Unsure what to buy for your loved ones this Christmas? Here are two ideas. For diehard smokers, try buying an electronic cigarette, currently causing controversy in California, where an attempt to prevent their sale was recently vetoed by Governor Schwarzenegger. The devices cause debate for a host of reasons — not least because there is
After the womenfolk in the household have gone to bed, I like to spend a minute trawling a few porn sites. In my case it may be either www.privateislandsonline.com (the estate agency most beloved of James Bond villains) or more commonly www.savewright.org, with its section ‘Wright on the Market’ listing all the properties currently on
In the less politically correct age which was my childhood, a series of stocking-filler paperbacks sold in their millions. The first was called The Official Irish Joke Book — Book Three (Book Two to follow). The only joke I remember concerned the Irish Nobel Prize for Medicine, ‘awarded to a man who had discovered a
To me this is a silly line of attack. That’s not to suggest there are no possible improvements to Royal Mail services — I can think of several. For instance someone should ask postmen to reverse their round every year, so that it isn’t always the same hapless householders (me, in this case) who receive
It is a joke I have heard told 20 different ways since I first heard it 23 years ago. Often the location has changed, along with the nationality of the subject or his transgression. However, the ur-joke, told to me by an anthropologist in 1986, went like this. A tourist is exploring the coast of
Some time in the mid-1990s I spent a day in a windowless room watching endless presentations of European television commercials. In the style of the times, most were filmed in exotic tropical locations with lavish production values, sumptuous photography and a pulsating soundtrack. As the day drew to an end, the creative director of an
Fifteen years ago, when I lived in W2, I was sent a leaflet from something called (I think) the Bayswater Residents Association. As is common with anything produced by self-appointed volunteers, the leaflet proposed an exclusively geriatric vision for the postal district in which we lived, one completely at odds with its population. The organisation
At first glance the climate change debate is simple: you either believe the doom-mongers or you don’t. Soon, however, other questions arise. Is the world warming up or not? If so, is this warming anthropogenic or the result of a natural cycle? If greenhouse gases are indeed to blame, do we reduce emissions now or
To Amy******@************.org: I have a LG microwave that I want to sell for $30. I am aware your ad said whites only, but I am an African American. I sincerely hope that we can put race issues aside and just do business. From Amy ****** to Me: I am so sorry that you misread my
In the end I ignored my own advice and bought an Apple iPad, purely, as I explained to my wife, ‘for the purposes of research’. The very same ‘research’ that has by now filled two or three desk drawers with a ridiculous assortment of electrical chargers, the devices they once charged mostly lost, burnt out
I am, it’s true, optimistic about the role of technology in making life more pleasant and interesting, but in some areas I am sceptical, even fogeyish. Ask me to design a perfect world and it will have electronics (and medicine) from the present day but engineering and architecture from the 1930s. My answer to any
A few years ago a leisure centre advertised ‘Keep-fit classes for the over-60s’. Nobody turned up. To broaden the appeal, they advertised ‘Keep-fit classes for the over-50s’. The sessions sold out. Not one of those joining was under 65 years of age. How many 65-year-olds want to attend anything aimed at the over-60s? And how
With the single exception of the in- flight live map with its wonderfully eccentric ideas about the relative importance of towns and cities (what’s so special about Chartwell?), I don’t often use the in-flight entertainment systems on planes. I’m not sure I want to watch Avatar on a nine-inch screen — or on any screen,
I haven’t watched Triumph of the Will all the way through, but I am fairly confident that at no point in the film does Hess suddenly turn to the crowd and say: ‘Yes, sir, your question. Row 689, the blond gentleman in black with the skull insignia? No, not you, sir — the slightly more
This may be an extreme point of view, but I think novelists should learn to drive. I don’t know how exactly, but a reader can tell when an author has never gripped a steering wheel. Perhaps there are no descriptions of motoring in any of the books, or too many train journeys — or else
Every month or so I am approached by someone wanting to start a new business. Mostly these ideas are interesting and even sensible. On rare occasions, however, they can seem slightly deranged — a website that lets you customise your own wheelie bin, that kind of thing. The pitches for these ideas usually end with
I don’t know if you have ever been to Paris, but it’s basically a kind of London for girls. I generally try to avoid the place, as you can’t get a decent curry and there’s nothing in the shops unless you are an anorexic dwarf. But a couple of times a year I used to
If you have used Oxford railway station recently, you may have noticed a strange electronic sign on the up platform displaying a ‘parking code’, a seemingly random three-digit number. I wondered about this and asked around. It seems that, when parking next to the station, you can either ‘pay and display’, in which case you
It takes a more ruthless person than me to walk past any of the defunct branches of Borders without feeling some pangs of conscience. I am sure the chain made some mistakes (it had a strange habit of opening vast, hangar-like stores in out-of-town retail parks such as Lakeside, places not generally known for their
Much as it pains me to use the Spectator’s pages to plug another publication, I can’t help being impressed by the Economist’s invention of a new kind of subscription service. Much as it pains me to use the Spectator’s pages to plug another publication, I can’t help being impressed by the Economist’s invention of a