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Funny to think what our taxes go on. I wouldn’t have had ‘the invention of a deity’ on my 2024 government expenditure bingo card, but here we are. The National Maritime Museum, which last year received £20 million from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, has unveiled a statue of a ‘god-like protector of all migrants’ to sit next to a bust of Horatio Nelson. The pair will engage in a pre-recorded conversation in which the gender-neutral god praises the ‘resilience’ of those ‘escaping war’ while moaning about our national hero’s ‘fancy medals and uniform’.  We find a sort of syncretic religion in the National Maritime Museum’s migrant god 

We have finally found a buyer for my late mother’s Suffolk house, but I’ve fallen into something of a trap. After the money’s divided and the bills are paid, I shall have a lump sum but nowhere near enough to buy a home. I’m 54 next month, not much more than a decade off official retirement age. Having taken a year off to do up the house for sale, I have little salary to show any mortgage-lender that won’t make them call security or simply giggle. Completion date is in February, and I have nowhere concrete (quite literally) to go to. I spent 2022, having grabbed my two cats and

In our celebrity-obsessed culture, the EGOT establishes someone as an all-out legend. Achieving an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and a Tony is the Hollywood-Broadway equivalent of a quadrathlon. Only 19 people have ever won all four awards and the feat is usually accomplished over several decades. Articles run every award season advising punters of the stars who are ‘nearly there’ – Elton John has finally made it, receiving an Emmy for a streaming performance of his farewell concert. The most efficient route to an EGOT is to write a beloved stage musical which is then turned into a film There is some contrast, however, between the public perception of the EGOT

The summer of 2013 was the third hottest on record in London. At the time I was living in a mouldy semi-detached in Clapham South; what happened in that house has left a lingering horror in my memory that changed the way I feel about London forever. In the flat below us there lived an elusive elderly woman named Audrey. Before I signed the lease, the landlord had briefly mentioned her, saying only that she was a bit anti-social but nothing to worry about – ‘not violent or anything.’ That should have scared me off but I was desperate and my university course was due to begin in a matter

Even in the long-shadowed depths of winter, Sicily can be a seductive place. From the hushed, hidden and time-polished marble piazzas of intricately lovely Ortygia, to the White Lotus out-of-season treats of ‘so pretty it hurts’ (Ernest Hemingway) Taormina, this blessed island has for obvious reasons been attracting invaders and colonisers for thousands of years. Indeed, enigmatic remains at Cozzo Matrice, near the lake of Pergusa – where Hades abducted the goddess Persephone – suggest Sicily might boast some of the oldest built human settlements on the planet. Litter is a primary sign of a society in dangerous civic decline  Such is the longevity of human civilisation on Sicily, it

During the Covid lockdowns, I accrued a number of kitchen implements I used only once or twice before confining them to the back of the cupboard. One item that lurks among the mismatched Tupperware is a rather expensive chip pan, namely a deep fat fryer with a whacking three litre capacity, in stainless steel, with a viewing window. I live with one other person, not in a lesbian commune, so why I thought I needed one as big I cannot fathom. In fact, why I needed one at all I have no idea. Stuck at the back of my cupboards is a soda stream, coffee percolator, and an electric carving

Can I have a Legend of Aviation award please? I deserve it for the time I flew Aeroflot and lived to tell the tale. Then there was the time I flew from Denmark to Amsterdam, taking off from a snowbound runway in a twin-propped plane which looked like something out of Biggles; that was pretty hairy, too. But alas, I guess there wasn’t enough room on the list of this year’s honours, to be presented in a Beverley Hills ceremony compered by John Travolta. Prince Harry made the cut, along with Buzz Aldrin, but it seems I’ll have to wait until next year. Harry and Meghan have achieved something useful: they

You can change practically anything about yourself these days, from your appearance through to your gender. But one thing remains practically immutable: your birthday. And here some of us are markedly less fortunate than others, as those of us who made our entry into the world in early January well know. Having a birthday at this time of year means that, in birthday terms at least, you have drawn a very short straw (and it probably won’t have a cocktail attached).  We early January babies already face quite enough dampers on our celebrations without the addition of a prohibition clause The first difficulty is simply party fatigue. This was less of