We Americans have been instructed to burst our buttons with pride over Artemis II’s drive-by of the Moon. But out here in cratering America, far from Mission Control, we remain buttoned-up. This is not due to our skinflint nature or lack of imagination; nah, it’s just that Big Science – “corporate socialism,” as the late parsimonious populist Democratic senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin termed the space program – is spiritless, mechanical and inhuman.
On one of the first warm Saturdays of this year, hundreds of New Yorkers flocked to the popular High Line, the railway-turned-public park that extends over 22 blocks of Manhattan, to bid farewell to a T-Rex-sized pigeon. The pigeon, cast out of aluminum and named “Dinosaur,” had been a resident of its elevated perch since 2024. As so many New Yorkers will tell you, though, part of what’s magical about living in this city is that the experience is often transient. In the words of Baz Luhrmann, you should “leave before it makes you hard.” There’s nothing worse than a hard pigeon and so it was that on that glorious day last month, I joined throngs of people eager to get one last look at the monstrous, departing bird.
If you subscribe to The Spectator, there’s a fair chance you are a committed reader. Of books, I mean. Books are your friends, they don’t frighten you. Even long books. But here’s a behavioral oddity that I’ve noticed in others, and in myself. We tend not to read many books twice, but we do often watch movies twice, even more than twice. Of course, length may have a lot to do with it; movies are rarely more than two hours long; books can often take days to finish. But is there something more to it, something deeper? Down here on the beaches in Florida we now recognize something the psychologists are calling “cinematherapy.
The oil delivery man had way too much swagger and, as he waved his nozzle about, I realized that he might be expecting a little something. Oh dear, I thought, as he pushed the nozzle into my oil tank, pressed the button on his truck and spent less than ten seconds giving me the amount of oil I could afford. Oh dear, what if the oil crisis is now at such fever pitch that desperate housewives in remote places are offering a little something on the side to get more oil? I had two French cyclists who ran the shower in the en-suite for so long I thought they had fallen asleep Ten seconds’ worth of oil did feel like the end of the world. Usually, I can afford to let the truck fill the entire tank and it comes to about a grand.
Kenya When a mob of Somali cattle I bought in Kenya’s far north arrived on the farm in February, we quarantined them in a remote corner. To protect them against lions they slept in a boma with high drystone walls topped with treacherous thorns, guarded by a fierce police-licensed guard named Joseph. The Somalis are great stockmen, though these beautiful beasts, known as Awai, are more long-legged and rangy than our traditional ranch Borans. My truckload of cattle had survived a two-year drought on rocks and dust and they could walk hundreds of miles to water, yet they were randy and highly fertile. These are ancient cattle, of the sort that you see in petroglyphs and ochre painted on rock faces across Africa. I have fallen in love with them.
No one in the DC political class is cool. For all our American spirit of independence, democracy still defers to the majority, and power compels even the most singular, Machiavellian mind to mold itself in the image of the people. Politics drains the blood out of the individual, replacing him or her with a bland and legible product, flattened into the image of at least 50 percent of the population. Prediction markets are a perfect example of this effect, shining the brightest lights into the caverns of cool, calcifying opinions into trends, trends into probabilities, and probabilities into certainties. There is nothing that poses more of a threat to cool than this, and no market hungrier for it than the politicos of Washington, DC.
My wife Camila doesn’t drive, but she does direct. Studying the map, she’ll say, “This road!”, and before I know it, we’re off down some track, startling locals who haven’t seen a “yuma” – technically an American but really any foreigner – for years. Cuba is a country that lends itself to country road adventure. Besides drinking daiquiris, it’s perhaps my favorite thing to do. And it’s what I miss most now that it’s impossible: the US oil blockade that began in January means there is no gasoline. ‘Is this ceviche the red snapper or the snook?’ I asked. The waiter shrugged, ‘Once it’s ceviche it’s hard to tell’ Few others seem to do it.
