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Friday

Penworthy

Two tips for the Irish Grand National

Irishman Martin Brassil is a brilliant target trainer but even he has to handle the ups and downs that come with participating in the so-called Sport of Kings. Horse racing, particularly at the highest level, can bring despair as well as joy as Brassil experienced at last week’s Cheltenham Festival when he had three fancied runners over the three days. Built by Ballymore was a disappointing 4-1 favourite when he came only 14th of the 21 runners in the Coral Cup Handicap Hurdle, Fastorslow unseated his rider when well-fancied for the Boodles Cheltenham Gold Cup and, worst of all, Ose Partir, was brought down and, sadly, fatally injured in the Boodles

Richard Bratby

’Allo ’allo, have you got a licence for that model engine?

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted a steam engine. When I was five my parents promised that I could have one when I was 12: I think they thought I’d forget. I didn’t, and seven Christmases later I unwrapped a model traction engine made by the Birmingham firm of Mamod. It was chunky and basic, and its bright green and red paint gave it a toy-like appearance. But its brass valves and copper pipes were unquestionably the real thing. Out in the garden, Dad and I lit it up. The engine grew warm, it hissed; its flywheel whirred into life. And a glorious aroma filled the

Alec Marsh

The irresistible horror of the farm shop

Picture the scene; you’re Kate Middleton and it’s Saturday lunchtime. You’re out enjoying suburban Windsor. The Audi is safely stowed – along with hundreds of other cars mostly produced in Germany, the Czech Republic or the West Midlands – in a nearby car park the size of the deck of the USS Harry S. Truman and about as eco-friendly. The farm shop is a kind of Peppa Pig World for adults There’s a faux 1950s Citroen van-lookalike with corrugated panels from which a pair of stressed teens in brown aprons are selling overpriced macchiatos, almond lattes and stone-cold hot chocolates, to a lengthening queue of gilet-wearing mums and dads. Most of

Ettie Neil-Gallacher

In defence of ready meals

Earlier this week I read that, from the moment of pulling into the car park to exiting it, the average supermarket shopper reads just seven words. Seven words. My initial reaction was: who are these Neanderthals? So, for want of something to talk about over supper after nearly 20 years of shackles, I ran this random fact past my husband. He was amazed anyone read as many as seven. My reaction this time was more fulsome: who is this Neanderthal, and why am I having dinner with him? When I was home from boarding school, I was positively relieved when she reached for an M&S carbonara rather than Delia These

Wednesday

Angus Colwell

Chicago doesn’t know what limits are

Chicago residents bristle when you ask them whether they eat deep-dish pizza. ‘Yeah’, they sigh, ‘we might occasionally when someone visiting wants to try it out’. Sigh. ‘We have great thin crust though’. But lots of places have good thin crust. I came to Chicago to try the deep dish. But deep-dish pizza is stupid. It’s not a pizza, more a dense pie: the sauce sits at the top, and the filling beneath is quicksandy cheese. Sausage meat, jalapeños, chorizo, bacon, red onions and mushrooms are thrown into it and expected to learn how to swim. I got a deep dish on my last day in Chicago and found it wasn’t good. Not for

Robin Ashenden

What my strange old friends taught me

As a young man I sought out the company of much older people in the arts, feeling they had some secret to life, often the same one in different guises, which I wanted, needed to discover. In the let-it-all-hang-out youth culture of the 1990s I felt awash, and the elderly (which to a 20-year-old meant anyone over 60) were also kinder, less threatening, more generous with their time. Two people who influenced me most were Daniel Farson – roistering Soho writer and broadcaster, a kind of modern-day Toby Belch – and Karin Jonzen, a septuagenarian Swedish sculptress with a studio off the King’s Road. It was all pure gold, a

Ella Dorn

China’s greatest poet was a drunk teenage girl

One of China’s most famous poems was penned by a teenager with a killer hangover. ‘Heavy sleep can’t get rid of the dregs of alcohol,’ she grumbles, sequestered in her darkened room after a night of boozing and bad weather. She has to ask a maid to open her curtains. Here comes one of the quintessential images of classical Chinese poetry: a crab-apple tree stands in the drenched earth, wrecked by the storm. Her maid, who hasn’t been drinking, sees nothing wrong. The poet is full of sorrow. Spring has faded. To her, drunkenness was always beautiful, even when it led to disaster Li Qingzhao grew up in 12th-century Shandong,

Emma Wells

Inside the Kent townhouse built for heroes of the Napoleonic wars

‘I’m used to going deep into narratives, and I just loved the story of this house,’ says actress and director Sara Sugarman, who is selling her Grade II* listed Georgian home in a historic Kentish dockyard. Her roles include TV series Grange Hill and Juliet Bravo, movies Sid & Nancy and Mr Nice, and she has also directed Lindsay Lohan in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen and Jonathan Pryce in Very Annie Mary, earning the Sundance Film Maker’s prize along the way. ‘I wanted pure authenticity, so I researched everything I could about the history of the house and 1830s design and got a real hunger for it.’ ‘Every

Tuesday

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

The monstrous beauty of Nico

Few things sum up the chasm between childhood and adolescence more poignantly than our changing relationship with music. One minute life is all familial cuddles and nursery rhymes – the next it’s all parental alienation and rock’n’roll. One year I was eagerly buying the records of Pinky & Perky, the next those of Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick & Tich – and the next, the records of the Velvet Underground and Nico. Nico had finally found the family’s piano and was pumping away on it as if her life depended on it My relationship with Nico – the fantasy and the reality – is one of the funniest never-meet-your-heroes experience