Society

Thursday

18 Aug 2016

Low life | 18 August 2016

I took the only spare chair on the terrace of the Modern bar, one of four bars on this Provençal village square. By repute, it’s the bar where the least snobbish of the villagers meet and drink. Rough, some might say. Old-fashioned ideas of masculinity and femininity are more clearly marked here than at the posher bars up the road. It was market day. Sixty or so locals, plus one Englishman — moi — occupied the steel-framed wicker chairs arranged around the trunk of a plane tree. At the next table a sweet little girl in a pink kimono embroidered with flowers had a balloon attached to a small bat

Melissa Kite

status

Whenever I try to use the NHS I end up feeling like Bruce Willis’s character in The Sixth Sense. No one can see me. It is as if I don’t exist. And unlike Dr Malcolm Crowe in the movie, I have not, as I wait in hospital and GP surgery queues, found an ally with a special gift which enables him to see me when no one else can. No one has ever come up to me and whispered: ‘I see sick people!’ Instead, I languish like a ghost in every south London minor injury clinic, A&E and doctor’s surgery. Recently, I received a letter informing me that my local

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 18 August 2016

Q. My partner and I have been living together for 26 years, but now that he’s asked me to marry him, friends seem determined to give us a wedding present even though we wrote ‘no presents’ on the invitation. We had both been married before we met and already had more than enough ‘stuff’. Since then we have both inherited collections of furniture from our parents. Without wishing to seem ungrateful, we need to have a plan to prevent more belongings coming into the house. Since the one thing that would really improve our lives is if we could reduce our clutter, rather than add to it, we thought we

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 18 August 2016

In the four months since I had a brain haemorrhage I have had several tests to find out how my mind has been affected. The first tests were conducted in Siena, where I had been taken to hospital after falling ill on a spring holiday in Tuscany. A nice Italian lady showed up with bundles of problems for me to resolve. They ranged from mathematical ones of the sort one used to face at primary school — how many apples costing so much each could be bought with so much money and leave how much change — to finishing incomplete sentences and explaining events or processes depicted in drawings. Although

Tanya Gold

Magic at St Michael’s Mount

The Sail Loft is under a castle on a mountain on an island in the sea; for that, I could forgive it anything. It is on St Michael’s Mount in Marazion near Penzance, an island so charming and devoid of internet connection it almost strips me of words. If I lived here I would not write again; I would not need to. I would be happy, and who judges fish when they are happy and finds it not enough? It is accessible along a granite causeway for four hours each day — then the path goes back to the sea and one must take a boat; it is more ruthless

Robin Oakley

Blessed be the humble

After 30 years in racing it is a little late in Rab Havlin’s career to suggest that he will suddenly become a star. Havlin doesn’t do ostentatious. He is not a racecourse ‘name’, one of those riders towards whom sports-mad fathers propel their sons to seek a racecard autograph. To adapt Michael Gove’s Conservative leadership pitch, whatever charisma might be, Havlin doesn’t have it and nobody would ever associate him with glamour. What Rab Havlin does have, though, is the thoughtful dependability which has made him an integral part of John Gosden’s Newmarket winner-preparation factory. On the racetrack Rab will often partner the stable’s lesser lights at lower-grade meetings, but

Dot Wordsworth

Chrononhotonthologos

When I ran out of space last week, I was about to mention the way in which some people relish long names. It may be childish but they enjoy it. In Dorothy L. Sayers’s detective world, characters unashamedly cap obscure quotations and references. There is an exchange in Murder Must Advertise between an ad man and Lord Peter Wimsey: ‘Anyway how do you spell Chrononhotonthologos?’ ‘Oh! I can do that. And Aldiborontophoscophornio too.’ The funny thing there is that, in the edition I picked up, published by Hodder in 1983, the latter name is spelled wrongly. It should be Aldiborontiphoscophornio. He was a character in Henry Carey’s quite funny play

Peter Jones

Above the law

Because no country can interfere in another’s legal system, there is little the UK can do to help the six Britons jailed in India for possessing ‘illegal’ firearms which were, in fact, fully authorised for the protection of shipping against piracy. Where David Cameron failed, Boris might try an appeal based on ius gentium, ‘the law of nations’. Cicero was the first Roman to discuss the idea. He talked of societas (‘the state of association between people’) having the ‘widest possible application, uniting every man with every other man’. The jurist Gaius (c. AD 150) put it in legal terms like this: ‘Every people governed by statutes and customs observes partly its own peculiar law and

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 18 August 2016

Bridge players love going on about system. Some want every bid to have a conventional meaning and some want to play ‘naturally’. Personally I like a few conventions but not so many that judgement becomes redundant. Norway held its weeklong Bridge Festival in Fredrikstad this year which kicked off with Mixed Pairs. It was won by Helen and Espen Erichsen, one of the few married couples who play together and stay together! 181 pairs played a three-board Swiss format and on hand 82 (out of 90) Helen used just the right amount of system and judgment to help win the gold medal: Helen was sitting in the South seat and

Toby Young

Hurrah for Cornish holidays!

After the misery of going abroad for the summer holidays for the past few years, I’m now happily back in Cornwall. Caroline took some persuading. We used to come every year, but the combination of bad weather and cramped accommodation became too much for her. After a bad experience in a mobile home three years ago, she vowed ‘never again’ and we spent a week in Portugal in 2014 and then ten days in France last year. That was purgatory. The last straw was being un-able to order fresh fish at a seaside restaurant in the Languedoc. To get Caroline to reconsider, I had to splash out on a luxurious

Doc

2274: Round and round

The perimeter squares yield six theme-words in order, though any one of them can come first. The remaining unclued lights (two individually and a pair) reveal three more theme words. Solvers are asked to highlight in the appropriate colour a final two-word theme-word hidden in two rows in the completed grid. Across 6 A caravan is usually aware of width (5, two words) 7 In ebbing river, perch slowly disappeared (6) 8 Piece of jewellery in unwrapped sweets (7) 10 President’s car crossing (4) 12 Accompanied fellow with scatty Doreen (10) 13 From where a pot she’s brewed (8, two words) 16

Jonathan Spyer

Who should rule Syria?

