I’m being stalked
‘I’m being stalked by a Netflix film crew.’
Uncategorized
Wednesday
If we park in their space again, there will be further retaliation
‘They said if we park in their space again, there will be further retaliation.’
Jesters
‘Welcome to the brand new podcast, all about jesters and jesting.’
Short attention spans
‘They have really short attention spans.’
Invitation
‘It’s an invitation to a “bring a bottle” party.’
I’m here to defect
‘I’m here to defect.’
We’ll start our campaign to get rid of all the men
‘Once we join the Garrick Club, we’ll start our campaign to get rid of all the men.’
This is just a bowl of muddy water
Rise in sons living with parents
My battle with a Puglian pugilist
To nearly any English tourist, the small southern Italian town I’m currently living in, half an hour from my daughter’s school, would seem idyllic. It has an old castle, a monastery and olive groves in all directions, but in Puglian guidebooks it barely rates a mention. It’s the scruffy, down-to-earth cousin of richer or bigger towns nearby, places like Monopoli or Bari, but has nearly everything I could want. There are arches and stone stairways, pot-plants everywhere (80 in my alleyway alone), and that delicious, ivory-coloured stone which paves the streets in Puglia and which long use has polished to a shine. At night the street-lanterns turn the white buildings
Penknives aren’t dangerous
The company that makes the world-renowned Swiss Army penknife has decided to introduce a range of penknives that come… wait for it… without knives – citing increased regulations ‘due to the violence in the world’. It isn’t the knives that need changing, but rather the poorly-applied laws The problem is that a Swiss Army penknife without a knife isn’t a penknife, it’s a multi-tool, which is an entirely different kettle of fish (and you couldn’t possibly gut a fish with one of them – unless you’re going to unleash the corkscrew, Phillips screwdriver or tweezers on your trout). It isn’t the knives that need changing, but rather the poorly-applied laws. In Britain, for
The lost art of the football punch-up
Fifty-five years ago, in a match at Highbury Stadium, the Leeds United goalkeeper Gary Sprake punched Arsenal midfielder Bobby Gould hard in the face. Gould had jumped to try and meet a cross with his head. As he was returning to earth in a kind of pirouette, he swung his right heel back in the direction of Sprake, jabbing his studs into his opponent’s ribcage. Crafty. Nasty. Sprake then took his revenge, laying out Gould with a left hook. In these incidents, some kind of masculine code of honour kicked in What happened next is a 90 second lesson in older forms of masculinity and an older form of football. As
Tuesday
The concerning sickness of NHS staff
If you have been to the cinema recently and arrived in time for the adverts, you may already know what I am talking about. Somewhere between promotions for mega-burgers in glorious technicolour and exotic holiday destinations, you are plunged into what seems an endless, but is actually only a two-minute, horror flick, entitled ‘Sicker than the patients’. The fitness of at least half the nursing and support staff I encountered left a lot to be desired It is two minutes of unrelieved gloom and despair, book-ended by a family rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ around a sick patient (Daddy), who – lucky guy – appears to have a room to himself, not just
The food trends that need to die
Jacques – a tiny French restaurant in Finsbury Park – was the very first posh joint I ever ate at, back in 1987, and I have fond memories of it. The proprietor, Jacques, was a flamboyant 40-something: very gay, extremely rude to his customers (did I mention he was from Paris?) and partial to drinking his own profits. Nouvelle Cuisine, with far less fat and much smaller portions, was on trend, and Jacques’s glorious menu of rabbit in mustard sauce with mashed potatoes, and rich crème brûlée, was slowly replaced by carrot salad, followed by minuscule portions of blowtorched fruit. The cheaper ingredients and smaller portions allowed Jacque to consume
Join the Royal British Legion!
One of the things I really regret is that I didn’t spend more time down the British Legion with my dad. I was a bit snooty about it, I suppose. All those ex-squaddies talking about the army and playing darts and having a pint or two.I was an indie-kid, heading to university to read English. I preferred Camden to Greenford. But now I’d choose the Legion any day. And if more us don’t then you might see your local club closing as a result of the cheap pints at a local Wetherspoons. I realise now that the old British Legion clubs and the Legion itself is of such importance that
Monday
Why British women are so unhappy
I must admit to being somewhat taken aback on reading – in a new survey by the Hologic Global Women’s Health Index, whatever that is when it’s at home – that we women of Blighty are sadder and more ‘stressed’ than our sisters on the European mainland. Odd because I’ve always found us a cheerful bunch; after all, we were churning out the Carry On films, graced with Babs Windsor’s lusty chuckle, while French, Italian and Scandinavian film actresses were all looking like they’d lost a fiver and found a euro. Being jolly has for some time been seen to be the mark of a peasant But apparently, of the
AI is coming for artists
It’s a famous theme in science fiction: the idea that, one day, humanity and the thinking machines will somehow go to war. It’s the narrative spine of The Terminator films. It’s implied in 2001, A Space Odyssey. You can find it in Neuromancer, The Hyperian Cantos, Ex Machina, The Creator and I, Robot (the Asimov stories and subsequent film). In one of the fundamental texts of sci-fi, Frank Herbert’s Dune, this apocalyptic conflict is given a name: the ‘Butlerian Jihad’. Personally, I’ve always dismissed the concept of Butlerian Jihad as fanciful, even as I accept that Artificial General Intelligence – machines as smart as the best of us – is
Saturday
There is nothing common about the northern lights
It was 10.45pm and our film had just finished. I checked my phone and saw a friend claiming he had just seen the northern lights — in Wembley. It had been trailed as a possibility, but I hadn’t given it much credence. Not with the light pollution inside the M25, surely. You’d need to head up to the Chilterns at least, and even then be incredibly lucky. But I dashed to the back garden anyway. The night sky certainly had an unusual clarity, almost shimmering, and you could clearly make out the whole of the moon behind the shining crescent. But no colours. My Wembley pal must have mistaken the glow
Friday
Four bets at Chester and Ascot
There is so much to like about Chester’s three-day May meeting ending today: a unique course with an atmosphere to match, quality racehorses, highly-competitive contests every day and much more besides. If you have never been to the Cheshire track situated on the outskirts of this cathedral city on the River Dee, put it on your to-do list now because it will not disappoint. I have already put up one tip for today’s big race: the Chester Cup (3.40 p.m.). Zoffee, suggested at 16-1 a week ago, is less than half that price now and, in theory, he should benefit from his number one draw. However, he tends to be
Women will be disappointed by the Garrick Club
Perhaps it was the anachronistic use of the term ‘gentlemen’ that finally put paid to the idea of the gentlemen’s club. If only these illustrious institutions had thought to rename themselves ‘cis-male inner-city safe spaces’, we probably wouldn’t be looking on aghast as another centuries old tradition is summarily flushed down the memory hole. Strange that it’s taken the perpetually peeved a couple of hundred years to twig that gentlemen’s clubs were exclusively designed for… oh never mind, it’s a tough one to fathom I know, especially for all those highly educated Garrick club members who have just voted 60/40 in favour of admitting women, thereby abolishing one of the