‘Do you want the good news or the bad news about the Germans?’ I asked, and then I offered a few more options. The builder boyfriend got out of his truck as he returned from fixing a gate. He looked askance and sighed. Whatever our latest B&B guests had done, he said, it was obviously
50 min listen
First: Putin has set a trap for Europe and Ukraine ‘Though you wouldn’t know from the smiles in the White House this week… a trap has been set by Vladimir Putin to split the United States from its European allies,’ warns Owen Matthews. The Russian President wants to make a deal with Donald Trump, but
The woman pushing a wheelchair was causing such a rumpus in the supermarket that whichever aisle I was in I could still hear her shouting. She was an Englishwoman abroad if ever I saw one. Resplendent in sleeveless vest and leggings, she was pushing her adult daughter around an Irish supermarket as a friend or
‘Please do NOT wash up!’ reads the makeshift sign I have fixed above the kitchen sink. It instructs our B&B guests to leave their dirty dishes on the side, which sounds ridiculous. But we cannot convince anyone to put their plates and cutlery in the dishwasher any more, because they all seem to have bought
The American girl was listing her reasons for moving to Ireland in protest at Donald Trump. ‘I cannot stay in a country where Roe vs Wade has been overturned. Did you know abortion is restricted in a lot of states? Oh no, I cannot wait to live in Ireland.’ We are becoming used to Americans
27 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Michael Simmons argues that Trump is winning the tariff war with China; Kapil Komireddi reviews Robert Ivermee’s Glorious Failure: The Forgotten History of French Imperialism in India; Margaret Mitchell watches a Channel 4 documentary on Bonnie Blue and provides a warning to parents; David Abulafia provides his notes on
‘You need a Wwoofer,’ said the guest as he luxuriated in the big armchair by the roaring fire in our sitting room. We looked at him blankly for a moment before I replied: ‘We have a woofer. Two woofers.’ And I nodded to the spaniels lying at our feet. ‘No, I’m talking about the Wwoof
Trapped in the middle seat next to a Dublin businessman in the window seat, I was subjected to a monologue on the ‘far right’. ‘It’s not Islamic extremism we need to be worried about,’ he said. I wanted very badly to say it absolutely is Islamic extremism we need to be worried about, but I
The guest who thought our farm was in the town centre was very cross indeed. She got out of her car by the old fountain and stood hands on hips surveying the meadows sloping from the big old house towards the rugged mountains beyond. She was wearing knee-length khaki safari shorts, so you’d have thought
A rattling noise woke me in the dead of night and I fumbled my way into the dark corridor. It was coming from the room at the end of the hallway, which was occupied by a couple from West Virginia on a romantic road trip. The door rattled again as I stood there. I realised
‘Right, we’re going to book into Pauline’s B&B and give her a four-star rating and that will drop her down from a perfect five,’ I said, in a state of utter lunacy. We were sitting in front of the fire at the end of a rainy West Cork day during which another difficult customer had
‘I want the stairlift to go faster!’ said my mother, as the machine she was sitting on whirred furiously while she moaned to me about it on the phone. ‘How fast do you want it to go?’ I asked, imagining it doing 60mph down the short run of stairs in their little house in Coventry,
‘You could mow all this lawn here and it would look a treat,’ said the arborist, returning from a stroll around the grounds, which were looking resplendent in the sunshine. ‘Yes, yes, mow the grass. Good idea,’ I said, for the builder boyfriend has told me I have to agree with the customers. No matter
Bolting down the back hallway, I realised I was running away from the guests. I shut the door marked private and collapsed on to the dirty old dog sofa in the boot room. ‘You’ll never guess what I’ve done,’ I texted the builder boyfriend who was in London. ‘Left the yard hose on,’ he texted
The builder boyfriend sat nervously in front of my laptop as I logged him in to do his speed awareness course. I sat him at the kitchen table, I clicked the link the speed course people sent him and then, as we waited for them to admit him, I began my pep talk: ‘Do not
‘Our boys went to Lebanon and trained Hezbollah!’ shouted the drunk Irish lad in the fish and chip shop as an Indian man behind the counter silently fried chips. ‘Chucky ar la!’ the lad shouted, or Tiocfaidh ar la, to correctly spell in Irish the slogan of the IRA, meaning ‘Our day will come.’ And
The builder boyfriend returned from a trip to London to inform me he was being done for speeding at 32mph, for crying out loud. He was flashed by a camera crawling uphill in a 30 zone going through the almost middle-of-nowhere in the Ashdown Forest, on his way to visit his sister in Sussex for
By changing the address on my driving licence, I was somehow signed up to something that began charging my credit card £39 a month and was going to carry on charging for ever. It was Barclaycard that spotted it and warned me it was a ‘scam’ in a text alert. Had I really agreed to
The online speed awareness course cost £101, or a few pounds less if you didn’t want to book ‘flexible’ so you could change it if something went wrong, which it was bound to. Quite how companies like the AA, which deliver these courses, divvy up the spoils with the police I have no idea. I
‘Is there a secret passageway behind that door?’ said the weirdly difficult Kiwi as she eyed a door marked ‘private’ leading off the central staircase. ‘Yes, sort of,’ I said. Behind that door is the rear part of the house, unrenovated. So if you open it, the secret is you fall into a gap in
