The reckoning | The Spectator

The trouble with yachts

Yacht owners are well-heeled and outgoing types, perfect devotees of good food and wine. Drinking and yachting does not carry the same stigma as drinking and driving. But yachts are not exactly small things so where, exactly, do you put your boat when you stop somewhere for lunch or dinner? A guide has now been published, telling yacht-owners which Palm Beach restaurants are boat-friendly, how much dock space each establishment has, whether or not there are docking fees, whether “rafting” is sometimes necessary (ferrying people to and from the dining area from the dock), whether overnight parking is permitted (in case you imbibe too much), what is the maximum size of boat accepted, whether table service on the boat is available and for what fee and whether sailboats are permitted.

Chilton Williamson, Jr.

The clash between Trump and Pope Leo shouldn’t Catholics

I have always believed that no Catholic with a sound understanding of his faith, which represents the ultimate in realistic thinking and a realistic view of the world, should be shocked by anything. For this reason, the recent contretemps between the President of the United States and Pope Leo XIV left me completely unaffected. Donald Trump is not a Catholic and the Pope in Rome serves in persona Christi, the 367th temporal embodiment of the Lord before the Second Coming. I believe further that a great many devout Catholics devote too much attention to whoever it is who happens to be serving as the Vicar of Christ at any given moment and that it is theologically wrong to treat him as an international celebrity, as it has been the custom of Catholics to do in the postwar era.

Josie Cox

Down with the children’s birthday-industrial complex

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about birthdays. For one thing, I’m writing this on the very day I turn 37. For another, you might’ve heard that America’s got a big one coming up later this year: 250. Old enough to stop squabbling and act its age. But right now, the only birthday that matters in our household is my daughter’s, and it’s coming up in two weeks. New York City children’s birthday parties – at least many of the ones I’ve witnessed – are unlike anything you’ve ever seen. Not so much parties as highly coordinated tests of moral conscience. They’re diplomatic summits involving balloons, sugar and, yes, perhaps a touch of low-level psychological warfare.

Lloyd Evans

Man vs lobster

She was doing a postgrad course in a town by the sea, and a strange thing happened to us one afternoon. On the quayside we saw lobsters being sold from a trestle table. Only one of them remained and I squinted at it, close up. The sharp oval claws, like holsters, had been bound in elastic bands to stop them nipping customers. It seemed a small-minded precaution. These imposing pincers were cumbersome and useless on dry land. But in the sea, with the water’s buoyancy to give them mobility, they would be swift and lethal weapons. Yet the lobster-catcher had neutralized them with a pair of turquoise bands. What for? The beast was already defeated, plucked from its natural habitat by a giant human being, and yet the victor was fearful of the tiniest nip from his prisoner’s claws.

Melissa Kite

What really killed off the traditional B&B

To B&B or not to be B&B? That is the question. Whether it’s nobler to offer breakfast to a guest is not in question, but whether it’s possible has been my dilemma since I started my guest house. After reading Ross Clark on The Spectator website saying that he longs for the traditional B&B, all I can say is I’ve really tried to be that landlady he describes, in pink fluffy slippers, frying bacon in a house with Artex walls. I’ve tried to take people who roll up late at night, I’ve tried to put the second B back into the enterprise, and I’ve tried to cope with customers who, like Ross, want the option of a cooked breakfast but not a fry-up – porridge, made just the way they want it, which is different for every single customer.

Life