Mary Wakefield

Of all the sad and surreal things to happen in the past few months, the Catholic church’s decision to abandon the dying was, for me, the worst. The Church of England abandoned its churches, forbidding first congregants then priests from setting foot in them, making it clear that in fact it actively dislikes church buildings.

I sometimes pick up some food at Tesco for an 86-year-old pensioner who lives a few streets over. At the weekend, I brought him milk and cornflakes. He opened his front door; I put the bags down, retreated the required two metres, but when I looked up he was in tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said,

I identify strongly with the garden eels in the Tokyo aquarium. Pre-corona, they were perfectly sociable. Come opening hour, when visitors’ faces began to squash against their glass, they’d happily stare back. Every week that goes by without visitors, the eels become more fearful and these days, the aquarium reports, when the keeper arrives to

I had thought that actually getting the coronavirus would bring clarity — that there would be some satisfaction in meeting the enemy, feeling its spectral hands around my lungs. No such luck. Uncertainty is the hallmark of Covid-19. Even its origins are murky: wet markets or the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control? Who knows, and

Last summer, in the bc era, I took my then three-year-old to a new group play session: ‘Lottie’s Magic Box.’ Off we trooped in the usual north London fashion: child on scooter, imperious and unmoving, hauled along by mother in the role of husky. Micro, purveyor of scooters to the middle-classes, sell colour-coordinated leads especially

When it was first reported that Johnny Depp had been hit and pelted with crockery by his slight, blonde then wife, Amber Heard, I’m afraid my first reaction was disdain. Johnny and Amber recorded their rows on their mobile phones (as you do) and a ‘reliable source’ leaked the recording: ‘I was hitting you, it

More and more of us are staying home for our holidays — but even so, our small hotels and B&Bs are folding at a scary rate. UK hotel insolvencies are up 60 per cent, it was reported last week. Why? Competition bites, said the papers, blaming Airbnb. But there’s another biter, too — more sinister

We’re closing 2019 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 9: Mary Wakefield’s article on Benedict Cumberbatch playing her husband: Imagine looking at a photo of a stranger and feeling in response, quite naturally, the sort of happy affection you might feel towards a spouse. Well, it’s weird. In July this year,

We’ve begun to behave as if young people are special; more virtuous and wiser than adults. It’s wrong and it’s creepy and we’ve got to stop it — not for our sake so much as for theirs. It looks as if, come Friday, 16-year-old Greta Thunberg will win the Nobel peace prize, and if she

On that record-breaking, sweltering day at the end of July, my three-year-old son did a pirouette in the paddling pool — ‘look at this Mama!’ — then tripped, slid under the surface and lay there on his back staring up at me through two foot of water. I was in the pool too, just an

It was somehow inevitable that shortly after Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick announced a fall in violent crime, there would be an absolute horror-show of death across the capital. The ‘weekend of bloodshed’ began on Friday 14 June with the murder of 18-year-old Cheyon Evans, knifed by teens in Wandsworth. A few minutes later Eniola

It was somehow inevitable that shortly after Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick announced a fall in violent crime, there would be an absolute horror-show of death across the capital. The ‘weekend of bloodshed’ began on Friday 14 June with the murder of 18-year-old Cheyon Evans, knifed by teens in Wandsworth. A few minutes later Eniola