Low life
The joys of home and hearth and hot lemon
Over Christmas and New Year I was rotten with flu and didn’t go out once. I stayed soberly at home…
That’s another year gone and, against the odds, I’m still here
A fruity voice on the train’s announcement system said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, make sure you have all your belongings, family…
Forgive us our Christmases as we forgive those who Christmas against us
After lunch on Christmas Day my father always stood at the sink in his apron and yellow Marigolds and did…
The best thing about travel-writing gigs is meeting other hacks
The thing I enjoy most about travel-writing gigs is meeting other hacks. Hacks are almost invariably fun, funny, gossipy, irreverent,…
The criteria for admittance to a Maldivian cemetery
Moofushi, Maldives We clambered aboard a dhoni, the sturdy wooden boat that the Maldivians use for getting about the…
‘Are you going out tonight, Frasier? If you are, don’t leave without me’
An hour earlier I had stepped off a plane from Dublin and I was three-quarters deaf in one ear. I…
I nearly went lost my mind in southern Spain on the trail of Gerald Brenan
Another writer I once liked very much is Gerald Brenan. Brenan served with distinction in the first world war and…
Bidding a fond, and drunken, farewell to the awe-inspiring Mark Amory
Rubbing shoulders with political suits on the pavement outside the Westminster Arms, I drank two pints of Spitfire. Pump primed,…
'My boy was my all': letters from a bereaved mother to a Somme widow
My maternal grandmother (née Clarke) had six brothers, all keen poker players. All six volunteered to fight in the Great…
Hello trees, hello sky, hello armoured riot police
What a beautiful day, I thought, as I nodded to the porter in the bowler hat and stepped out of…
The karmic rewards of becoming a vegetarian
‘Is that you, Sister?’ It was Tom misdialling again with those thick, stubby fingers of his. ‘No, it’s me: Jerry,’…
Karl Miller called me his ‘great white hope’. I failed him, of course
As I think I said in this column the other week, I used to sneak into English lectures at University…
Chatting up Katherine Mansfield
I like the New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield, who according to Virginia Woolf smelt like a civet cat and had…
A visit to a drugs den above a fishmongers with Miss South America
‘Stand outside the fishmongers in 20 minutes and call this number,’ she said, ‘and I can arrange it.’ On Saturday…
A game of dominoes turns ugly
I’m round at Amy and Bill’s for Sunday afternoon tea. Amy and Bill are my in-laws, kind of. When I…
The bump in the night that changed my mind about pygmies
Music of the Forest on Radio 4 last week was a profile of the anthropologist Colin Turnbull, 1924–1994, who achieved…
An undergraduate anorak at 32
When I was 32, tired at last, for the moment anyway, of seizing the day, I stopped drinking and gave…
Glazed tiles, a barred window: it must be another morning in a police cell
In my late twenties, it was not unusual for me to wake up in a police cell wearing a paper…
What I learned working in the lunatic asylum
In 1984 I was 27. Since leaving school I had done unskilled manual labour, when I could get any. Then…
A road trip in the company of Long John Silver and an exciting pair of thighs
I live in south Devon. Last week I went up to north Devon, to visit a friend who was renting…
I might have no testosterone but I do have a Fiat Barchetta
I’ve might have no testosterone. (My production is currently being stopped by injection once every three months.) But what I…
The indiscreet charm of Jim Davidson
Le tout Torquay was there, cramming into the Princess Theatre with a drink in each hand ten minutes after the…
My grandson’s Great Leap Forward
‘Oscar!’ cried Miss Herd as I arrived. She was standing at the classroom door releasing her charges one by one…
I am walking to the Spectator party — sober, clean and in all my finery
They do love a party at The Spectator. I was invited to four in ten days last week: the Apollo…
Honesty, simplicity, integrity: not what I want the morning after
Tap tap tap at the door. I opened my eyes. ‘Check-out 10.30,’ said a neutral or possibly slightly hostile female…
