Over at the judging for Waggiest Tail, things were getting acrimonious. ‘That bloody woman,’ my new acquaintance muttered. We were sitting behind the rope barrier in the front row and had formed a bond over a serious injustice in Prettiest Bitch. ‘I’m pretty sure she threw this category three, four years back. I happen to
‘Horses – beautiful, noble, intelligent creatures,’ said the neighbour I was having tea with. ‘There speaks someone who has never had to deal with them,’ I said, for I had been run ragged by our four horses since the builder boyfriend had left me at the house in West Cork and had gone to London
Republic of Congo I’m sending this to you from the rainforest in Congo, surrounded by vast trees and jungle noises in one of the loveliest, remotest places I’ve ever seen. Yesterday, flying at 150 feet above the canopy, I glimpsed in a clearing a family of relaxed gorillas gazing up at me, a visitor from
I had a revelation while watching the Olympics opening ceremony. It was during the infamous section that I (and almost everyone else) understood to be a reference to Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’. A large woman in a halo-like headdress was flanked by various avant-garde performance artists, including three drag queens. These, presumably, were
Q. What should I do if my housekeeper refuses to clean my nanny’s bedroom and bathroom? I am worried they will turn into a tip. – M.C., London A. Today’s competent London nannies are so highly paid that yours may have developed delusions of grandeur. Your housekeeper is quite right to refuse. Why not tell
Most Tory MPs enjoy leadership elections. There may be an element of what the trick-cyclists call ‘displacement activity’. Equally, it is tempting to employ the cliché about rearranging the furniture on the Titanic. The Brane-Cantenac 2000 was everything that a claret lover could wish for Until 1990, the process was brief. It took only four
The singer Charli XCX (or ‘Ninety Ten’ as my husband insists on pronouncing it) has endorsed Kamala Harris, in a way. ‘Kamala is brat,’ she tweeted. Since the slippery meaning of brat includes elements of dirtiness, drunkenness and hedonism, it might not define all that Americans want in a president. Not that Charli is American.
Women aren’t allowed in so we lurk on the threshold – wives, mothers, lovers waiting for our men to appear in their new changed selves. Prime among them comes the boy, trying on his new blue suit for next week’s prom. At once we recognise the occasion, know it’s not a suit he’s trying on
My father has become an old Aegean King peering out anxiously, scanning the horizon full of foreboding. So I phone him before I leave to say I’m on my way. I use light words, ‘coming soon’, ‘around that time’, promising words that hover and play, allow him to drift in and out of sleep while
‘Mais il fut flottant, mon berceau’ – Corbière Sleep, sleep, my floating boy!A plunge of Northern gannets ridesthe air above your head; collideswith silver fish that shoal below.Let these ravens’ krok-kroksooth and lull you as you rock –sleep, sleep, my floating boy! Sleep, sleep, my floating boy!The herring-hunting humpbacks soundand ring their bubble nets aroundyour
In the late 1980s, a story entered advertising folklore. A group from an ad agency had boarded an evening train from Newcastle to travel home from a client meeting. On boarding, they learned that the buffet was out of action, and they were hungry. Happily, one of them was carrying in his briefcase a wondrous
