Loelia Lindsay, socialite and former wife of the 2nd Duke of Westminster, is said to have remarked: ‘Anybody seen in a bus over the age of 30 has been a failure in life.’ Well, I’m turning 59 soon and I still use buses. So, by that reckoning, success has so far not only eluded me
I saw a chap walking down the road the other day looking, unusually for my part of town, the very quintessence of sartorial elegance: polished brogues, tailored pin-striped suit, rolled umbrella. He was a modern-day Beau Brummell. But what really topped off his ensemble – literally and figuratively – was a bowler hat. I haven’t seen anyone wearing one of those
Despite having eaten my own body weight in chocolate over Christmas – and vowing to do better in the new year – my inner Augustus Gloop means I still feel duty-bound to finish what’s left. Self-control when it comes to eating has never been one of my strengths. My New Year’s resolution about a healthier
In this strange new world we inhabit, where many people appear to struggle with nuance, the oversimplification of complex problems means that any shades of grey are ignored. This informal logical fallacy, in which every situation is presented as having only two possible options when, in reality, more exist, is now standard in politics and
Once Christmas Day’s out of the way and we’re stuck in that no man’s land between one year and the next – known, tweely, as ‘Twixmas’ or, if you’re posh, the ‘interregnum’ – one thing guaranteed to make the front pages is the announcement of the New Year’s Honours List. News of the worthy –
I was driving my daughter to school recently when we tuned into Heart Breakfast. A caller was attempting to answer five Christmas-related questions that, if successful, would mean that the countdown to the big day could ‘officially begin’. They weren’t hard but when the questions were answered correctly, there was pandemonium in the Heart studios.
When I was growing up, it was generally accepted (unless you were a football hooligan) that, however much you disagreed with someone, they were entitled to their opinion. You listened, occasionally interjecting, and then made your case – sometimes forcefully. In the end, you might agree to disagree, but you didn’t harbour any enmity. These
Now that the clocks have gone back and the evenings draw in, those of us lucky enough to own a log burner start thinking about cranking it up. One of the few benefits of returning to GMT, as far as I’m concerned, is the chance to get primal – and have a real fire. Yet,
Earlier this year, I wrote here about the arsonist who’d left our neighbourhood looking post-apocalyptic. In the months that followed, the pyromaniac grew ever more reckless. Initially, he’d stuck to torching vehicles on the road, which was bad enough. But then he took it a step further. He set fire to a car on a
I was at a party recently where a self-important woman looked disdainfully at my proffered hand before limply shaking it as if it were a wet dishcloth crawling with E. coli. After briefly touching my fingers, her lip curled as she demanded to know who I was and what I did for a living. It
When Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973, musician and satirist Tom Lehrer famously quipped that political satire had become obsolete. Today, many people under 50 would be hard-pressed to say who Kissinger was – let alone why the award was controversial. So perhaps, given recent events, it’s time to update the
There’s been a lot of talk recently about flags, especially English ones. The start of the Women’s Rugby World Cup – a good excuse to bring out the bunting – has coincided with a renewed interest in proclaiming national identity. Some might see it as an outpouring of patriotic pride, while others view it as
Recently, I was on my way to buy the Saturday papers when my ears pricked up. In the distance, I could hear the unmistakable sound of a protest: whistles, slogans, klaxons. I strained to make out what people were shouting, but, given the grim images recently beamed from Gaza, odds were, it was about the
In my corner of Bristol, alongside drug dealers, shoplifters and street drinkers, we now have our very own pyromaniac. They started small – an abandoned office chair, a clothing bank and an old telephone box – before moving on to bigger things. Half a dozen cars have been torched over the past few months, including
In my first ‘proper’ job after university, selling advertising space for a well-known motoring magazine in the early 1990s, one of the few things that alleviated the utter tedium was the banter. Some of the quickfire repartee was ingenious. We were nearly all graduates, intelligent and articulate. Someone would occasionally overstep the mark, but we
Recently, I found myself trying to explain to a much younger colleague who Oliver Reed was. We’d got on to the subject of the hell-raising actor because I was bemoaning the fact – perhaps rashly – that today’s world is completely anodyne. Fear of offending others means it’s better to keep your thoughts to yourself;
The other day, while on my lunchtime walk, I passed a woman on a mobility scooter holding an impressive-looking doobie. Later, on my bus home, a bloke got on having just extinguished a joint, bringing the overpowering stench with him. Some commuters don’t even bother to put them out. All you can do is sit
When I was in London recently, I arranged to meet some old university friends at the pub. Now in our late 50s, we’re getting quite decrepit. Hair – if we have any left – is grey or greying; waistlines are expanding. We talked about our deteriorating vision and hearing, high blood pressure, dodgy knees. None
The backlash against plans for a Gail’s bakery in Walthamstow made me think about my own experience of gentrification. When I moved to my suburb of Bristol nearly 20 years ago, it was still a largely white working-class area. It was also a temporary home to many of the students from the local university. It
When I was growing up, regional accents were quite firmly delineated. If you came from Birmingham, for example, you spoke Brummie. That is, unless you were posh. In which case, wherever you lived, you spoke the same BBC English – or received pronunciation. Speaking ‘correctly’ was a determiner of class, like a grounding in Latin.
