gym sometimes. He can’t speak, and he’s deaf, I think, and he doesn’t walk too well, but the disciplined intensity of his work-out is an example to us all. A carer follows him around to advise, guide and watch over him; an elderly man with a neatly trimmed beard

We’d been excommunicated from the eBay auction site for over a year. Non-payment of fees. They said I owed £4.17; I maintained that I’d paid it. And because it’s easier to get in touch with God than it is with the eBay administration, that’s how things stood until a fortnight ago when I caved in

I’ve gone round to Sharon’s and walked into a stand-up row between Sharon and her brother in their kitchen. They’re yelling at each other and the dog’s going barmy. She’s a slut and he’s a dick is the argument in a nutshell. The phone rings. I make myself useful and answer it. It’s Trevor, Sharon’s

My friend and I arranged to meet outside the Boleyn pub, which is on the corner of Green Street and the Barking Road, 15 minutes before kick-off. I was about five minutes late and he wasn’t there. I had both our match-day tickets, so I couldn’t go in without him. I stood in the pub

The active volcano Stromboli, one of the Aeolian islands, rises out of the sea off the north-east coast of Sicily. It is forbidden to make the three-hour trek to the top without a guide, so I signed on with a chaperoned party of 30 tourists for a night climb. Our piratical-looking guide was a fierce

It’s believed by some that the town we use for shopping has something therapeutic in the air. Those who have looked into it go further. They say that the town stands beneath an intersection of ley lines, which subtly energises the inhabitants. This belief that occult energies permeate the town attracts to the area people