And Finally

Q. I have a good relationship with a neighbor. She has a labrador and I have a Jack Russell. If I cannot walk my dog she will do it and vice versa. Yesterday my daughter visited unexpectedly and was at the top of the house when she heard my neighbor open the front door and call my dog for his walk. Five minutes later she heard the dog being returned to the house. I don’t want to fall out with my neighbor but I would always walk her labrador for at least 45 minutes and my dog needs a proper walk every day. How should I proceed? N.B., Stockbridge A. Fitness trackers for dogs are all the rage – attached to the collar, they count steps and provide GPS tracking.

I was looking at a photo of my great-grandfather the other day and admiring his beard. A magnificent spade-shaped affair, it reached halfway down his chest. He was a Victorian, of course, and his era was, above all, the century of the beard. All the eminent Victorian males, such as Darwin, Dickens, the Earl of Salisbury and Prince Albert wore them.  When Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth decreed recently that all US military men should be clean shaven, it struck me that, had that rule been around in the 1860s, the American Civil War would never have been fought, since all the leading generals on both sides were endowed with substantial forests of facial hair. One Union commander, Ambrose Burnside, was so notably hirsute in this respect that he lent his name to sideburns.

The older and more plutocratic among you may remember the unlamented business-class airline seat of the 1980s and 1990s. Every few years, major airlines would proudly announce the wondrous extra legroom available in their long-haul business class and the increase in the recline angle of the seat. And each time the experience got worse. You see, the person sitting in front of you now invaded ever more of your airspace when they reclined their own seat. You then had no choice but to follow suit to regain the lost territory. The resulting Nash equilibrium meant everyone on board was forced to spend the entire journey leaning backwards at 45°. Getting to the lavatory required playing an involuntary game of Twister with the person sitting by the aisle.

“Don’t they speak English?” asked my husband, tossing over a copy of the Daily Mail as though it were my fault. The headline read: “Missing in action.” It referred to Dan Jarvis disappearing from view in his new job as Defence Secretary. The headline writers should know that, militarily, those missing in action are presumed dead. The Mail meant AWOL – absent without leave. In 2024, I remarked how odd it was that Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, should say about mob violence outside a migrant hotel near Rotherham: “It is organized, violent thuggery.” Now Hilary Benn, the Northern Ireland Secretary, is at it.

When people ask me what my politics are, I have to explain that I support a dwindling faction you might call the Terry-Thomas wing of the Conservative party. This faction dominated the party in the 1980s – the kind of spivvy garagiste who, no sooner was your back turned, would knock down a row of medieval cottages to open a Hyundai dealership. There were probably a few too many of them in the 1980s. Today we need them back. Shakespeare depicts this archetype very well, possibly because (as a Brummie entrepreneur) he was one himself. He understood that you need a few chancers around to make things happen. Where are they now? I raise this point because, while we know that Britain is overly regulated, the root cause may be that we are also far too moralistic and judgmental.

“That’s not a facepalm,” said my husband. “It’s a headslap.” He proved the point by making contact between the flat of his hand and his noble brow, producing a percussive sound. Then he covered his eyes with outstretched fingers and said: “That’s a facepalm.” He was right to make a semantic distinction between these two nonverbal gestures. The headslap signifies usually comic frustration at another’s stupidity. The facepalm conveys embarrassment. The names are recent. Facepalm is not found earlier than 1996 in the Oxford English Dictionary. Those who like to employ emojis (which I do not) will find one for the job. The headslap has not yet been noticed by the OED.