New York Christmas partying, like Yuletide shopping displays, begins much earlier of late. After the lockdown, however, the urge to party, and party hard, is justified. Like others, I am trying to make up for the missing two years, but the hangover toll is prohibitive. It takes a whole two days to feel normal again,
The sunny, growing month of November is the British expat’s Provençal dividend. Every morning the meridional sunshine comes in through the left-hand bedroom window, lighting my face as I sit up in bed with the breakfast tray and the daily paper. By 11 o’clock it has moved across to the right-hand window, warming the blanket
‘Notice from your vets’ said the email subject. I clicked and there was a letter telling me that my vet was sacking me as a client with two weeks’ notice, even though I had a sick dog. This was because I had asked to see my dog’s notes and discovered they had been discussing me,
I am incapable of throwing anything away in the kitchen. In my fridge, there must be at least half a dozen pots of bits and bobs, dishes of leftovers and scraps. In my freezer, a bag of parmesan rinds has filled slowly, each intended to be chucked into a pot of soup or stew to
So that’s another term done at the Spectator Wine School. And what a term! We had such a fine teacher – take a bow Mrs Taylor, Head of Vinous Studies, on loan from Private Cellar – and such bright pupils that everyone passed. Not only did our conscientious students pull their weight in class, eschewing
Winter is finally upon us and I’m relying on my usual array of tablets and powders to ward off seasonal viruses. Caroline and the children constantly ridicule me, saying I’ve been taken for a fool by snake-oil salesmen, but I tell myself these concoctions are responsible for my robust good health. I’ve tested positive for
Q. I work as a PA for someone who constantly refers to my husband by the wrong name (Gerald instead of Gerard). This has been going on for months. I have corrected her twice with no result. What do you suggest? My husband is beginning to feel chippy about this. – Name and address withheld
At the end of last century, when there were grounds for optimism about Russia’s future, an increasingly popular word expressed this: stabilnost – stability. Russians would roll it round their mouths as a Texan would use ‘goddam’, or an English after-dinner drinker of an earlier vintage might evoke his enjoyment of the beverage by letting
I’ve heard two people in the past week make a jocular remark about things just growing ‘Like Topsy’. They were both life peers as it happens, Lady Altmann and Lord Norton of Louth. Is one still allowed to make this proverbial reference to Uncle Tom’s Cabin? In a way the simile is the same as
Sometimes in bed you turn your back on me and I on you, and a lazy game of footsie is the product of those two negatives, a slow dancing cheek to cheek. I like the tangle and the tightness of a hug, the snug asymmetry of spooning. But when our heads diverge, reflecting each on
Craned onto the site from a truck the ten-by-ten corrugated steel cube, our paint shop. Nothing for sale but a magnet for kids: bricked, scorched, clambered upon, adorned Stoke, Vale, obscenities from spray cans. Inside the door, an Alsatian’s head in sagging red gloss welcomes you to a throat-seizing reek of turps, linseed and
An American academic told me that during the 2016 presidential election nobody in academia believed there was the faintest chance Donald Trump would win. Except for the primatologists, that is. It was that silverback gorilla, alpha male thing – and Trump played the role freakishly well. One election tweet showed him enthroned in his private
The government may for the moment have disbanded its circular firing squad, but racing has never shown a greater ability for self-harm. For once last Saturday I was not on a racecourse. Unfortunately, Mrs Oakley had had a late-night mishap with an Ugg boot and after a midnight ambulance, a night in A&E and her
