Life
Trouble withthe neighbours
A few years ago, I got a bit fed up with receiving Christmas cards from my friends designed to show…
Trouble withthe neighbours
A few years ago, I got a bit fed up with receiving Christmas cards from my friends designed to show…
Let’s pay for the BBC content we use
What follows is a proposal for reducing the BBC licence fee and improving the corporation’s output while saving the British…
The Greece I once knew is now just a myth
I think back to my Greek childhood and longing for the once cosiest and most romantic of cities overwhelms me.…
Safety tip: don't try to steal Trev's phone
‘I’ve lost my phone,’ yells Trev. We’re in a club. He’s come charging on to the dance floor to tell…
Challenging parking tickets is my crack cocaine
‘Cydney, we are not moving to Cobham!’ I told the spaniel in my best outraged Margot Leadbetter voice. What a…
Smartphones are wonderful – until they take over your life
The smart phone is a wonderful thing. We are never out of touch anymore, neither with friends nor with the…
The man who takes the stress out of training horses
For all their formidable physical presence, racehorses spook easily. A sudden gust of wind flapping a plastic sack, a page…
Bridge
Moving house is traumatic but moving bridge club is worse. Young Chelsea left Barkston Gardens, its home for over 30…
Arachnid
Sadly, Michael Adams, for many years Britain’s leading grandmaster, will not be playing in the British Championship, which starts next…
No. 371
Black to play. This is from Williams-Hawkins, -British Championship 2014. How can Black finish off his attack with a fine…
Tube lines
In Competition No. 2907 you were invited to imagine that poets, living or dead, had been recruited to compose verse…
2221: Shielded
The unclued lights are of a kind, verifiable in Brewer. Elsewhere, ignore two accents. Across 1 Transfers…
To 2218: Fab!
The unclued lights are all preceded by GREAT to form the phrases that can be confirmed in Brewer. (The clue…
Why I was right to vote for Jeremy Corbyn
Is the ‘Tories for Corbyn’ campaign politics at its most infantile? As one of the few conservative commentators willing to…
Battle for Britain
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Australia’s amazing, exhausting sporting comebacks
I have never met an Aussie I didn’t like, but, crikey, their sporting indefatigability is exhausting. Don’t they ever give…
Dear Mary: How can I flirt on the train when a man who knows my old habits is watching?
Q. Travelling on a train recently I happened to notice two former acquaintances, sitting together and very nearly opposite me,…
Venetian restaurants know I’m English from the back
The Gatto Nero — or ‘Black Cat’ — is in Burano, a tiny island in the Venetian lagoon. It is…
Pluto’s moon Charon is secretly a Charlene
‘What about the moon Tracey?’ asked my husband facetiously when an astronomer on the wireless, talking of Pluto’s moon Charon,…
Battle for Britain
Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
Arachnid
Sadly, Michael Adams, for many years Britain’s leading grandmaster, will not be playing in the British Championship, which starts next…
No. 371
Black to play. This is from Williams-Hawkins, -British Championship 2014. How can Black finish off his attack with a fine…
Tube lines
In Competition No. 2907 you were invited to imagine that poets, living or dead, had been recruited to compose verse…
Your problems solved
Q. Travelling on a train recently I happened to notice two former acquaintances, sitting together and very nearly opposite me,…
