Life
The (occasional) joy of being a QPR fan
I made my way to Loftus Road on Saturday for QPR’s first home fixture of the season. We’ve got a…
Dear Mary: Your problems solved
Q. My 74-year-old husband was having drinks in the garden of some young clients when he bit down on an…
Aussie Life
I read in the Australian last week that the Queensland parliament is considering criminalising stealthing. And no, that’s not a…
Language
A Speccie reader has alerted me to the use of an odd word ‘alum’ to refer to the graduates of…
Real life
Everything is well and truly burned to a crisp, and we are piling through hundreds of pounds of hay a…
Low life
I’m staying for a week in an 1850s house in the Surrey hills that looks-wise might have been built for…
The turf
‘You’re being unfaithful,’ says the punter’s wife brandishing a note found in her husband’s suit pocket: ‘Dorothea 07440 521321.’ ‘No,…
Wine-poached peaches
I’ve never been very good at leaving things be. I tend to gild the lily. I may plan to do…
Puzzle No. 714
Black to play. Smirnov – Duda, Chennai Olympiad 2022. With his next move, Duda forced a decisive gain of material.…
Solution to 2564: Sea monster
The unclued lights 11 SOLITARY, 8 POOR, 38 NASTY, 36 BRUTISH and 35 SHORT are descriptions of 1 THE LIFE…
High life
Patmos Judging by the news, the world is finally coming apart: Chinese lab escapee Covid is still going strong, monkeypox…
2567: Stop!
The unclued lights (including two pairs, one of which is three words, and one single light of three words) are…
Hidden agenda
In Competition No. 3260, a challenge suggested by a reader, you were invited to reveal the existence of a hitherto…
Bridge
In the modern game, being green versus red (non-vul v. vul) is a licence to bid on tram tickets: passing…
A lucky escape
I chatted to a spectator after one of my games at the Sparkassen Chess Trophy in Dortmund. ‘A close shave…
Did the earth move for you?
I’m writing this on the plane back from Iceland, a fact that fills me with relief. Not because I didn’t…
The beauty of ‘theft-tanks’
The Conservative party leadership contest is a milestone for diversity and inclusion. This time, we get to choose between someone…
Dear Mary: Your problems solved
Q. My parents are abroad for two months and as my flatmates in London are all, like me, working from…
The perfect summer drink
Imagine a camel train, crossing the great desert. The remaining water is rancid; the beasts’ humps are shrunken. Death looms.…
Catcalls
‘A law against catcalls?’ asked my husband sceptically. ‘What next, criminalising booing and hissing?’ He often gets the wrong end…
Battle for Britain
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Aussie life
New US Ambassador Caroline Kennedy had them at her first media conference interjection: when the white, stale male journalist (the…
Language
It was Will Self (writing in The Speccie) who drew my attention to the new word ‘uberise.’ He says he…
My lunch with Liz
Sometimes this column has a guest reviewer: a dining companion. It was Liz Truss in late summer 2011, for the…
Flageons
‘Don’t you know the answer?’ asked my husband with mock surprise, throwing over to me from his armchair a copy…
