Notes on...

Lewis Carroll used to travel with purses divided into separate compartments, each containing the exact number of coins he’d need for a particular transaction (train fare, porter, newspaper and so on). These days we have one bank card which gets tapped everywhere. The coinless society might be more convenient – but it’s also more boring. Coins are beautiful and fascinating. For centuries they were the only way most people knew what their monarch looked like. Henry VIII was nicknamed ‘Coppernose’ because of the way the silver coating on copper coins rubbed away, starting with his nose. Even Oliver Cromwell put himself on the currency (as a Roman emperor wearing a laurel wreath). Since Charles II, monarchs have alternated the way they face.

For several years, a debate has raged (mainly on Twitter, now X) over whether animal fats are actually better for you than industrially processed ‘seed oils’. The debate has become more mainstream thanks to the efforts of the new US Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jnr, who wants to Make America Healthy Again. His strategy involves a back-to-the-land style embrace of animal fats, particularly beef dripping. The anti-seed oil community use technical-sounding terms like ‘linoleic acids’ to firm up their side of the debate but fundamentally their point is that our bodies have evolved to process animal fats rather than overly processed stuff. J.D.

Do you Boom Boom? Or are you just Booming? Can Boomers Boom Boom or is it just for Zoomers? Can you Boom Doom? Hear me out: I’m getting to grips with the new vibe shift. In December, Sean Monahan, an American trend analyst, announced the arrival of the ‘Boom Boom’ aesthetic, which he described as a ‘pure expression of excess’ or ‘an Eighties archival look that is maximalist in its appetites’. He apparently came up with the term as he sat in London’s low-lit Decimo restaurant. Monahan is taken fairly seriously when it comes to predicting cultural trends. In 2013 he coined the term ‘normcore’, which is defined by a conspicuous, intentional blankness; it is the converse of Boom Boom. Think trainers at work and blanket athleisure wear.

In 1990, an exotic Swiss-Canadian teenager of purportedly Habsburgian lineage descended on Cambridge in a cloud of cashmere. His wardrobe was unfeasibly organised, shelf after shelf of cashmere arrayed in all the hues of the rainbow. We regarded him as a thing of wonder. In those days most of us British undergraduates were deeply unsophisticated, many of us impoverished. We were just about graduating from high-street polyester to Scottish lambswool. Cashmere was unheard of. Life moves on, and who today hasn’t indulged in a spot of cashmere? My wife is addicted to the stuff – jumpers, cardigans, polo necks, gloves, scarves – good God, the scarves. These days cashmere is everywhere. Even Uniqlo regularly knocks it out at sub-£100 prices.

In some countries Shrove Tuesday (the day of merrymaking before the rigours of Lent) developed into a ‘carnival’ that lasted several days, but in England it was only ever a half-day holiday, since it was not an official Church feast day. Apprentices and schoolchildren claimed the right to an afternoon of ‘sport’, and from at least the 15th century the most popular Shrove Tuesday recreation was ‘throwing at cocks’. This was a cruel custom that involved immobilising a cockerel, either by tying its foot to a stake or half burying it in the ground, while bystanders took turns throwing stones, tools and bricks at the cockerel in an attempt to kill it.

In 2015, an orthopaedic surgeon called Limb, with three other doctors called Limb, wrote a paper on whether people’s names were correlated with their medical specialties. The findings were striking. In general surgery there were practitioners called Gore, Butcher, Boyle and Blunt. In cardiology, Hart and Pump. In anaesthesia there was a Payne but also a Painstil. For the 313,445 entries in the medical register that they examined, the median frequency of names relevant to medicine was one in 149 – but in neurology, one in every 21 doctors had a name relevant to medicine. In genito-urinary medicine, one in 52 had a relevant name.

If something can be squeezed into a jar with brine, Polish grandmas will do it. Walk into the kitchen of the average babcia and you’ll see jars lining the shelves filled with mysterious experiments, as if in an old-fashioned Slavic science lab. Here are pickled cucumbers, pickled peppers, pickled mushrooms, pickled cabbage and pickled beetroot. Babcia knows that pickles are tasty, cheap, versatile and great for your health. Dziadek (Grandpa) knows that they are great with vodka. British Zoomers love pickles as well. Pickles, according to the website Vox, are among 2025’s ‘hottest foods’. McDonald’s has even cashed in on the fad with an advertisement showing a husband affectionately donating pickles from his burger to his wife.

