Gstaad As the great Yogi Berra explained: ‘It’s déjà vu all over again.’ The great one also contributed the following wisdom that: ‘You can observe a lot by just watching.’ Yogi came to mind as high inflation and a recession loom, and merry old England’s trade unions are reverting to type and blackmailing the government.
Finally rain. None for months, then a violent tropical storm lasting two days. It marked the end of high summer as clearly and distinctly as a clarion of trumpets. Afterwards the nights were cooler and the sun less fierce and it was easier to maintain one’s temper. We could begin to look forward again instead
‘If you think about it, Frankie Dettori is to blame,’ said the builder boyfriend, because when things are really bad he deploys satire. One thing leads to another with horses, the joke goes, so we may as well trace our problems back as follows. If Dettori had not ridden a horse called Marienbard to victory
Kenya After two years of no rain, all colour has drained from the landscape on the farm so that by the time we boarded the bush plane to leave in the bright sun it was as if we were all snow blind. From the air the highlands were waterless and dead until we descended over
Order today. There are some typically quirky gems from Swig on offer this week and it’s great to have Robin Davis and the gang back in these pages. Their offer in January was a rip-roarer and, as before, there is plenty here to satisfy even the most demanding of thirsts. The 2020 Bourgogne Chardonnay Les
For the past few days I’ve been frantically watering my lawn in anticipation of the London hosepipe ban. True, there are other things in the garden that need watering – the roses, the magnolias, the rhododendrons, as well as the tomato plants, the rosemary bushes and the olive tree. But I can probably manage to
British tennis fans famously only acknowledge the sport exists for a couple of weeks in the middle of summer in SW19. But they ought to think about changing the habit of a lifetime over the next couple of weeks, as Emma Raducanu prepares to defend her US Open title at Flushing Meadows. It’s been a
Q. How can I find out, without making things awkward, whether one of my close male friends fancies one of my close female friends? They have known each other for years but until recently were both in long-term relationships. Now she has developed a major crush on him. Is there a way I could help
Cakeism is offering the voters everything they desire, knowing you will never give it to them because you live in a haunted mirror in which the only thing that matters is your survival. This duplicity is important to understand, because the road from Cicero to Caesar is so short it may lack potholes. Cake is
‘Quicksand!’ yelled my husband, flailing his arms wildly. Since he was sitting in his armchair, his dramatic representation of a scene from a western failed to convince, though it endangered the tumbler of whisky on the occasional table next to him. He’d been set off (not that it takes much) by my mentioning the ubiquity
The gardens are in bloom your mother loved. A jazz trumpet blares – ‘Stormy Weather’ – to a girl spread with her laptop on the grass. Delinquent for a day, you came to catch the last of summer on these paths or the bank grown perilous with out-of-control, knotted weeds, where your father fished at
Richard Judge, Whitstable RNLI I was brought up on boats. Trawling, potting, netting. The harbour was very active at the time. We were using claxons and maroons so the whole town knew – there’d be quite a crowd, watching people running down. It’s more discreet now, the crew can click an app.
