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Diary

Rachel Johnson

Wednesday, 20th August 2008

Rachel Johnson holidays in Salcombe

The fifth week of continuous downpour. Mouldiest summer ever. The children stay abed until lunchtime. I yell upstairs, Who wants to go for a massive walk? Who wants to come to Tesco in Minehead? Who wants to go to the Exmoor pony centre? There are never any takers. Exmoor pony centre was the scene of one of our many recent unsuccessful family outings, rivalling the lack of success of our visit to the Big Sheep ‘all-weather attraction’ outside Bideford. At the Big Sheep, we drove for two hours to watch a sheepdog herd three ewes. So the children basically get up for lunch, when we all crouch in the dingly-dell kitchen with its view on to a ferny bank, eating pasties and hunks of Cheddar, watching the endless rain drench the green valley, puddling the unmetalled road the colour of builder’s tea, and turning the Exe into fast-running Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.

The silver lining is Kristian, our manny. He replied to my ad on the Gumtree website. After years of engaging posh Scottish girls or moody Croatian maidens to be an ‘extra pair of hands’ over the summer, I now refuse to hire any females or any males for that matter apart from Antipodean men. Kristian is a qualified engineer, PE teacher, and hugely laid back, energetic and obliging. My only concern is that he hasn’t had a day off yet. ‘I once spent a month on a prawn trawler, alone with two other guys. One was a recovering alcoholic and the other didn’t speak. And we never caught any prawns. So nah, I’m good,’ he reassured me, as he mended the chainsaw, having cleared three barns. ‘No wucking furries, mate.’

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David Short

August 21st, 2008 6:04pm

This Diary plumbs the depths of vacuousness.

Who cares about this woman's duff experiences on holiday, her awful children, her silly 'mannuy', and her weirdly named friends.

She may as well rename herself Polly Filla and file direct to Private Eye.

ian skidmore

August 21st, 2008 6:59pm

It has puzzled me for years but now I know how she got the job. The ST is being ruined by all those dreary supplements.
Incientally if I was offered pasties and a hunk of Cheese for lunch I would certainly give breakfast a miss

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Hardeep Singh Kohli

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The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

In his speech announcing his Pre-Budget Report, Alistair Darling said that he was going to put up the top rate of income tax to 45 per cent from 2011, because he wanted the burden to be borne by ‘those who have done best out of the growth of the past decade’.

Mind your Language

Dot Wordsworth

‘What?’ said my husband, coherently, thrashing with his stick at a blackboard on the pavement. It said: ‘Quarter chicken with two regular sides, £5.90.’ This was no geometrical chicken.