My household has this past fortnight been afflicted by a pox. The windows have been boarded up and I’ve been roaming the corridors wafting a carbolic smokeball. Eerie groans echo in fetid chambers. The plants have withered and no visitors come. It is the chicken pox, and both my daughters ... Read More...

Has anyone else been watching the wonderful Yotam Ottolenghi’s Mediterranean Feast? For those who aren’t familiar with him, Yotam is one half of the excellent Ottolenghi deli/cafés that have popped up in recent years in smarter parts of London. Yotam is Israeli and his business partner, Sami Tamimi, is Palestinian ... Read More...

Steve, the Fire Training Officer, had tattooed arms, a sovereign ring and beautiful long eyelashes. My fellow trainee Fire Marshall whispered that she was jealous of the lashes. Looking closer, I could see what she meant; he had the eyes of Audrey Hepburn. In all other respects Steve was impeccably ... Read More...

There’s a new self-help book out, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking. The nub of the thesis appears to be as follows: ...saying positive affirmations to yourself in the mirror can make you feel worse and … visualizing the future can make you less likely to achieve ... Read More...

On Thursday Tony Blair stated that it was important to ‘de-escalate’ matters in Gaza. I’m not sure if he coined the word but I’d not encountered it before. In that night’s Question Time two panellists also spoke of ‘de-escalation’. Fascinating, the irrepressible urge to coin, to fill in ever tinier ... Read More...

To Bristol Zoo again, this time for bangless fireworks. Quick visit to the monkeys to say nighty-night first. The fireworks were bangless because animals don’t like bangs. Nor do tiny infants so we thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce the youngest daughter to Guy Fawkes night. What ... Read More...

To Kent for a couple of half-term days. Is this the most under-rated English county? It's got everything that southern England can offer, but no-one makes much of a fuss over it. I suppose it suffers from being a place one travels through to get to warmer climes - with ... Read More...

I am sitting beside one of the darkened windows of the Sloe Bar-Café at Paddington, one of the best people-watching spots in London. My, what a relentless churn of humanity this is; what a swarm of busy worker ants, what an exhilaratingly multinational melting pot…and what a lot of tall, ... Read More...

The BBC's Savile-Newsnight dégringolade, as horrible as it is, offers up an interesting case study to students of management. Is there a symptom of bureaucratic degradation that the corporation is not exhibiting? We have: the proliferation of managers but a lack of management; the presence of people whose job title begins ... Read More...

Oddballs, eccentrics, toe-curling incidents – my life seems to be full of them. The country is full of them; the world is. The other day I was sitting in a manky and claustrophobic office with a man of business, trying to come to an agreement. The desk was against a ... Read More...