Everyday life
Agitprop for toddlers
The oddly strident politics of CBeebies
Florence Notebook
Florence was in fog the day I arrived. Its buildings were bathed in white cloud, its people moved as though…
Dear Mary
Q. I have a problem with what might be called location blindness. I live in Balham, but when I arrange…
Once more, the spectre of Enoch Powell is raised to stop debate about immigration
One of the genuine seasonal pleasures to be enjoyed as 2013 slipped around the U-bend was Enoch Powell making his…
Dear Mary
Q. We had our son’s fiancée and her family to stay recently. After dinner, expecting conversation, we were shocked to…
Meet the parents
Woolley Grange is a child-friendly country house hotel that seems, at first, entirely monstrous — a grey Tudor house in…
Diary
For a minute I just stood there with my back against the wall, staring at the credit card receipt. Then…
Flirting with disaster
Why can’t British men flirt? This was one of my first thoughts when I arrived in England some years ago.…
Dear Mary
Q. I am working on becoming a member of the Chipping Norton set. Should I be pronouncing the excellent open-air…
My 50 weddings
The lessons of a perpetual guest
Dear Mary
Q. Some years ago, on holiday in Egypt, we found ourselves in the company of a couple who wanted to…
Name of shame
The importance of not being Nigel
Dear Mary
Q. What to do when you are an unwilling eavesdropper in a train carriage in which people you know assume…
Diary
It’s been a strange summer. After a stroke, holidays are not what they used to be. We went to Juan-les-Pins…
Low life
This time last year the postman delivered a picture postcard depicting a village square in Provence. The photograph on the…
Dear Mary
Q. Is there a polite way of halting a wannabe novelist from reading his oeuvre aloud to an unwilling audience?…
Binge benefits
The occasional alcoholic blowout is much to be preferred to steady, everyday drinking
A touch of class
Usually it is annoying when you have to board an aeroplane via a shuttle bus rather than an airbridge. The…
Dear Mary
Q. To ask for money in lieu of a wedding present (Dear Mary, 3 August) is ghastly, but an established…
Diary
Hay-making was easy this year, and over in good time for a holiday. I am opposed to holidays, having worked…
Must we celebrate gay weddings twice?
Apparently I’ve proposed to my civil partner. He claims that on BBC Radio 2, on the Jeremy Vine show (he…
Dear Mary
Q. My mainly male colleagues and I were happy to learn that an attractive young woman would be joining the…
Be more tortoise
Five lessons from my new pet
Diary
The pilot refuses to get going until everyone is seated and quiet. When we take off there are raucous cheers.…
Must I sponsor your misery?
Every charitable donation now seems to come with a promise to suffer
