James Maker

Today’s oldies don’t envy the young

Next year, I will be 65. At 65, one leaves the plateau of middle age and enters the foothills of senescence. For some, it’s an uneventful milestone marked by tidying up some herbaceous borders or experimenting with pesto; others yield to mortal panic and max out their credit card on something wildly impractical. On reaching

Why blokes love coke

If cocaine were a perfume, it would be Chanel No.5: a timeless classic impervious to the flux of fashion and taste. It straddles all socio-economic divides, provided you can afford it. When I lived in Spain, cocaine was the recreational drug of choice because it was more widely available than other narcotics, and its grade

I’m finally a proper villager

I knew that my adjustment to living here was complete when, this morning, I hit the send button of an email. I had written to the parish council suggesting that the local church change its street signage. This is, of course, the critical moment when the character undergoes a metamorphosis into Flora Robson. ‘The board