Notes on…
Winkles
For the first time in 30-odd years, many Brits have started eating winkles again. Unable to holiday abroad this summer,…
Punch and Judy
They’re one of the country’s most famous married couples. You just need to spot his colourful jester outfit and the…
Signal boxes
Petersfield signal box is in the wrong place. Or at least it is now. When it was built in the…
Crowds
London, writes Dr Watson in the first Sherlock Holmes story, is ‘that great cesspool into which all the loungers and…
Capital letters
Irrespective of whether Donald Trump ends up being a two-term president, surely no modern political figure has done more to…
Handshakes
The government wants us back in the office — catching trains, buying sandwiches and actually seeing colleagues and clients rather…
Bread
I cannot claim the gift of prophecy, but early this year — before lockdown panic-buying and the warnings of a…
Floral masks
Now that we must all wear face masks, it is hardly surprising that they have started to become a fashion…
Illegal raves
Every time I read that Britain’s anti-coronavirus measures are being jeopardised by a ‘small minority of senseless individuals’ holding illegal…
Wine windows
Stroll around Florence and you’ll notice little ornate openings embedded in the walls of Renaissance palazzos. They look like doorways…
Amusement parks
August, as usual, will be the busiest month for Britain’s amusement parks — which is odd when you consider that…
The Great Yarmouth Hippodrome
Guess which theatre is the first to open to the paying public post-Covid? Not Lloyd Webber’s London Palladium, where small…
747s
I felt a genuine pang when British Airways announced that it was retiring its fleet of Boeing 747s, the largest…
Mugs
Rishi Sunak found himself in hot water last week, though fortunately it was not too hot. Just the right temperature,…
Cricket balls
The Prime Minister recently blamed the delay in the resumption of amateur cricket on the ball itself, calling it ‘a…
Online chess
How have you been filling these listless homebound hours we’ve been given by the government? I’ve been frittering them away…
Football without fans
Football is back — but the fans aren’t. Covid means that clubs have to play their games behind closed doors.…
Scouts
Police were no match for the Black Lives Matter mob that pulled down a statue of Edward Colston last week…
The Field of the Cloth of Gold
This week marked 500 years since the beginning of the two-week festival of jousting, feasting and general splendour that came…
Coach holidays
Amid all the Covid-19 coverage, it’s hardly surprising that the collapse of a coach-tour operator last week didn’t make too…
Band names
You wouldn’t have thought that Starbucks’s pricing policy could influence rock history, but that’s what happened. In the early 1990s,…
Bats
‘You’d like me to write about bats? I’ve not held one in earnest for years,’ I said, although I did…
Puttanesca
The lockdown could have been the moment I was waiting for: a chance to make those long, slow recipes whose…
Owls
My tawny owl has been self-isolating. I say mine but in truth she chose the nest box in my neighbour’s…
Slippers
Tartan, monogram, moccasin, clog. What do your slippers say about you? Trick us all you like with your office Manolos,…
