The news is heartbreaking at the moment
‘The news is heartbreaking at the moment.’
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Wednesday
Any good with bedbugs?
‘Any good with bedbugs?’
I think you’ve had enough
‘I think you’ve had enough.’
I sentence you
‘I sentence you to a lifetime wait for a prison place...’
Bubble tea
‘Spare a tenner for a cup of bubble tea?’
At the time…
Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite
‘Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.’
The babysitter
Worrying about my sleep quality
‘Worrying about my sleep quality on this tracker is keeping me awake.’
It’s not bed bugs I want you to get rid of
‘It’s not bed bugs I want you to get rid of – it’s that bloke next door.’
Chivalry is dead
‘Excuse me please, would you mind moving your bag so I can sit down?’ I asked. He took a slug from his can of lager, looked me in the eye and said no. Picture the scene: the London Underground, steaming hot, a crowded carriage, a long day spent in heels, and a spot of sciatica. Before me was a muscular, able-bodied man, probably in his twenties. I didn’t ask for his seat – I politely asked for his suitcase’s seat. I thought he was joking. But he looked at me, unsmiling. ‘What, really?’ I asked. ‘This is a priority seat for luggage,’ he told me. He was on a priority
Have I been sent mad by goats?
I am on a retreat in the Portuguese mountains outside Faro, a heavenly place called Moinhos Velhos. I have not eaten food in three days. I have practised hours of yoga and meditation. I have swum many cool, slow lengths of a blue-tiled pool and sweated in a wood-fired sauna and walked for miles through a red dirt valley under whispering conifer pines. Day two is the day you hate everything and want to blow up the world Yesterday I wanted to kill people. Not just the people on the retreat (who are all very calm and friendly and kind, which of course is why I wanted to kill them)
What to do about rude words in Scrabble
‘Nice,’ my junior school teacher once surprised the class by announcing, ‘isn’t nice.’ We shouldn’t, Miss Morris went on to explain, describe food as ‘nice’ but instead as ‘tasty’, ‘delicious’ or perhaps ‘tempting’. Similarly, rather than saying that a person is ‘nice’ we should indicate in what way they are nice, describing them for example as ‘charming’, ‘generous’, ‘thoughtful’ or ‘drop dead gorgeous’. All scatological terms will only score half points (but anyone who adds ‘scato-’ to the front of ‘logical’ obviously deserves bonus) Well, she didn’t say that last one. In fact, she rather had it in for the word ‘gorgeous’. The nine-year-old me was much miffed when she
Tuesday
Memories of Britain’s lost steam sleepers
In the early 1950s, as a very small school boy, I would travel between Inverness and London by steam sleeper train. The adventure started with tea in the Inverness Station Hotel while awaiting the train south. My parents never worried about my safety – unlike today, when children must have constant supervision from only the most stringently vetted adults. When I arrived at the platform, I was met by the sleeper superintendent, a guard into whose charge I was given. He had a small cabin in the luggage van, which, depending upon the time of year, would be decked with strings of rabbits, salmon in plaited reed cases, grouse, pheasants
Deliver us from speed awareness courses
I can’t decide if I’m a brilliant or bad driver. I admit I didn’t pass first time (it only took seven attempts). But in the intervening decades, I’ve amassed so many miles behind the wheel I like to think that, if he knew me, I’d be Sadiq Khan’s Public Enemy No.1. High mileage, no major accidents and zero fatalities must mean I’m alright. I’ve got a clean licence too. I put it down to the rosary I chant along to on Spotify with all the superstitious spirituality of a Sicilian nun as I speed across town for my dawn swim. It has been divinely ordained that I should dovetail the
My quest for a legendary punk mix tape
In the early 1980s, I was a young teenager being drawn into the small music scene of a provincial town. The moment was post-punk – bands like Joy Division, The Cure and Echo and the Bunnymen were driving my interest – but I was also fascinated by the punk movement that had immediately preceded it. One of the enduring origin-story legends of punk, frequently mentioned in the music press articles I was then devouring, was that it had been kickstarted when Lenny Kaye, later the guitarist in the Patti Smith Group, curated (as we’d say now) a compilation album of lo-fi 1960s American garage bands called Nuggets. Nuggets was a
Monday
After 25 years, I’ve returned to synagogue
On Saturday, I went to the synagogue in Béziers. I was motivated by defiance, sentiment, and an urge to demonstrate solidarity, but hardly from any rekindled religiosity. I’ve never had any to be rekindled. Like my namesake, the late Dr Jonathan Miller, said in Beyond the Fringe, ‘I’m not really a Jew… but I’m Jew-ish; not the whole hog.’ I grew up in North London when there were still some scars from the second world war. Bombsites. Prefab homes in Dollis Hill. I knew about the Holocaust but it seemed remote, impossible. My family had arrived in Britain in the late 19th century, exiles from the pogroms in Latvia. If
The sad decline of Disney
Happy Birthday, Disney. A hundred years ago today, Walt and his brother Roy formed the Disney Brothers’ Studio to produce a series of short films based on Alice in Wonderland, a successor to Walt’s original Laugh-O-Gram studio. It helped shape the American imagination and transformed the art of animation. If you meet anyone who actually saw the original Snow White in the cinema – as the late Stewart Steven told me – you’ll find they recall being scared out of their wits by the scene where Snow White runs through the forest with eyes and groping hands following her. Actually, there’s an awful lot to scare the viewer in Snow
The message in the King’s new coins
Last week, the Royal Mint unveiled a new set of designs for British coins. They depart dramatically from tradition by featuring themes from nature rather than heraldic, royal, or national emblems. The last set of definitives, designed by Matthew Dent and released in 2008, featured enlarged details of the royal arms, and previous designs have featured emblems of the nations of the UK such as the lion, dragon, thistle, leek and flax plant – as well as the familiar designs introduced at decimalisation. Few of the wild animals are readily identifiable with a single nation or region of the UK The new coins include a dormouse (1p), a red squirrel
Saturday
England have a spring in their step ahead of the Afghanistan match
England looked fortified by their Himalayan break on Tuesday, bouncing back from a depressing defeat to New Zealand, to despatch Bangladesh by a margin of 137 runs in Dharamshala. In hindsight, England were conspicuously superior and the match a little one-sided, with Bangladesh’s batting intimidated by the steepling bounce achieved by the very tall Reece Topley, who had replaced Moeen Ali’s off spin. But make no mistake, Bangladesh are a more than decent team who, on their day, can beat any international side. They surprised England in the 2015 World Cup and pipped India as recently as last month. With pressure on England, the Dharmshala match had the potential for
