The flight from Nice to Bristol was packed. As soon as the doors closed I spotted a hummingbird hawk-moth bumping about the lights beside the overhead lockers. Poor thing. I often see them on my little terrace, wings a blur, freakishly long proboscis burrowing deep into the flowers. A woman with a steely bob a
Hanging a pair of gates at the rear of the house gave us so much satisfaction, it suddenly seemed strange that we had waited so long to do it. When we first moved here, I fell so in love with the place, and was so lost in a dream about rural Ireland, that I left
Northeastern Kenya We were in beautiful bush country up towards Somalia, in pastures that shone like spun gold in the sunset as herds of Boran cattle came into the bomas to suckle their calves. My hosts, Ogadeni clan stockmen who had invited me to travel here to look at their herds, showed me their favourite
They say not to judge a book by its cover – but what about judging a recipe by its name? Some sound like a disease or worse. Spotted dick, toad in the hole, lady’s fingers, Dutch baby, I’m looking at all of you. Cullen skink is one that has been accused of having an off-putting
It has been a gratifyingly wine-soaked week. Our Pol Roger-fuelled dinner celebrating the mighty Michael Heath’s 90th birthday was followed by a brace of Spectator Winemaker Lunches, one featuring Marimar Torres’s sublime Sonoma Pinots and Chardonnays, the other, at Boisdale, focusing on the glory that is Lebanon’s Ch. Ksara. Fearing toxic shock if I stopped,
They say never meet your heroes, but Bernard Cornwell didn’t disappoint. Knowing I’m a superfan, the events team at The Spectator asked me to interview him on stage on Monday and he was everything you could hope for: funny, candid, clever. The default register of very successful people in my experience is insincere modesty, but
Q. Some friends of ours have an amazing house on the coast in Kenya. Every time we see them they are guaranteed to say ‘You must come to stay, you’d love it’ or something similar. No dates are ever forthcoming but we have decided we’d actually quite like to go this winter. How can we
There is a fellow called Anthony Newman who is fascinated by drink, as a consumer, a producer and an intellectual. That said, he spent some years supplying Australians with craft beer, which does not sound very intellectual. But he insists he paid for his own passage and was able to return without a ticket of
Are you a survivor? We are not, luckily, all Gloria Gaynors. She declared in 1979: ‘I’ve got all my life to live, and I’ve got all my love to give/ And I will survive.’ She has so far made good on her promise. Surviving afflictions unscathed is not always an unmixed virtue. ‘She would be
After the disappointment of the confit de canard and the ‘no shows’ of those I’d planned to see a face looms up right at the death, whale-like with shy pinprick eyes and then all in a rush just as the taxis arrive I’m being told memory is vivid even though his House had been Queen’s
So as to not leave any marks on the freshly emulsioned walls by leaning the metal stepladder against them, and to save me the groan of starting next morning by heaving it up off the floorboards and lugging it into position, I stand it upright, dead centre of the empty lounge overnight, clothe the rungs
A femtosecond, derived from the Danish word femte meaning ‘fifteen’, is a unit of time in the International System of Units equal to 10-15 or 1⁄1,000,000,000,000,000 of a second; in other words one quadrillionth, or one millionth of one billionth, of a second. A femtosecond is to a second as a second is to approximately
