Life

High life

Favourite dates

To the Carlton Club for an oversubscribed dinner moderated by Michael Binyon with Liam Fox and yours truly speaking about the Middle East. When my turn came I shyly pointed out that I was honoured to be invited because the usual subject I’m asked to discuss is Paris Hilton or jail. ‘Why don’t you do

More from life

Your problems solved | 7 July 2007

Q. Everyone over 40 in my office has been let go. I assume I have been spared the axe because Human Resources has never had a record of my date of birth. Now a mountain of paperwork has arrived from the school at which my son will take up a place in September. We, his

Much missed

We had been through so much together. Racing not just on the domestic scene but also in Melbourne, Mauritius and Maisons-Lafitte. Together over 15 years we had been bird-watching in Venezuela, Costa Rica and the Gambia, Madagascar and the Isle of Mull. But at Newmarket last Saturday somebody relieved me of my long-cherished Zeiss binoculars.

Down and out

I open my eyes. It’s morning. I’m lying on a sofa in a sitting-room I don’t recognise. This’ll have to stop. Apart from anything else, it’s getting boring. I’m reflecting on this when Tom charges in. ‘Jerry!’ he says urgently. ‘Does my face look different?’ It does. Even from several feet away it looks radically

Class conflict

The garden which came with the house was far too small. Buster — clearly a martyr to claustrophobia — regularly burst through the hedge into what used to be The Hall’s orchard. Then, unable to burst back again, he howled in frustrated rage until I rescued him. So, in a fit of uncharacteristic extravagance, I

Mind your language

Mind your language | 7 July 2007

‘What’s this?’ exclaimed my husband as we came round the corner between the Foreign Office and the Treasury on the edge of St James’s Park. ‘What’s this?’ exclaimed my husband as we came round the corner between the Foreign Office and the Treasury on the edge of St James’s Park. It was the memorial to