Everyone was confused about whether it was real or not real, but it’s an amazing picture, it’s amazing art,’ Surinder Kaur, who runs the AVI Hair & Beauty Salon in Nottingham. I overheard an Asian bloke with his family asking … Read More »
My recent post on home insurance auto-renewal drew a few emails. Here’s one of them: Car insurance is another scam. Mine goes up and if I don’t complain – or don’t realise – I pay over the top, despite not … Read More »
George Lewis told the Englishman, the Italian and the Jew, you just can’t hold on, boys, to every conceivable point of view. Bob Dylan Not long ago I ended an email on a separate matter to Kit Knightly, one of … Read More »
This sneaked into my inbox the other day from my home contents insurers. Can I go to the website and deselect auto renewal? Can I buggery! I have to slalom through the maze of phone flow-chartitude we’ve all come to … Read More »
Michaelmas Day is when the Archangel Michael ejected his colleague Lucifer – a shady type known to use aliases and adept at blending in with the crowd – from Heaven. It’s also my birthday. A gorgeous day as it happens. … Read More »
Through the pines. Over the dunes. And onto the beach, the light in constant flux … … an Atlantic north-westerly ripping in relentless. “I’m going out”, said J, pushing through piles of sand outside our bedouin tent. “I may be … Read More »
I spoke in Afloat in the Fens of a brace of pike spotted in a small mere, amid an otherwise banal housing estate on the edge of Thrapston and fed by the Nene. Here they are. Close by, another ambush … Read More »
It’s a scorching afternoon, still and sultry. A minute after putting in at Islip, I disturb a grey heron. It flaps a gawky take off across the river twenty metres ahead. Ten minutes after that I hear a tiny plash … Read More »
Needing spiritual refreshment after two months making repairs to my house in Sheffield (I let it out, and hand over the rent collected to my own landlord) and a recent flurry of posts on Julian Assange, I took the junior … Read More »
As lockdown closed sports stadiums across Britain, BBC rugby commentator Nick Heath took to our parks and streets with his smartphone, professional skills and quintessentially English wit. Try his instant classic, Two Lonely Blokes in a Park … … the … Read More »