Scatter cushions
‘Ugh! Scatter cushions.’
Uncategorized
Wednesday
Doomscrolling
‘Oh will you stop doomscrolling!’
One day soon this will all be keyhole surgery…
‘One day soon this will all be keyhole surgery…’
Not a word about my strike plans
‘Not a word about my strike plans.’
You don’t realise how tough it is being a single grandparent
‘You don’t realise how tough it is being a single grandparent.’
One little fire and we’re back to the stone age
Birmingham is the tops
‘I love it here. Birmingham is the tops.’
Paddington Bear and the new idolatry
Is nothing sacred? Not quite, as it turns out. There remains one last object of piety in these, the early days of the third Christian millennium (don’t laugh). Surprisingly, it is a fictional bear from darkest Peru. Yes, Paddington is back in the news. Because he hath been desecrated. There is, or was, a sedentary statue of St Paddington Bear on a bench in Northbrook Street, Newbury. He was depicted clutching a marmalade sandwich in both paws, wearing an expression that was probably intended to be thoughtful, but that to any reasonable person appeared feral and malevolent. One dark night a few weeks ago, Daniel Heath and William Lawrence, RAF
I’ll never holiday again. I couldn’t be happier
Waking up to hear the ‘unprecedented’ news about Heathrow Airport, I felt a nanosecond of luxurious relaxation (albeit I’m not exactly over the moon about being in a hospital bed without the use of my legs). Of course I’d rather be scampering about an airport superstore being sprayed with scent by sexy shop-girls rather than stuck here waiting to be hoisted into the air over a commode like some smelly piñata. But there’s never any harm in looking on the bright side and I’m very glad not to have been flown all the way back to Delhi when I was on the verge of landing in TW6, as was one
Why we still love Pizza Express
How’s this for a bargain? A Pizza Express margherita for only 33p, if you dine in and order between 5 and 6 p.m. tomorrow, to celebrate 60 years of the chain. ‘In 1965 we brought proper pizza to the UK, and what better way to mark those 60 years than with 60 minutes of our original pizzas at their original prices,’ reads the promotion. I love Pizza Express. I don’t often go there, but I’ve never had a bad time in the place. I almost always choose the American, which has been on the menu since it opened, and the service and food is always consistent. I have no expectation
Tuesday
With Loyd Grossman
24 min listen
Loyd Grossman is a man of many talents: from appearing on our screens as the host of MasterChef and Through the Keyhole, to crafting a beloved line of pasta sauces. Loyd has left his mark on both the culinary and cultural worlds. On the podcast, Loyd talks to Lara about hazy memories of ‘sipping a Shirley Temple cocktail aged 6 or 7’, the secret behind his pasta sauces, and why he loathes school meals.
Australians are destroying our ancient past
I’ve been to a few underwhelming Unesco World Heritage Sites. Take the Struve Geodetic Arc, which curves almost invisibly across Eastern Europe. I visited without even realising. As for the Fray Bentos corned beef factory, in Uruguay, I’m writing this about 20 minutes from the Fray Bentos corned beef factory and I’m still reluctant to go and see. The same might be thought of Australia’s Lakes of Willandra, which I visited around 2014. Unesco itself describes them as ‘fossil remains of lakes and sand formations from the Pleistocene’, which is not exactly heart-racing. They are unhelpfully located in the south-west corner of New South Wales – lost in semi-desert, far
What’s wrong with a Spinal Tap reboot?
