Youth mobility scheme
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Wednesday
No grit
Prisons are full
‘No wonder the prisons are full.’
They might raid the summer party!
‘They might raid the summer party!’
Stopped the boats
‘I would have been more impressedif he’d stopped the boats.’
Apparently we go well with bargaining chips
‘Apparently we go well with bargaining chips.’
That’s what I have every time it’s your round
‘That’s what I have every time it’s your round.’
I need to control these borders
The wild optimism of a young society
There’s a strange, near-psychedelic effect that hits you when you travel from an ageing country to a young one. It’s not in the buildings – although the buildings may be new and hastily tiled – and it’s not necessarily in the politics, culture or economic vibe. No, the shock is more human, and intimate. It is in the faces. And the noise. And the nappies. I’ve just returned from a few weeks in Central Asia: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan. And while these nations differ in history, ethnicity and landscapes, two things bind them all. First, they all have an inexplicable penchant for a stodgy rice dish called plov (in Samarkand I
Do cyclists know how hated they are?
Cyclists. I’ve become a tolerant cove in my old age but if there’s one word certain to raise my dander, it’s cyclists. In Brighton they think they own the place, enabled by successive stupid councils, who have spent tens of thousands of pounds on cycle lanes and those eyesore e-bikes all over town. With a murderous version of droit de seigneur – at odds with their right-on, self-righteous self-image – cyclists appear to believe that walkers are a lower order who they are free to run over as they please. Cyclists in Brighton seem particularly fond of riding on pavements, where the most damage can be done. It’s like they
Stationery is quietly making a comeback
All of a sudden, our local stationery shop – the Write Stuff – has grown a shelf labelled ‘Letter Writing & Correspondence: Original Crown Mill’. And there, in ranks, are pads of beautiful writing paper – vellum and laid, cream or white, A4 or A5 – plus boxed writing sets, decorated top and bottom with flowers and/or butterflies. All with colourful envelopes to match. ‘Goodness!’ I said to Antonia, who owns the shop. ‘Who is writing letters these days?’ ‘The young,’ she said. I was astonished and charmed. Immediately, I bought a pad of Original Crown Mill Laid (Finest quality since 1870) and decided to write to the granddaughter currently
Tuesday
With Daria Lavelle, on her breakout novel ‘Aftertaste’
33 min listen
Daria Lavelle was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, and raised in New York. Her work explores themes of identity and belonging and her short stories have appeared in The Deadlands, Dread Machine, and elsewhere. Daria is the author of the critically acclaimed new novel Aftertaste which explores food, grief and the uncanny. On the podcast she tells Liv about her ‘inexplicable’ love of olives as a child in Ukraine, trying to make it as a writer in New York and how to write about food without it feeling contrived.
I’ve become a solar panel hustler
What better accessory for my fleet of electric cars (well, two) than my own solar power station, converting the rays of the sun into blistering acceleration? I am propelled by a love of tech gadgets and the prospect of a quick killing. Do not confuse me with Net Zero zealots – I’m in this eco game for myself. So far today, my roof has thrown off 62.8 kWh – enough to drive my 2019 Hyundai Kona Electric for 350 km. (The other car is a Tesla, which I am scared to take out after a dozen of its brethren were recently incinerated in Toulouse.) Solar panels are the best investment
Britain is now a slackers’ paradise
My friend recently told me about a young Chinese woman who was staying with them and kept tittering to herself. Asked what she was finding so funny, the answers were telling. In one case, it was because she had seen so many people lounging in parks that she had assumed the working day had been cancelled from on high – and was amused to find out it was a normal weekday. Then there was the way that all the shops and cafés were shut by 9 p.m. Again, the private merriment. ‘Nobody works here!’ she exclaimed gleefully. In a sense, she’s right. Of course some people work – those in
The curious case of Bella May Culley
I was belatedly baptised last week in the Church of England, and though Christians are enjoined to show compassion to sinners and forgive them their trespasses, my eyes do not fill with tears at the plight of 18-year-old Bella May Culley from Middlesbrough. Bella currently finds herself in Prison No. 5 in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi after she was accused of smuggling drugs into the country. The prison is described in British media reports as decaying and dangerous, but which, from the pictures, looks tough, austere and simply furnished – no worse than one might expect of correctional facilities in the Caucasian republic. Even someone as daft as Bella must
Monday
How to save Britain’s pubs
In Bradford a few weeks ago, I popped into a pub called Jacobs Well. It’s a squat old building, all but submerged behind the stultifyingly ugly road that grinds around the edges of the town centre. The Well was fairly quiet on a Monday night, but everyone there was congregated around the bar and it was immediately apparent that this was a place where long friendships are nurtured and strangers are welcomed. There were interesting cask ales, free hotpot and doorsteps of bread on a side table for anyone who fancied a meal, wonderful photos of old Bradford on the walls and a blackboard chock-full of handwritten notices advertising upcoming
The unfashionable truth? Early motherhood is wonderful
At the end of last year I developed a pathological aversion to going to my local supermarket, owing to a garish sign in the window counting down the number of ‘sleeps’ until Christmas. The twee Americanism was grating enough, but I had another reason to feel queasy: I was heavily pregnant with my first baby and my due date was Christmas Day. Of course, my husband and I were longing to meet our much-wanted son. But as the day drew inexorably closer and I dived ever deeper into the ubiquitous ‘exposés’ on early motherhood, I began to feel afraid. Is it any wonder? To read pretty much any book, magazine
The semicolon had its moment; that moment is over
Rend your cheeks and rub ashes into your hair; for that most elegant, elusive of punctuation marks – the semicolon – is, if not yet quite dead, at least fairly close to being on first name terms with St Peter. Research from Babbel, a ‘learning platform’, shows that usage of the semicolon in texts has plunged by 47 per cent over the past two decades. I would be more surprised if the Pope turned out to be Catholic. These days, students struggle with commas and apostrophes. How can the poor milquetoasts be expected to grasp the finer usages of semicolons? This is all a terrible shame. Good punctuation is a balm for
Sunday
Help! I’m trapped in a hi-tech hotel
Raffles Doha is one of the world’s weirdest, most improbable buildings. That’s it in the picture – a five-star hotel incorporated in one prong of the incomplete circle that is the 40-storey Katara Towers in Lusail City (the Fairmont Doha is in the other prong), on land reclaimed from both desert and sea. It’s an architect’s/despot’s fantasy turned reality. The bonkers design is meant to echo Qatar’s national emblem of crossed scimitars, and I’d love to see the back of the envelope upon which it was first sketched. It’s far, far beyond my miserable hack’s pay grade, but invited as a guest I’m ashamed to say that I couldn’t resist. The tone was set
Saturday
The overlooked brilliance of BBC’s The Hour
With reluctance – but enticed by its surprisingly starry cast and the fact that it had landed, ironically enough, on Netflix – I recently tuned in to The Hour, the BBC’s 2011 political drama series. It’s about a BBC TV news programme being launched in 1956, against the backdrop of the Suez Crisis. And, goodness me, isn’t it good? Better than good, in fact – it’s a high-carat television diamond, and not some lab-grown job either, but the real, romantic, sparkling deal hewn out of the earth and hawked via Antwerp before ending up in the Imperial State Crown. From the get-go – those classy, Hitchcockesque credits – you know
