Life
The real reason we should be burning our own gas
Regular readers of this column will be familiar with my promoting an idea called a ‘Paceometer’ (pictured). Rather than presenting…
Spectator Competition: Take heed
Comp. 3444 invited you to submit a Hilaire Belloc-style cautionary tale for our times. This one was last set in…
The noble work of chairlift diplomacy
In 1956, three British MPs encountered a group of Swiss politicians in the bar of the Hotel Fluela in Davos…
Aussie life
The middle-class leftist activism that you now encounter every day in Australia and the West has a major flaw. It…
Language
There is a bit of water in the Persian Gulf that is in the news almost every day now –…
Food to slake boredom: Le Café by Nicolas Rouzaud reviewed
Burlington Arcade on Piccadilly has a caff down from Charbonnel et Walker, where you can buy a box of chocolates…
It’s time to let go of Tiger Woods
It’s not the newest joke in the world, but worth a quick rerun right now after the latest in a…
‘I always have a smile on my face up there’: jockey Sam Waley-Cohen on the art of winning
Last week, I had a commuter-hell day. The Great Western train to London was standing room only, horribly delayed, and the…
Has Airbnb just declared war against its hosts?
The Airbnb help centre chatbot kept telling me that she understood how frustrating it must be for me to have…
The joy of meeting ‘randomers’
Provence Life was complicated when I fled to Provence in November 2014 with no job and very little money. At…
2746: Chain letters
The unclued lights can be arranged to form an unbroken chain with the last three letters of one word becoming…
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…
