The frustrating thing about rights is that when you give them to people they don’t cherish and appreciate them. They turn them ungratefully upside down like a modest-sized Easter egg and shake them vigorously to try to work out if something better might be inside. Right to roam is like this. You would think walkers
Splitting the atom is nothing compared to figuring out how to get hold of your farrier. Why is the farrier more capricious than a rock star? Why does he hardly ever turn up on the day, much less time, he says he is coming? Why does he not keep a diary? Why does he never
Oh, I suppose I might as well give it a whirl, I thought, as the recorded voice began its dirge: ‘If you are calling to cancel your BT service, please press one…’ It would have been more accurate to say: ‘If you never use your landline and have only now, while doing your New Year
1 January. Rooms left in house to decorate: 1 (only the attic, therefore doesn’t count).Walls plastered by self with no help from man: 1 (vg!!). Reconciliations with ex-builder boyfriend for the festive season owing to total collapse of self-belief right on cue at year end, notwithstanding evidence of self-sufficiency in newly plastered walls: 1 (must
Ebenezer Grayling sat busy in his counting house. It was a cold, bleak day at the Department for Transport. Big Ben had only just struck three but it was getting dark already and the lights were going on in the grand buildings of Whitehall. Grayling stared down at the papers in front of him. He
Decorating a tree on the unfinished minstrels’ gallery was an appealing idea if only for the health and safety violations. The little lodger was up for it and between the two of us we heaved the six-foot tree to the kitchen, preparing to hoist it aloft. As things stand, the gallery above the kitchen doesn’t
The horse dentist is handsome, with blond windswept hair and a weather-beaten face. There is something Heathcliffian about him, something wild and sexy. On the other hand, he dresses in overalls, brandishes grim tools, and looks a lot like a medieval torturer. He cheers me up with his gallows humour, but also he scares me.
Lying in bed one night as the rain pounded down, I became aware of a yellow patch forming on the bedroom ceiling. It took shape as I lay there watching it, and before long it had spread into a glorious stigmata of impending ruin. This would happen. Because it’s not as though for the first
Left at the Dementia Café, right at the Sleep Office, past the Spiritual Care Centre… This was my journey through the ground floor of my local hospital until I came to the physiotherapy department where the Calf Stretching Education Group was being held. Hospitals are very different places nowadays from the forbidding buildings of my
If you are wondering, any more than usual, how your tax is being spent, you should know that I have been summoned to a Calf Stretching Education Group. According to the letter from the NHS, it has come to the attention of my local hospital that I have tight calf muscles. ‘We would like to
‘This isn’t so bad,’ said my friend, as we knelt at my old mare’s side as she lay on the ground beneath a tree growing weak. Aged 33 in horse years, or ninetysomething in human years, Tara had been enjoying an extraordinary renaissance since Darcy the thoroughbred had been turned out to live with her
Just when you thought there was nothing more for women of the left to nonsensically oppose, I bring you news of a baffling development. Female horse-riders of a liberal persuasion are burning their bridles. Yes, there’s a new craze among the lunatic fringe of the horse world whose members are casting their reins on to
Lounging confidently on the sofa of a Soho hotel suite, Dominic West has been beaming at me, but now his handsome smile dissolves into a hurt look. I have just asked him to explain why he, in common with so many actors, feels the need to voice his political views. ‘I should just pipe down
After months of trying not to try the exciting new version of Gmail, the exciting new version of Gmail tried me. I hadn’t realised it had happened until I opened my laptop and didn’t recognise my own inbox. With the horror that creeps up in me like acid reflux to greet all technological advances, I
Teacher training is terrific fun. Oh yes, I am thoroughly enjoying myself on my evening course at Guildford College. Don’t worry, I’m not actually becoming a teacher. The Snowflakes of Britain are safe. No, I hit upon the idea of running a writers’ group. But of course you can’t just run anything in this country
Two and a half hours after my tech guy began trying to uninstall Norton, he had purple smoke coming out of his nose and mouth. Well, Vimto-flavoured vapour. Sucking on this pseudo-crack pipe like a junkie, he was, and I was itching all over from a bad case of techno-hives. ‘What on earth is happening?’
‘I’m just going to pop yourself on hold,’ said the girl from the online shopping firm who was trying to find my amazing disappearing bed. First a bed I ordered arrived with half of it missing. Then, when I rang to complain, they upgraded me to a better bed by way of apology and when
The little lodger is moving in. I chose her after an exhaustive search of twentysomethings looking for accommodation, during which I met a terrifying selection of millennials and members of generation snowflake. The highlight has to be the 22-year-old engineer who came with his parents. They toured the house and inspected the room on offer.
A big part of my problem is that I don’t understand why people do the things they do. I was walking my dogs across a meadow and I looked behind to see a large, tan vizsla running towards us. He was entire, so I called Poppy and Cydney to heel and put Cydney on the
Leaving Norton, the antivirus software package, is a bit like trying to leave the EU. You may think, once you have decided to click the ‘X’ button in the box that says you don’t want to subscribe to this expensive protection outfit any more, that you have left. You may think that it was your
