An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.
In the past I would have been interested in crafting plausible excuses for unforgivable social behaviour such as failing to turn up to events to which you had RSVP’d, missing a netjet or having said something genuinely appalling. One example: circa 1999, the late Rt Hon Alan Clark MP wrote to Dear Mary. He asked
Sometimes, it’s not just bombs, viruses and elections that make you worry about the future of humanity. A recent survey, commissioned by the National Literacy Trust, reveals that fewer than one third of eight-to-18-year-olds enjoys writing as a hobby. If you’re thinking that I’m being wistful about fountain pens (‘whatever happened to ink blots?’) you’re
The famous Flyfishers’ Club, Britain’s oldest fly-fishing club, is the latest male bastion to have the fair sex banging at the door. Women feel they have been unjustly excluded throughout its 193-year history, and now they want in. Seeing as the Garrick has at last buckled to the demand to admit women, they say the
‘I don’t know how you do it with three.’ I am at a child’s birthday party, working out how many Wotsits it is acceptable for me, an adult, to take. It is 10.13 a.m. and these Wotsits will be my breakfast. Something had to give in the morning routine to get my son here on
Michael Prowse, proprietor and auctioneer at Pilton Auctions, is rummaging through boxes at the back of his office – which is in a warehouse, up a wooden ladder and underneath corrugated metal and plastic roofing. ‘I’ve got something horrendous here,’ Michael says, ‘but its on it’s way to the bin.’ I’ve asked him what the strangest
Can an older person like me ever really be friends with a young person? At one time I would have said yes, absolutely. Age has nothing to do with friendship. You either enjoy someone’s company or you don’t. End of story. But now I’m not so sure. My young friends in London are always having
The power of Bitcoin to make and lose fortunes in a very short time is unmatched in history. But could the biggest boom and bust be yet to come? Since January the value of Bitcoin has staged a remarkable recovery, and is now back trading at or even above the highs it reached in 2022. That is
The man in the Post Office was a bit bemused by the three enormous boxes I was trying to send from my home just outside Edinburgh down to London. He’d asked what the value of the packages was. In one sense, they were worthless, I explained. But I really needed to make sure they got
The main benefits of dog ownership are well-known – you get companionship, unconditional love and the exercise that comes with taking the thing for a walk. But there’s a side-effect that no one ever mentions: having a dog teaches you what it’s like to be famous. I’ll be sitting in a café, happily reading a
A man takes the stage at the Clapham Grand. His large, histrionic eyes are ringed with kohl. His slim limbs are decked in spandex, open to a furry navel. He throws back his flaxen hair and punches the air. ‘Thunder!’ he yells to the opening salvo of the AC/DC tub-thumper ‘Thunderstruck’. His name is Mac
The company that makes the world-renowned Swiss Army penknife has decided to introduce a range of penknives that come… wait for it… without knives – citing increased regulations ‘due to the violence in the world’. It isn’t the knives that need changing, but rather the poorly-applied laws The problem is that a Swiss Army penknife without
One of us must once have told a political pollster: ‘I really have no idea at all who I’m going to vote for.’ A moment of mild exasperation put us down as ‘Don’t knows’. Forever afterwards, the prospect of an election, whether for Wandsworth council, the Mayor of London or the Battersea parliamentary constituency, brings
In ‘The Adventure of Silver Blaze’, Sherlock Holmes mentions ‘the curious incident of the dog in the night-time’. ‘But the dog did nothing in the night-time,’ argues Inspector Gregory. ‘That was the curious incident,’ replies Holmes. You never hear anyone say: ‘We finally stumbled across a charming little petrol station nestling among the trees’ Along
In 2020, the year of coronavirus, I came to a fork in the road. I’d just turned 50, a moment of looking back over your life, realising what you’ve failed to achieve, and accepting there’s only a finite number of years left to you. It was clearly a time for making a change of some
In the penumbra cast by the light of my phone, I can dimly see the wreckage of a night with a newborn baby: half-drunk bottles of milk, the tangled cord of the monitor, muslins strewn across the bed. It is 3 a.m. and the baby has gone back to sleep. I, however, am wide awake. Or rather, the consumer in me is wide
