Life

High life

High Life | 5 September 2009

Gstaad My Davis Cup partner Nicky Kalogeropoulos won both the Wimbledon and Roland Garros junior titles in 1963, and the following year, at four–all, 30–all in the fifth set against the French champion Pierre Darmon, signalled his opponent’s ball good after the umpire had called it out giving Nicky a breakpoint. He lost the match

Low life

Low Life | 5 September 2009

I hadn’t seen cousin Claire for five years. She was as lovely and as enthusiastic as ever as she welcomed me into her barn, where she was throwing a party for her mother and father’s golden wedding anniversary. She clocked the tie — the White Park Cattle Association tie — immediately. White cattle heads on

Slow life

Slow Life | 5 September 2009

We were about to leave. The bags were packed and loaded, the kids were strapped into the car. I embraced our host. He drained his glass, grinned, raised it and then hurled it through the air with a long, windmilling arm. It was a big throw, the biggest he could manage and the thing seemed

More from life

Status Anxiety | 5 September 2009

With four children under six, flying anywhere for the annual summer holiday has become prohibitively expensive, so for the past five years we’ve been going to Cornwall. With four children under six, flying anywhere for the annual summer holiday has become prohibitively expensive, so for the past five years we’ve been going to Cornwall. The

Spectator Sport

Spectator Sport | 5 September 2009

Amid all the fake blood and thunder, car-crashing, bashing and diving that has scarred the games we love in recent days, it is time for those few of us still deluded enough to believe that sport represents the very best that life can offer to reflect on a very happy man. Well, you assume he’s

Dear Mary

Dear Mary | 5 September 2009

Q. My daughter will be studying Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde for English GCSE and my wife and I are at daggers drawn. I say that Jekyll should be pronounced ‘Jeekill’, as in Gertrude. My wife says that this is pretentious and we should stick to ‘Jeckill’, as in Hollywood. Please advise. A.D., Faringdon, Oxfordshire

Mind your language

Mind Your Language | 5 September 2009

Errors stick like burrs. Forty years ago, Jimi Hendrix played ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at Woodstock with a good deal of distortion on his guitar, mostly engendered by feedback. Some people, I learn, refer to this inaccurately as phase distortion. Phase distortion cannot of itself be heard, the physicists tell me. Phase, again, is identified in