Leaning against the hotel bar after dinner on the first evening of our residential erotic-writing course. On my right, John, a tall young energetic skinhead theatre director. On my left, Yannis, a short dignified old Greek intellectual who was kicked out of Greece by the Colonels. Yannis owned the hotel. John and I were would-be
My boy’s mother’s boyfriend is in his mid-fifties, works his arse off six days a week as a builder’s labourer and spends next to nothing on himself. He’s honest, decent and kind. His only vice is the ten cigarettes, machine-rolled from smuggled duty-free tobacco, that he smokes every day. But somehow he’s always broke, always
Clouds Hill, Colonel T.E. Lawrence’s former Dorset pied-à-terre, comprises four cramped rooms — two up, two down — and you have to mind your head as you go up the stairs. At the top of the stairs is a cell-like bunkroom, lined from top to bottom with aluminium. The wooden ship’s bunk would only be
We’d had a tiff in the Strand and I’d stormed off. It was late. I didn’t have anywhere else to stay the night, and I live in Devon, so I had to storm off halfway across Britain to get home. I caught the last train out of Paddington by the skin of my teeth. Once
Back on track with the abstinence regime after the debacle at the dog lunch, I treated myself last weekend to a guided walk on Dartmoor. The walk, advertised in the Dartmoor Visitor, was called ‘Crock of Gold and Childe’s Tomb’. Twenty Gore-Tex-clad people, some with ski poles, plus yours truly, dressed appropriately perhaps for a
‘What happened to him?’ I said, meeting the eye of a thin magpie through the bars of his cage. Andrew Meads, veteran bird rescuer and proprietor of Safewings wildlife sanctuary at Isham, near Kettering, Northants, related the following case history. A fortnight ago a man driving a stolen car suddenly lost control, mounted the pavement,
In church last Sunday, the reading was taken from the first chapter of Paul’s letter to Timothy. ‘Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners — of whom I am the very worst,’ Paul boasts. I’ve never seen eye to eye with St Paul. He rubs me up the wrong way. Here, his bragging
The cognoscenti will tell you that the best time to visit the south Devon coast is the autumn. The vulgar summer hordes have departed, the weather in September is generally reliable and accommodation is cheaper. Unfortunately for them, word has got out. The lanes round here were more congested with traffic last week than in
I was looking for the Palace of the Kings of Mallorca, and lost my bearings in the maze of narrow side streets that comprises the old quarter of Perpignan. In a street so narrow I could span it with outstretched arms, a youth on a motorbike roared past me doing a wheelie. Further up the
There is a Japanese concept known as ma. A loose translation of ma might be ‘the space between things’. In Kyoto, at the temple of Ryoan-ji, is a famous Zen garden. It is a dry garden of 15 rocks positioned on a surface of raked gravel, symbolising clarity and openness. (One of the 15 rocks,
On Sunday, fielding in the gully, I passed some of the time between balls calculating how many pints of bitter I could allow myself when it was our turn to bat and drive home without being wildly over the limit. The arithmetic was fairly simple: the number of pints consumed, multiplied by two for the
Personally, unlike some, I’ve nothing against the holidaymakers who flock to this part of the world as soon as the primroses are out. They liven up the place. In winter, the geriatric ghettoes dotted along the coast hereabouts are too unnaturally quiet. Owing to the infirmities of age, artificial joints, strong winds, blindness, deafness, incontinence
Under ‘large floral patterned chamber pot, used once, slightly damaged, £5 ono’ I came across ‘Abmaster stomach exerciser, boxed, unwanted gift, £10.’ I’d been looking out for a stomach exerciser in the small ads for a long time, so I dialled the number. A small inarticulate child answered. Was the Abmaster still for sale? There
A bouquet of red, white and blue flowers tied with a royal-blue ribbon has recently appeared among the scores of tributes tied to railings in the street in Pollockshields, Glasgow, from where 15-year-old Kriss Donald was abducted and later murdered, allegedly by an Asian gang. ‘In our hearts,’ the message says. ‘From the Southside British
In my experience a long coat on a man is often a sign of mental instability. Frankie’s brown woollen overcoat was so long he kept stepping on the hem and treading it into the mud. Jim did the introductions. Frankie took no notice of my name, calling me ‘laddie’ instead. Then he said he’d got
Last Monday afternoon Professor Lewis Wolpert CBE, FRSL and I sat in his chaotic study in the Anatomy department at University College, London, quietly regarding each other. Professor Wolpert seemed to me to be superior to myself in every way possible. He was better-looking, better-dressed, more self-assured, miles more intelligent, and probably richer. It was
Me and the boy are regulars at the weekly car auction near us. We never bid for anything. We just like to go and sit and watch the cars coming and going and seeing what they fetch. We don’t even comment on an excessively high or low price. We talk only about the soup. We
I don’t watch a lot of telly these days because I’d rather read. But when I was going out with my boy’s mother, she and I watched it all the time. It was all we ever did. I’d come home from work and we’d sit on the sofa and watch the telly until it was
Before going to Venice, we spent two days in Verona. It was my first time in Italy and I got a crick in the neck from looking up at so many amazingly old, beautiful buildings. ‘If you think this is beautiful, wait till you see Venice,’ they said. Our host was David Petrie, a Scottish
Wind-driven rain beats on the windscreen. There’s tree debris in the road and standing water in all the usual places when it rains as hard and as long as this. The fuel gauge is resting on empty but I make it to the garage, which is still open. All the pumps are free except one,