Provence Apart from three Covid years, the German rock cover band Five and the Red One (named, so they say, because one of them has a ‘fire mark’) have played a free concert on the Cours here in the village every summer since 2008. I first saw them in 2009 when my three daughters were
‘Please do NOT wash up!’ reads the makeshift sign I have fixed above the kitchen sink. It instructs our B&B guests to leave their dirty dishes on the side, which sounds ridiculous. But we cannot convince anyone to put their plates and cutlery in the dishwasher any more, because they all seem to have bought
On the face of it, Wormwood Scrubs is not particularly appealing. I don’t mean the prison, but the common in the north-eastern corner of Hammersmith and Fulham. It is 170 acres of unsupervised scrubland with enough wooded areas to attract a smattering of predatory homosexuals – a poor man’s Hampstead Heath. Often, as I walk
Forgive me if I don’t join the general ‘Make mine a treble’ hoo-ha about the future of Test cricket after the theatre of the final day of the Oval Test against India, as an injured Chris Woakes made his way to the crease. Why was Woakes ever allowed to bat? His shoulder was dislocated and
Q. I am soon to entertain a house party on a sporting estate. We took the same house last year and all went well, except the housekeeper complained to the owner that we’d let our guests ‘tramp through the house in their trainers and boots’. This was a misrepresentation but it’s true that the odd
This column sometimes shrieks the death of central London, and this is unfair. (I think this because others are now doing it.) It is not the city we mourn but our younger selves. Even so, the current aesthetic in restaurants is awful and needs to be suppressed: beiges and leathers, fish tanks and stupid lighting,
I spent some time looking for the connection between the ancient city of Canopus and the English canopy. Nelson won the Battle of the Nile in Aboukir Bay. The bay was named after the city of Abu Qir, which was named after a Christian martyr, St Cyrus. Abu Qir stands on the site of the
(for Sonia and Michelle, the gauche mystique) Liberty guides us on the narrow path her ponytail a torch for the groaning peoples. Someone has dropped a bead of pomegranate, I imagined Kore rapt in the act of eating in this shaded place of wild asparagus, the surface fissured where she was taken under. For a
Parkinson’s My left arm, apt and agile, has the knack Of swinging with a youthful nonchalance. My right is stiff. My right hand shrinks and claws, Reluctant to lift cups or open doors. It’s the deft fingers of my left that dance Over the keyboard, while the right hangs back. My left side’s young, my
We bought it down the car boot sale, not much of a risk for three quid. While I was paying the mother, the teenage daughter ran her thumb over the screen a final time. We’re back today with stuff to sell, David more than two feet taller. It’s been pitched at three quid again. Every
With DJs and MCs inviting the crowd to dance on the parade-ring steps as if they were on a beach in Ibiza, and hectoring them into shouting ‘Yay’ or ‘Neigh’ to racing quiz answers, Ascot was a different place last Saturday – Dubai Duty Free Shergar Cup day. Grimacing traditionalists would have been stamping on
