Culture

If there’s one thing more boring than people telling you about their dreams, it’s people telling you about their exercise. And if there’s one thing more boring than people telling you about their exercise, it’s people telling you about how they use AI. With that in mind, here’s how I’ve been using ChatGPT as my running coach. Stick with me.  Most runners now use an app called Runna, which creates personalized runs for you, according to your target race date, time you have to train, and what not. One friend who has recently started running – "I could barely drag my lardy arse around 5k (3 miles) at 6:00/km" – managed to run a 55-minute 10K after just two months using it.

France’s summer smash at the cinema is set to be a comedy called The Perfects. It opens next week with an all-star cast that includes Scottish actor Alan Cumming. The Perfects are a family of con-artists who flee France to escape the police and they end up in Scotland where madcap adventures in tartan ensue. It’s further proof that France can’t get enough of Bonnie Scotland. Films, television documentaries, newspaper features and even a puff piece earlier this month on the primetime lunchtime news about a visit to the most isolated pub in Scotland.  Billy Connolly once famously likened Scottish folk singers to ‘singing shortbread tins," churning out clichéd lyrics about mountains, heather and a Roamin' in the Gloamin.’ "Garbage!

My grandparents’ home was a proper house, on the cusp of Hampstead Heath in North London, with roses and flagstones at the front. It was the sort that looked like it housed a robust wine collection – solid on account of good, aged European bottles, bought at a time when standards were, one assumes, higher.  There was one bottle in my grandfather’s possession that came with particular fanfare: a 1974 Bordeaux whose label was so far gone you couldn’t see exactly what it was. As a treat, I arranged to have the sommelier of the Connaught Hotel examine and open it. Once the cork gave way, a thud of brown sediment rocked the bottle. It was decanted and it breathed – inasmuch as a long-dead thing can breathe. Still hopeful, we tried the sherry-looking stuff – and it was nasty.