Society

Thursday

28 May 2020

Unfortunately our new puppy is not just for lockdown

Will the huge surge in demand for puppies and kittens during lockdown lead to a lot of abandoned pets when life returns to normal? That’s the concern of various professional bodies and animal welfare organisations. The Kennel Club has warned those searching for puppies on its website that a dog is for life, not just the coronavirus, while Battersea Dogs Home initially slapped a ban on rehoming, allowing only fostering during the crisis. ‘Now isn’t the right time to bring home a puppy, or make an impulsive decision to get a pet,’ warned Holly Conway, head of public affairs at the Kennel Club. The Young family acquired Malinky, our five-month-old

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: What is the etiquette about watching graphic sex scenes as a family?

Q. Please can you tell me the correct etiquette about signing the visitors book after you are married? Obviously you don’t sign your parents’ one before marriage — but your fiancé does. After you are married do you both sign — even if you have lived in the house all your life? — Name and address withheld A. There is no reason for any former child of a house to feel offended if the parent (or step-parent) asks them to sign the visitors book after marriage. It is not a veiled insult or a signal that ‘this is no longer your home’. The visitors book is a matter of record,

Dot Wordsworth

What’s the difference between ‘scaffold’ and ‘scaffolding’?

Whenever I turned on the news last weekend, my husband took to humming the March to the Scaffold from the Symphonie fantastique. He was expecting a political decapitation. Political metaphors tend to the violent: toast, under a bus, the high jump. Berlioz didn’t use échafaud, ‘scaffold’, in the title of his movement, but supplice, ‘torment’. But J.M. Neale, the author of ‘Good King Wenceslas’, wrote a less successful ballad on the martyrdom of Archbishop Laud that included these lines: ‘So steadfastly the scaffold-steps/ That good Archbishop trod/ As one that journeyed to his Home/ And hasten’d to his God.’ Scaffold has a different connotation from scaffolding, with its loud voices,

Taki

I’ve made up for missing all my children’s and grandchildren’s births

Gstaad Well, Theodora did not wait and I missed yet another grandchild’s birth (the prettiest little blue-eyed thing ever, even if I say so myself). The funny thing is, I’ve never been able to be there when it counts. I missed my daughter’s birth because I was playing tennis in Palm Beach and got to the Bagel ten minutes too late (she rarely forgets to mention it). I missed my boy’s because I went to sleep and Alexandra chose not to wake me. My grandchildren Taki and Maria were born in Rome, and Antonius and Theodora in Salzburg. That makes it children and grandchildren: six; yours truly: 0. Nothing to

Jeremy Clarke

We have a communist bar and a fascist bar. If only I could remember which is which

When I first came to this village, I was told that one of the bars was a ‘communist’ bar and the other ‘fascist’. The information was appended with vague mutterings about the Nazi occupation being a live rail in the collective village memory even after 60 years and that it was probably best not to enquire too persistently or deeply into the subject. French bars are great for getting very drunk very quickly while standing up on a tiled floor, but are not comfortable or cosy like a British pub. Therefore I haven’t yet made a habit of patronising either of the village bars except occasionally during the busy summer

Melissa Kite

All I want to do is de-worm my horse

We arrived at the country store with only three minutes to closing time so our chances of scoring horse wormer were not good. ‘Leave it to me. Don’t you dare say a word,’ I told the builder boyfriend, who has form in this particular shop, where he is wanted for crimes against worming bureaucracy. I should explain, for those who don’t own horses: buying a horse wormer is more difficult than scoring crack. I don’t know about crack, of course, but I’m assuming it’s not straightforward. In any case, buying a wormer has to be more complicated because I get the impression people buy crack all the time whereas for

Anthony Horowitz

The Cummings road trip debacle is my last straw

I can’t remember the day I realised Santa Claus wasn’t real but I will never forget the moment I lost my belief in the Conservative party. It happened very recently — this morning, in fact. It was an odd day anyway which began with my reading an email from Mary Wakefield, inviting me to write this diary, even as she was appearing on my TV screen: an unnerving experience. Should I accept? Should I pretend that I’m ignorant of the biggest news story of the moment? I’m reassured that the one of the most trenchant and earliest attacks on Dominic Cummings’s road trip was written by Alex Massie and appeared

