The joy of dentistry.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth having teeth. It goes without saying that they greatly aid the process of mastication and digestion and they’re quite good for biting fingernails too, but beyond that they seem such a flashy inconvenience. They rot, they hurt, they need constant attention and they are another expense that one could […]

Extra mileage.

A couple of days off kilter but still relevant. Unless fatigue has warped my judgement. My spies tell me they’re leaving it until the last hour, and then they might leave it a bit longer after that. We Brits are not for folding. My spies tell me that all the politicians are busy going the […]

A high street low.

Ahh. We’ll miss Debenhams. Won’t we? Do you remember Debenhams? It really used to hold the high street together, didn’t it? You’d do all your other shopping, all the bits you couldn’t get in Debenhams, like a loaf of bread or a tetanus jab, and then you’d sail through those big sliding doors and spend […]

Full of festive fear.

Christmas has started early this year. It seems we have been fixated on the silly season even more intensely than usual this year, for obvious reasons. Deep down in our collective conscience we’ve managed to persuade ourselves in some richly nonsensical way that if we can save Christmas then that’s it, we’re all out of […]

It’s electricity.

If all you’re after is power, drive, rhythm and thrill there really isn’t much point looking beyond AC/DC. They will never be the most advanced or intellectual when it comes to rock and roll but you could easily argue that by being so straight forward they have emerged as the purest embodiment of that art […]

Priti by name.

The problem with being called a bully is that once that label is out of the bag it’s very hard to put back in. When someone shows you a photo of a murderer or paedophile or member of The Brexit Party the usual reaction is simply confirmation – “yes, they definitely look like a murderer/paedophile/member […]

It’s Over.

There were over 100,000 divorces in England and Wales last year. Thank goodness for that; finally a statistic that cannot be explained away as ‘due to coronavirus’ I think those couples should proud of themselves. They didn’t need a shitty old pandemic to be sick of the sight of each other – they became sick […]

Rocky road.

So many things to discuss and so little time. Record deaths, ditched exams and the sudden departure of a couple of dodgy rodents from the murkier corners of Downing Street should all warrant a few paragraphs each, but I have other things on my mind; specifically a bunch of rocks. Because that’s all Stonehenge is: […]

Across the pond life.

It’s a bit like when you play a game as a kid and you’re not a great loser and you lose the first time and your immediate response is to suggest a ‘best of three’. That’s what they should do in the American election. Just let Trump keep calling another round until he gets his […]

Culture fix.

Almost every Saturday Review section of The Times has a feature called ‘My Culture Fix’ in which someone related to the arts answers questions about their, er, culture fix. Depending on which branch of the arts we’re talking about the answers can be illuminating, tedious or, much worse, very farty. You can usually tell if […]