Uncategorized

Friday

Philip Womack

Pixels are replacing paper

Those of us of a certain vintage will remember the National Record of Achievement, a brown, crummy-looking folder, sent (personally, I like to think) by Tony Blair to every schoolchild in the country. We were encouraged to keep our certificates within its corporate leaves, from Swimming Level 1 Goldfish to Duke of Edinburgh. Presumably, before the government had this idea, people didn’t know what to do with certificates. Perhaps they were used as kindling, or eaten. Receiving a certificate was a moment of fulfilment. If it came in the post, anticipation was part of the process. Being awarded one in person had extra frisson. Some certificates were better than others. The

Wednesday

Flora Watkins

Oasis nostalgia is a form of mass delusion

Rolling Stone magazine once quipped that grunge was what happened when the children of divorce got guitars in their hands. If you take this theory and tweak it, then one can reasonably conclude that Oasis is what happens when children who grow up in a house devoid of books decide to form a band. The bilge that’s been written about Britpop and the wallowing in 1990s nostalgia since the Gallagher brothers announced their reunion tour last year (it kicks off in Cardiff this Friday) is approaching fever pitch. Tatler even has one of Liam’s children on its cover. You may have gleaned by now that I am not a fan.

Rob Crossan

Fat people are being fed lies

Every afternoon, I witness the unedifying spectacle of teenagers waddling out of the comprehensive school on my street in south London. Many of the 14- and 15-year-olds appear to weigh the same as their age. Few manage to make it past the chicken shop without buying a box of deep-fried nuggets to share between them. It crossed my mind that teenagers, cruel as they are, can no longer call a kid ‘Fatty’ (or ‘Tubs’ if they’re in private school). Shouting that in a playground would cause a Spartacus-esque reaction. In my school in the mid-1990s, being overweight was an oddity suffered by a maximum of two children in every year

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

How to humiliate a Range Rover driver

Aston Martins are sin, personified: everyone disapproves of them, but everyone wants one. That is why James Bond, a sex-addicted fictional civil servant, is suited to them – at least until he died in No Time to Die (clearly it was). Of course he died. He became emotionally available. If Bond isn’t ripping the knickers off death-stalked maidens, what is the point of him? Why is he feeding a child mango? Next! If you don’t want an Aston Martin, you are either dead like him or – more likely – you have never driven one. Recite the technical specifications by all means and pretend this is why you bought it:

Tuesday

Arabella Byrne

Wimbledon’s myth of elitism

Many were the jibes when Boris Johnson announced that he was ‘thrilled’ to be back on the tennis court in 2021 as lockdown restrictions eased. ‘Bloody posho poncing about on a tennis court’ or ‘how typical’ were probably some of them. Sir Keir, naturally, made sure that he was photographed on a football pitch on the same day. But here’s the thing: these days, playing tennis isn’t posh. Yes, chins love to watch it and play it – helped by tennis courts of their own – but the playing of tennis has become democratised. Reports of next-gen community tennis clubs springing up all over the country have become widespread, according

Nigel Jones

Venice is a city of love and menace

Jeff Bezos has brought much tat into the world, along with the undoubted convenience of Amazon’s services. But in at least one respect, he is a man of good taste. In choosing Venice to plight his troth with his lovely bride Lauren Sanchez at the weekend, Bezos picked the best possible location: La Serenissima is indeed a veritable miracle. It is a logic-defying wonder, and despite my frequent visits, I still don’t understand the physics of its construction. How can a city of hundreds of heavy palaces and churches, resting on petrified wooden piles driven into mud, continue to exist centuries after the Venetian lagoon was first settled by terrified