The Spectator

It’s time to end lockdown – and switch to voluntary social distancing

Who occupies the post of chief adviser to the prime minister is not generally an issue of great interest to the public. That Dominic Cummings has come to dominate the news for several days is partly explained by the long shadow of Brexit and his role in the referendum campaign. But it is no use attributing to that alone the furore over his decision to travel from London to Durham at the height of lockdown. People are genuinely aggrieved that when they have made personal sacrifices to conform to the ‘stay at home’ edict, a man who helped devise those rules appears not to have done the same. In vain

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Cummings under fire, protests in Hong Kong and a big cat in East Finchley

Home Open-air markets and car showrooms will be allowed to open from 1 June and other ‘non-essential’ shops from 15 June. Sales of goods in April had fallen by 18 per cent, those of clothing by 50 per cent. Government borrowing rose sharply to £62 billion in April, the highest sum known. The Office for Budget Responsibility predicted borrowing for the year of perhaps £298 billion, more than five times the estimate at the time of the Budget in March. The government announced funding for new long-term housing for 6,000 rough sleepers, of whom more than 14,000 had been given emergency accommodation from the start of the coronavirus lockdown. The

John Lee

The way ‘Covid deaths’ are being counted is a national scandal

As a pathologist, I’m used to people thinking that my job mainly involves dealing with death. But nothing could be further from the truth. That is why I and many of my colleagues are so dismayed by changes introduced during the coronavirus epidemic which mean that pathology has not been able to play the role that it should have in helping to understand this new disease. The word ‘pathology’ tends to conjure up images of body bags, mortuaries and murder investigations. ‘Ho ho,’ people say, ‘your patients can’t answer back.’ They imagine days spent trudging across fields to reach murder scenes, Silent Witness-style, and nights sifting through arcane evidence to

Susan Hill

I’m sick of people patronising Captain Sir Tom Moore

Nobody earns the right to respect just by having lived into old age, whenever that begins — it has happened by chance and by virtue of having dodged a few bullets. But everyone has the right to be treated with good manners and kindness by those with any power over them — even prisoners and toddlers having pyrotechnical tantrums. Mostly, politeness and consideration are forthcoming. It is always a shock if a bank clerk, dentist or traffic cop are brusque, perhaps because it is so rare. Still, I can stand rudeness more easily than I can tolerate being patronised, something older people encounter regularly. When Colonel Sir Tom Moore raised

Fiona Mountford

As the primary schools go back, it’s the older kids who suffer

It now appears that school’s out till after the summer for pretty much all secondary pupils. The loudest cries, an equal mix of exaltation and despair, come from those who were due to sit GCSE and A-l-evel exams this term: groups now split between delight at unstructured months of leisure time and anxiety that lackadaisical efforts in mock exams won’t prove enough to secure them the required grades. Yet my sympathies in this stalemate lie with those in Year 12, or the lower-sixth, the sandwich year between the two public exam groups. The Prime Minister has said that from 15 June, these 16- and 17-year-olds will be allowed ‘some contact’

Matthew Parris

Covid has all but left London. Why?

My partner, Julian, hovered at my shoulder on Friday as I tapped out my Times Saturday column (about travel quarantine). I’d slipped in a paragraph with my own thoughts about the transmission of Covid-19. ‘Cut the lot,’ he said. ‘You’re not an epidemiologist. Nobody’s interested in your theories.’ This was probably good advice so I put my own thoughts on hold. Until now. Because something’s still nagging me. I know I’m not an epidemiologist, but silences speak loud in science, and from those experts put up for media interview I notice a curious silence — a silence on what feels like a most important report and, from their interviewers, a

Lionel Shriver

Is living without risk really living at all?

