Indholdsfortegnelse for January 2024 i The Oldie

Gyles Brandreth's Diary The Grim Reaper has been having a high old time of late. I've barely had a moment to keep up with my diary, I have been so busy writing letters of condolence, attending funerals and giving addresses at memorial services. I was especially saddened by the passing of Prue Penn, 97, a long-standing friend of Elizabeth II and a woman so alive it's hard to believe she could be dead. A few years ago, Lady Penn got my address from a mutual acquaintance and, out of the blue, sent me an email. (She was computer-savvy: her grandchildren called her ‘techno-granny'.) It was a fan letter, really. She told me I was the only writer who seemed to understand the unusual relationship between the Queen and Prince Philip.…

WHAT IS heteropessimism? Heteropessimism is a feeling of despair that has come over a generation of straight people. Well, specifically, straight women. While men can be heteropessimists – see the incels, the ‘involuntarily celibate’ theta males who complain bitterly about women online – heteropessimism has wider purchase among women. Many women feel that the dire specimens with whom they keep matching on dating apps such as Tinder and Bumble aren't isolated examples. There are simply too many shirtless bros who say ‘Only swipe right if you're a ten’ or ‘Blowjobs are a must'. Even beyond the apps, they are finding man-children who ‘either are quite openly damaged and not ready to be in a relationship, or else profess to be and then abandon ship at the first glimmer of intimacy’,…

Oldie Man of Letters Even assuming a student is lucky enough to attend a university where they have individual tutorials, or where the lectures are of a high quality, how many students today truly consider it to be worth upwards of £9,000 per annum? One response to this mercenary question is that it misses the point. Of course, if all you want from your encounter with a university tutor is information, you could probably get better value from Google or Teach Yourself books. The educative experience – this is how the argument would go – is found in the encounter between a clever, eager young mind with that of one who is more mature, and better read, whose discourses can expand your mind, and whose capacity to correct, as well…

Mary Killen's Beauty Tips Heavy winter coats for social occasions were a staple in yesteryear – ie among Oldie-readers now between 80 and 100. It was colder outside before global warming, and coats were a matter less of etiquette than of survival. For smart occasions, mink coats were favoured by grown-up women; dark, woollen knee-length overcoats by men. For less smart occasions, women wore Loden coats – in traditional dark green with silver or horn buttons. Men would not have been seen dead in a Loden coat in London, but might have donned a fawn-coloured covert coat, with a brown velvet collar, from Cordings. But, today, other than for weddings, funerals and memorial services, and on the racecourse, winter overcoats have become increasingly unnecessary. Why? One reason is that we…

L ili Marleen was the marching tune of World War Two. Immortalised by Marlene Dietrich, it was originally written as a poem in 1915 by German poet Hans Leip and set to music in 1938 by Norbert Schultze. During the war, the song became a favourite of servicemen on both sides of the conflict. When Tommie Connor provided an English lyric, the rich contralto voice of Anne Shelton supplied the vocal. Shelton's rendition was used to counteract a Nazi propaganda campaign targeted at British troops in the North African desert. It sold a million and earned Shelton the title of ‘the British Lili Marleen girl'. Shelton died on 31st July 1994, aged 70. Had she lived, she would have celebrated her 100th birthday in November. Shelton was born on 10th…

History What do you expect to be doing on the evening of Christmas Day? Some version of sleeping off the turkey in front of the telly, most likely. Setting aside the birth of the Christ child himself (which, yes, probably didn't happen on Christmas Day anyway), it's tempting to think that, for one day at least, history might also put its feet up on the sofa. Not necessarily. Two of the most consequential coronations in European history happened on Christmas Day: Charlemagne's at Aachen in 800, and William the Conqueror's at Westminster Abbey in 1066. In both cases, the Christmas crownings set the seal on the defeat of Saxons, though only in Charlemagne's case was he also proclaimed an emperor. In time of war, the most famous Christmas episode is…

