Low life
Meet Santini: the world’s worst tourist guide
Santino was unusually short in the leg and, in his mid-twenties, was already rapidly losing his hair. He had recently…
The joy of scrumpy
‘How’s your day going?’ said the taxi driver as he snapped his knob into drive. If I caught the plane…
A moral dilemma on my freebie holiday
We drove north and parked in the designated car park with a quarter of an hour to spare before the…
I took Oscar to Provence – in business class!
In the Easter holidays, plus two school days, for which his mother will be fined or, as a serial offender,…
Am I about to be usurped by Philippe, our handsome French gardner?
We have a gardener, Philippe, who comes once a week. He lives in a ruin a little way down the…
I’m making a cave disco in the south of France
I’ve swapped my carer’s tray in Devon for a barrow and spade halfway up a cliff in the south of…
After ten weeks spent caring for my mother, I had to relearn the art of conversation
I said my goodbyes and went outside with my trolley bag to wait for the taxi. While waiting, I looked…
The travesties competing in the Terrier category at Crufts
Does the BBC suppose that it will convert the public to a belief in equality if it does not, in…
I hadn’t had a drink in six weeks but that was seven hours, three pubs and a club ago…
Standing in a messy kitchen at the tendril tip of a county line at three o’clock in the morning, Trev…
My life as nurse, chief cook and bottle washer for my mother
My fifth week confined to barracks as nurse, chief cook and bottle washer. I drive to the supermarket about twice…
The strange people who keep a nightly vigil over my mother
To begin with it was mice. The house was overrun with them. She saw them out of the corner of…
‘I don’t know how ever Jerry stands it’: diary of a world war one artillery man
My sister’s boyfriend is a solitary man and easily overwhelmed by another’s presence. On his rare visits he flits in…
Oscar is nine, and has largely abandoned speech in favour of gestures and monosyllables
Just before I left France, Oscar’s mum sent over a photo of Oscar in his classroom at school showing the…
What Sylvia learned at the constipation clinic
‘The whole of my life I’ve had difficulty.’ I heard Sylvia say this through the door, which was slightly ajar.…
When a reader invited me to stay with him in Exmoor estate, how could I refuse?
My first night back in Blighty, I sat all evening at the kitchen table drinking wine with a charming, courteous…
Hell — and heaven – on the French Riviera
We drove down from the hills to visit friends of friends with a house by the sea and on the…
I ended New Year’s Eve more sober than I started it
We were eight for dinner on New Year’s Eve: four men and four women with a combined age, I would…
From Baroness Trumpington to bad sex: my Christmas party week
The Airbnb accommodation at Paddington, chez Mohammed, was a fourth-floor room measuring about nine feet by five. As well as…
Why you should never read your own diary
At the turn of the century, I started a diary. I’ve mostly typed it on old typewriters, bashing out a…
We lost our elderly, dementing French charge
I entered the cave house carrying groceries and panting from the climb to find an old hippie woman displaying rugs…
Only a Leaver would be stupid enough to go to the wrong airport
Three of us on a cold metal bench waiting for the bus. It’s almost dark. Winter arrived yesterday and we…
It was carnage in our French cave
Evenings, I sit in a chair facing the cave interior and Catriona lies on the new sofa facing me (and,…
France’s second world war shame
The monument to this French village’s war dead is a plain white stone block with the head of a grizzled…
The perils of smoking three-year-old Glaswegian skunk
Three years ago we were given a bag of skunk, Catriona and I, provenance Glasgow. It was one gigantic dried…
40-plus reasons to love and hate France
I apologised, was gladly granted an indulgence, and on Sunday I packed a small bag and reached into a drawer…
