For many, the first Baileys of the year heralds the start of the festive season; to others, it’s a drink to be consumed only when the temperature drops into single digits. A bottle lasts up to 24 months — opened or unopened, refrigerated or not — and it is an essential component of any worthwhile
I was 19 when I became a Hamleys elf. The closest thing I can compare it to is military service. Every elf was given a uniform and it was our responsibility to make sure it looked presentable. It was green and red, with matching shoes and hat, and striped tights that didn’t keep out the
The mullet is back in fashion, which is proof that true evil never dies. What’s more, the trend is being driven by public-school boys. I only noticed its return last month, when I attended a local ball in East Sussex frequented by the type of people you’d expect at a local ball in East Sussex.
You can get drunk on tiramisu. I have done it. It takes two portions at least. You drink (I mean eat) the Marsala wine and the rum — and then must be escorted, tenderly, to the bus stop. I don’t usually drink alcohol. If I did, I would smash up restaurants. But I do eat
Many people love to hate bagpipes. Everyone from William Shakespeare to Alfred Hitchcock has held them in contempt. For some, they are almost a form of punishment. Last week, a frustrated motorist blasted bagpipe music in the faces of Insulate Britain protestors on the M25 before he was stopped by police. Most pipers will tell
You see them everywhere in vast orange mounds: pumpkins, piles of pumpkins, large enough to be turned into a coach in Whole Foods, a bargain 65p in M&S. Halloween, in terms of retail, means orange for pumpkin and black for witches. Round our way, a pumpkin outside the front door means that the household is
The gin craze of recent years has reached a scale that would have horrified Hogarth. You can now buy strawberry, raspberry, rhubarb, blueberry and lime gins in supermarkets. For me, though, there is only one flavoured variety worth bothering with: sloe gin. Where the rest are novelties, this is a staple dating back to the
Last weekend, for the 54th time, hundreds of competitors met to compete for the title of world conker champion in the village of Southwick in Northamptonshire. King Conker was there to oversee the proceedings. Jasmine Tetley beat the men’s champion Ady Hurrell in the Grand Final to retain the title she won in 2019. There
We keep hearing about the importance of levelling up. Architects tasked with the responsibility of building new homes, however, might want to consider levelling across. With land prices at a premium, bungalows may not appear to be the most prudent use of limited space but lateral living has plenty to recommend it. Originally built for
There aren’t many countries where Coca-Cola isn’t the most popular drink. Scotland is one of them. And unlike some of the others — such as North Korea or Cuba — it’s not because Coke isn’t sold. It’s because of the popularity of Irn Bru, Scotland’s ‘other national drink’. Few soft drinks have such a devoted
Last week a gentle Norfolk waterway got into trouble with Facebook. The problem was its name — Cockshoot Dyke. Facebook’s relentless algorithms blocked posts that mentioned the dyke and issued notifications warning about ‘sexual content’ and ‘violence’. The name of this stretch of water isn’t, of course, actually rude at all. It relates to a
The Egyptologist Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson interprets drawings in a tomb in Thebes as persons queuing up to have passports issued to them in 1500 BC. This was a millennium before Nehemiah asked King Artaxerxes in the Bible for ‘letters to be given me to the governors of the province beyond the river that they
You can’t (and probably shouldn’t) design a treehouse. Treehouses should grow organically, in every sense: they must be made of wood, obviously — one definition of a treehouse is that it is a tree holding its dead friend — and the footings for the platform must be the knots or branches that are footholds when
Jules Léotard was blessed in his name. It might have been quite different had he been called, say, Jules Droupé. As it was, his family name was lithe, elongated, taut. It was a name with stretch. Léotard was born in Toulouse in 1838, the son of a gymnastics teacher. The young Jules might have become
The migration of European eels is one of the miracles of nature. They start life in the great deeps of the Sargasso sea in the north-west of the Atlantic ocean as tiny, flat creatures, like almost transparent willow leaves, which drift 3,700 miles on the Gulf Stream to Britain and mainland Europe. The journey can
Hidden below St George’s Wharf in Vauxhall, down the road from a now defunct gay sauna, is Floatworks, a wellness centre that offers ‘floatation therapy’. Sensory deprivation tanks can be found in most British cities — in bohemian towns like Bristol and Brighton, but also in Birmingham and Belfast. The concept is simple enough: people
There are many reasons why birds disappear — and why they return. The avocet, however, is probably the only one that owes its resurgence to the Nazis. After a 100-year hiatus in Britain, this elegant black and white wader reappeared after the second world war. Four pairs were found in Minsmere nature reserve and another
Fish tanks were probably first conceived in the distant past by the Chinese, but in many respects, aquariums are a distinctly British phenomenon. The first public one opened at Regent’s Park Zoological Gardens in 1853. The word itself seems to have been first used in Philip Gosse’s 1854 book The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the
In December 2019, and in keeping with our tradition of perverse birthday gifts, some friends gave me a bidet device. The contraption was a simple one. Fastened on to the back of the lavatory bowl beneath the rim of the seat, it plugged into the flexible hose that filled the cistern, thus enabling the user
In the small Cumbrian village of Gosforth, in the graveyard of St Mary’s Church, there is a sandstone cross which has stood there since the 10th century. It’s tall, nearly 15 feet, which immediately distinguishes it from any other sculpted stone cross you might find in churchyards across Britain. Up close, it’s even more unusual.