I don’t have much in common with Charlotte Church (I support the ancient state of Israel, whereas she supports Narnia; she’s still relatively young and cute, whereas this ancient mariner’s ship has sailed) but something we do share is a lifetime of extreme generosity verging on the profligate, often to people who do not deserve
It’s the flash that shocks you first. It’s night and you’re driving in the outside lane of the motorway at a speed that isn’t exactly the national limit, but isn’t so wildly in excess that it would raise eyebrows. Suddenly your car floods with the light of a thousand suns. The flash in the rear-view
Researchers at the Humboldt University of Berlin have discovered that we no longer consider ourselves old until we’re 74. What’s more, by the time you reach 74, you think old age begins at 77. Which is something to celebrate – just don’t tell the Department for Work and Pensions or they’ll get more bright ideas about pushing
Street robbery has become an epidemic. Horrible thugs are stealing luxury watches and jewellery in broad daylight. The number of luxury watches stolen almost doubled in England and Wales between 2015 and 2022 – with 25,802 stolen in 2022. The problem is particularly bad in London, where the Metropolitan Police have set up a special unit
I recently had the pleasure of spending some time with my two teenage grandsons, who live in Dorset – 16-year-old Dylan and Isaac, who is 14. Listening to them chatting with their friends, I slowly realised that, half the time, I hadn’t a clue what they were on about. Peculiar words I’d never heard before
My annus horribilis was 1992. I was in fifth grade (aged ten) and had impulsively cut my hair short over the summer. I turned up to school with auburn ringlets billowing out and up from my head in a wavy sphere. Boy did it get the boys going: constant insults, including ‘Ronald McDonald’ (McDonalds’ clown
Defeat stares me in the face every time I walk down my north London street. Decorating the knocker of a house a few doors along is a blue rosette announcing it’s home to the winners of the street dog show. Whenever I go past with my cockapoo Honey, she is nonchalant, barely bothering to stop
Before I went to medical school I had a hip alternative life. In the 1980s, as a 17 year-old schoolgirl, I wrote for the New Musical Express. My friends assume I had a great time with sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, but the truth is I was such a cautious Carla that I didn’t
On visits to the continent as a child, what struck me was the strangeness of other European countries. Going to France or Italy, pre-internet, you cut off your connections to the outside world, and even got the British news a day or two late. People ate horse meat, tortellini in brodo or croque monsieurs, and
Every year, the world’s greatest watch companies and their biggest fans head to Geneva for an orgy of horological spectacle: Watches & Wonders. Here, companies pull out their latest, newest, most impressive goods, showing off the main products they intend to launch and the fans salivate and loosen their already pummelled wallets. It’s not a cheap
April is nesting season and with it comes egg collectors, an illegal band of very specialised and, in some ways, very British of criminals. Many would consider themselves wildlife enthusiasts. Most see their crime as a hobby, ignoring the effects of stealing a clutch of eggs and thus accelerating the species decline in a particular
When an au pair or nanny writes ‘I was wondering if I could talk to you this evening,’ it is rarely good news. At best, it is to ask for a pay rise; at worst, to give notice of a departure. ‘I’d like to go to Madrid,’ said our beloved au pair one evening, confirming
Amelia ‘Milly’ Gentleman, the Guardian’s fearless investigative reporter, has ‘exclusively’ revealed some of the Garrick Club’s filthy secrets. It’s ‘the final gasps’ of ‘a declining patriarchal elite’, she writes. ‘A lonely slice of an England that forgot to modernise’. All over the country, fair-minded folk must be thinking ‘woo, when can I join?’ Clubmen
A year or two ago I got my first expensive watch, a Longines Conquest Heritage. It wasn’t quite my dream timepiece – that was a 1960s Omega Seamaster automatic (think Bond films at the Sean Connery stage) but these are priced off the scale and need plenty of specialist upkeep. The Longines Conquest, very much
