Q. I am in the process of restoring an old barn and want to use only environmentally friendly, locally available or recycled materials. However, the clipboard Nazis at the local council have told me I must coat my exposed beams with fire-retardant paint. I am very anxious to avoid the chemicals contained in these paints.
Pitched suddenly into England’s cricket captaincy, it has been a delight to see Andrew Flintoff going about the job with a smile on his face. However the series ultimately pans out, wholehearted Flintoff’s ursine charms made for a winning start all right. Traditionally, of course, established England captains steered clear of India. The anointed monarchs
Q. I deeply fancy someone in my office who sits near me. Our exchanges have always been businesslike and I doubt she has noticed my interest. The other women I work with appear to find me congenial and we socialise outside the office although none seems to perceive me as a ‘sex object’. Having said
Treats all round next week if the second-leg matches in football’s Champions League are as compelling as the first. Chelsea and Rangers, each playing in Spain, are at serious risk of elimination, but Liverpool and Arsenal should be in the hat for the quarterfinals. Liverpool, a goal down, may lack a front-line scorer but a
Is it just me, or does everyone have a bit of a problem warming to Gary Rhodes? I know, I know, all celebrity chefs have their annoying shortcomings: Jamie’s wet lips; Nigella’s sloppy eating habits (sucking her fingers, juices dribbling down chin); Delia’s full-on, aproned bossiness; Rick’s silly dog, Chalky; Ainsley’s just about everything. And
Perhaps it’s the association with The Goodies and with Dennis Nilsen, serial killer, but people are reluctant to admit that they live in Cricklewood. ‘Well, it’s sort of on the Hampstead border,’ they mutter sheepishly, when quizzed on their new home. But they’ll be hollering it from the top of Brent Cross shopping centre before
Q. A dear friend has been going to Pilates classes. She is very proud of her newly taut torso, but I fear she has been taking the discipline too seriously. She now has the rigid bearing of someone wearing an invisible neck brace, and the last time we hugged I was left with the sense
Six Nations’ rugby resumes this weekend. Still all to play for. The first two rounds of the tournament, which ends on 18 March, produced a generally grey show of unforced errors and a glum lack of daring. Only the briefest shaft of sunlight has penetrated. BBC television’s overly enthusiastic blanket coverage, welcome in some ways,
Is there perhaps at the bottom of the Thames, slithering back and forth with the tides, a muddy heap of mobile phones, glowing faintly in the dark, some emitting their last faint trills and so interfering with the radar of errant amphibians? I only wonder because nobody every returns to me the mobiles which, to
It is some years since I saw, in a Paris bookshop, a translated copy of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit, but I still enjoy recalling the French names given for the four members of the rabbit family: Flopson, Mopson, Queue-de-coton et Pierre. Cottontail is the species of rabbit which is found all over
Q. Some friends and I have been discussing the vexed question of vegetarians, and opinions are divided as to whether they should announce this (or any other dietary requirements) when an invitation is given, or wait until they arrive. The former suggests that something special needs to be prepared for them, while the latter could
On the face of it, Manchester United at Liverpool is the irresistible FA Cup tie of the weekend, with needle all the sharper for the rancorous matches the two clubs have played of late. But don’t bank on it, for the contest could be muted this time as each club knows it has far bigger
Q. My new husband has baggage from his previous life in the form of two best friends, a couple he has known for over 20 years. The female member of this couple drives me nuts. My husband, who adores her (and definitely does not fancy her), says she is not trying to wind me up,
Dick Francis spent more than ten years gathering material for his biography of Lester Piggott, a man not famed for his spendthrift ways with cash or words. ‘I know you think Sir Ivor was the best of your nine Derby winners,’ Francis said to him one day. ‘Tell me about him.’ Piggott thought for some
A seasonal competition: which phrase will BBC commentators utter most over the next fortnight: a) ‘winter wonderland’; b) ‘mountain magic’; c) ‘oh, bad luck, Great Britain’? The Winter Olympics have begun: bobble hats, fur-collared greatcoats, frostbitten noses and hour upon hour of various forms of sliding. The media battalions easily outnumber the 2,500 competitors; the
Q. Speaking of pellets, as you did last week, may I ask something else? Whenever I have eaten birds, it has always been quite an informal occasion where one didn’t have to worry about, well, what to do with shot. One could simply more or less neatly take it out of one’s mouth. But if
The basso thump of Six Nations’ rugby begins this weekend — today Wales are at Twickenham and Italy in Dublin, and tomorrow the French collide with the Scots at Murrayfield. The reverberating crash-bang-wallop continues till the Ides of March. Turn the BBC’s sound down; rugby is now as gruntingly noisy as women’s tennis. Oh for
I ask Egon Ronay, the man who first put the rosettes into British cooking and who has just published his 2006 guide to the best restaurants in the UK, if he’d care to have lunch, show me how he judges a restaurant, maybe teach me a thing or two. (As if I needed it! Pull
E17 may seem an unlikely candidate to be gracing the glossy pages of style magazines, but the area — birthplace of William Morris and home to the ‘greyhound racing stadium of the millennium’ — is blossoming. These days the association between Walthamstow and going to the dogs is, in one sense at least, an unfair
Q. Two years ago I dispatched a spoof Christmas letter to a select handful of friends thinking this might amuse them. I committed all the standard crimes: blow-by-blow accounts of (fictitious) holidays and activities; an insistence on the good looks, academic prowess and remarkable musicality of our children; my own successes; our soaring incomes; hilarity