At lunchtime on the day before the Sunday People published pictures of Charles Saatchi engaging in ‘a playful tiff’ with his wife, I was standing at a market stall outside his magnificent art gallery in Chelsea, slurping down oysters laced with Tabasco. They were horribly delicious. I ate half a ... Read More...
Dabbler Diary
Some welcome June sunshine. We sat on a bench in the park with a cone each. Scoop of Walls vanilla and a flake, no fancy stuff, passing on a traditional British summer treat to the next generation. But the heat gave me yearnings for the Med or the Canaries and ... Read More...
Every morning Amazon helpfully confirms that my phone’s email function still works by trying to sell me something. As does The Ticket Factory. Also Premier Inn, Centre Parks and especially VistaPrint, whose labyrinthine Unsubscribe facility has several times defeated me. These ‘consensual’ marketing emails we are invited to call ‘bacn’, ... Read More...
What’s the earliest age it is possible to develop a phobia? I ask because my younger daughter E, who is seventeen months old, has taken to seeing spiders everywhere. She will be playing happily enough when, suddenly spying some bit of fluff or black smudge on the floor, she will ... Read More...
The most memorable and piercing end of term report I received at school consisted of this single sentence: “Andrew’s attitude is a not entirely displeasing mixture of cooperation and sedition.” This headstone-worthy epigram was penned by my A-level history teacher, a Mr Berwick Coates, and blow me if I didn’t ... Read More...
The Health Visitor (why do these public sector job titles always seem like Orwellian euphemisms for something sinister?) knocked on the door. She had come to assess my eldest daughter (Brit Jnr, but hereafter in this Diary known as ‘C’) for her hearing and speech development. I opened up and ... Read More...
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things. Then I had my own children and I got them all out again. And jolly good fun they are ... Read More...
In every party there comes a critical point when the sober and the pissed have diverged so far that they can no longer communicate with each other. I found myself on the wrong side of the divide at about 10.45pm on Saturday night, staring at the bonfire and sipping a ... Read More...
A difference between me and a craftsman is in the level of violent aggression with which I approach manual tasks – this I have noticed about myself. Take screwing. A craftsman would with patience and care twiddle his bradawl and drive in his screws at a steady, sensible pace, whereas ... Read More...
At a quarter past one on Monday afternoon I descended into the crypt. The heavy door closed behind me and I was alone, facing a long pool of water in which the low grey-green ceiling arches were reflected to create an optical illusion of a tubular tunnel. In the middle ... Read More...
