Perudo

Thursday

The Spectator

The Spectator’s 2024 Holiday Gift Guide

Matt McDonald, managing editor As we grow older, the idea is that we become wiser. I’ve decided to buck that trend by making progressively dumber decisions that put me further from my goals of attaining professional success, home ownership, emotional stability and nirvana. The most recent of these is increasing the distances I’ve been running; I will be attempting a half-marathon back home on the south coast of England the week before Christmas, with a view to running my first marathon in Berlin next fall. It’s unclear why we as a species decided to adopt the practice of doing marathons a couple of millennia ago — the first man to do it did die at the end, after all.

gift

Tuesday

Orson Fry

Perudo in Utah

I’m two miles outside Wanship, Utah, at a remarkable new hotel called The Lodge at Blue Sky. I’ve just met my host in the bar, a bear of a man called John Tuffman, or ‘Tuff’, as I’m told to call him by his assistant. Owing to my delayed flight, we’re running a little behind schedule. ‘Down the hatch’, he says, nodding to my beer while he repositions his Stetson. We climb into a car and are driven up to the barn. A few weeks ago, I received an email which I had every right to believe was a scam or an elaborate catfishing attempt. It was an invitation from an events company in San Francisco to appear as the World Perudo Champion at an executive retreat in Utah. At 6 p.m.

perudo