James Maker

My local gastropub, which is very popular, serves a hot, freshly made and runny-yolked scotch egg. It's billed as a ‘Cackleberry Farm Scotch Egg with Maldonado Salt’ because part of hospitality is marketing. If you just chalk up ‘scotch egg’ on a board, it doesn’t entice the appetite in quite the same way. But call it ‘œuf écossais enrobés de chair à saucisse’ and serve it on a cracked slate tile – you’ve got yourself a stampede. A couple who live in the village visited the pub and ordered two of them. Shortly after being served, the husband of the couple returned the plates to the bar and asked the staff to reheat their partially eaten scotch eggs. The landlord explained that he could not reheat them once they had been partially eaten.

Next year, I will be 65. At 65, one leaves the plateau of middle age and enters the foothills of senescence. For some, it’s an uneventful milestone marked by tidying up some herbaceous borders or experimenting with pesto; others yield to mortal panic and max out their credit card on something wildly impractical. On reaching this jubilee, an acquaintance of mine dyed his hair jet black. This is inadvisable because rather than restoring the appearance of youth and vigour, one emerges from the bathroom looking haunted, like a persecuted homosexual solicitor in a Dirk Bogarde film. .

If cocaine were a perfume, it would be Chanel No.5: a timeless classic impervious to the flux of fashion and taste. It straddles all socio-economic divides, provided you can afford it. When I lived in Spain, cocaine was the recreational drug of choice because it was more widely available than other narcotics, and its grade was relatively pure. Cocaine is shipped from South America or Mexico directly to Iberia rather than transiting other points, where it is blended en route to its destination. Consequently, the reveller in Madrid vacuums up less talcum powder and household cleaning product than does his counterpart in London. Here in the Home Counties, there is unquestionably cocaine use – notably among Baby Boomers who can point to St.

I knew that my adjustment to living here was complete when, this morning, I hit the send button of an email. I had written to the parish council suggesting that the local church change its street signage. This is, of course, the critical moment when the character undergoes a metamorphosis into Flora Robson. ‘The board is in a shade of blue one associates with a major hospital,’ I wrote in mild protest. I was about to file him away as a bisexual in search of his first same-sex experience I suggested a smaller sign in heritage-green. The clerk of the parish council obviously runs a tight ship because she responded within the hour. A new sign was being ordered, she said, and thanked me for my interest. Naturally, being English, I replied thanking her for replying to me.