Gstaad Purity in a sport does not mix with popularity, and defending the former is anathema to the hucksters, crooks and profiteers who make up the latter. In this I do not include the sportswriters of serious newspapers, with whom I actually sympathise. They see what’s going on, but they have to report on sport
Well, I found the Adulis restaurant and my online date was there. She didn’t muck about, and neither for once did I, and when we parted at noon the next day, I was very tired. So I was relieved to be checking in later at a spa hotel on the north Cornish coast called the
On your marks…get set…bah humbug! They can keep their Olympic traffic lanes and their Olympic copyright laws preventing me from cooking five fried eggs and placing them in an interlinking pattern on my breakfast plate — although I just did, so there. I also arranged the apples into Olympic ring formation in the fruit bowl, now
Kenya coast A loud crash woke us in the middle of our first night at the beach house. ‘Robbers must be trying to break in,’ said Claire, kneeing me in the back. ‘Go and see.’ I was groggy. It had been a 12-hour drive from the Rift Valley to the coast, with several near collisions
It won’t surprise many people to learn that the British Olympian selected to carry Team GB’s flag at the opening ceremony tomorrow went to a private school. Triple gold medallist Sir Chris Hoy attended George Watson’s College, a Scottish independent school established in 1741. Annual fees are a fraction under £10,000. Earlier this month, the
Ofcom, the body that regulates the communications industry, says that for the first time people in Britain prefer texting or sending emails to each other to talking on the telephone. Telephone use fell by an amazing 5 per cent in 2011, while over 150 billion text messages were sent in the same year, more than
You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, as Joni Mitchell used to whiffle way back when. And on cricket, as on so much else, the flaxen-haired loopster of Laurel Canyon was right. My friend Fiona took her three boys to the cricket at the Oval last Thursday and a fine time was had
Q. Time is running out, but I hope you might be able to offer some last-minute help. An indulgent godmother is lending my 18-year-old son her immaculate mews house in London for the autumn while he ‘works’ on his gap year. He has no idea how to keep a house clean and tidy and any
Brasserie Zédel is the pinkest restaurant I have ever seen. It is pig pink, Barbie pink, icing-sugar pink and tongue pink. It is so pink that I photograph the napkin, and look at the napkin many times to remind myself that such a pink restaurant exists where it does, in a district reminiscent of cracked
Collins dictionaries have invited people to send in a word for inclusion in its English dictionary. ‘If it’s accepted,’ the publishers say, ‘your word will be published on collinsdictionary.com within a few weeks, and your name will appear on the definition page where you will be recorded forever.’ Forever (usually written as two words in