My obituaries habit gets ever stronger. I find there’s nothing as inspiring or instructive or entertaining as reading a few hundred words about someone’s time on this planet. My main dealers are the Times and Radio 4’s Last Word. Each batch throws together a varied mix, people who share only one thing in common: the fact that they checked out at the same time. All human life is here, as it were. A good obituary knows we want stories, not lists of achievements. Some obituaries read like sitcom scripts. Like the obit for a rugby hero who played in a match between the British army of the Rhine and the French army. Twelve players were sent off, one of them our hero for landing a right hook on the nose of an opponent who had just bitten him on the genitals.

The Pope hates gossip. In his Christmas message to his Vatican advisers last year, Francis warned that it is ‘an evil that destroys social life’. It’s not the first time he’s attacked rumour-spreading. He once compared gossips to terrorists because ‘he or she throws a bomb and leaves’. The Holy Father’s condemnations are of particular concern for me because I was recently accused of being a ‘notorious gossip’. I vehemently reject the charge, of course, but if it were true, at least I’d be following a proud journalistic tradition. In fact, if it were not for gossip, this very magazine might not exist. The original Spectator’s founders, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, filled the 1711 incarnation by hovering around coffee houses, picking up gossip for stories.

Those who use TikTok, or are familiar with Ed Davey’s dance routines on social media, may have heard of the ‘Costco Guys’. For those with an aversion to TikTok (or to Ed Davey), Andrew ‘A.J.’ Befumo Jr. and Eric ‘Big Justice’ Befumo are a father-and-son duo who became internet celebrities by gorging on food items in their local Costco in Florida and rating them on a ‘boom or doom’ scale. Cue 2.5 million followers and debut single ‘We Bring the Boom’ – which Davey chose as the soundtrack to his latest bid for online attention. Patrick Maguire was probably right in the Times last week to say that this sort of soul-crushingly knuckleheaded viral fame justifies Oxford University Press’s decision to make ‘brain rot’ its word of the year. And yet I’m with A.J.

Donald Trump has form with the smelt. In his 2016 presidential run, he complained that California’s authorities were prioritising the endangered fish (which are native to the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta) over farmers’ irrigation needs. ‘Is there a drought?’ he asked a private audience of farmers ahead of a rally. ‘No, we have plenty of water.’ Environmentalists, he said, were wasting water in their efforts ‘to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish’. Last week, he levelled a similar accusation against California’s governor Gavin Newsom – or, as he calls him, ‘Newscum’ – for using the state’s water (which could have fought the LA fires) to provide the ‘essentially worthless’ smelt with a habitat.

The cape is having a moment thanks to the Highland wardrobe of Claudia Winkleman, who is currently presenting The Traitors for a third season. Capes are often used in literature to signal an air of mystery (think Sherlock Holmes) or to hide identity (Little Red Riding Hood or Lord Voldemort). The cape is a contradiction: demure but dramatic, it is the perfect item of clothing for a TV programme themed around treachery. But far from disguising the wearer, a cape can’t fail to attract attention. The silhouette gives everyone an aura of stature. I tend to reach for mine for my Monday morning commute when I feel the need to look more put together. Capes give the impression of someone who has got their act together, or at least knows where they’re going.

Two things come to mind when I think about visitors books. The first is the memory of leaving the home of a low-profile and secretive single man whose company is widely craved. I had been revelling in a sense of self-importance as I had good reason to suspect that the previous occupant of my guest bed had been none other than the late Queen Elizabeth II. Surely this proximity elevated my own moral and social status in some osmotic way? But when I suggested I sign his visitors book my host became querulous. He declared that he didn’t have a visitors book for the precise reason that he didn’t like the idea of his friends ‘snooping’ to see who else had been there. I think of the canny businesswoman who ran a holiday cottage letting agency in Devon 20 years ago.

