Recently, I found myself trying to explain to a much younger colleague who Oliver Reed was. We’d got on to the subject of the hell-raising actor because I was bemoaning the fact – perhaps rashly – that today’s world is completely anodyne. Fear of offending others means it’s better to keep your thoughts to yourself;
The other day, while on my lunchtime walk, I passed a woman on a mobility scooter holding an impressive-looking doobie. Later, on my bus home, a bloke got on having just extinguished a joint, bringing the overpowering stench with him. Some commuters don’t even bother to put them out. All you can do is sit
When I was in London recently, I arranged to meet some old university friends at the pub. Now in our late 50s, we’re getting quite decrepit. Hair – if we have any left – is grey or greying; waistlines are expanding. We talked about our deteriorating vision and hearing, high blood pressure, dodgy knees. None
The backlash against plans for a Gail’s bakery in Walthamstow made me think about my own experience of gentrification. When I moved to my suburb of Bristol nearly 20 years ago, it was still a largely white working-class area. It was also a temporary home to many of the students from the local university. It
When I was growing up, regional accents were quite firmly delineated. If you came from Birmingham, for example, you spoke Brummie. That is, unless you were posh. In which case, wherever you lived, you spoke the same BBC English – or received pronunciation. Speaking ‘correctly’ was a determiner of class, like a grounding in Latin.
Attending an English public school in the 1970s when you weren’t from that world was a tough gig. Mum’s family were from the East End. Dad was what might euphemistically be called a ‘wheeler dealer’. Having had little education, Dad was determined his children wouldn’t suffer the same fate. So my brother and I were
I was on my way home from sixth-form college when I heard about Dad’s arrest for his alleged involvement in what, at the time, was the biggest heist in history. Three tonnes of bullion, along with platinum, jewellery and traveller’s cheques, had been taken from the Brink’s-Mat warehouse at Heathrow in the early hours of