Taking my life in my hands — as we all do when getting out of bed — I walked along the Thames last week. On the northern footpath east of Blackfriars Bridge, a young man ran atop the adjacent wall and jumped across a gap in the brickwork. The gap was six feet long, the wall as high. Had he missed, he’d have met all manner of hazards on either side. He gained nothing overt from that leap, only an ephemeral sense of satisfaction, yet risked broken bones or a fractured skull. As he turned heel in preparation for repeating the feat, I was both aghast and impressed. We could

Mark Mason

Canned fish, nickels and Swindon pools – the unlikely origins of band names

You wouldn’t have thought that Starbucks’s pricing policy could influence rock history, but that’s what happened. In the early 1990s, when Mike Kroeger was working in one of its Canadian stores, a cup of coffee cost $1.95. So Kroeger spent all day handing customers their five cents change, saying: ‘Here’s your nickel back.’ When he later joined a band, and it needed a name, he simply combined the last two words into one. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, on the other hand, had some friends who, because of their place of employment, were known as the ‘pet shop boys’. The band themselves don’t use the ‘the’, though of course everyone

Melissa Kite

It’s hell when your whole neighbourhood is working from home

Every morning, like sun-seekers stampeding to get their towels on the sunbeds at a cheap Spanish hotel, it’s a race to the patio for my neighbours and me. Each of us in the line of terraced houses on the village green must try to be the first to get into their garden, because the first one out there reserves the air space. If it’s the neighbour who works in telecoms then we’re in for merger talks all day. Her firm is in the middle of a big deal, the negotiations for which she’s carrying out on her patio via laptop conference calling. Working from home. Oh dear. This is going

Max Pemberton

The NHS is letting down thousands of patients

I’m embarrassed every Thursday. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. The outpouring of love for NHS workers at 8 p.m. each week has been touching. Who wouldn’t want to be clapped and cheered? But quietly among ourselves, many of us in the health service have increasingly felt it’s misplaced. I’ve come to dread it. It makes me wince. The fact is that the NHS is currently letting down thousands upon thousands of patients. When the dust has settled, I fear that we will be responsible for the death or morbidity of countless people. Since the pandemic hit, entire NHS services have completely stopped. I fear that this will have catastrophic

Robin Oakley

Racing needs us as much as we need it

Horseracing in Britain, which was suspended by coronavirus on 18 March, is due, as I write, to resume on Monday 1 June at Newcastle. Some French tracks reopened last week but Irish racegoers will have to wait until 8 June. In all cases, including the belated staging of the 2,000 and 1,000 Guineas at Newmarket on 6 and 7 June, Royal Ascot from 16 to 20 June and the Derby and Oaks at Epsom on 4 July, it will be racing behind closed doors. Thank you, France, for the hors d’oeuvre that served as a reminder of the hot form on the Flat of jockey Pierre-Charles Boudot and, over jumps,

Rory Sutherland

The stupidity of the ‘spare bedroom’

The Tesla Model 3 is an astounding achievement, but one thing baffles me: why do electric cars lack even the most basic tea-making equipment? I can’t be the only Briton to wonder why you would travel around on top of a 75kwh, 360v lithium-ion battery without having the facility to plug in a kettle. Or indeed power an off-the-grid shack for a few days. I have become oddly obsessed with questions like this because of the many lockdown hours I have spent watching bizarre YouTube videos. One remarkable series concerns the tiny house movement, where people seek to simplify and declutter their lives by moving into little wooden huts. I

Bruce Anderson

Bitter memories: my craving for a pint

It is enough to drive a man to drink. The most glorious weather, so suitable for white Burgundy on a picnic in a meadow-full of wild flowers, for rosé almost anywhere: above all, for beer. A few weeks ago, I wrote longingly about the thought of a pint of beer. Time has passed; the craving has intensified. Nor am I alone. Chatting to a friend about fine vintages being used as palliatives — these bottles I have shored against my lockdown — we agreed that there are moments when a foaming beaker of English wallop would hit the spot more satisfyingly than the most awe-inspiring bottle from Bordeaux or Burgundy.