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Why can’t you swim in reservoirs? They look so cool and inviting and are often the only open bodies of water available in certain parts of the country. And yet swimming is prohibited in the majority of them. The answer usually offered is that they are dangerous, cold, deep, that there are underwater structures and machines that could injure you or suck you under the water. The strange thing is that this answer only applies in England and Wales, not Scotland, where reservoir swimming is common. Access to inland waters in Scotland is enshrined by law: my local group in West Lothian is full of dippers chatting about their adventures

After Cabinet members recently took to the microphone for a karaoke evening, is Westminster’s new favourite hobby on course for a winter comeback? With summer days of al fresco cocktails and late-night picnics in the park almost behind us, a let-your-hair-down evening belting out karaoke could be just the answer. Here’s our guide to London’s best booths. Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes Cosy rooms with vinyl records covering every inch of wall, studded leather sofas and low-lit kitschy lamps create a perfectly funky vibe for an evening of crooning along to Otis Reading and Stevie Wonder. This retro bowling alley, which is a short hop from Russell Square station, has eight lanes and the only vintage

The UK has something of a reputation for butchering those classic European dishes on which entire cultures seem to be founded. Think spaghetti carbonara creamy enough to make an Italian weep or the kind of rubbery, watery beef bourguignon that is the culinary equivalent of our grizzly, grey weather to any self-respecting Frenchman or woman. But perhaps no dish is more maligned or widely miscooked than Paella. Certainly, we’re not helped in this respect by our celebrity chefs. And the usual suspects are at it again – Jamie Oliver reportedly received death threats for adding chorizo to his version and Gordon Ramsay followed suit, eliciting a similar reaction. It’s also

How do you help the environment and improve your quality of life? Why, buy milk in bottles. Some of us can remember them – foil topped, left outside the door, washed, then returned…a virtuous cycle which worked because it made practical sense. Life went downhill when the milk industry was deregulated in the 1990s and milk turned up in plastic cartons, homogenised and in supermarkets, and so it has remained, until quite recently. But the rattle of the milk van is returning to the streets in parts of London and elsewhere…things, folks, are looking up. It was one of the great advances in human civilisation when we developed lactose to

A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but somehow, eggy bread just doesn’t hold the same appeal as French toast, does it? The latter has become a bougie brunch dish, while the former languishes in second-hand student cookbooks. At heart, they’re the same thing: slightly stale bread soaked in an egg-based custard, then fried. Whatever pretensions French toast may have (and however delicious it might be), its origins are a cheap dish that improves and extends the life of stale bread with just a couple of eggs and a knob of butter. Of course, they aren’t the only two names for this stuff: unsurprisingly for an economical

BBC2’s mid-19th century Arctic whaling drama The North Water is earning critical praise for its gruelling depiction of seafaring life above the 66th Parallel. Murder, deceit, starvation, shipboard homosexuality (willing/unwilling), cannibalism (or at least hints of it in The North Water), an irate polar bear and deliberately scuttled ships feature in the drama. If you’re thinking that the scenario of The North Water sounds familiar, you’d be right, as these elements were all present in season one of The Terror (2018, AMC), which was finally shown earlier this year, also on BBC2. The North Water stars Colin Farrell (evil harpooner Henry Drax) and Jack O’Connell (emotionally damaged ships surgeon Patrick Sumner)

One of the great things about touring in the age of audio books, is that you can use your time driving between gigs, with nothing more to concentrate on than other half-tons of steel and rubber hurtling down ‘Smart’ motorways at suddenly varying speeds, to really binge on reading. I’d long been meaning to expand my knowledge of George Orwell. I’m pretty familiar with his better, or at least better known, essays and I have of course regularly scaled his Two Last Peaks, Animal Farm, and 1984. I’ve read Animal Farm so often that it has become a sort of catechism, and if it had a tune I could probably sing

‘Pub with rooms’ used to mean ‘backpackers’ hostel’, the sort of place with three bunk beds to a dorm and a pound deposit on your towel. But recently the capital’s pubs have realised that by raising their game, they could steal a decent chunk of the London hotel market. In a city where £400 a night often buys you nothing more than a fake mahogany desk, pubs are now offering boutique rooms at Travelodge prices. And apart from the value they offer, what could be more exciting than staying above a pub? It’s a return to the days of the coaching inn, somewhere you could eat and drink with an

Veteran comic Steve Martin has returned to our screens, this time taking aim at that most prolific of podcast genres: the true crime documentary. In his new Hulu show, Only Murders in the Building, the former star of The Jerk plays a washed-up TV actor and true crime obsessive who, along with two other misfits, sets out to turn a neighbourhood homicide into the new great American podcast a la Serial. The first episodes of Martin’s sitcom are funny enough, managing to skew the pretentiousness and ego of the wannabe sleuths. But they do beg one question: which is why it’s taken this long for someone to fire a shot at

Two of the misconceptions surrounding curry that it consistently struggles to shrug off are one, that it is unhealthy, and two, that it is difficult to make at home. I’ve always found both perplexing. Turks and Persians must be similarly bemused given the reputation of their archetypal food, the kebab. Yes the late night version, carved from a rotating trunk of greasy lamb with a mini chainsaw and then covered in garlic mayo, is a calorific car crash. But kebab as it was meant to be – meat simply grilled over charcoal and served with rice and salad – is perfectly healthy every day food. And yes a curry house

Italy’s relaxation of its travel restrictions for double-vaccinated Brits has many of us eyeing up the options for an autumn getaway. And why not? Come September, cities like Venice are no longer tourist traps (Dolce & Gabbana fashion shows aside) and yet the balmy weather remains. Many visitors head to Italy for Venice alone but they miss a trick by foregoing the beautiful nearby port town of Trieste – beloved by Italian holiday makers and yet untouched by Brits. With the Venetian authorities rumoured to be considering turnstiles on the periphery of Venice, Italy’s most iconic city increasingly feels like a museum. And so, for those left hankering for a slice of living,

More than new pencil cases, name tapes, and the smell of school halls, back to school season always makes me think of proper puddings. There’s a category of pudding that seems reserved for properly old cookbooks, a handful of old-fashioned pubs, and dinner ladies. Spotted dick, cornflake tart, and jam roly poly. Perhaps its ubiquity at school lunches accounts for its ghoulish alias: dead man’s leg or dead man’s arm. School children have a taste for the macabre, but to be fair to them when the pudding is unwrapped and before it is sliced, it does look fairly uninspiring, and not a hundred miles away from a pallid limb. This