Postcards from the Edge In the spring of 2024, if the Almighty spares me, I'll be 80, which is to have gratefully attained the status of a long life. As is an octogenarian's wont, I look back on early influences and memories. One of the most vivid is attending the Christmas pantomime – Dick Whittington in particular. I was something of a dunce at school. So it seemed inspiring that Dick was portrayed as an orphan and a failure, whose only friend was a cat. I relished the chorus of audience encouragement. It egged him on with the cry of ‘Turn again, Whittington,’ urging him to keep on keeping on. At the age of eight, I remember being drawn to the idea of persistence and not losing heart. And so,…

‘Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents…’ is how Little Women, Louisa May Alcott's classic novel for girls, written in 1869, begins. The March family, having been well-off, are now in financial straits for reasons unspecified. The first chapter deals with the four March sisters being ordered by their mother, whom they call Marmee, to take their delicious celebratory Christmas breakfast to a nearby destitute family with many children, starving and living in degrading squalor. The sisters obey with alacrity. They go home to a dreary breakfast of bread and milk, but feel they have been well-rewarded for their kindness by the pleasure they have had in giving to children so much poorer than themselves. They are then further rewarded by a rich and benevolent neighbour who, on hearing of…

Poetic types SIR: I found Dunphy's cartoon about incompatible typefaces (November issue) most amusing, not least because it reminded me of a verse I wrote during a few moments of boredom in a meeting at which typefaces suitable for exhibition posters were being discussed. Gill Sans was mentioned, and it occurred to me the name was well suited to the hero of a traditional Scots ballad. Within a minute or two, the following verse took shape on my note pad: Gill Sans rode up to the castle walls To seek his own true love, And there fair Lucida he espied On the battlements above. ‘Gill Sans,’ she cried, ‘Ye must awa’, Ma father's called the sheriff. He says ye may not lie wi’ me Because ye are sans serif!’ Poor…

‘I'm a person who [ego alert] has always been interested in people and their stories.’ Of course! That's why you became a novelist, journalist, comedian, psychotherapist, podcaster etc. And yet what comes across is that the speaker is totally self-referential. Those emphatic pronouns –‘I'll be telling you what I have discovered about this incredible story’ – are a giveaway. The worst trend in 21st-century radio is the encouragement of hyperbolic self-plugging. But Sian Williams really is interested in people. She took over Jane Garvey's Radio 4 series Life Changing, in which guests relate life-transforming incidents and misfortunes. It's edge-of-seat stuff (first tested in the 1980s by Jenni Murray's Never the Same Again). Nobody could forget Jane Garvey, in an early episode, meeting Grace Spence Green, junior doctor and mountainclimber. At…

What happens when a boy band becomes a married man, 50 in February, with a litter of kids and an American actress wife, Ayda, having on the way sold more records and picked up more awards than all of us have had hot dinners? He becomes older, wiser and more reflective. He gets accused of looking like an ancient lesbian by Camilla Long in the Sunday Times (though the subs made her change it to ‘a 90-year-old Chrissie Hynde’ – frankly I'd be flattered to be compared to the lead singer of the Pretenders at any age or with whatever tastes). As a cheeky teen in Stoke-on-Trent, he'd only ever been on stage to play the Artful Dodger, when his mother spotted an ad for a boy band. It became…

The root vegetables that I have grown during the past year have mostly been successful, especially a prolific variety of early potato called Jazzy. The beetroot – red, golden and white – grew well, and the carrots were sown with taped seed, which made thinning unnecessary. In the past I have usually failed to thin carrots, and they have suffered. One is advised to lift beetroot and carrots in October and store them in sand. But, in my experience, they go limp after a few weeks and are better left in the ground until needed. The Solent Wight garlic was a great success and should keep well through the winter. And the Jerusalem artichoke plants, having grown eight feet tall with yellow sunflowers during summer, now have roots ready to…

If you buy a new car after 2026, you'll find that Big Brother is not just watching you but sitting alongside you. That is the earliest date from which Euro 7, the next round of EU pollution regulations, is planned to take effect. It may be delayed but whenever it comes, it will mark the greatest governmental intervention into automotive freedom of travel since the 19th-century Red Flag acts restricted ‘road locomotives’ to 4mph (2mph in cities). Of course, being no longer in the EU, we needn't apply it. But we very likely will, because Europe is the major market for cars made here and governments of all stripes are peopled by rule-makers. Essentially, the new proposals will ensure that your car's on-board diagnostic systems will record data and send…

