Low life
Low life
Over Christmas and New Year I was rotten with flu and didn’t go out once. I stayed soberly at home…
Low life
A fruity voice on the train’s announcement system said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, make sure you have all your belongings, family…
Low life
After lunch on Christmas Day my father always stood at the sink in his apron and yellow Marigolds and did…
Low life
The thing I enjoy most about travel-writing gigs is meeting other hacks. Hacks are almost invariably fun, funny, gossipy, irreverent,…
Low life
Moofushi, Maldives We clambered aboard a dhoni, the sturdy wooden boat that the Maldivians use for getting about the…
Low life
An hour earlier I had stepped off a plane from Dublin and I was three-quarters deaf in one ear. I…
Low life
Another writer I once liked very much is Gerald Brenan. Brenan served with distinction in the first world war and…
Low life
Rubbing shoulders with political suits on the pavement outside the Westminster Arms, I drank two pints of Spitfire. Pump primed,…
Low life
My maternal grandmother (née Clarke) had six brothers, all keen poker players. All six volunteered to fight in the Great…
Low life
What a beautiful day, I thought, as I nodded to the porter in the bowler hat and stepped out of…
Low life
‘Is that you, Sister?’ It was Tom misdialling again with those thick, stubby fingers of his. ‘No, it’s me: Jerry,’…
Low life
As I think I said in this column the other week, I used to sneak into English lectures at University…
Low life
I like the New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield, who according to Virginia Woolf smelt like a civet cat and had…
Low life
‘Stand outside the fishmongers in 20 minutes and call this number,’ she said, ‘and I can arrange it.’ On Saturday…
Low life
I’m round at Amy and Bill’s for Sunday afternoon tea. Amy and Bill are my in-laws, kind of. When I…
Low life
Music of the Forest on Radio 4 last week was a profile of the anthropologist Colin Turnbull, 1924–1994, who achieved…
Low life
When I was 32, tired at last, for the moment anyway, of seizing the day, I stopped drinking and gave…
Low life
In my late twenties, it was not unusual for me to wake up in a police cell wearing a paper…
Low life
In 1984 I was 27. Since leaving school I had done unskilled manual labour, when I could get any. Then…
Low life
I live in south Devon. Last week I went up to north Devon, to visit a friend who was renting…
Low life
I’ve might have no testosterone. (My production is currently being stopped by injection once every three months.) But what I…
Low life
Le tout Torquay was there, cramming into the Princess Theatre with a drink in each hand ten minutes after the…
Low life
‘Oscar!’ cried Miss Herd as I arrived. She was standing at the classroom door releasing her charges one by one…
Low life
They do love a party at The Spectator. I was invited to four in ten days last week: the Apollo…
Low life
Tap tap tap at the door. I opened my eyes. ‘Check-out 10.30,’ said a neutral or possibly slightly hostile female…