Before moving to New York City, I had a particular vision of what my life as a writer in this fabled land of opportunity would look like. I’d wear sleek, black turtlenecks and skinny jeans. I’d go to diners and eat bagels. I’d defy the caloric calculus and stay svelte. I’d write at my window like Carrie Bradshaw, getting paid at least $2.50 per word. I’d go to book parties and stroll through the West Village, occasionally bumping into a semi-famous friend. We’d spontaneously drink wine. Perhaps most importantly, I’d have an excellent therapist – someone who had many leather-bound books, a calm and reassuring presence that could effortlessly calibrate my mental state. He’d look a bit like Wallace Shawn or maybe Barbra Streisand.
Lying in bed with a swollen face, I decided that the best thing to do was nothing, so I ended up watching the Duchess of Sussex make smoothies. I don’t know why everyone is so mean about her Netflix show because it hit the spot for me. As I took to my bed after surgery to take out the old screws and plates in my long-ago broken jaw, everything put me on edge apart from watching Meghan and her lovely way of smiling and smiling as she expressed wonderment at a bunch of grapes, or the way a liquidizer whirred. As my face swelled and turned some interesting shades of green and yellow, and I wondered if I would ever smile again, there was something absolutely restorative about watching Meghan gasp with enthusiasm about flowers and honey and lettuce. Everything was “amazing!
The snow is deep and crisp and even, the sky bluer than blue, and beneath my Black Crow skis the soft hiss of fresh powder. I’m rehearsing my excuses as I carve my wiggly way down a well-upholstered piste. “I’ve gone skiing by mistake,” I cry out on the pure mountain air. I’m almost embarrassed by my own excess as this is my second ski break of the year, and to go twice before Easter during a war and an energy crisis is giving peak first-world indulgence. Still, as I like to say, I have not one but two Agas, “just not in the same house,” so what the heck. Here goes. My two ski trips in two months, then.
“I want to learn Iranian,” said my father, resolutely, as he watched the bombing on TV. “Farsi,” I said, thinking I would talk to him about that very happily on the basis it was better than helping him contact the Ukrainian government so he can fight the Russians. “What’s that?” he said. “Farsi,” I repeated. “Parcel?” he said. But it was pointless trying to explain, for he was up and looking out the window and telling me to look in the parcel box. We were waiting for the special food I had ordered for the new cat someone irresponsibly rehomed to my parents and which already has a stress condition from living with two dementia sufferers. I need to take it with me back to Ireland when I get a spare week or two to gather the papers for the EU.
The acceleration of history and the increasingly rapid advancement of the postmodern project, aimed at the transcendence of humanity by itself, makes consideration of the fundamentals of the progressive project necessary, but also inevitable. Among them is its dedication to the hectic search for hitherto unsuspected “human rights” and their instant realization in the name of “natural law,” a subject the French historian and political philosopher Pierre Manent has studied in depth and brilliantly illuminated in a number of works, most recently Natural Law and Human Rights: Toward a Recovery of Practical Reason.
In these parts, it is always said that the most disappointing aspect of Palm Beach life is… well, the beach itself. Yes, it has sand, sea, minimal surf (and, as often as not, “dangerous marine life,” as the deep purple flags flown at the lifeguard stations indicate). But that is all. There is nothing like what you get, for example, in the north shore of the Mediterranean where, from Gibraltar in the west to Bodrum in Turkey, thousands of miles to the east, every few hundred yards you have a chic café or a ritzy restaurant, or boutiques selling everything from bikes to bikinis. No, the beaches of Palm Beach are socially inept, empty of entertainment, where the most exciting thing I have seen (twice) is a seven-foot shark caught on a line, which is a touch off putting for bathers.
