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My friend Allan Lamb calls me a ‘cricket tragic’, back-handed compliment from a former English international cricketer. So the prospect of flying out to Australia and watching the first Ashes Test in Perth was too seductive to ignore. I knew pretty early on that the cost was going to be exorbitant. A gruelling 24-hour flight – and therefore serious jet lag – meant that either a premium economy or a business-class airfare was necessary. But as this was a bucket-list moment I indulged in the latter. Then hotel prices during an Ashes Test were inevitably ramped up and six nights at an ordinary inner-city hotel ended up costing twice as

‘He leaped the fence, and saw that all nature was a garden’. So goes the famous Horace Walpole quote about William Kent, the 18th-century landscape designer who saw the garden and its surrounding views as single and unified. Were he alive today, Kent might very soon leap over the ha-ha he designed at the Grade I-listed Rousham House in Oxfordshire and tumble head-first into one of Labour’s new eco-town developments. His breeches rumpled, Kent might observe with some sadness that the coherence of his design is no more. Built in 1635 by Sir Robert Dormer, Rousham continues to be occupied by his descendants Charles and Angela Cottrell-Dormer. Unlike your standard

Let me introduce you to the performative chef. The performative chef is a man. He is between 23 and 29 years of age. Both of his arms are covered in fine-line tattoos. His favourite tattoo is a quote from Philip Larkin that reads: ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do.’ His parents are in fact lovely people, but he’ll never tell you that. He sports a mullet (or buzzcut depending on the season). He rides a fixed-gear bike to work. He exclusively wears oversized clothes. He talks to every stranger that will listen about getting an eyebrow piercing. He studied classics

When Zoë Cave Hawkins bought a run-down townhouse in the heart of the cathedral city of Winchester, she was fully aware that getting permission to update the Grade II-listed property was going to be a bit of a hassle. But the reality was far worse than she could have imagined. As fast as her architects could draw up plans, a phalanx of planning officers, listed building officers and conservation officers would descend to rip them up.  A proposal to build a terrace above the new flat-roofed kitchen extension was nixed because it would mean replacing a series of original windows on the first floor with modern French doors. A new door to an

Yummy mummies everywhere, put your Veja trainers and frill-collar shirts away, because last week the Times issued a stinging broadside. Being labelled a ‘yummy mummy’ is apparently now so derogatory as to be an ‘almost cancellable offence’. The Yummy is dead, the headline declared, while my phone blew up like the fourth reactor at Chernobyl as Yummies far and wide forwarded me the article. ‘We are not dead!’ many fulminated, while others were more concise: ‘That’s just bollocks; I’ve never worn barrel jeans in my life.’ Detailing the sartorial transformation of Yummies into so-called ‘cool mums’, Times fashion editor Harriet Walker wrote that ‘in a bid to put as much clear water as possible’ between herself and the cohort that came before her, the Yummy is now the ‘cool mum’ with a look that is ‘less sleek, more knowingly scruffy’. Where once the

When I was growing up, it was generally accepted (unless you were a football hooligan) that, however much you disagreed with someone, they were entitled to their opinion. You listened, occasionally interjecting, and then made your case – sometimes forcefully. In the end, you might agree to disagree, but you didn’t harbour any enmity. These days, the idea that a person is free to hold their own beliefs, especially if they run contrary to your own, is considered laughably old-fashioned. The aim now is to silence that individual. If necessary, you eviscerate them, figuratively – usually online. Sometimes, tragically, their views are deemed so unpalatable that they’re silenced for good.