From our UK edition
I asserted that my room was booked and paid for by the travel company organising my trip. Maarika, the lovely Estonian trainee receptionist, said the room was booked, yes, but not paid for. I insisted, she resisted, I gave way. I handed over my credit card and signed here, here and here. She handed over
From our UK edition
Someone comes to the front door, which is wide open to let in the sunshine, lifts the heavy brass knocker, and lets it fall, once. I’m upstairs, in a dark bedroom, bent over the laptop. I don’t hear anyone go to the door to answer it. The visitor waits patiently, then after perhaps half a
From our UK edition
I listened to actor, presenter, and ‘activist’ Tony Robinson choose his Desert Island Discs on Sunday. He’s a doctrinaire leftist, and all my prejudices are on the opposite side, so I didn’t expect I would be cheering the man on. Nor did I. I’m an ardent listener to Desert Island Discs and I don’t think
From our UK edition
Our relationship lasted a week. This is how we met. She was standing outside the pub at kicking-out time. Could I do her a favour? Would I go back inside, into the gents, and buy her a packet of condoms from the machine. They weren’t for her. They were for her teenage son, who has
From our UK edition
Early on Sunday morning the phone rang. Trev. He could hardly speak because his ribs hurt so much, he said. And I should see his face. One eye was closed, he had a deep gash across his forehead and a chunk had been taken out of the top of his nose. But how had it
From our UK edition
No prizes for guessing who wrote this, or what the drink is: ‘There was very little left of it [in his hipflask] and one cup of it took the place of the evening papers, of all the old evenings in the cafés, of all the chestnut trees that would be in bloom now in this
From our UK edition
After I’d migrated from Essex to Devon during the last recession but one to look for casual work, the first woman I ‘went out’ with in any formal sense was my boy’s mother. She lived at her mother and father’s tied cottage and for a while I more or less lived there as well. Her
From our UK edition
I was sitting alone in a day room on the top floor of an NHS hospital. Presently, two women came in and sat down. One sat with her face in her hands, sobbing silently, while the other leant forward and whispered to her. Far from being consoled, the crying woman broke down still further and
From our UK edition
On the morning of the day that the Elect were scheduled to be whisked up into Heaven in what is known by Christians as the Rapture, I was standing outside a neighbour’s front door holding a piping hot baked potato in each hand. On the morning of the day that the Elect were scheduled to
From our UK edition
After the Cow Girl debacle, I went straight back online with another dating site. I was working on the same principle as those eager to get behind the wheel again as soon as possible after a serious accident to regain confidence. I signed on with a dating site designed for people wanting to have sex
From our UK edition
‘Come on, man, wake up! What are you doing lying here like this, dressed like this?’ He was a young black man, confident, street-wise, and he sounded let-down, disappointed. I think it was the suit and tie. He didn’t like to see good clothes treated like that. The tie meant I was a conservative type
From our UK edition
I came up to town for a party to launch a new publishing company called Notting Hill Editions. One thing led to another afterwards, my rail ticket was open-ended, and I stayed up in town for two days and nights, drinking in pubs and clubs. Two incidents stand out in my mind from the broken
From our UK edition
We’ve ridden African elephants and done the evening game drive. In between I’ve had the full-body Swedish massage from a Zulu woman who used the point of her elbow and the side of her knee and was panting slightly throughout. Now we are six of us around a dinner table in a replica Zulu meeting
From our UK edition
The Spectator is a civilised paper. If they give you a weekly column, they are pleased for you to say what you like. The only editorial interference you can expect, apart from being hired, is the sack. They’d all rather die a slow and horrible death than exert the slightest influence over what you write.
From our UK edition
I rang my boy. He was in the supermarket with Oscar, my 15-month-old grandson, spending his last 50p on four ‘basics’ toilet rolls, he said. The toilet rolls cost 48p. It was a good job, he said, that he had nine cigarettes left in his packet to last him until his partner’s pay cheque from
From our UK edition
After Cow Girl abruptly terminated our relationship, there was a long radio silence between us, during which time I was fairly demoralised. I’d thought I was lovable. If anyone could be bothered to look hard enough, or dig deep enough, I’d always thought, they’d find gold. But Cow Girl had struck no pay dirt, knew
From our UK edition
‘OK, Jeremy, you sit there. Next to Sophie.’ We’re sitting down to lunch, eight of us, to celebrate our host’s birthday. The seating plan is male then female in alternate places. The host is a performance poet and about half of the other guests have been introduced to me as poets, but I’ve forgotten which.
From our UK edition
This year I was once again sumptuously entertained at the Cheltenham Festival by the racing tipster Colonel Pinstripe in his tented chalet. On Gold Cup day I presented myself at the flouncy entrance and the Colonel, standing just inside, like the custodian of a harem, warmly welcomed me in. Before introducing me to the company,
From our UK edition
Beside the roundabout a woman was standing with her thumb out. Late thirties. Black knee-length boots. Old jeans. No coat. The thumb was resigned, indifferent. I swung in sharply, positioning the door handle precisely level with the thumb. She pulled the door open and sat in. A red, careworn face. I stated my destination. She
From our UK edition
I woke in room 272 of the West Ham United Quality Hotel faced with the usual questions. What peculiar instinct had brought me safely back when I couldn’t even remember checking in? Were my phone, wallet and car keys still with me? Had I made an exhibition of myself? Committed a crime? I leapt out