A while ago, I decided to sell my vinyl record collection. I have about 300 of these landmarks of my life sitting in big boxes; I never play them. So, even though it feels as if I'm betraying them, out they must go. I decided to shift as many as I could on eBay because I thought it would be easy. It isn't. I tend to think of eBay as a recent invention, but it's actually 28 years old, and currently has an astonishing 1.5 billion listings on it, including mine. It has matured. There are a lot of perfectly sensible people who make a living, or at least an income, by buying stuff at jumble sales and reselling it on eBay. Frankly, I'm jolly glad that I'm not relying…

Pop-ups I'm angry at the endless pop-up intrusions that keep appearing on my computer screen.These can barge in at any time and ruin my concentration and I often have to spend ages trying to get rid of them. I was reading a news story when ‘Dashboard. Just One Second’ popped up, supposedly to make my data ‘customizable’, whatever that meant. Later, when I was typing, up came ‘Hello, this is Bing. I'm the new AI-powered chat mode that can help you quickly get summarized answers.’ Oh dear – those irritating Americanised zs. Luckily, I managed to shut down its ridiculous suggestions. No way did I want to write a story about a cute puppy. Here's another: autocorrection, where my computer changed my typing into typo horrors. I wrote ‘misleading’ and…

Ask Virginia I don't want any presents Q I’ m over 80 this year and I know that on my birthday everyone will ply me with presents – I'm so lucky! But I'm in the business of throwing everything away, not hoarding more stuff. So how can I insist that no one give me anything? Do you think I should suggest they give money to a specified charity? It seems rather presumptuous – but do you have any other ideas? Mrs S Jameson, Wirral A Certainly don't ask friends to give to charity! They might not have been thinking of giving you a present anyway, but perhaps have thought of making you a cake or a card. And who knows whether they would approve of the charity you suggest anyway? There…

Mark Ellen (p17) played in Ugly Rumours with Tony Blair at Oxford. He edited Q magazine and The Word. He wrote Rock Stars Stole My Life! and does the Word in Your Ear podcast with David Hepworth. Roger Lewis (p18) wrote Erotic Vagrancy: Everything about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor; Seasonal Suidice Notes; and Charles Hawtrey: The Man Who Was Private Widdle. Rachel Kelly (p22) is author of You'll Never Walk Alone: Poems for Life's Ups and Downs. She also wrote Black Rainbow: My Journey through Depression. She worked for the Times. Quentin Letts (p54) is the Daily Mail's political sketchwriter. He was a theatre critic for the Times. He is author of Patronising Bastards: How the Elites Betrayed Britain.…

Grumpy Oldie Man If the question sounded stale from overuse, at least what enticed it was zingily fresh. ‘Have you,’ asked Rebecca, the wife with whom I do not by and large cohabit, ‘gone completely mad?’ I drained the tumbler, refilled it and despairingly cradled my head. ‘Sweet Lord Jesus,’ I murmured, ‘what is wrong with me?’ Becca wearily raised her brows, as if to suggest the question was far too broad and multifaceted to be addressed in the one sitting. Or, come to that, one lifetime. ‘This isn't good,’ was all she could muster. ‘This is not good at all.’ At first glance, the remark that provoked the above Socratic dialogue may very well seem innocuous. All I had said, immediately before the sanityrelated enquiry, was this: ‘He's actually…

O uch. That was my feeling last month, listening to Mel Stride, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, at the Conservative Party conference. Mr Stride said growing social awareness of mental-health problems is itself contributing to a rise in diagnoses and an increase in unemployment. Figures from the Office for National Statistics for August this year showed that the number of adults with anxiety or depression who are no longer working jumped by 43 per cent to 1.35 million – 386,000 more than before the pandemic. We are ‘too readily identifying people’ as having mental-health conditions, Mr Stride said. I wonder if he might be right. We may have become too quick to label people as suffering from mental illnesses. While before we might have felt worried, we…

