The Volvo only went in to have a parking light changed but, of course, it ended up being taken to pieces. Somehow, whilst fitting a bulb and then securing the exhaust pipe, which had come a bit loose, they found a leak from an indeterminate origin. It was probably the gearbox fluid, the mechanic explained.
Meet Kevin Jackson, the black Tea Party activist disgusted at the prejudices of Obama’s supporters Kevin Jackson talks a lot of sense. He also says things that make you wonder if your ears are playing up. As the newest star of the Tea Party circuit gives you his views on Obama, Palin and David Cameron,
The visit from the accident assessor appointed by the insurance company sent me on a cleaning spree involving industrial quantities of bleach. I spent the hours preceding his arrival subjecting every corner of my flat to a thorough going-over. Then I lit scented candles and brewed fresh coffee. ‘What am I doing?’ I muttered dementedly
In Yvette Cooper’s home, an entire room is given over to memorabilia of her husband’s life in politics. Pictures of Ed Balls hang on the walls and the room is kitted out with phone lines and computers so it can function as a nerve-centre for the shadow chancellor while he is working from home. Cooper’s
Is it too much to ask for the machines in my life to stop ordering me about? Am I reaching for the stars in wanting to be loosely in control of my car, my phone and my laptop, rather than me being at their beck and call? I’m not talking about the odd message telling
The Slobs are alleging ‘soft tissue damage’. I’m not surprised that this is the diagnosis of the doctor appointed by the lawyer pioneering their attempt to defraud my insurance company. The Slobs, you may remember, are the charming couple who claimed I had seriously injured them both when I rolled into the back of them
By the time you read this I shall probably be 40. I say probably not because I am thinking of ending it all to ensure I remain for ever young in people’s hearts. I say it because the way things are going, the event may go completely unnoticed. It may be so ignored by my
The high-speed rail link will spell disaster for the countryside – and for Cameron My outing with the Bicester hunt has already taken me over a five-bar iron gate when a lady on a handsome dapple grey pulls up alongside me. ‘You’re visiting, aren’t you?’ she says, as our horses snort and stamp. ‘You need
‘You don’t have long. That dog won’t be a puppy for ever. Don’t waste this precious time.’ Those were the wise words of my friend Vince when I brought Cydney home. ‘Get out there with her,’ he explained. ‘Walk her in all the big parks. Maximise your pulling opportunities.’ Vince claims he never had so
Do the right thing and the right thing will follow. Right? After my encounter on the Queen’s highway with Wayne and Waynetta Slob, I decided I had better ring my insurance company and warn them that there might be a fraudulent claim. The couple had screeched off from the police station in their shiny new
Hilarious as it would be to say I had a crash on my way to trade my car in for a new one, I’m not entirely sure that was what happened. I was driving very slowly down Streatham High Road on my way to Croydon where the new Volvo awaited me. The traffic was bumper
If 40 was the question, climbing a mountain was not the answer. I don’t know why people go looking for themselves when they approach middle age and I always swore I wouldn’t do it. But then I found myself a few months off the dreaded landmark birthday and off I went up Kilimanjaro. All I
A wise man once said it is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves. I say never go on a trip that ends with you sealing your laundry into vacuum packs before disposing of it like nuclear waste. Honestly, these Kilimanjaro climbers are mental. My own team was dominated by six previously sensible family men
An everlasting chant wafts from the ancient walls of the temple of Kapaleeshwarar: ‘Om Namasivaya.’ The effect is hypnotic. I wander inside and the chant merges with Vedic folk music as a joyous crowd of worshippers sing in praise of Shiva. An elderly couple are having a birthday blessing and the Dravidian precincts are a
What I know about mountaineering you could write on the front of a postage stamp. But I’m willing to bet Sir Edmund Hillary did not have bright pink, ergonomic insoles in his boots called ‘Superfeet’. I have. I was sold them along with vast amounts of other gear I’m fairly sure must be extraneous by
Sometimes I don’t suspect the world has gone mad, I know it. For example, I took a black cab home from the theatre the other night and, as we passed Tooting Common, the driver wound down his window and threw a handful of raw sausages out of it. I tapped the glass politely and asked
Don’t even ask me how fast I had to go to get to the speed awareness course on time. The rush-hour dash was made even worse by the fact that the letter from ‘the UK’s leading provider of occupational road risk management, driver assessment and training for corporate organisations and speed awareness’ warned me that
Sanity is subjective. It depends very much on where you are. I know this because I spend half my time in south London and the other half in the country. Talking to strangers in the supermarket is fine in Surrey, for instance. In Waitrose, Cobham everyone talks to you. The check-out lady there told me
Stupidly, I left a pile of money on the fridge while I was in Italy and told the cleaner to come as usual. I thought it would be nice for her not to lose the business. But my cleaner is not some fly-by-night who takes money for nothing. My cleaner is serious about cleaning. She
Perhaps beginnings are meant to be disorientating sometimes. For many pages of Mohammed Hanif’s second novel I cannot get my bearings and start to worry that, far from finding my way into the dense narrative, I am becoming more and more lost. I fret about what the problem might be. Is it overwritten? The earthiness