Society

Saturday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary… | 17 March 2007

Q. The tennis coach at our village club was recently coaching one of his young clients. On the next court, one of the club regulars and her new middle-aged male friend were completing a strenuous game. The man suddenly collapsed and the coach, a trained first-aider, identified the symptoms of cardiac arrest and applied the necessary heart massage and mouth-to-mouth. It took over half an hour for the ambulance to arrive, during which time the victim’s partner became increasingly hysterical and distressed, offering very little by way of practical support while the coach continued to alternate chest compressions with oral ventilation. The man fortunately survived, largely because of the cool

Deborah Ross

Restaurants | 17 March 2007

I’m due to dine out with a couple of people who I’m sure don’t want to be named, so let’s call them Bob and Jim, even though their real names are Tobyn and Leaf. I let them choose the restaurant. I do this not because it’s one less thing for me to have to think about, which would be selfish, but because I am a generous-natured, generous person famed for my generous generosity. Ask anyone, apart from those who might actually know me and might hold a grudge for no good reason whatsoever.  Anyway, Bob and Jim, who are Tobyn and Leaf, but in disguise, eventually come back with The

Jeremy Clarke

What a laugh

We didn’t get to Sheffield till after dark. But when the Renault Mégane drew up as we waited beside the station taxi rank, the boredom and discomfort of the interminable train journey was instantly forgotten. Our dog-eared second-hand car-price guide stated that a 1998 Renault Mégane 1.6 Sport was worth anything between £800 and £1,500. My boy had won this one on the eBay internet auction site for just £500. All being well, he’d got himself a bargain. We took the car in greedily with our eyes, scanning it for such obvious defects as might be visible under the tangerine street lighting. It seemed to be all there. No obvious dents

Taki

History lesson | 17 March 2007

‘One of the least edifying sights in  Britain today is that of Douglas Hurd expressing his righteous anger over the war in Iraq…’ So begins one Roger Cohen’s rant in the International Herald Tribune under the heading ‘Globalist’.  Some globalist. What I find much less edifying is Roger Cohen, presumably an American, giving us lessons on how to treat the Muslim threat to our Christian and enlightened way of life. Let me explain. Cohen’s beef with Douglas Hurd is that he, as foreign secretary, was gutless while the Serbs were committing genocide against the Bosnian Muslims between 1992 and 1995. Hurd I do not know and the little I met

Robin Oakley

Pipe dream | 17 March 2007

George Bernard Shaw once asked a female acquaintance on a cruise ship, ‘Will you sleep with me for £10,000?’, and received an affirmative answer. When he followed up by asking her, ‘Would you sleep with me for £10’, the lady took considerable umbrage, demanding furiously, ‘What do you think I am?’ ‘That,’ said the playwright, ‘has already been established. Now we are merely negotiating the price.’ We are all after a price for something. Having been deeply impressed by his prep run on the Polytrack, I have been trying to find a bookmaker willing to offer me an ante post price on Blue Bajan for Lingfield’s Winter Derby. But the

Ursula Buchan

Hosts of golden daffodils

‘Golden Harvest’ 1 Y-Y, ‘High Society’ 2 W-GWP, ‘Jetfire’ 6 Y-O; these names strangely preoccupy me at this season of the year. If you think that my trolley and I have gone our separate ways, you cannot be au fait with the classification of Narcissus. If that is the case, I cannot say I exactly blame you, since life is short. However, there is, I assure you, a potent fascination in being able to nail, at a glance, the division to which a particular daffodil belongs.  There is some point in all keen gardeners knowing about Narcissus classification since, if you order daffodils from a specialist nursery, you will come

