Poperinghe, Bailleul, Wytschaete, Gheluvelt, Ploegsteert, Messines, Zonnebeke, Passchendaele. The other week I grandiosely claimed that I have been reading about the first world war, on and off, all my life. What I ought to have added was ‘with little or no understanding’. Because it wasn’t until a fortnight ago, when I bought a 1916 Ordnance
My hangover was what the great Kingsley Amis describes in his Everyday Drinking guide as a ‘metaphysical’ hangover. Apart from the usual feeling of being unwell, stealing over me was that ‘ineffable compound of depression, sadness (these two are not the same), anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure and fear for the future’. Amis’s remedy was
I’m cooking almost full-time for my poor old Mum and learning on the job: shepherd’s pie, roast pork, cauliflower cheese. I’m slaving over the stove and recipe book for hours and she hardly touches any of it. ‘Come on. Eat up. Do you good,’ I say, not unconscious of the role reversal. The other day
I picked up my grandson from his mother’s flat and noticed the change in him the second I clapped eyes on him. He was taller than when I had said goodbye to him a month ago, and his spirit seemed more conscious of itself. I also noticed that my devotion to him (lately inviting criticism
At three o’clock I took half a bottle of Glenmorangie with me to Jimmy’s. That it was Burns Night, and Jimmy happens to be a proud Scot, was mere coincidence. When I walked in, Jimmy was putting finishing surgical touches to the back of a bullet-head. ‘Do you drink whisky, Jimmy?’ I said. ‘Oh aye,’
‘ESTA refused,’ said the email from the official website of the US Department of Homeland Security. Franklin Roosevelt once said that the saving grace of America lies in the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities — a sense of humour and a sense of proportion. This refusal, presumably
In France, or in Provence at least, polite rule number one is to say hello. You must offer a distinct ‘good day’ or ‘good day, ladies and gentleman’, for example, when joining the queue in the baker’s or at the post office, or when getting on a bus or entering a bar. A nod or
By New Year’s Day I’d had enough of festivities. Instead of getting out of bed, I turned over, put my face to the wall and refused all offers of food, drink and conversation. I kept this up throughout the day and into the evening, when I had to get up to go to the toilet.
As I stood there, I was reminded of the man of no fixed abode who, several years back, aged 68, made it into the local paper charged with shoplifting. He’d failed to steal a bottle of champagne and a hat to the value of £75. In court, the magistrate had inquired as to the brand
We ascended the gangplank and were smartly directed to the ship’s library, where the seated purser swiped my debit card and took our passports. This purser’s face was prematurely aged, disfigured by misfortune, implacably hostile. Would she be keeping our passports until the voyage end, we asked humbly? We would get them back at the
I took a dab of antiseptic gel and rubbed my hands together. ‘Alone tonight, sir?’ said the charming head waiter. I was, I said. For the sake of conviviality, he seated me opposite the only other lone diner in the ship’s restaurant, a chap in his mid-sixties with his head in a book. This bookish
My pal Charlie inherited a car and a ride-on mower from an old pal. He kept the mower and the next time he saw me in the pub he offered me the car. He’d driven down in it, he said, and it was out in the pub car park. ‘This car is bombproof,’ said Charlie
The door to Trev’s flat was open so I walked in and found him on the sofa watching TV. He looked up and gave an ironic cheer. How long was it? We thought it must be at least a year since we’d last seen each other, maybe a year and a half. And how was
At ten to eleven we filed outside the church and assembled in the graveyard around a small cenotaph commemorating the dead of two wars with a dozen unmistakably local names. As we shuffled out, we hoped that the rain would hold off — no offence of course to any of the names on the cenotaph
We had a hyperbole competition, the taxi driver and I, over the climbing full moon, clearer and brighter than either of us had seen it for as long as we could remember. Did I know, he said, that the gravitational power of the moon on the Earth was just enough to stabilise the Earth’s wobble?
The French countryside around here is teeming with wild boar. They visit the shack at night to eat the pansies and nose up the flower-beds, and their violent flare-ups over a disputed morsel wake us up. Standing about in the lane the other night, blocking it, was a 25-strong gathering of them. They ranged from
Last May we had dinner with a comic who reads a lot and his wife. At one point, he told Catriona that he had just finished a novel that he had enjoyed more than anything he had read for a very long time and he would like to lend it to her. He disappeared into
On Saturday night, I toddled up to the village hall for the fish-and-chip supper, quiz night and raffle — bring your own booze — hosted by the vicar. The hall was already packed when I walked in, and I was shown to the only one of 14 tables that wasn’t yet full and introduced to
Early on Friday morning I flew from the north of Iceland to Reykjavik, from Reykjavik to Heathrow, then I hopped aboard the night sleeper from Euston to Glasgow Central to attend the wedding of Catriona’s eldest daughter, held the next day at the Winter Gardens of the People’s Palace on Glasgow Green. Three years ago,
The temperature gauge needle heeled hard over into the red. ‘Not again,’ I said to Oscar, sitting beside me on his booster seat. Sunday evening, and I was returning him to his mother after having him to stay for the weekend. The distance door to door is around 20 miles: about 40 minutes along country
