Life

High life

High Life: Spurned by Nurse Jenny

It felt like a stiletto jab in my liver, a pain so sharp it will take half a century to forget. Jessica Raine — aka Nurse Jenny in Call the Midwife — has shacked up with a married man, an actor and a redhead to boot. It is as if I had heard that my

Low life

Low life: Wearing chalk on the Jubilee Line

On the wall at home is a framed photograph of T.E. Lawrence taken in his chunky forties. The photo, a postcard advertising an exhibition of historical artefacts, is a close-up of his face. Knowing what we do about his pathological aversion to most human contact, the camera’s nearness is startling. And the thing is, in

Real life

Real life: Pain and floss

‘Have you been flossing?’ The four most terrifying words in the English language. The dental hygienist peers down at me through her scary goggles and speaks in a strange, muffled voice through her mouth mask. Despite all the face furniture I can see that she is arching her eyebrows. ‘Have you been flossing?’ I’m more

More from life

The Turf: Ladies’ tights in a jockey’s pocket

The first time I met the jockey Andrew Thornton, at a hotel dinner, he had a pair of ladies tights sticking out of his pocket. No, he hadn’t just been interrupted in an amorous encounter in the car park. Nor does he have an eyebrow-raising secret taste in underwear. The tights were part of the

Vicky Pryce – why jail will be the making of her

Just before Vicky Pryce was sentenced on Monday, her QC made a plea for clemency on the grounds that the case had already ‘undermined her professional position considerably’. In other words, she’d been punished enough and to send her to prison would be excessive. But had the judge felt sympathy for Pryce on account of

Dear Mary

Dear Mary | 14 March 2013

Q. My mother has had a minor physical setback which means it is currently too difficult for her to go out and see people. People consequently come to her, which is wonderful, but because she is so popular, they come in their hordes. It is not so much the provision of food and drinks which

Drink

A lord’s prayer

There was a splendid old fellow called Ian Winterbottom, successively a Yorkshire businessman, a Labour MP and a junior defence minister in the Lords (he later joined the SDP). He was the sort of Labour supporter who dismays Tories, because his politics were based on social generosity. It would have been impossible to dismiss him

Mind your language

Austerity

‘Remember snoek?’ asked my husband, as if I were old enough to be his mother. In 1947, ten million tins of this distinctive-tasting fish, Thyrsites atun, were imported from South Africa to take the place of sardines. The Conservatives complained in Parliament that the Labour administration’s austerity diet was damaging the health of British people.

The Wiki Man

Yahoo and the big-city paradox

An interesting furore erupted this month following an order from the new chief executive of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer, that employees accustomed to working from home would henceforth have to turn up at the office. The edict, unexceptional in many industries, scandalised many tech workers, for whom the freedom to work anywhere is an article of