The countryside is all very well so long as you know you can leave it. Funnily enough, exactly the same can be said for the town. I realise I have spent the entire year trying to decide whether to sell up and move from London to the wilds of Surrey. Or stay put in Balham.
Let’s get one thing straight. Women have been bringing up children perfectly happily for centuries without breastfeeding them in Claridges. The fact that we are having a row about a politician daring to slightly support a posh hotel that has sort of said it would really rather prefer it if women breastfed their babies behind
After our spectacular season opener, the spaniel and I were on probation. Cydney, you may recall, retrieved a hen bird stuck in a stream but then ran off on a freelance flushing mission between drives. I thought it was rather a success, on balance. But the rest of the shoot begged to differ and judged
Waiting to appear before a Commons select committee, my father turned to me. ‘This was not on my bucket list,’ he said. My father should be enjoying his retirement. Instead, he and my mother are still working full time in their seventies because they cannot sell their home due to the blight of HS2. And
The ambassador’s receptions are noted in society for their host’s exquisite taste that captivates guests. You know that, I know that. Anyone who enjoyed the cheesier television adverts of the early Nineties will know that. Imagine my excitement, therefore, when I received an invitation to a buffet supper at the real Italian Embassy. The friend
Before I go any further, I would like to make clear that no animals were harmed in the making of this column. You might think that goes without saying, but I don’t take anything for granted when a woman I know has just been censured by the RSPCA for not providing her horses with a
People don’t listen. It’s a relatively new thing. People used to listen, to varying degrees. You had your good listeners and you had your bad listeners. Now people just don’t listen at all. I was in the pizza joint in Balham with the builder boyfriend. The waitress was standing at the table with her pad,
Just before Cydney ran off and disgraced me on the first day of the shooting season, she covered herself in glory. This seems to be the way of things with spaniels. They are a bit like children in the sense that, so far as their public performances are concerned, they either fill you with pride
What is the point of the Dangerous Dogs Act when there is a man marauding with an illegal pit bull in south London and the police are not arresting him? My friend rang me in hysterics recently after the beast all but savaged his little Patterdale terrier in Kennington Park. The pit bull picked him
After four hours of driving, we should have been in the middle of Dartmoor. And yet we were not. We were pulled over in a lay-by and the infernal devil that is the iPhone satnav was wiping the floor with us. The iPhone has been stuck in groundhog day since we took it to Cornwall
My London flat now has so little space in it I’ve begun storing stuff at the dry cleaners. Back in May, I checked a huge winter quilt in at Viking’s and left it there until the weather turned colder. There just wasn’t anywhere, not a single spare nook or cranny, to put it and quite
As the maître d’ ushered me into the packed restaurant, I leaned in close and intoned softly, so as not to be heard by the elegant lady sitting nearby who was obviously my date, ‘I’m here to meet…’. And I nodded towards her as I said the name of my New York publisher. Yes, that’s
A letter arrives from the lawyers handling my defence in the phantom whiplash injury claim. It is now coming up to three years since a singularly rough-hewn couple alleged I had incapacitated them by shunting my little convertible in a slow moving traffic queue into the back of their people carrier. I haven’t heard much
Yesterday, the RSPCA published the long-awaited review of its prosecutions policy. Interesting choice of timing – it finally released the critical report on the day of Cameron’s conference speech. Talk about burying bad news. The review recommends that the RSPCA no longer prosecutes hunts because it also campaigns on hunting, and calls into serious question
A crazy woman is living inside my head. It’s not just the normal crazy woman who camps out there from time to time and argues about parking tickets. It’s a new crazy woman who thinks she can avoid parking tickets by fighting men in the street. Physically, with her bare hands. Is this what they
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_25_Sept_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Melissa Kite, Camilla Swift (and Charlie the dog) discuss animal welfare” startat=630] Listen [/audioplayer]We love animals more than we love people. Of course we do. Following the recent fire at a Manchester dogs’ home, people donated £1 million and blocked the M6 with their cars as they arrived in their multitudes to adopt
After a rush of blood to the head, I decided it might be a good idea to ask some awkward questions of the RSPCA. Oh no, I hear you cry. What fresh hell is this? Let me explain. I found out that the charity is pretty much closed to any kind of scrutiny. Unlike other
‘Let me get this straight,’ I said, looking my Slovakian friend in the eye. ‘You are going to go back to your own country because the healthcare here is no good?’ ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Is no good. Is terrible. I leave job and go home and sign on. I get treatment in Slovakia.’ I shook
Incredible as it seems to me now, there was a time when a wolf whistle was annoying. A man would shout something approving from a scaffold and I would harrumph about my privacy being invaded, my gender not being respected, my dignity as an intelligent woman being violated. Then I got old and a wolf
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_4_Sept_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Isabel Hardman, Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth discuss the Tory civil war” startat=60] Listen [/audioplayer]Justine Greening wants to talk about social mobility. If it is not immediately obvious why the Secretary of State for International Development wants to talk about this issue, it becomes clear. Growing up the daughter of a steel worker