Jeremy Clarke

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,

By day Clive drives a tractor. At night he tramps the fields with a pair of greyhound collie crosses called Knocker and Tip and a lamp. The lamp he is currently using is lighter in weight and much more powerful than his old one. To Clive, the almost incredible scientific and technical advances of the

These days Uncle Jack only comes out of his room once a week, for a bath. The rest of the time he sits in his chair in front of the television, wailing. You can hear him all over the house. It sounds very peculiar, as if we are keeping a tethered discontented beast somewhere in

I spent last week in south Wales, staying in a cottage near the coast. On the second evening we walked to the local pub to see what it was like. We went across the fields to get there. Nailed to one of the stiles was a notice. ‘The bull in this field is a Semmantal

Sophia was such a very large lady, the seatbelt of my car, even when fully extended, wasn’t quite long enough to go round her. She insisted on wearing it though, so her lover Ulrika and I redoubled our efforts. After a titanic struggle we found that we could force it around her if we pulled

There is very little in the way of conversation at home. Uncle Jack sometimes appears in the hall to ask someone where he is, what he is doing here, or what time of the year it is. The rest of us communicate so rarely we are rapidly losing the power of speech. Occasionally someone might

Two tickets, booked over the phone, in row L of the stalls: £87.50. At the box office in the theatre’s foyer we were handed our tickets by a condescending, black-shirted woman. An unpleasantly condescending black-shirted girl at the top of the stairs demanded to see our tickets before allowing us to go any further. When

I’m over the limit so I’m driving home down the back lanes to avoid the police. You have to drink-and-drive round here because we’re a bit isolated and the decent pubs are all in town, 20 minutes away. Wrong of me, I know. But if I go home the back way it’s single-track country lanes

I was running the Whack-the-Malteaser stall yet again this year. My sister put me on it the first year I helped out at the ‘fun day’ she organises every summer at the day centre for people with learning difficulties, and I’ve been running it every year since. This year I asked if I could go

First thing Monday morning I was in court. No car tax. When I eventually found the magistrate’s court, it was like the Marie Celeste. No defendants hanging round the entrance smoking, no receptionist behind the glass in the foyer, no ushers, no solicitors briefing anxious clients in the corridor at the last moment, no cleaners,

We’ve moved up from a Festival 30 to a Willerby Bermuda. Or rather my philanthropic aunt has. We knew she was thinking of upgrading this year, but we thought she was going to go for a Festival Super maybe, or at a push an Atlas Fanfare Super 35. Not in our wildest dreams did we

I hate avoiding people I like just because

When I got back from Pamplona I hadn’t slept in a bed or washed my hair for a week. There was a red stain around my neck where my sweat had mixed with the dye in my St Fermin neckerchief. I was badly sunburned. There was a suppurating graze on my shoulder and a cold

I’m doing 170 kilometres an hour along the motorway from Barcelona to Pamplona. I pass a sign telling me I am now entering Navarre, and passing from Aragon to the Basque country. It’s a blue sign, about 20 foot square and riddled with holes. Where I live many of our road signs are peppered with

Right, that’s it. On the morning of the 87th anniversary of the first day of the Battle of the Somme I’m lying in bed listening to a news ‘update’ on our local commercial radio station. Last night, apparently, our latest batch of MPs voted, in an overwhelming fit of moronic vindictiveness, to ban all hunting

At ten to five the sun rose. Me and the boy were seated in our directors’ chairs on the beach, mourning the embers of our dying fire. We were about midway along a five-mile curve of shingle, about 30 yards from the sea. The sun came up, as I told my boy it would, in

I hope Prince William enjoys studying Kiswahili. I certainly did. In my mid-thirties I jacked in a job as a binman, did two A levels in a year, passed both, then studied Kiswahili for three years at the School of Oriental and African Studies in Bloomsbury as part of an African Studies degree. I went