The bad news was broken to us by the parish magazine. Christmas Eve is a Sunday this year. So the vicar, who presides over three parishes and must spread himself over as many evensongs, will not be available for the carol service which is traditionally held on the village green. It seemed outrageous that Christianity should
The car manufacturer of the year has to be JCB. I’ve long wanted one, of course, and it’s not hard to find them in the local classifieds. What is hard, for we unlucky enough not to be digger drivers, is to know what you’re buying. It’s not only the nomenclature — what exactly is a
While you don’t have to be a masochist to be a jump jockey it surely helps. You can expect a fall, on average, every 13 rides and it is the only profession in which you are followed round by an ambulance. Self-flagellation, too, seems to be part of the picture. Former champion jockey Richard Dunwoody
There won’t be any wild turkeys eaten in Britain this Christmas. There won’t be any wild turkeys eaten in Britain this Christmas. However, a few of these birds, which are indigenous to north and central America, are being reared in south-west England. It is possible that one or two dark-plumaged turkeys may be seen in
Ford recently declared losses of £3 billion in three months and is to ‘restate’ its earnings since 2001. According to my (failed) eleven-plus maths, that’s around £30 million a day. How long can any company survive such haemorrhaging? All right, it includes one-off job-shedding and writing-down asset costs, with provisions for restructuring and 30,000 redundancies.
When I’m good I’m very good, but when I’m bad I’m better In a Cary Grant film in which she effectively played herself, Mae West declared, ‘When I’m good I’m very good, but when I’m bad I’m better.’ Exotic Dancer, the six-year-old trained by Jonjo O’Neill who runs in the familiar pink silks of Sir
In my early days as editor of the Field, I read an article submitted by one of the magazine’s venerable hunting correspondents In my early days as editor of the Field, I read an article submitted by one of the magazine’s venerable hunting correspondents — the subject was harehunting and a day out with, I
We celebrated harvest home last Sunday — late in the season by conventional standards, but postponed from the early days of autumn for the best of reasons. In our village, church and school are indivisible and it was agreed that the pupils should not switch from work to worship until half-term was upon them. So, in
Required by the day job to be in St Andrews on Friday night, reporting the latest example of governmental hope over experience in the Northern Ireland power-sharing talks, I was determined still to make it to Champions’ Day at Newmarket. Sir Percy’s first appearance since the Derby, a cracking contest for the Cesarewitch and the
The countryside writer Ian Niall, a columnist in these pages some 50 years ago, told in his classic work, The Poacher’s Handbook, of one of the fraternity known as Black Bill who had an affection for partridges and could never bring himself to kill them. ‘The partridge is the one bird I don’t touch,’ says
Germinated on the greed and profligacy of mankind, it’s now the fastest-growing city in the US whose every new building rises like a brittle, neon flower out of the scorched earth. Sticking up its finger to the notion of living anywhere close to within its means, it leeches resources from its neighbouring states only to
We are a canine village. Of course people outnumber dogs. But I doubt if the ratio is much above three to one. Like the rest of the country we favour Labradors and Jack Russells — most of which (or whom as their owners would say) are imaginatively called ‘Jack’. There is the occasional scuffle when
A vicar at a wedding I was at last week told of a driver who broke down with a lorryload of penguins. He flagged down another lorry and offered its driver £100 to deliver his consignment promptly to the zoo. His own vehicle repaired, he was alarmed when he got to town a few hours
The red grouse is a resilient little bird. Prone to an unpleasant disease called louping ill which is transmitted by sheep ticks, and vulnerable to attack by nasty, invasive little worms, its population may crash in some moorland areas for several years; and then it will reappear in healthy numbers as if nothing had happened.
The Countryside Alliance, through its Game-to-Eat campaign, has been doing some good work in promoting venison. It is higher in protein and lower in fat than other red meat; some supermarkets are now offering venison steaks and sausages, but fewer than 10 per cent of the population buy the meat. Since deer numbers in Britain
For a soulless city, Phoenix certainly has an interesting airport. The last time I was here, supposedly on business, I had my boarding pass issued by a vampire and found myself being herded through security by an official dressed as a giant chicken. Then it was Halloween, but here we are on an ordinary June
If, as I was told the other day, much of the frozen chicken and duck meat brought into this country comes from the Far East, it may be that some of us have already been exposed to the risk of contracting avian flu. But I don’t suppose that this will weigh with the government when
Overture and beginners, please. This is it, for real, and mercifully the hysterical months of jingo-jangle jibber-jabber are stilled and silenced into concentration today when, at long last, the England football team plays the first of its three qualifiers in the World Cup against Paraguay in Frankfurt. To reach the sudden-death knockout stages in a fortnight’s
Listing page content here Watching the woman in front of me in the Ascot Tote queue backing five horses in the same race on Saturday reminded me of Lloyd Bentsen, one of the best US politicians never to become president, who died last week. Asked once if it wasn’t rather unfair running simultaneously for vice-president
Mike Peyton is the author of the brilliant memoir An Average War — though in truth his war was anything but. In October 1940 he joined his family regiment — 4th battalion, Royal Northumberland Fusiliers — and was overrun and all but wiped out on 6 June 1942 fighting a rearguard action in the Western