Nobody ever does racing-speak as well as the Irish. After his Munich recently showed improved form to win at the Curragh, the Irish trainer Eddie Lynam declared, ‘He works like a real machine at home — but until today he raced like a washing machine.’ I, too, woke up last Saturday with my back feeling
My wife and I have ended up as stay-at-home parents — with a part-time child Policy Exchange, the right-wing think tank, has published a report recommending that mothers should receive a universal childcare allowance which they can then use to pay for part-time help or, if they decide to give up work, compensating themselves for
I managed to crash the Vanity Fair Oscars party – but not Boris’s victory do It was not until I saw Boris making his acceptance speech at City Hall just after midnight that I decided to gatecrash his victory party. I was quite drunk, having just hosted a dinner party, and my wife had long
Christa D’Souza plans a Caribbean summer Hate crowds? Haven’t booked your summer holidays yet? Want to feel like you’re getting your money’s worth just this once? If so, let me make a suggestion. Instead of going to the south of France or Puglia this summer, why not try the Caribbean? It may sound perverse, going
Experiments don’t always come off. Like the train company trying out new safety glass for drivers’ cabins. It adapted technology from an aviation manufacturer which had developed new cockpit protection against bird strikes. But when the bird projectiles were launched the mocked-up train windows shattered and the dummy driver was decapitated. In dismay, it messaged
So a little light housework or gardening cuts your stress levels, does it? Well, I never. I long ago developed a ‘ten-minute gardening’ scheme for stress-busting, and I could not recommend it more highly. I keep a bucket near to hand, containing hand fork, kneeling pad and Atlas Nitrile gardening gloves. (These are like surgeon’s
Boris has played me like a violin twice in my life — even appealing to my conscience At the time of writing, the outcome of the London Mayoral election is still unknown, but I am rooting for Boris, obviously. Doubts have been raised about his ability to run a city like London, but he possesses
Machiavelli’s The Prince is by far the most useful guide to parenting King Lear was right: How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have an ungrateful child. For the past fortnight, I have been overseeing the construction of a tree house for my three-year-old son Ludo at the bottom of my garden, but
In Bucharest recently I encountered some Romanian proverbs. ‘Always eat the end of the bread: your mother-in-law will love you,’ said one. And, more to my liking: ‘Always empty the last drops out of a bottle into your glass: people will like you.’ Sometimes people in racing, facing the strains for our pleasure, find themselves
What are the limits of our obligations as members of society? Should we intervene when we witness a violent crime taking place? Do those of us with large families to support get a free pass? Or should we disregard our personal circumstances and simply apply the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would be
I have finally done it. After two decades of pitching ideas to television executives, one of them has been commissioned. The first episode was broadcast last week and attracted several million viewers. OK, now for the bad news. The person named as the ‘creator’ of the show is someone who I have never met and
It would have been nice to be at Nad Al Sheba racecourse last Saturday to see the burly, majestic Curlin obliterate the pretenders to his crown as the best racehorse in the world and saunter away with the Dubai World Cup. We only see quality like that once in a decade. Instead I was at
I am so strapped for cash that I have been forced to give up my outside office and start working from home. With three children under five, this is far from ideal, but at least there’s a small window in the afternoon when the eldest is at school, the middle one is at nursery and
Six months ago I wrote an article in this magazine in which I complained that rising property prices in Shepherd’s Bush had forced me and my wife to move to Acton. I pointed out that the only decent café within walking distance of our new house had closed down, citing this as evidence that there
Ursula Buchan does a spot of gardening If you are an assiduous buyer of plants, you will know that there are quite a number of foreign-bred plants for sale in our nurseries. This has become more obvious in recent years, since the nomenclature rules have changed. These days a plant should be sold under its original
On hearing that I was off to a horse sale Mrs Oakley’s goodbye lacked the usual wifely warmth. Something a touch minatory about priorities and the need to keep a roof over our heads. Not to mention a replacement for the aged BMW. But at the first Goff’s ‘breeze-up’ auction of the year, held at
Well, it finally happened. After 25 years of cycling in London, I had an accident. Bizarrely, it occurred right outside Action Bikes, the shop in Shepherd’s Bush where I bought my bicycle. There is a cycle lane running past the shop, but I wasn’t using it at the time because there was a Mercedes parked
For the past 200 years or so, Englishmen who aren’t faring too well in the home country have had the option of moving to the States. Thanks to their inferiority complex, our American cousins labour under the illusion that we are more intelligent and better educated than them. You only have to deign to notice
I used to be quite keen on jogging, working on the theory that you add a minute to your life for every mile run. My enthusiasm weakened after a TV colleague pointed out that the net result of my endeavours would be an extra six months in the nursing home in my eighties at £4,000
‘Few shows of such embarrassing, authorial ineptitude can have hit the London stage since the Blitz.’ That was the verdict of Nicholas de Jongh, the Evening Standard drama critic, on the satirical play about the royal family that Lloyd Evans and I wrote in 2006. It wasn’t the only bad review we got, but it