Tim Hayward

Wednesday

Tim Hayward

The impossible dream of a clean white shirt

From our UK edition

I have no wish to sound like a worn and bitter hack, sand-blasted by weltschmerz, but I don’t have many ambitions left. It’s not like I want to write the Great Western Novel. AI can do that and who the hell reads any more? And I worry about ‘bucket lists’. They always seem remarkably similar. Ridiculous self-imposed sporting targets like marathons; the health-and-safety sanitised absurdity of ‘adrenaline’ experiences; pathologically unimaginative travel. I blame advertising for this. Indiscriminate 30-second reels of yoga/skydiving/surfing/beaches/hiking/street food in Thailand/stargazing in Machu bloody Picchu. God we’ve become dull. Even our ‘wildest dreams’ are commoditised and fully predictable.

Thursday

Tim Hayward

Can you still afford to eat out?

From our UK edition

Many of us will remember, misty-eyed, how things changed around the turn of the century. How Britain ceased to be a nation brutalised by rationing and rissoles and instead blossomed into a utopia of celebrity chefs, endless food TV and a population seemingly willing and able to eat out most nights of the week. We no longer regarded ourselves as poor cousins to European nations with ‘cuisines’ – hell, Michelin stars glittered from every orifice. We had the uncalibrated zealotry of converts. In the years following the pandemic, UK hospitality came blinking back into the light, adopted a collective fixed grin and the can-do attitude of small businesspeople, and did some amazing things while trying to get back to that prelapsarian state of glory.