It’s 500 years since Martin Luther, along with the preacher Paul Speratus, put together the first Protestant hymn book, the Achtliederbuch, literally the ‘book with eight songs’. Collections of liturgical chants and songs had existed before, but they had never been meant for the congregation – just for choirs. Luther believed collective sung worship in German (as opposed to Latin) was key to spreading the Reformation’s ideas and inspiring converts. What better way to engage worshippers than to include them in the church services they were attending? A catchy, simple melody and words everyone could understand, regardless of status or ability to read, helped too.

There are not many phrases that offend me more than ‘pigs in blankets’. The correct name for this dish is, of course, kilted sausages. In fact, the bacon-wrapped cocktail sausage has many incorrect names: the Irish go with kilted soldiers while the Germans call them Bernese sausages. The Americans for some reason wrap hotdogs in croissant pastry and call them saucisson en croûte, as though they’re some kind of European delicacy, à la Escoffier. Careful though, sometimes these deviations in name mask a greater sin. One Christmas, my posh nan promised ‘devils riding horseback’. I was thrilled for what I assumed must be the Nigella-fied version. Instead, she served baked prunes stuffed with almonds and wrapped in a sliver of bacon.

Smithfield has been the beating heart of London’s meat industry for more than 800 years. Located at the middle point of Farringdon, Barbican and St Paul’s, the capital’s only remaining wholesale meat market has survived bombings and fire, public criticism and a waning butchery industry; it has been pulled down and rebuilt, and adapted to changing times. In continuous operation since medieval times, to call it an institution is an understatement. But this week it was announced that it will be forced to close its shutters for the final time. The City of London Corporation was granted the right to run Smithfield meat market by Edward III in 1327.

Babycham, the drink you perhaps last sipped while tapping the ash from a black Sobranie as Sade played on the jukebox, is coming back. Launched in 1953 by Francis Showering of the Somerset cider family, it was aimed at giving women something to drink in the pub other than a port and lemon. Demand for the ‘genuine champagne perry’ soared after it became the first alcoholic drink advertised on the new ITV in 1955 – to the extent that Babycham was once said to be stocked by all but two pubs in the country. It’s a ‘champagne’ rather than a ‘sparkling’ perry to this day – an attempt by Bollinger to sue for abuse of their trade name in the 1970s was dismissed by Lord Denning.

‘Le Beaujolais nouveau est arrivé!’ If that phrase means anything to you, you’re likely of a vintage that remembers pre-Clarkson Top Gear. Growing up in the 1980s, you couldn’t miss adverts for the Beaujolais Run – an annual race to be the first to bring the new wine back to England. People would rush over to Burgundy in their Aston Martins and Jaguars, fill up with Beaujolais and roar back home. The idea for a race across France was cooked up by Clement Freud and wine merchant Joseph Berkmann in 1970. It really took off in 1974 when the Sunday Times offered a prize to the first person to bring a case of wine back to the newspaper’s offices following its release at midnight on the third Thursday in November.

Ask young people today if they know that they can dial a number to hear the time and you would probably be met with blank stares. Why would you pay to phone a speaking clock when the time is right there in front of you on your watch or phone screen? However, if you were young in bygone days you may have memories of getting parental permission to phone ‘TIM’ and hear somebody telling the time… precisely. In fact, every year millions of people still phone this service – now the BT Speaking Clock – almost 90 years after its introduction. It was launched by the Post Office on 24 July 1936 and was aimed at folk who did not have a clock or watch to hand.

Bonfire night is more about burning Catholics than haute cuisine and it shows. I’ve always felt for Catholic friends at this time of year, but I am a Jew, and I am told I am oversensitive. It’s also three decades since I made £150 doing ‘Penny for the Guy’ on Hampstead High Street. The last time I went to a bonfire night party it was hosted by a Catholic, and this confused me, until I remembered: she is an English Catholic. If Christmas is for the goose, and Easter for the hot cross bun, bonfire night has the toffee apple. Because this is a desolate festival, it has neither toffee on the apple – we will get to that – nor, too often, a bonfire. I’m not for burning Guido in effigy like those pyromaniac loons in Lewes, about whom I always think: who will they burn next?