Real life

I can’t help it. When I look through my front window and see two super-cool-looking young black guys dressed from head to foot in Nike screaming obscenities, it quickens my pulse. I can’t help it. When I look through my front window and see two super-cool- looking young black guys dressed from head to foot

For nearly a year now, I’ve been promising my father I will brave the BT call centre to order him broadband. He knew that what he was asking me to do was a far greater thing than any father should ask of his daughter, so when the day finally dawned for me to make good

The following conversation with Lambeth council pest-control unit took place a few days before a fox attacked two babies. I had rung them to ask for advice about how to control the hordes of foxes roaming my street like hoodies. As I reported last week, the initial signs of a sensible response were not encouraging.

Dividing my time between town and country leaves me pretty confused at times. The other day a fox streaked across a paddock at the Surrey farm where I keep my horses. The gamekeeper, who was having his tea break, stubbed out his cigarette enigmatically and went off to do whatever it is that gamekeepers do.

Can there be anything more disorientating than turning up at a restaurant to have dinner with someone who has brought a pair of digital scales with them to weigh their food? ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I said, as my friend pulled the state-of-the-art Salter slimline model from his briefcase the moment we sat

Never do a good turn for anyone. What was I thinking, asking the lady if she’d like a lift up the Tube steps with her pram? I wasn’t even going in the same direction as her, for goodness sake. She was at the bottom of the steps looking up at the gargantuan climb ahead. I

Dating must be God’s way of making you appreciate Gardeners’ Question Time. There is no other explanation for why it is so nerve-grindingly awful. I would rather do anything than go through this torture, including listening to people moan about the fact that the soil in their east-facing herbaceous border is too alkaline for an

I have done something so utterly heinous that I cannot keep it to myself. Even though writing it down is going to get me into all sorts of trouble, for the sake of my sanity I have to confess. It’s something I’ve been doing for years but only just realised. I must have been in

The consensus among my girlfriends is that it is simply marvellous that I’m free, that I’m being true to myself, that I have taken my power back. On the other hand, if I don’t find another man soon I’m never going to get this sack of logs out of the footwell of the passenger side

‘It’s not good enough just to appear on your doorstep at election times,’ says the leaflet from Chuka Umunna, my local Labour candidate. Which is presumably why he hasn’t. This is not to imply that I have never seen him. I once caught a glimpse of him galloping past my house. I think he was

As so often, the commuters of Cobham were treated to the sight of me disappearing down Old Lane on the back of a reversing horse. There is always a rational explanation for this behaviour, and on this occasion the horse was impressing on me that she didn’t much fancy going to Effingham Common today, thanks

Goodness knows how I did it, but I seem to have organised my life so that it runs out annually and needs renewing before the first of April. I do grasp the significance of the end of the financial year and all that. But what I cannot work out is how I managed to co-ordinate

‘What’s your call about?’ said the switchboard operator at the Department for the Environment. ‘You don’t need to know that. Just please put me through. They’re expecting me.’ ‘But I have to say what your call is about.’ ‘Well, my call is about having just spoken to the minister and him not having time to

How much screening does a person have to go through in this country to obtain a rabbit? Being recently lagomorphically bereaved — and newly single — I am in desperate need of new pets. I always adopt a stray after a break-up. It’s how I came by the legendary giant black rabbit BB, now passed

Switching energy suppliers is very much like switching boyfriends. As soon as you do it, the one you just left immediately drops their prices while the one you’ve switched to starts changing their terms and edging their prices back up again. It’s a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ conspiracy. Three years ago,

‘Are you sure it’s got snow tyres?’ That sentence will be burned into my memory for a very long time. I was standing at the Avis desk at Geneva airport French side, and my boyfriend was grilling the girl behind the counter about the exact spec of the vehicle we were about to drive into

At first glance they didn’t look like they were going to be trouble. A boy and a girl in their late teens, possibly early twenties. He wore glasses and looked preppy, she was demure with her hair neatly tied in a ponytail. When they began talking during the overture, I thought little of it. As

The strange message left me squinting into the middle-distance in abject confusion. I had just emailed a friend to ask if she was still able to meet me that evening. ‘I’m meditating right now :),’ her reply said. And it was crowned with the addendum: ‘Sent from my iPhone.’ After a few disorientated seconds spent

Forget all the talk about health and wealth inequalities. At the basis of the north-south divide is something quite simple and it is this: in the north people talk to each other, in the south we do not. This rule remains in place for many good reasons of taste and propriety. But chiefly it is