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Foul weather and worse to come. Puddles in the farmyard. An 18th-century farmhouse with a cast-iron fox’s mask for a doorknocker. The door is ajar. Inside, men in hunting waistcoats are gathered around a silver drinks tray. The warmth and enthusiasm of my host’s greeting takes me aback. He welcomes me literally with open arms
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There was a bus shelter, but it had no sides and the icy wind was blowing the rain horizontally at us. We huddled together, all eyes on the bus-driver. A bus-driver with an ounce of compassion would have opened the doors and let us on to get warm. This one sat and insolently contemplated us
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‘Where are you going?’ said the nurse. ‘Guyana,’ I said. She looked blankly at me. ‘South America,’ I said, passing on information I’d only recently learned myself. ‘Next door to Venezuela.’ She got the health advice website up on her computer screen, typed in Guyana and read out the list of recommended immunisations. ‘Tetanus, hepatitis
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Last Saturday I was sitting at the kitchen table ready to go out for the evening, when I heard at the tail end of a radio news bulletin that the English poet Vernon Scannell had died. The name rang a bell. I went to the bookshelf and, yes, there was Vernon Scannell’s Collected Poems 1950–1993,
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I’m in agony. I’m in agony. Toothache. Upper left molar. The pain is shooting up the side of my face and stabbing through my left eye socket. On the plus side, the world is suddenly less complex. My idea of future happiness has been reduced to nothing more ambitious than a pain-free existence. No longer
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To prepare for the collapse of Western civilisation, which seems to be more imminent with every news bulletin, I’m learning about wild food. Two months ago I learnt how to identify, prepare, cook and eat several different types of seaweed. Last week, I went on a ‘fungus foray and feast’. The foray attracted a dozen
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The estate agent was hopelessly late — stuck in traffic, she said — so I gave the couple the tour of our home instead. It was clear that they had no intention of buying: they lived nearby and were just being nosy. What’s more, I caught them exchanging superior glances, first at the framed portrait
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The first thing me and my boy do when we go to the car auction is to head for the burger van and order a cheeseburger each. The burger bar is called CJ’s. We jokingly call it CJD’s because we say the burgers consist of cartilage, udder and compacted sewage. Sometimes we pretend to identify
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The only light came from a reading lamp pointing at the centre of the room. The background music was whale song and randomly plucked harp strings. The room was the top floor of an 18th-century house. The only other floor I’ve seen that sloped as much as this one is in the Crooked House at
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The Reverend Nicola Hunt of St Peter’s, Ugborough, welcomed us to the St Francis of Assisi Day animal service. Yes, she had seen the Vicar of Dibley episode in which there had been an amusing portrayal of an animal service. Looking around the congregation, we hadn’t brought quite the wide variety of animals that the
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As of this week my boy (17) is no longer legally entitled to buy cigarettes. His half-brother (16) the same. It must be galling for a teenager finally to reach an age when he or she becomes legally entitled to join the adults in one of their glamorous vices, to enjoy that entitlement to the
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He came aboard at Newton Abbot and sat down opposite without acknowledging me. Mid-fifties. Kempt, but only just. Navy blue, well-worn suit. Plain tie. Once he’d settled himself he looked out of the window and studied the passing sky. I tried to catch his eye. We had a three-hour journey ahead of us and it
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The gym attendant is giving me private boxing lessons for ten quid an hour. He used to box for the army. He candidly admits to having perfected one combination only during his short career: a left to the ribs followed by a right cross to the head. It was his secret weapon. It either worked
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She lay on her side and watched the people coming and going from the tented stalls and music stages. I lay on my back beside her and stared up at the billowing ceiling. We’d arrived at the Ragged Hedge Fair, put up the tent, had a series of unbelievably petty squabbles in the process, and
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‘So. Jeremy. Why do you want to learn about eating seaweed?’ said Ingrid as we trooped down the leafy farm track to the beach. Ingrid, our leader for the day, was a spry woman in her early fifties wearing a hand-stitched buckskin Hiawatha tunic and possibly little else. She was going to show us how
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My boy’s mother and Adolf Hitler share the same birthday… My boy’s mother and Adolf Hitler share the same birthday, and, as an astrologer might expect, their personalities are in many ways similar. She can make a long-term plan and stick to it; she’s intensely loyal; and if you get on the wrong side of
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The theatre was a converted Anglican church. Was there perhaps a lingering, antagonistic Christian spirit at work here tonight? Or was there perhaps a rival medium in the audience, blocking the channels? These were very real possibilities, said Paul, barely suppressing his anger. But he rather thought that the root cause was the collective scepticism
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Three hours to go before the new season kicks off and I’m sitting in the beer garden in my new claret-and-blue Fred Perry polo shirt. Three hours to go before the new season kicks off and I’m sitting in the beer garden in my new claret-and-blue Fred Perry polo shirt. I’ve got a credit-card-style match
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Reactions to the smoking ban at a working men’s club I pressed the buzzer on the wall of the darkened doorway of the Custom House Working Men’s Club in east London. It wasn’t clear whether the shabby building was open for business or not. I pressed again and waited. In the early 1970s there were
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During the wettest July since records began, I was completely dry. As usual, not drinking made me angry and withdrawn. As usual, I had homicidal urges and couldn’t read. And, as usual, cleaning and polishing was the only way I could distract myself. I cleaned and polished the floors, windows, furniture, tools, ornaments and, of
