Life
Spectator competition winners: poems about procrastination
In Competition No. 3306, you were invited to submit a poem about procrastination. Procrastination looms large in Out of Sheer…
A taste of 1997: Pizza Express reviewed
As the government withers this column falls to ennui and visits Pizza Express. As David Cameron, who left the world…
How to make proper vanilla ice cream
I could map out my life geographically and temporally in scoops of ice cream. From the oyster delights handed over…
How do you solve a problem like debanking?
As I sat down to write this column, an old friend let me know he’d just been ‘debanked’. That is,…
The beauty of Boran cattle
The Farm, Laikipia Outside the nightjars were calling and a zebra brayed in the valley. The constellations were still bright…
The Co-op can keep its no claims discount
When I received an email from the Co-op telling me they had made a mistake with my car insurance, and…
The pleasure and pain of reading
Gstaad There are lurid rumours circulating around this Alpine village that an international literature symposium has taken place, with some…
Aussie life
Amanda Stoker’s willingness to talk about her bottom has given David Van the distinction of becoming Australia’s first real subject…
Language
I have written here in the past about the expression ‘weaponised words.’ There are many examples: ‘fascist’, ‘Nazi’ and ‘hard-right’…
What’s so super about Super Tuscans?
In Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, the hopes embodied in the title dissolve into grimness and black irony. It was all…
We are experiencing an unusually high volume of bureaucracy
I have a hunch why people in late middle age are abandoning the workforce: their jobs, as they once knew…
2608: Support – solution
Reading the title as ‘backup’, unclued answers VOLTE-FACE, RETREAT, SPIN, TURN, COUNTER, BACKTRACK, WITHDRAWAL, ROTATE, RETIREMENT and RECOIL had to…
Young’s First Law of free speech
I’ve always been envious of journalists who give their names to ‘laws’, as in O’Sullivan’s First Law: ‘All organisations that…
Spectator competition winners: sonnets on sonnets
In Competition No. 3305, you were invited to submit a sonnet entitled ‘Sonnet On Famous And Familiar Sonnets’. The germ…
No. 758
White to play and win. Composed by Josef Hasek, 1929. One plausible try is 1 Kc5 but 1…f5! prepares to…
The hell of speed chess
Somewhere in hell, there is a cavernous hall filled with row upon row of people playing online speed chess. Their…
