Rachel Johnson

Looking back, I can pinpoint my fatal blunder. It was lunch. It was like the West allowing Vladimir Putin to help himself to the Crimean peninsula without a peep, basically. This is how it happened. My husband had invited two families to stay over the May bank holiday which bled into half term. For four days. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, in light tones, ahead of their arrival. ‘I’ve told them they’re bringing all the food and doing all the cooking.’ As if I’d welcome this wonderful idea, when in fact what he’d suggested was the domestic equivalent of handing over the nuclear football and the codes behind my back.

After we bought a place on my father’s hill farm in 2000, I’d study the notices pinned to boards in post offices-cum-stores across Exmoor in a glazed trance. If we got a puppy, I reasoned, as I studied a blurry Kodak photo of a Cadbury-coated labrador gun dog’s melting mega-litter, I’d stop wanting another baby. The children would sally forth into the great outdoors without complaint at the word ‘walkies’. Our love of the dog would carry us through the ups and downs of family life and – here was the kicker – render the five-hour schlep from London to Exmoor, to an unimproved farmhouse sans TV at the end of a two-mile track, non-negotiable. And then, driving down a steep hill outside Exford one day, I screeched ‘STOP!’ just past a five-bar gate.

Kyiv On the morning of 24 February, I woke just before seven as a tentative apricot dawn was spreading over scrubby flatlands dusted with light snow. The secret train was trundling into an unprepossessing town, houses scattered amid spindly pines, nothing to write home about. I didn’t even look for a station sign as they’d all been removed to fox Vladimir Putin’s mercenaries. This country is under martial law, a curfew, and as morning was breaking Ukraine was entering the fourth year of fighting off its vast neighbour’s vicious and unwanted advances. We’d boarded the previous night near the Polish border (I know it sounds ridiculous but I am not allowed to say where) and I had claimed my couchette with toddler excitement.

Lamu Ever since we arrived on the syrupy, sweltering Swahili coast – where else would your Best Life columnist be in the dead of winter? – I’ve been writing this in my head, and this was going to be the running order. This succulent island paradise has long been re-colonised by celebrities, princes and make-up moguls First, colour. The cream scoops of the dhows racing the channel between Shela and Manda islands, teak masts tipped at a rakish slant; sundowners at Peponi after a long swim in the mangroves; the Lamu dawn chorus, an ear-splitting stereo of the 5 a.m.

It’s probably haram to quote Cecil Rhodes these days, but he was bang on when he said: ‘Remember that you are an Englishman, and have subsequently drawn the greatest prize in the lottery of life.’ We’ve had peak property, peak journalism, peak publishing, peak medicine, peak travel, peak coffee Even as a mere Englishwoman, I’ve had the best of everything (hence this unapologetically smug column).

As the editor’s brief for this column is ‘Fomo-inducing’, I must push the boat out for my debut and am thus nominating my Parties of the Year before the festive season is under way – which is a bit like poor Rory Stewart saying Kamala Harris would win comfortably just before Donald Trump turned every swing state red. But I’m calling it anyway. These winners, I tell you, are bashes that will be remembered long after the guests are pushing up daisies, although they need a Chips Channon, an F. Scott Fitzgerald or a di Lampedusa to do them full justice. And they are? First up we have – or had – ‘1974’ to celebrate the half-century of Lord and Lady Bamford’s union.

‘Yous!’ a train cleaner in rubber gloves says as we arrive at Liverpool Lime Street. ‘What are yous doing here?’ He is grinning and holding up the political journalists and delegates dribbling from the Euston train like a leaky hose. Behind me waits Tim Shipman, the consummate chronicler of Conservative political chaos. I once sent Shippers a photograph of me sitting between my brothers Boris and Jo in a row on a cream chintz sofa at Chevening, all holding his hardback Fall Out: A Year of Political Mayhem. It was 2017. Instead of exchanging books which we had written – as is the family Christmas custom – everyone had given each other his. Those were the days to be a hack, eh. Or a politician. Drama! Box office! Action!

At first I didn’t realise it was Fashion Week. In Paris, there are always androgynous men in kilts stalking the boulevards and straggle-haired waifs who’ve forgotten their skirts rushing from one shoot to another, but there did seem to be more men with nose rings and Louis Vuitton city-shorts prancing about than usual. We passed a crowd of black-clad votaries standing in the icy lemon sunshine on the Avenue George V. I asked a photographer what they were waiting for. ‘Le défilé de Givenchy,’ he snapped, as if only a fool could be unaware it was the third day of Menswear Paris Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2024-25. At least he did me the honour of replying in French. Speaking of straggle-haired waifs, Kate Moss celebrated her 50th here and threw a party at the Ritz.