The wigs are being dusted off, the spandex jumpsuits laundered and the amps turned up, not to 11 but to infinity. Rock legends Spinal Tap, one of the world’s loudest bands, are back with a sequel to their seminal 1984 mockumentary, to be released on 12 September. But can Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues possibly live up to the nearly flawless original, or are we about to witness an act of cultural sacrilege? Happily, nearly all the original cast will be in the sequel, and we are promised some big-name cameos from Paul McCartney, Elton John and Garth Brooks. Apparently, we will catch up with the band’s recent activities:
Children’s books are too depressing
The Carnegies are a long-running award for children’s writing and illustration, established by the Library Association in honour of Scottish philanthropist Andrew Carnegie and first awarded in 1936 to Arthur Ransome’s Pigeon Post. This year’s shortlist of 16 for fiction and illustration, chosen by a dozen librarians, is out now and billed thus: ‘Marginalised Male Perspectives Explored with Empathy and Hope’. So, boys are the new girls as the left-behinds of our day and white boys in particular are the group most obviously marginalised. Well, boys certainly feature in some of the work, but what’s striking about the shortlist is what it represents about contemporary children’s books: an awful lot
Monday
Finally, I’ve been forced to get a phone
I’ve never cared about status symbols, because my talent is the only one I need, so of course I wasn’t concerned with mobile phones, which were once tremendous markers of rank. Since then, not having a smartphone (or pretending not to) has become a thing some high-status people boast about now that 95 per cent of the UK adult population (and a great deal of the child population) own them. Ed Sheeran claims to have dumped his in 2015, Elton John describes himself as a Luddite, while Simon Cowell sensibly told the Mail on Sunday way back in 2007: ‘It was actually stopping me from working or living properly, so
Why my dog is vegan (and yours should be too)
This morning, as usual, I was woken up by the large ball of golden fluff that is my dog, Honey. At a time she considers decent, she bounds on to my bed, tail wagging furiously, to tell me it’s time for her breakfast. Honey still has the puppyish bounce she has always had – even though, at the age of almost 12, she is gently settling into canine old age. And I’d go so far as to say that what I give her to eat has a lot to do with her youthfulness. Eye-roll as much as you like, but I believe one of the key reasons Honey is thriving
It’s time to buy a British jumper
When did you last bump into the words ‘Made in Britain’ on a jumper, shirt or pair of trousers? There’s a chance, if you’re under 40, that you’ve never actually seen those words printed in an item of clothing – ever. And that’s quite a problem, particularly when you consider that we find ourselves in an era when the Prime Minister’s favourite two words are ‘national resilience’. The simple fact is that when it comes to clothes we aren’t resilient. In fact quite the reverse: in the past year Britain imported something like £15 billion-worth of textiles and clothing (compared with clothing exports of around £3 billion). So in addition
Sunday
‘CleanTok’ and the psychology of spring cleaning
Thousands of years ago, housewives living in what is now Iran would prepare for the spring equinox and Persian New Year by cleaning their homes from top to bottom. Today, ‘cleanfluencers’ on social media earn a living all year round by demonstrating how to keep your home sparkling. That might mean road-testing their new robot vacuum cleaner or going old-school and scrubbing grubby grouting with baking soda (spoiler alert: stain-removing toothpaste works better). Times have changed but the tradition of spring cleaning is alive and kicking. And while the need to give your home an annual service after months of soot and dirt build-up from open fires is no longer
Saturday
Should Sepp Blatter really be prosecuted?
It is ten years since Sepp Blatter finally lost control of football’s world governing body, Fifa. But despite his retirement and advanced years – he has just celebrated his 89th birthday – Blatter has not been able to bow out quietly. In a few days, on Tuesday, Blatter will be in court, in Basel, in his native Switzerland, to hear verdicts on allegations of fraud. Last month, Blatter spoke to protest his innocence in this case: ‘When you talk about falsehoods, lies and deception, that’s not me… That didn’t exist in my whole life.’ However, this picture of purity is one few football fans would recognise. Because Blatter is a
Friday
Bets for Newbury and the Grand National
As regular readers will know, I am a great admirer of the training talents of Harry Derham and I have no doubt that he will reach the top in his chosen profession. This month he reached a significant landmark, training the 100th winner of his career. Derham, aged just 30 and the nephew of 14-times champion National Hunt trainer Paul Nicholls, certainly has his string in sparkling form at present with six winners from just 18 runs over the past two weeks for an impressive strike rate of 33 per cent. All the signs are that he is a man to follow in the final weeks of the jump season.