The Spectator

Letters to the editor | 17 March 2007

Paterson’s pranks Sir: Could I, as the person who unwittingly provoked Jennifer Paterson’s outburst in the Spectator kitchen, say exactly what happened? I was not, as Simon Courtauld writes (‘Who wants to buy our old office?’, 10 March), ‘a junior member of staff’, but the magazine’s advertising director. The kitchen was opposite my office and the nearest other kettle four floors down in the basement. Since Paterson only used the kitchen on Thursdays and I used to lug up all her vegetables in between flogging space, I would in her absence make the odd cup of coffee there. Finding an offending unwashed spoon, Paterson threw not plates but the entire

Anne Applebaum

From chessboard to boardroom

If I were a leading venture capitalist, the CEO of a large company, or in any case a person in search of ways to win friends and influence people, then I would be in a much better position to judge the utility of How Life Imitates Chess, Garry Kasparov’s bid to convince business executives that there is much to be learned from studying the game of chess. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that this book represents Kasparov’s bid to convince business executives that there is much to be learned from Kasparov’s game of chess. In the course of the book, for example, Kasparov re-examines his ‘development as

Jaspistos

Short story

In Competition No. 2485 you were invited to submit a short story entitled ‘Can You Forgive Her?’ The standard of the entry was mixed, but none was worthy of the mockery heaped on Anthony Trollope’s novel of the same name by Punch, which, infuriated by the indecisiveness of the heroine Alice Vavasor, referred to it as ‘Can You Stand Her?’ Henry James wasn’t much of a fan of Alice either, reputedly remarking that he could ‘forget her too, for that matter’. The unforgettable prizewinners, printed below, get £35 each. Hats off to Peter Smalley’s beguiling if bemusing Pinteresque two-hander, but the bonus fiver goes to Brian Murdoch’s compromised priest. ***

Robert Gorelangton

In the mood

The Hound of the Baskervilles first appeared on stage 100 years ago in Berlin, presented by Ferdinand Bonn. Herr Bonn was dead keen on realism and decided that his wife’s huge, beloved black dog would be the star of the show. Every night she would wait in the wings ready to produce a lump of German sausage, the idea being that, as Stapleton lured Sir Henry Baskerville on to the moor, the dog would belt across the stage and leap at the dangled bratwurst. For a spectral effect, the brute had lamps attached to its head; its savage howling was produced by a man backstage yodelling into a gramophone horn.

Richard Northedge

Gordon will hang on to his nice little earner

Before every Budget, for as long as memories extend, stock-brokers and fund managers have written to the Chancellor telling him that unless stamp duty on share purchases is abolished, the Square Mile will shrivel to nothing. Nowadays, the pre-Budget report gives lobbyists a second annual opportunity to make these special pleadings, while word-processors have made it easier to regurgitate the submissions. But with the same regularity that the City dispatches them, chancellors routinely reject them. The arguments have changed over time, from a straightforward appeal about boosting City business, through claims that the tax would inhibit Britain’s euro entry, to suggestions that abolition might solve the pension crisis. The phrase

Jonathan Davis

The risk of cataclysm has not gone away

Even before the world’s stock markets had their latest wobble two weeks ago, an interesting debate was gaining currency at some lunch tables in the City. As always, the debate in the moneyed classes is primarily about risk. It’s only those without money who spend their time worrying about beating the market and making the most out of any investment opportunity they can find. For those who have, discretion has always been the better part of value. The debate stems from the fact that risk, in its conventional financial sense, appears to have gone walkabout. The way most investment assets are priced these days, there appears to be barely a

Norman Bissett

Manna

Footsore, like the Assyrians of oldas ravenous as wolves, we left the hillbright-eyed, invigorated by the cold,clean mountain air of which we’d drunk our filland slept on the train home from Ballater.Twenty-eight miles we’d walked to Lochnagarand back, following the burbling watersof the Muick, the summit one grand hurrah.That night we fell like two starving navvieson bowls of Scotch broth, platefuls of roast beef,and Yorkshire pud, spuds, sprouts, carrots, gravy,rhubarb crumble — divine beyond belief.After a day of holy, God-like things,the benediction balm: feasting like kings.

