Dante’s Beach, Ravenna All seven chickens we recently acquired are now laying eggs – except the one called Giovanna, which is walking with a limp thanks to our youngest child Giuseppe, who is ten. The other day, Giuseppe somehow shut Giovanna’s right foot in the back door as he shooed her out of the house.
Trapped in the middle seat next to a Dublin businessman in the window seat, I was subjected to a monologue on the ‘far right’. ‘It’s not Islamic extremism we need to be worried about,’ he said. I wanted very badly to say it absolutely is Islamic extremism we need to be worried about, but I
I am, for the most part, a rule follower and a people pleaser. It’s one of the reasons I love baking, which essentially amounts to a set of instructions designed to make something to be shared and bring joy. But if someone recommends something to me, I can be resistant to it for ages. The
With a seemingly endless round of lunches, dinners and tastings, it has been a punishing few days of far too much vino. Even dear Mrs Ray expressed her concern, although I thought that a bit rich given the state of her after Book Club. We decided, though, to take it easy, and I even foreswore
I was surprised to read a report by Sunder Katwala’s thinktank British Future saying the UK is a ‘powder keg’ of community tensions and warning of further unrest this summer. In a foreword by Sajid Javid and Jon Cruddas, who are co-chairing a commission looking into last year’s riots, Britain is described as ‘fragmented’ and
Q. We have a neighbour who always overfills my glass. I beg her not to. Even if I commit the solecism of holding my hand over the glass to stop her, she will wait and then sneak up behind me and pour more in. I like her but I always reel away from her house
England is now and history. The other day, in the Weald of Kent, now was England and pleasure. We were visiting the Balfour Winery, near Staplehurst, on an enticing midsummer day. This was a quintessential English landscape. To the left, a wood with classically English trees. To the right, a country house. In the distance,
The courtship rituals of the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility last ten weeks. The consummation is a fiscal event, such as the Budget coming in the autumn, if we survive. Eligible young ladies used to have dance cards on which to enter the names of their suitors. The Treasury has a scorecard on
A response to Larkin’s poem ‘The Old Fools’ No, Philip, they’re not fools they’re just old, the world over mind-boggling millions of them the lot who are always losing things — sometimes not only things — the stooped battalions for whom bladders and stairs are now an issue along with banks without cashiers, opening tins
Slowly the slow train pulls away To run beside the river bed With everything I long to say To people who are long since dead.
In my last article, I introduced you to the ‘paceometer’, which shows how the relationship between an extra unit of speed and the consequent saving in journey time is anything but linear. For any given distance, the time saved by increasing your speed by an additional 10mph may be immense or almost irrelevant depending on
