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Wednesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The row over Chelsea’s AI garden

The gardening world is a gentle, friendly place. Rows are rare, with disagreements creeping in softly like moss, not blowing up the way they do in politics. Everyone is quite nice to one another, almost to a fault. Which is why the row over Tom Massey’s AI garden at the Chelsea Flower Show is quite so striking. Since the line-up for the 2025 Royal Horticultural Society version of London Fashion Week was announced last week, gardeners have been absolutely and abnormally furious about the first shoots of AI appearing. Massey’s garden promises to be an ‘intelligent’ one, using AI trained on RHS plant data and advice to tell visitors how

Ben Lazarus Ben Lazarus

Will councils soon be digging up the dead?

I’ve been fighting Brent Council over some graves. Paddington Old Cemetery is dilapidated and Victorian and has been classified as a park by Historic England for decades. Only a tiny section of its 24 acres is used for new burials. Without life, cemeteries attract foxes (who mess on graves), and the wrong type of people – drug addicts and drinkers Brent recently launched a rather biased consultation looking at whether off-lead dogs should be banned (my favourite question in the survey: ‘Do you agree with dogs urinating on graves?’). The council claims they have received ‘a growing number of complaints’ from mourners about dogs but won’t say how many complaints.

Tuesday

Tom Goodenough

Sard times: Exploring Sardinia’s secret south

Sardinia hasn’t always been the tranquil, picture-perfect paradise of today. The island was once ruled by bandits; its rugged landscape the perfect place for criminals to hide. Things weren’t much better on the coastline: slap bang in the middle of the Mediterranean, the island was an easy target for pirates and was vulnerable to plague. Life in Sardinia was once truly miserable. Head west from Cagliari and it isn’t long before you’re in a Sardinia that many visitors don’t get to see Thankfully, the pirates and plague are no longer a problem in this part of the world. But there is another ‘p’ you might have to watch out for

Flora Watkins

The debauched posh are back

‘The wines were too various: it was neither the quality nor the quantity that was at fault. It was the mixture.’ This is the meet-cute at the beginning of Brideshead Revisited. Lord Sebastian Flyte chunders through the window into the ground floor quarters of Charles Ryder. Seduced by these smart shenanigans, Charles proceeds to dump his dull middle-class muckers in order to ‘drown in honey’ (also champagne, Catholicism and plover’s eggs) with Sebastian and his rich Oxford set. By the time I arrived at university at the turn of the century, debauchery had long been democratised. John Lennon had smoked a spliff in the gents at Buckingham Palace, while another working-class

Monday

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Where are the small boat babes?

Realising that I was one of only two non-Polish women while partying with the youngsters from my local Pizza Express – my home-from-home for a decade now – I had to laugh at myself. How I love my waitress mates; Marta, Polina and Camila have become almost like family, showing up self-funded and shoutily supportive at my theatrical endeavours over the past couple of years. Now one of them has left to return home, I felt a sense of loss. How odd to see the likes of the Guardian favouring such red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalism And to think I used to believe that Poles coming here was a bad idea. Growing up adoring my

James Bartholomew

Che Guevara was a sadist

Che Guevara died 57 years ago this month and yet, even now, he remains the epitome of revolutionary cool. You never know when he is going to pop up. I came across him recently in the lobby of a hotel in Kandy in the highlands of Sri Lanka. There he was with that determined, heroic look under a dashing beret with a red star badge. He was on a poster dominating the wall above the capitalist till where the luxury hotel took payment. Guevara didn’t care. He took out his pistol, held the barrel at the boy’s neck and fired. The boy was almost decapitated The famous photo was taken

Zak Asgard

Sober October is awful. That’s why I do it

As Sober October comes to an end and we turn our attention to two months of forced festivities, it might be time to ask ourselves if these month-long periods of sobriety actually do anything. In short, I’ve found the answer is that they do. This year, I attempted Dry January. Why? For one simple reason: shame. There are few emotions in life more powerful and more potent than shame. And what is a hangover if not chemically-induced shame? The first time I got really drunk was at a house party. I was 15. My friend and I were new to alcohol and so we thought it clever to buy a

Friday

Penworthy

Five bets for the new jump season

I would normally stay tipping on the flat for a couple more weeks but this weekend’s Newbury and Doncaster cards make no appeal, gambling wise, while the return of a Saturday jump card at Cheltenham is hugely welcome. On balance, I prefer betting on national hunt racing because it’s easier to get attached to the horses that are racing year after year – and to get to know their preferences, their dislikes and their quirks. I always bet with caution in the early weeks of a new season because it is impossible to know which horses are fit and which are not However, I always bet with caution in the

James Maker

Why blokes love coke

If cocaine were a perfume, it would be Chanel No.5: a timeless classic impervious to the flux of fashion and taste. It straddles all socio-economic divides, provided you can afford it. When I lived in Spain, cocaine was the recreational drug of choice because it was more widely available than other narcotics, and its grade was relatively pure. Cocaine is shipped from South America or Mexico directly to Iberia rather than transiting other points, where it is blended en route to its destination. Consequently, the reveller in Madrid vacuums up less talcum powder and household cleaning product than does his counterpart in London. Here in the Home Counties, there is

Mary Dejevsky

My failed attempt to game GP appointments

Nearly 20 years may have passed, but a good number of people will still recall the exchange between a salt-of-the-earth member of the public, Diana Church, and the then-prime minister, Tony Blair. The year was 2005, the occasion a pre-election edition of BBC Question Time, and the issue at hand? Well, plus ça change – the hoops patients had to go through to see an actual GP. Mrs Church had asked the PM whether something could be done about a system that required her to book an appointment no more than 48 hours in advance. That’s right, no more than (not no less than) two days before. A baffled prime

Daniel Sokol

Inside the secretive world of tutoring

‘There is absolutely no need for any child applying to our school to be tutored,’ said the headmistress of a prestigious London day school during the Q&A session. Relieved, I left the hall to wander around the booths in a nearby room. I was struck by the many tutoring agencies, offering advice, courses and books on how to boost your child’s chances of securing a place at an elite school. In light of the headmistress’s earlier comment, I couldn’t help but recall the famous words attributed to P.T. Barnum. ‘A sucker is born every minute.’ The majority of applicants are tutored to the hilt Not long after, I found myself

Wednesday