The long civil war in Syria is still far from conclusion. Any real possibility of rebel victory ended with the entry of Russian forces last autumn — but while the initiative is now with the Assad regime, the government’s forces are also far from a decisive breakthrough. So who, if anyone, should the UK be backing in the Syrian slaughterhouse, and what might constitute progress in this broken and burning land? It ought to be fairly obvious why a victory for the Assad regime would be a disaster for the West. Assad, an enthusiastic user of chemical weapons against his own people, is aligned with the most powerful anti–western coalition

Doc

to 2271: I’m not here or there

All but one of the unclued lights can be preceded by DOCTOR (or in one case DOC). The title also explains why DOC’s name (as the compiler) was omitted from the heading of the puzzle. Solvers were required to highlight CAPE at 38 Down which yields ‘Cape Doctor’ where Doctor follows rather than precedes the unclued light. First prize Storm Hutchinson, Dulas, Anglesey Runners-up Philip Whiteland, Doveridge, Derbyshire; J. Frankland, Storth, Milnthorpe, Cumbria

Ed West

Why a record number of university places might not be a good thing

A-Level results are announced today, and with it the happy news that a record number of university places have been offered. About 42 per cent of 18-year-olds in England will go to university, but we’re still some way behind the world’s leader, South Korea, where two-thirds of young people achieve a degree. And how’s that going? Seongho Lee, a professor of education at Chung-Ang University, criticizes what he calls ‘college education inflation’. Not all students are suited for college, he says, and across institutions, their experience can be inconsistent. ‘It’s not higher education anymore,’ he says. ‘It’s just an extension of high school.’ And sub-par institutions leave graduates ill-prepared for

Laura Whitcombe

Why I welcome the soaring costs of a holiday tipple

I thought I’d be a pretty cheap date on holiday abroad this summer. I’ve abstained from all alcohol for the past eight months, including my beloved Siglo rioja, as I get ready to become a mum. So I expected the savings we’d make by only one of us drinking while on our road trip through France and Italy to offset the crazily expensive road tolls we clocked up as we travelled through the Mont Blanc tunnel, passing over the top of Milan to get to Venice. Boy, was I wrong. In most of the restaurants and cafes we visited it was actually cheaper to order a glass of wine than a

Helen Nugent

Students, exchange rates, car insurance and energy bills

It’s A level results day, the final hurdle for teenagers hoping to fly the coop and go to university next month. But new research suggests that parents with children approaching university years could find their youngsters living at home for years to come. Figures obtained by Aviva reveal that the number of students living with parents while at university rose from 247,965 to 327,390 between academic years 2004/5 and 2014/15, now accounting for around one in five students in higher education. The total number of UK students taking full time and sandwich courses has risen from 1,391,180 to 1,697,150 over the same period. Earlier this year Aviva reported that there could

Tom Goodenough

The Spectator podcast: The doom delusion

It’s August 2016 and the best time in human history to be alive. Well, at least that’s according to Johan Norberg, who writes this week’s Spectator cover piece on the new golden age. Never, he says, has there been less war, disease, conflict, discrimination or poverty. So why do we find that so hard to believe? On the podcast, Lara Prendergast is joined by Fraser Nelson and Johan, who says: ‘What I’ve done is look at long-term data and statistics – everything from poverty, malnutrition, literacy to fatalities of war, the risk of dying in a natural disaster, the risk of being subjected to a dictatorship – and everything is

Jonathan Ray

Portmeirion blog

Jonathan Ray heads to north Wales and braves both Welsh rain and Welsh wine in search of the fabled Welsh salt marsh lamb. Portmeirion was as beguiling as ever and the Welsh summer weather as vile. My wife, Marina, and I and our two teenage boys are just back from spending a week in one of Portmeirion’s quirky cottages and we had a hoot. We were last there five years ago – also in high summer – when it sheeted with rain all week. This time we did a little better and had five days of rain and two of blinding sunshine. But, having visited the Italianate fantasy folly that

The Spectator

Iron birds

From ‘News of the Week’, The Spectator, 19 August 1916: The Parliamentary Air Committee having recently inhaled much ozone at giddy heights, during their visits to a R.F.C. park, have breathed some of it forth in a brilliant idea. They propose that the present clumsy and ugly system of designating aircraft by numbers and letters should be replaced by the names of birds. The machines would be grouped in classes, and each class would have a distinctive name. The names of seabirds would be given to seaplanes and the names of land birds to Army aeroplanes. Just as ships of war are grouped in the ‘county’ class, the ‘river’ class, and

Stephen Bayley

Peggy Guggenheim

She had come a very long way from the shtetl, but Marguerite ‘Peggy’ Guggenheim was still the poor relation of her fabulously wealthy family. Although these things are, of course, relative. It was her uncle Solomon, enriched by mining, who first made the family’s name. Peggy’s father sank with the Titanic in 1912. Eventually Solomon’s museum, a Frank Lloyd Wright design as magnificent as it was absurd, became a New York landmark. Peggy never much cared for it, so she built her own elsewhere. Guggenheim was no one’s idea of a great beauty, but possessed enough lust, fortune and ambition to compensate. She moved to France just as traffic on