Spectator Life

Waking up to hear the ‘unprecedented’ news about Heathrow Airport, I felt a nanosecond of luxurious relaxation (albeit I’m not exactly over the moon about being in a hospital bed without the use of my legs). Of course I’d rather be scampering about an airport superstore being sprayed with scent by sexy shop-girls rather than stuck here waiting to be hoisted into the air over a commode like some smelly piñata. But there’s never any harm in looking on the bright side and I’m very glad not to have been flown all the way back to Delhi when I was on the verge of landing in TW6, as was one young woman on the Today programme last week.

How’s this for a bargain? A Pizza Express margherita for only 33p, if you dine in and order between 5 and 6 p.m. tomorrow, to celebrate 60 years of the chain. ‘In 1965 we brought proper pizza to the UK, and what better way to mark those 60 years than with 60 minutes of our original pizzas at their original prices,’ reads the promotion. I love Pizza Express. I don’t often go there, but I’ve never had a bad time in the place. I almost always choose the American, which has been on the menu since it opened, and the service and food is always consistent. I have no expectation beyond my pizza being fresh out of the oven, and everybody being served at the same time, however big the table. That’s not, by any means, to say the menu is perfect.

The wigs are being dusted off, the spandex jumpsuits laundered and the amps turned up, not to 11 but to infinity. Rock legends Spinal Tap, one of the world’s loudest bands, are back with a sequel to their seminal 1984 mockumentary, to be released on 12 September. But can Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues possibly live up to the nearly flawless original, or are we about to witness an act of cultural sacrilege? https://youtu.be/P-Y51nBET8k Happily, nearly all the original cast will be in the sequel, and we are promised some big-name cameos from Paul McCartney, Elton John and Garth Brooks.

The Carnegies are a long-running award for children’s writing and illustration, established by the Library Association in honour of Scottish philanthropist Andrew Carnegie and first awarded in 1936 to Arthur Ransome’s Pigeon Post. This year’s shortlist of 16 for fiction and illustration, chosen by a dozen librarians, is out now and billed thus: ‘Marginalised Male Perspectives Explored with Empathy and Hope’. So, boys are the new girls as the left-behinds of our day and white boys in particular are the group most obviously marginalised.

This morning, as usual, I was woken up by the large ball of golden fluff that is my dog, Honey. At a time she considers decent, she bounds on to my bed, tail wagging furiously, to tell me it’s time for her breakfast. Honey still has the puppyish bounce she has always had – even though, at the age of almost 12, she is gently settling into canine old age. And I’d go so far as to say that what I give her to eat has a lot to do with her youthfulness. Eye-roll as much as you like, but I believe one of the key reasons Honey is thriving is because she hasn’t eaten meat for more than six years. Yes, my dog is vegan. Not that she realises that, of course: as far as she’s concerned, she still gets the same sausages, dog chews and choice of dry and wet foods as she’s always had.

When did you last bump into the words ‘Made in Britain’ on a jumper, shirt or pair of trousers? There’s a chance, if you’re under 40, that you’ve never actually seen those words printed in an item of clothing – ever. And that’s quite a problem, particularly when you consider that we find ourselves in an era when the Prime Minister’s favourite two words are ‘national resilience’. The simple fact is that when it comes to clothes we aren’t resilient. In fact quite the reverse: in the past year Britain imported something like £15 billion-worth of textiles and clothing (compared with clothing exports of around £3 billion).

Even if you haven’t seen Adolescence, currently the most-watched show on Netflix, you’ll doubtless be aware – or think you’re aware – of its central themes: knife crime, social media, the manosphere and its pernicious influence on teenage boys. In other words, ‘the Andrew Tate shite’, as the show’s (female) detective sergeant sighs at one point.  Critics have gushed that this is ‘TV perfection’ (Times, Guardian) and a landmark series ‘so powerful it could save lives’ (Guardian again). Each of the four one-hour episodes is apparently shot in one take, which is the sort of thing that thrills male critics but for ordinary viewers can, at times, feel self-indulgent and contrived.

You will doubtless have read the news and possibly even an obituary of Group Captain John ‘Paddy’ Hemingway, the last of ‘the Few’, who died this week at the great age of 105. That he lived beyond the age of 21 is little short of miraculous, of course – given that he was shot down no fewer than four times in just a fortnight during the Battle of Britain, which claimed the lives of 544 pilots out of nearly 3,000 who fought for Fighter Command. Without the victory their service and sacrifice brought, it’s highly likely that the outcome of the second world war would have been reversed.

The regular’s stage is the fetid pub carpet, the creaky floorboards, the cramped smoking area where they can sneak a shot between rounds. Their audience is the jaded, spotty bartender, the unsuspecting family looking for a quiet Sunday lunch, and any poor soul too cowardly or inebriated to walk away. Regulars are the backbone of the British pub trade, but their time has come to an end. Gen Z has rung the bell for last orders. A recent survey found that 43 per cent of 18-to-34-year-olds have given up booze altogether. Thirty-six per cent of that same demographic are using non-alcoholic substitutes to curtail their drinking, and ‘bingeing’ – drinking more than four pints in one sitting – appears to be on the decline.

Years ago, newly triumphant from getting my first book published, I went to my parents’ house for a celebration dinner. Having duly toasted their son’s modest literary success, they then revealed that I wasn’t the new author in their social circle. An old university friend of theirs from Holland – we’ll call him Jörg – had just sent them a copy of his new book, ‘a sort of travel memoir, a bit like yours’. This was not a comparison I welcomed. My book was about quitting my job as pot-holes correspondent on the London Evening Standard to freelance in post-Saddam Iraq – not exactly Michael Herr’s Dispatches, granted, but more gripping, I liked to think, than writing about roadworks on Streatham High Road.

You first start to notice them in that desultory way you become aware of the floating specks across your vision that signify a migraine is on the way. Perhaps you saw a woman in Waitrose wearing a black one and wondered why she was sporting a giant version of the Umbro football manager’s coat from the 1990s. Then someone pointed out the hot pink camo combo on the sidelines at an under-12s rugby tournament and, looking across the pitches, you realised just how ubiquitous they have become. By the time you spot my own hate-favourite – the Dryrobe Advance Abstract, a limited edition now out of stock which looks like the old Channel 4 test card – you may be experiencing full-on throbbing temples.

Following the closure of Hungarian restaurant the Gay Hussar in 2018 – that Soho institution and virtual museum of Labour party history – it seems Londoners are about to lose another Central European landmark. The Polish restaurant Daquise has finally had time served on it by Transport for London, who wish to redevelop the buildings round South Kensington station, where Daquise has been serving its loyal customers for nearly 80 years. Formerly a wartime canteen for Polish officers, Daquise opened as a restaurant in 1947. Even its name is rather romantic – a portmanteau word put together by the restaurant’s uxorious founder (he was Dakowski, his wife Louise, therefore Daquise).