Even if you’re not a dog expert, you probably know enough to laugh at the breed of my resident barn dog. Chow Chows are not exactly cooperative, and while they are bred as territorial guard dogs, their cat-like laziness makes them, at best, capriciously protective of their owner. These little balls of fur are, however, pretty damn cute. My three-year-old, Winnie, embodies all of these traits – or at least she did as a puppy, with the occasional tendency to regress. But growing up around horses on an unfenced property shaped her more than any innate breed characteristics. Having owned pretty much all the conventional breeds, I can safely say she’s now more or less exactly what you look for in a farm dog.
FanDuel and DraftKings ads spice the early spring airwaves, robots deliver their unimpeachable verdicts on human actions and a family of four shells out 500 bucks for parking and tickets to attend a game. Major League Baseball has returned! At least this year MLB scheduled its Opening Day game – a March 25 interleague (yech!) contest between the New York Yankees and San Francisco Giants – to be played stateside. Mixing America Last-ism with corporate-culture imperialism, six previous Opening Day games have been played on foreign soil. That other countries might have sports of their own annoys the panjandrums of professional baseball and football, who seek to impose spectatorial homogeneity on a diverse planet.
I’m thinking of becoming a magistrate. Before applying, I was advised to attend a few sessions and find out how it all works. My first case was a bag theft from a London pub. The accused, an Algerian football ace, pleaded guilty through an interpreter. The court heard that his glittering football career had been cut short by “an accident” and he was currently living in London “with the support of friends.” The magistrate, a kindly, soft-spoken redhead, fined him £60 and made a note of his “good character.” She reduced his fine by £20 as a reward for pleading guilty. The defendant lounged against the rail of the dock looking irritable and impatient as his sentence was pronounced. Outside the court, he spoke to his lawyer without a translator.
Now, I’m here to write about life in Havana, about daiquiris, fishing and salsa. But it’s fair to say life in Cuba has been getting a bit intense. Not as tense as it is elsewhere, but we’re very definitely on the list of countries where the US wants regime change. Washington has cranked up its 64-year trade embargo on the island into an all-out oil blockade. Donald Trump said he is hoping to conduct a “friendly takeover” of the island. The Habanos cigar festival, which I had been planning to write about, has been “postponed.” So I find myself pushing aside my notes on the ever-higher prices of Behikes, instead scribbling the word, “siege” on my page. It all seems a little medieval.
America is, famously and proudly, a republic. Everyone is equal before the law. No earls or dukes or even knights of the realm. And a good thing, too. Er… not so fast. As one of the magazines devoted to Palm Beach life recently pointed out, there is one honor available to citizens of the United States that is much coveted because, as with princes, dukes and earls, the honorific comes before the recipient’s full name – and, like nobility (but not in Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s case), it is conferred for life. That title is “ambassador.
I probably sound naive, but February always struck me as a month that should be full of hope – brimming with the type of optimism that comes from new beginnings. At least here in New York, though, it was grim. Everything feels more expensive. Everyone’s temper seems as short as the blink-and-you’ll-miss-them daylight hours. And then there’s the weather. The streets are flanked like an Arctic military checkpoint by car-sized mounds of calcified brown snow. The kind of snow that has visible layers, like a geological cross-section of urban neglect. The kind that has already gobbled up who knows how many small dogs. The wind is so ferocious, it makes that chemical skin peel you’ve been targeted for on Instagram look pleasant. New York does sleep. And thank goodness it does.
‘Do you know who I am?’ said the voice belonging to the lady who used to be my mother, crossly, at the end of the phone line. The truthful answer is no. Since the dementia took hold, a hostile stranger who doesn’t think much of me inhabits my mother’s mind and body. A hostile stranger who doesn’t think much of me inhabits my mother’s mind and body No matter what I do, no matter how many times I ring or visit her, this person who used to be my mother is always cross and disappointed. ‘Oh, you’re alive are you!’ the strange voice barks, before asking me what I’m up to, with a sarcastic edge. Whatever I tell her I’m doing, even if I say I’m lying down with a headache, she snaps back: ‘That’s nice for you. You enjoy!