'Death and Christmas, inevitable and ghastly,’ my father, the actor Robert Hardy (1925-2017), used to say. Around it came, a traditional part of every Christmas Past, as we all jollied about him, pounding the brandy butter and winding tinsel round the ponies’ browbands. And, just as perennially, when we came to warble at our own front door my father would give an Oscar-worthy dose of Christmas bonhomie. There would be a bit of Siegfried Farnon, the gravitas of Churchill, and a touch of Harry Potter's Cornelius Fudge magic in there too, for shimmer. As the day itself dawned, his ‘Bah humbug’ side returned in force – though Scrooge was one of the few parts he never played. Still, there were times when his versions of Churchill and Siegfried Farnon had…

The indecently perfect symmetry of human existence has been well-documented ever since Genesis (the Old Testament page-turner, not the band – even Phil Collins has his limitations) observed, ‘for you are dust, and to dust you will return'. Shakespeare's Seven Ages of Man poem, from As You Like It, caught the mood. ‘Last scene of all/ That ends this strange eventful history/ Is second childishness and mere oblivion/ Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.’ Yet, for all the exploration of the subject, one question is widely ignored. In the context of abortion, there is endless, feverish discussion about exactly when – conception/ foetal heartbeat/ at a certain number of weeks? – life can be said to begin. But we too seldom talk about when it is effectively over.…

Town Mouse It may not be the most sophisticated advertising slogan ever invented, but I bet it will work. ‘Taste the tasty taste,’ it reads. And it's been plastered all over London's Routemaster buses lately, alongside a picture of a gigantic banana, and the logo of the corporate banana merchant who paid for the ad, Chiquita. I see it a lot as I cycle round town. The company that sells advertising space on London's buses and Underground, Global, claims an awful lot of people will see this ad. According to its website: ‘Bus advertising reaches over 48 million adults over a typical two-week period, making it one of the highestreaching marketing mediums available. Buses are particularly effective when targeting illusive [sic] 15-34-year-old light TV viewers.’ As a cycling mouse, I…

Dominic Lawson, former editor of the Sunday Telegraph and the Spectator, paid tribute to his father, Nigel, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, at St Margaret's, Westminster. Dominic Lawson asked his father two years ago if he had any wishes for a memorial service. ‘Why should I? I won't be there,’ Lord Lawson said. Dominic continued, ‘The only thing that mattered to him was that he be buried at sea, by the Royal Navy. And he was: his remains were consigned to the deep from HMS Mersey, to the strains of Noël Coward's song Matelot, which he loved. The naval officer who organised this sent me details of my father's service record. One report had a slight criticism: “Lawson could be more self-assertive.” Well, he certainly took that on board. ‘He…

I first met Arthur Miller (1915-2005) when he came to a drama class I was running at his alma mater, the University of Michigan, back in 1987. Before his arrival, I told my students not to mention the marriage to Marilyn Monroe that Life magazine had called ‘the most unlikely since that of the owl and the pussycat'. I didn't yet know the story of the way this athletic six-footer responded to a reporter who asked him if he ever dreamed of the love goddess – he chased him round the buffet at a Miller celebration, punching him so hard he slithered backwards into the smoked salmon – but it seemed tactful to avoid such an intimate subject. Well, what did the great dramatist almost immediately do? Asked by an…

Fingers on buzzers: which popular TV word game, first aired in 1988, is returning after 23 years and to be hosted by Graham Norton? Wheel of Fortune! ‘My first ever TV job was a game show on ITV,’ Norton tells the press, ‘so this feels like coming full circle. You might even call it a wheel!’ Noel Edmonds, who hosted Deal or No Deal, which has also returned to our screens this winter, would call it cosmic ordering. Noel has been replaced as host of Deal or No Deal by Stephen Mulhern, who adopts the persona of the man on the Clapham omnibus rather than the Eastern guru. The format of Deal or No Deal is both too complex and too simple to explain, which is part of the programme's…

