Still Life
Tears and terror on the front line of the French wildfires
Provence As soon as I opened my front door I could smell it. Along the path, flakes of white ash…
Trapped with the plane passengers from Hell
Provence Under late June’s ferocious heat dome, during what turned out to be an almost eight-hour drive to join Martin…
Blood, sweat and tears on the road to Nice
Provence Straight from a weekend of helping a friend with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, I drove to Nice airport to…
Still life
Provence ‘Painting is a stupid job. Do something useful and train to be a nurse,’ commented a man beneath a…
Reading Jeremy’s words only gets harder
Provence In the hope of renting out the main cave house during the summer, I’ve been clearing to make room…
People who say it’s no good throwing money at a problem have never been poor
It started during the bus journey from Glasgow to Edinburgh airport on the way home to Provence. Saying goodbye is…
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…
Tales from the Jeremy Clarke Memoir Club
Provence The other Monday I hosted the third annual meeting of the Jeremy Clarke Memoir Club on what would’ve been…
The hellish side of Bumble
Valentine’s Day is upon us. I’ve never liked it. As an ugly ginger kid with a beautiful – much older…
The secret life of my friend Evelyn
Provence It’s difficult to believe that Evelyn will be 90 in a few months’ time. I’ve known her for more…
How I met Jeremy
In the early 2000s, academics, philosophers, politicians, members of the royal household and business people – including the CEO and…
The day Tilda Swinton came to stay
An exhibition at the Eye Film Museum in Amsterdam devoted to the multi-talented and award-winning actress Tilda Swinton, runs until…
LSD was a fuss about nothing
The flight from Nice to Bristol was packed. As soon as the doors closed I spotted a hummingbird hawk-moth bumping…
I took on a hornet – and won
Provence Midnight. In preparation for a 5 a.m. rise I’d been asleep for two sweltering hours under the ceiling fan…
A tale of two Martins
Provence The canicule broke yesterday, heralding the end of high summer. Wild figs and mulberries litter the path, filling the…
Medics make the worst patients
Provence Apart from three Covid years, the German rock cover band Five and the Red One (named, so they say,…
How not to behave at a London gentleman’s club
After a 5 a.m. start, I arrived at the departure gate in Nice airport to discover there was an air…
I’ve rekindled my love affair with England
Late spring. Sitting in the armchair in the living room, I was chilly and disconsolate. My middle daughter was seven-and-a-half…
My first ever blind date
Four of us go for lunch once a month. My hippy ceramist neighbour, Geoffrey, is a foodie and one of…
Two years without Jeremy Clarke
Two years ago, at five to eight in the evening of Monday 22 May 2023, I ran into the department…
My high-speed bus chase
My youngest daughter and her husband moved to New York last October. Three days after they arrived, she tripped on…
I’ve started a memoir club – in memory of Jeremy
Provence Molly MacCarthy launched the Bloomsbury Memoir Club in the spring of 1920 with two aims. The first was to…
Good portraiture can reveal uncomfortable truths
My eldest daughter and her family are moving from a three-bedroom Art Deco semi with a garden and garage on…
What will become of artists who paint?
What hope is there for artists following the sale recently of the robot Ai-Da’s portrait of Alan Turing, entitled ‘A.I.…
My brief encounter with online dating
Provence One of my daughters and a few pals, thinking I need company, have been urging me to get Bumble,…
