Gstaad It is hard to imagine that we have reached the year 2022 and are still imposing completely irrelevant restrictions on each other. By we I mean those of us in the supposedly enlightened West, where silliness, jealousy, cruelty and woke rule the roost. I’ll begin with the Chinese virus that has contrived to
I listed for Catriona the reasons why I did not want to go out to dinner that evening at the posh new restaurant in the village. The Hammers were on telly that evening and we had a fire lit. Plus, I was only just back from the hospital at Marseille where another half pint of
Last night I dreamt I went on holiday again. It seemed to me I stood by the departure gate, and for a while I could not enter, for I kept setting the metal detector off. Then, like all unvaccinated dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed through the barrier. The
I learnt a horrible new word during the holidays: Twixmas. It refers to the 27-30 December period and has its roots in the word ‘betwixt’, although why anyone would refer to those dates as ‘betwixt’ Christmas and New Year rather than ‘between’ is beyond me. Caroline, who now works in travel, introduced me to it
Q. I live alone, happily and remotely, but many miles from my immediate family. My son’s wife has very kindly taken it on herself to telephone every day to check on my wellbeing. Apparently she feels that, by so doing, she is giving me the chance to have ‘a chat’. I am grateful, of course,
There was only one flaw in my Christmas this year. I did not spend enough of it with Santa Claus-age children. It is of course easier to delight in the charm if one does not live with the brats all year round. However adorable they may be, there are moments when they are also living
‘Lashings of ginger beer?’ asked my husband when I mentioned backlash. He thought the phrase came from Enid Blyton, though it occurred only in the television parody Five Go Mad in Dorset, first shown in 1982 — 40 years ago, for heaven’s sake. Backlash, now in vogue, is often misused. The Guardian wrote about ‘the
The year after my brother died, I was out on my threadbare Vespa in countryside south of Bradford. The day was warm and blue; I let myself get lost, turn by turn, until I rode solo along the lanes. Low, overhead of me, a plane flew with a single propeller, its undercarriage painted cloud-like: its
Our metaphor container ship is dry-docked in Bratislava and our simile warehouse in Wuppertal has had to close its doors. We apologise. Some figments, we believe, may still be in transit, but there are supply chain fractures due to disputes over paperwork. We’re so sorry that we couldn’t get the parts but the
The explosion in remote and flexible working accelerated by the pandemic slightly supports my assertion that the most important limits to future innovation may be psychological and behavioural, not technological. I am among a number of people who believe that the newly widespread use of video-conferencing is of great economic significance. A few economists and
Seen any groundhogs your way? In racing the New Year began much as the old one had ended. At Cheltenham’s New Year’s Day fixture, the Dornan Engineering Relkeel Hurdle feature race ended with Danny Mullins driving to victory Stormy Ireland, a horse trained across the water by his uncle Willie Mullins, after their only serious
