Spectator Life

It's that time of year again. The giddy middle of May. When millions across the English-speaking world gather to find out who has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.  This year's shortlist, drawn – as ever – from a diverse selection of not-European, not-male authors, is particularly enriching and profound. As the committee itself puts it, the stories "bring compelling characters to life in sharply drawn settings, exploring themes of power, family tension, resistance and unheard voices, alongside courage and unexpected connection. Among them are a keenly observant domestic worker, a young woman whose henna art enables silenced women to speak, and a resourceful young sheep farmer.

Once upon a time Frenchmen regarded themselves as the world’s greatest lovers. These days they think of themselves more as fighters. Sexual partners have been replaced by sparring partners. President Felix Faure famously died while being pleasured by his mistress in 1899, but the blows favored by today’s male politicians are administered to punchbags. Emmanuel Macron loves to box. His wife, Brigitte, told Paris Match in 2023 that her husband puts on his gloves twice a week for "45 minutes of training, warm-up and core-strengthening boxing." Macron regularly poses for photos wearing his boxing gloves. In March 2024 he was snapped hitting a punchbag. The more cynical wondered if there hadn’t been some "enhancement" to the President’s bulging biceps.

Here we go again. Every year, with the inevitability of death, taxes and political regicide, the BBC’s Eurovision coverage reminds viewers that most pop music produced in European countries is of a terrible standard, and that the UK’s banal offering is never going to inspire any patriotic fervor. This year, British hopes are pinned on an electropop act called Look Mum No Computer, with a truly terrible sub-Depeche Mode song called "Eins Zwei Drei" that contains the lyrics "Counting in English doesn’t cut the mustard / So sick of munching roly-poly with custard." Don’t call me Cassandra, but I suspect that Look Mum No Computer (real name: Sam Battle) will be receiving rather fewer than drei punkte from many of the international judges.

What does Monte Carlo conjure up? A glamorous casino where fortunes can be won and lost, but mostly lost? Men in evening dress at baccarat tables with beautiful women standing by? A tax haven for the glitzy rich on the Cote d’Azur? Fabulous Belle Epoque buildings? A refuge for Edwardian English invalids to escape the cold? Grace Kelly? The Grand Prix?  It was here that Max de Winter met the girl who became the second Mrs de Winter at the beginning of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. "What do you think of Monte Carlo, or don't  you think of it at all?" he asked her. "I said something  obvious and idiotic about the place being  artificial," she recalled.  Well, she was pretty much correct.

Only the most heartless fantasist would deny the life-saving role that therapy plays in helping people manage mental illness. Some people, of course, find it enjoyable or helpful for their own reasons and fair play to them. "You do you, babe," as they say.   But in the round, there is more wrong than right with the edifice. What else is one to conclude after Meghan "Sussex" née Markle, one of the luckiest and most spoiled women in the world, posted on Instagram last week that that the "hardest seven years" of her life – those that followed her becoming a duchess, having two healthy children and trading a royal residence for a $29 million mansion in California – had come to an end?

In recent years it’s become a hackneyed truism that Nordic nations have found the key to happiness. The Danes, who often take first place in global rankings for mental wellbeing, pride themselves on hygge, that feeling of coziness evoked by wrapping oneself in blankets and being surrounded by candles. The Swedes promote lagom, the concept of the optimal medium. And while the Finns also appear to be satisfied with their lot – Finland came first in this year’s World Happiness Report for the ninth time in a row – they have no well-known term that encapsulates their attitude to life. In the spirit of Nordic one-upmanship, however, that could be about to change.

There are few things that look sadder than an abandoned sports field. I spent longer than I meant to sitting on a decaying bench looking out over the forest that was once the intended playing surface for the Stroitel Pripyat soccer club. The sky above was cerulean, cloudless and entirely still. The only life came from my hand-held Geiger counter which spluttered and crackled, telling me that I was in a territory that wasn’t fit for a stroll, let alone 90 minutes of lung-bursting athleticism.

Contrary to what we redheads have been led to believe, we are not disappearing. Our numbers have increased in the past 10,000 years, according to a recent Harvard study. What’s more, researchers found, being ginger may actually be desirable as far as natural selection is concerned because "having red hair was beneficial 4,000 years ago." The reason why has yet to be discovered. But it’s good news for the class bully, producers of sunscreen and those – like me – who’ve had a love-hate relationship with the variants in their MC1R gene which leads to red hair and pale skin. I was an extreme redhead as a child growing up in Scotland; not one of the beautiful ones with long, auburn curls and green eyes.