Notes on…
Bengal cats
Over the past year and a half, I have been victimised by my neighbour’s cat. Bollinger the Bengal weighs just…
Butter
Butter was not a major part of my childhood. In fact, I don’t remember it ever being in our fridge.…
Hand luggage
The general flying advice this year, with airports resembling cattle markets and when you can’t be sure if you’re ever…
Watering
In the hot, dry summer of 1976, I was working as a gardening student at Arboretum Kalmthout in Belgium. The…
Beard oil
Every few months I take out a box of essential oils and carefully lay them out on my kitchen table,…
National cycle routes
Many of us daydream about escaping into an imaginary parallel universe. The good news is that Britain has its own…
Hornets
There’s surely not a more despised creature in Britain than the hornet. They have long been viewed as yellow jacketed…
Letterheads
One of the pleasures of the letters from unhappy ministers to the Prime Minister last week (though not, presumably, for…
Desire paths
Pause in a park or field in summer and look out across the grass and you’ll see a multitude of…
Curtain calls
‘And now the end is here / And so I face the final curtain…’ You said it, Frank. The lights…
The National Army Museum
Five years ago this month I wrote an article in The Spectator denouncing the National Army Museum after its £24…
Elderflower
There’s an old saying that English summertime begins when the frothy heads of elderflowers appear in hedgerows – and ends…
Beach huts
Despite claims the property market is on the brink of a crash, one niche seems recession-proof: beach huts, barely bigger…
Dubonnet
The Platinum Jubilee celebrations look like boom time for the drinks industry, with various whisky, gin and port brands all…
Getting things mended
‘Sides to middle’, that’s the cry. When your foot goes through the flat sheet in the night, there’s only one…
Bowls
Bowls has a reputation as a sedate pastime, but it can be as fiercely competitive as any other sport. It…
Buffalo
Buffalo are now living in the fens of Kent. Why – have we slipped into the metaverse of Lewis Carroll?…
Iranian picnics
Iranians adore a picnic. During the country’s most ancient festival, Nowruz, the Persian new year, they brandish baskets of food…
Fringes
Fringes have in recent years been considered attractive – Bettie Page, Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Birkin, Kate Moss – so it…
Hitchhiking
When I first saw Vitaly I thought he was drunk. I was standing outside a petrol station near Fulda, in…
Violets
The English Rock Garden, the magnum opus of the great gardening writer, horticulturist and plant collector Reginald Farrer, is an…
The Wolseley
I was sitting alone at a small table in the Wolseley, Piccadilly, waiting for my supper and feeling a sense…
Crisp sandwiches
A crisp sandwich is a private and personal endeavour. In my experience (and I have considerable experience in this particular…
Mother’s Day
As ever, the Romans got there first. Their version of Mothering Sunday or Mother’s Day was the feast of Juno…
Slugs and snails
Slugs and snails are the bane of every gardener who tries to grow strawberries, leafy and tuberous vegetables, flowering bulbs…
