Life

City life

Should I grow old gracefully – or disgracefully?

Now that I’m about to turn 70, I’m wondering: shall I grow old gracefully, or disgracefully? Everyone I know, young and old, tells me that I must go disgracefully (and that’s how they plan to go, or so they say). It seems that growing old gracefully has gone out of style – especially for women

Real life

My B&B’s first celebrity guest

The TV talent show star was due to arrive at 5 p.m., and would be checking into our house long before we were ready to open it as a B&B. I said yes to the lady in the village who organises events, and she told me to expect this singer who is very popular in

Wild life

Life lessons from a 2,000-year-old plant

Iona, Angola East of the gulps of cormorants along the Skeleton Coast by the Ilha da Baia dos Tigres, Atlantic mists are rolling in across the Angolan desert. A red, alien sun dips towards the horizon and I’m crouching down on the sand, with my face close to the oldest living thing on our planet.

Wine Club

Wine Club: a bargain bunch of ‘defrocked’ clarets

Whoop! Whoop! Hang out the bunting, clear out your cellars, dust off your corkscrews: it’s the highlight of many a wine-lover’s year and time for our annual offer of ‘defrocked’ clarets from our confrères at FromVineyardsDirect. I know you know this but I’m going to remind you anyway – these wines come from the most

No sacred cows

Dear Mary

Drink

Nick Elliott and a life worth drinking to

The English language has immense resources, but the odd weakness. What, for instance, is the translation for ‘Auld lang syne’? We were discussing that profound topic while telling stories about absent friends, recalling the occasional bottle and thinking about Britain. Nick Elliott’s response to grim news was to open a bottle of Mouton Rothschild ’82

Mind your language

Rachel Reeves, Becky Sharp and the ‘black hole’

Becky Sharp, you’ll remember, near the beginning of Vanity Fair, throws the school gift of a Johnson’s Dictionary out of the window of the coach. She responds to Amelia Sedley’s horror by saying with a laugh: ‘Do you think Miss Pinkerton will come out and order me back to the black-hole?’ This is not the

Poems

Mutual Dust

Blue air and unpredicted sun The damp grass drying at last Let all the Chernobyls of our near past The video missiles and the lasered gun Come down on us, we will be found Still here, as shadows stencilled on the ground Burnt outlines of a single hour When we enjoyed ourselves; though burn we

The Wiki Man

The Mad Men theory of drunk decision-making

In electing this government, we seem to have picked the worst of both worlds: higher taxation combined with austerity in the public finances. The one bonus I had hoped to see from a left-wing regime was a healthily indulgent approach to spending. Instead we get a Chancellor of the Exchequer who is a former Bank