Chas Newkey-Burden

When I want a reminder of gentler, slower times I find them next to a motorway. In a world of haste, of apps and hustle, service stations are a soothing throwback to childhood trips, when I’d get a rush of excitement as Dad turned the car off the motorway and into the slip road leading to one of these temples of capitalism. As I returned to the back seat I would be chomping triumphantly on the chocolate bar I got from the shop or sucking the lollipop I was handed at the end of the Little Chef meal.   Perhaps we never entirely grow out of that feeling.

Like any freelance writer I’ve taken on some tough gigs. I wrote a book about Paris Hilton. I interviewed the hardman footballer Julian Dicks, surrounded by his panting English Bull Terriers. Even more dangerously, I’ve argued for veganism in the pages of The Spectator. But I recently got the most challenging commission of all: my Dad asked me to write a eulogy for my Mum, who has passed away.  Naturally, I was honoured. The speech gave shape to my grief and, when I delivered it at the funeral, I felt like I was speaking directly to her.

It was a few moments before the whistle blew on the opening match of the 2006 World Cup when a text message arrived from a colleague. ‘Well, here we go!’ it read. I rolled my eyes, slipped my phone back into my pocket, and left the message unanswered.  Why the grumpiness? Because the message came from a man who normally took no interest whatsoever in the game, except to occasionally mock people like me for being daft enough to enjoy a 'silly game with silly men kicking a ball around'. Yet here he was, transformed by the arrival of the World Cup into an enthusiastic student of… 'footie'.  He wasn't alone.

Sometime around the pandemic years, I began to notice that when friends called to catch up, alongside the customary news about careers, marriages, and offspring, they would update me on the fortunes of their favourite podcaster.  The trend reached a harrowing crescendo when an acquaintance of mine somehow became a devout listener to The Rest Is Politics and started keeping me informed about the latest exploits of his imagined companions, ‘Alastair’ and ‘Rory’. (Worst of all, his favourite of the two is Rory. I can think of only a handful of worse things to discover about a friend.

When I was in my teens and twenties, older people told me that they were exhausted just watching how I lived my life. I careered through my youth in a fog of football matches, protest marches, pubs, clubs and raves. I treated sleep as an inconvenience and I’d increasingly arrive home at daylight, not quite sure how the evening ended or where that bruise came from.  ‘Wait until you’re our age,’ oldies would say. ‘You’ll slow down too. Then it’ll be your turn to look at the young with bewilderment.’  Well, I did the slowing down part. After we were all locked down in 2020, I never fully unlocked again.

I’m one of those gobby vegans who will happily tell anyone why they should stop consuming animal products. But I can still admit what’s obviously true: most vegan cheese isn’t particularly good. I was once ardently devoted to cheese. In my vegetarian years, paneer, mozzarella and halloumi were less foods than companions. I loved how paneer would soak up the spice of a curry like a sponge. Mozzarella was like a spectacle of tensile, elastic theatre and halloumi provided evocative, salty squeaks. I also took delight in the standard toasted cheddar sandwich. Yes, I did get quite fat. But when I learned about what goes on at dairy farms, everything changed.

A farmer in Derbyshire is going to make his cows uglier to try to deter  modern agricultural impostors. These impostors are neither foxes nor badgers but social media influencers who keep showing up to film content with his animals.   They arrive in waves. On one occasion, dozens surrounded Alex Birch’s herd at the edge of a field. Another time, a yoga teacher unfurled her mat and filmed a class beside the cows, as though they were props in a bucolic stage set. Wearied by the intrusion, Birch now speaks of crossbreeding his Highland cows to make them ‘less photogenic’.

When I was a child, I always wanted to watch television during supper, but my dad wasn’t keen. He preferred family conversation and as we chatted over a meal he would try to gently steer us towards more pleasant subjects rather than the vulgar or provocative topics I tended to propose. ‘A meal is a sacred thing,’ he’d tell me.  I spent my secondary education at a bizarre school run by a quasi-Vedic cult, where table manners were also important. Before lunch, we chanted a Sanskrit mantra. The organic vegetarian food was to be offered, not grabbed. We sat upright, our backs as straight as any Himalayan yogi. We were told not to eat more than we needed. Naturally, I sneered at much of this as angrily as any teenage Clash fan would.

Over the past few months, I’ve been training for the London Marathon, so most weekends I’ve been out running more than 20 miles at a stretch. I carry the usual bits to make these long slogs vaguely civilised – energy gels, a water bottle, a couple of fruit pastilles. They help, of course. But there’s one thing I absolutely cannot do without: music.  Non-runners sometimes ask if I ever feel like giving up and trudging home. And honestly, the only times that’s happened is when my AirPods have died and the music – my invisible pacer, my emotional support DJ – has suddenly vanished mid-run.  This makes sense, according to Victoria Williamson, a researcher and lecturer in music psychology and the author of You Are the Music.

Life is riddled with things that impersonate something in a hideously disappointing way: the regret of Pepsi, the affront of the rail replacement bus and, for runners, the tedium of the treadmill.  They are one of the most tiresome inventions to scar this planet, offering a mind-numbing bastardisation of one of life’s joys. I’m a long-distance runner and I can run blissfully in the open air for hours on end but, on a treadmill, I want to give up after less than a minute. Running in the great outdoors is a blessed experience. The air is fresh and cooling, the scenery keeps changing and nature is all around you. The birds are singing and the time passes in that dreamy, accidental way – like when you’re deep in a brilliant conversation. It’s glorious.

France is holding local elections and the candidates are falling over themselves to appeal to a peculiar demographic: dog lovers. A candidate in the south-west city of Albi is promising shared human-dog drinking fountains, with the upper level for the owner and the bottom level for the pet. Her opponent has bitten back with a plan for a pet cemetery. Other hopefuls are proposing dog-friendly parks, food banks for needy mutts and dog-friendlier policies on public transport.   Dog ownership is up in France, particularly among the country’s ageing electorate, so canines have become an indirect electoral force. I can’t help thinking that British politicians may be missing a trick.

A broken-down washing machine is generally regarded as definitely a Bad Thing. There is the expense and hassle of repairing or replacing the machine, the prospect of a flooded kitchen, and the sudden realisation that your underwear stock is … less abundant than you hoped.   But when our washing machine expired recently, I was secretly thrilled because it gave me an excuse to go to one of the few places on the planet that always makes me happy: the launderette.  I feel soothed from the moment I walk into one of these womb-like environments. I love the warmth, the smell of detergent and the air of cleanliness.