Frank Keating

Don’t swot Swanton

Cricket’s World Cup will be an interminable slog in every sense. It began on Tuesday, 13 March; the final is still six weeks away (28 April). With only a month to sort out 32 bristlingly competitive teams, football’s World Cup is comfortably more user-friendly, while rugby’s version already has plans in hand to compress itself severely for the 2011 finals and so eradicate such laughable mismatches as 1995’s New Zealand 145 – Japan 17 or 2003’s Australia 145 – Namibia 0. Might there be some similarly jokey walkovers in cricket’s Caribbean marathon? Are Scotland’s supporters bracing themselves for  headlines such as ‘Calypso-Collapsos’? Mind you, of all the minnows Scotland has

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

The real credit crisis: the nation refuses to give any to Gordon Brown

By far the stickiest moment of my journalistic career was the time I interviewed a foul-tempered Michael Howard on his battlebus between Bristol and Cardiff during the 2004 European elections. But I’m sure I would have fared worse, much worse, if I had ever attempted to cross-question Gordon Brown. As it is, I’ve never even stood close to him: the only time he invited me to Downing Street — for a charity reception of which he was the nominal host — I accepted promptly, only to receive a photocopied letter telling me the event was oversubscribed and my invitation withdrawn. I’m sure this curt snub had nothing to do with

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

We should treat grand theories about the Ethiopian kidnaps with great scepticism

As we go to print the five kidnapped tourists in Ethiopia have been returned alive, but mystery still surrounds the circumstances of their capture and the motives of their kidnappers, while some of the Ethiopians who were captured with them are still missing. I expect a good deal of theorising in the week ahead. Some of it, like the speculation we’ve been hearing over the last ten days, will be wide of the mark. The released tourists are themselves likely to be confused about what was going on. This, I believe, may well be because their kidnappers themselves were confused. Chaos and misunderstanding are the explanation for so much that

Paul Johnson

Technological warfare against mice won’t work. Try cats

Ralph Waldo Emerson is quoted as saying: ‘If a man write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbour, tho’ he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.’ I don’t know about the first two commodities. There are too many authors churning out words, and who cares for a sermon these days, let alone the preacher? But mousetraps that work, that actually catch mice! Now you’re talking, Waldo! I hear nothing, these days, but complaints about mice. What’s the word? Infestation? Epiphytic? Zymosis? Pandemia? There has been nothing like it since 10th- and 11th-century

The Spectator

How to save the planet

In his film on climate change, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore quotes Winston Churchill’s famous warning in 1936. Admonishing those who were ‘only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent’, Churchill declared: ‘The era of procrastination, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.’ It is not surprising that Mr Gore and his green disciples should find this quotation alluring in their campaign for radical action against environmental change. But Churchill’s words are still resonant — or should be — in the debate on 21st-century

Austen Ivereigh

Let’s sort out the migration mess

Austen Ivereigh says that illegal immigration is both a symptom and a cause — of British economic success. The dead hand of the state is getting it wrong, as usual: time for a total rethink So, the government gets tough on illegal immigrants. The UK Borders Bill currently before Parliament plasters the cracks in our borders, imposes zero-tolerance for unscrupulous employers and gangmasters, and restores discipline to the nation’s frontiers by text-messaging Johnny Foreigner to remind him his visa is about to expire. Britain is no longer going to be taken for a ride — and about time too. But there is one issue on which the Bill is eerily

Melanie Phillips

The wizards of Oz have got it right

Coming from Britain to Canberra to interview members of the Australian government is like leaving a fetid malarial swamp to be douched with fresh cold water from a mountain spring. These guys are so onside in the great fight for civilisation against barbarism that they make ‘Bush’s poodle’ Tony Blair sound like a Harold Pinter wannabe on a bad day in Basra. As Britain impatiently awaits the disappearance of the Prime Minister it has impaled on the turnpike of Iraq, as it pulls troops out and as both Gordon Brown and David Cameron delicately signal that they will distance themselves from US foreign policy, John Howard’s government is increasing the