Life
The highs – and low lows – of supporting QPR
At the beginning of the current football season, I thought there was a real chance that QPR would get promoted.…
Spectator Competition: Punning wild
Comp. 3443 was inspired by Brian Bilston’s ‘Remembrance of Things Pasta’ which begins: She blew her fusilli, my pretty penne,…
Dear Mary: how can I stop rich friends splitting the bill?
Q. I have the sort of job that means I am regularly recruiting new young talent. Now when I go…
Helpmates
Participants at the Winton British Solving Championship face six rounds of fiendishly difficult chess problems. The problems have an exam-style…
This Easter, eat rabbit
Dissonance is necessary around Easter. Fluffy lambs and chicks are everywhere: on cards and decorations, in countless chocolate forms and…
Aussie life
History doesn’t repeat itself, said Mark Twain, but it often rhymes. And a century and a half after he said…
Language
There I was, relaxing one evening, when my phone burbled with a text. It was our distinguished editor with a…
Never pass up a chance to ski
The snow is deep and crisp and even, the sky bluer than blue, and beneath my Black Crow skis there’s…
Is it time for me to renounce the Devil?
As I spent much of January in dry dock in Tommy’s hospital (‘dry’ being doubly appropriate), other avocations were needed.…
Meghan is a woman much misunderstood
Lying in bed with a swollen face, I decided that the best thing to do was nothing, so I ended…
White working-class boys are being left behind
This week marks the fifth anniversary of the publication of the report of Lord Sewell’s Commission on Racial and Ethnic…
Dear Mary: Is my dentist profiting from my gold filling?
Q. I went to stay in the new house of a close, but not very close, friend. She put me…
Why engineers beat lawyers
I once asked my friend, the engineer Guru Madhavan, why engineering faculties at most universities were outliers in containing more…
Spectator Competition: Budding poets
For Competition 3442 you were invited to supply the opening of a memoir that would discourage the reader from reading…
Aussie life
As any arborist with a swimming pool will tell you, money really does grow on trees. And if I had…
Language
When I discover a new word I am delighted. ‘Autochthonous’ is one I have seen occasionally, but which I have…