In the kitchen, as in love and life, little things mean a lot. With the festive season in full swing, keep a couple of tricks up your sleeve to improve the shining hour. Greek orange and almond honey cake Appropriately seasonal, the classic Cretan Christmas cake is flavoured with cinnamon and orange zest and made with olive oil rather than butter, which allows it to keep well in a tin. Serves a dozen (some now, more later). 350g plain flour 2 level tsps baking powder 1 heaped tsp ground cinnamon 350g ground almonds 6 eggs, separated 350g light olive oil 175g blossom honey 3 unwaxed oranges, juice and grated zest 1 tbsp flaked almonds Butter for brushing To serve 175g blossom honey 1 tbsp orange-flower water (optional) 1-2 curls finely…

I was at Kenilworth Road the other day to watch Luton Town play a Premier League game. Sandwiched between terraced houses, one of the entrances leading between domestic gardens, it is a wonderfully evocative place. Barely changed across more than a century, it oozes proper authenticity. It's a very different experience from the grand environs of our leading football institutions. No wonder it is nicknamed by the club's supporters the Old Girl. Yet, beloved as it may be, it is also a singularly terrible place to watch a football match. The corridors are tight and narrow, the seats cramped, the legroom non-existent, the facilities decrepit. In the main stand where I was sitting, much of the action is obscured by the dozens of pillars holding up the roof. Last year,…

It was a good idea for a long time. Save regularly in a tax-sheltered fund that you couldn't touch until you became old, and you would be less of a burden on the state when you finally got there. Unfortunately, nothing long-term is ever safe from political fiddling, and so it has proved here. Pensions are now a minefield littered with unexploded acronyms. Even the experts struggle to keep track. The latest rule changes, sprung on the world last March by the rookie Chancellor, are a case in point. If you have an accumulated pension pot, the system is (relatively) simple, provided you do the decent thing and die before your 75th birthday. Save so that on that date the pot exceeds £1,073,100, a sum known as the Lifetime Allowance…

The partridge one thinks of at Christmas ‘in a pear tree’ is the red-legged or ‘French’ partridge (Alectoris rufa). Its cousin is the Grey or English Partridge. A ‘red-leg’ appears in St Jerome in His Study, by Antonello da Messina (c 1430-1479) in the National Gallery. A stone arch frames the entrance and on the threshold stand in profile a red-leg and a peacock. They and Jerome, inside at his desk, form a triangle of dominant living beings. Seeking online explanation from Caroline Campbell, the National's former Director of Collections and Research, is in vain. She tells us that the study invites entry but to enter we must ‘pass a couple of obstacles, a partridge and a peacock, but let's expect they're not going to provide too much difficulty to…

On this month's deal from the US Fall Nationals, East's exuberant defensive jump to Six Hearts catapulted South into a highly optimistic grand slam. Nineteen times out of 20, he'd be congratulating himself for his fine barrage bid. This, however, was the 20th. 1. Unusual, showing five-five in the two lowest unbid suits. 2. Negative double, showing the other major, ie spades. 3. Huge heart fit, and even 10-9-low of clubs looks very offensive; East bids immediately to his limit (some would say beyond). 4. Must show his as-yet-undisclosed spade fit. As far as South is concerned, both sides could be making slam on what appears likely to be a huge double-fit deal. 5. ‘You bid six, and I have two trump pictures and the ace of clubs…’ Also, North's…

Man could not do sentence because of his feet Blackpool Gazette Litter-picker's shock as poo bag nearly hits her Bolton News Drain cover replaced Henley Standard £15 for published contributions NEXT ISSUE The February issue is on sale on 10th January 2024. GET THE OLDIE APP Go to App Store or Google Play Store. Search for Oldie Magazine and then pay for app. OLDIE BOOKS The Very Best of The Oldie Cartoons, The Oldie Annual 2023 and other Oldie books are available at: www.theoldie.co.uk/readers-corner/shop Free p&p. OLDIE NEWSLETTER Go to the Oldie website; put your email address in the red SIGN UP box. HOLIDAY WITH THE OLDIE Go to www.theoldie.co.uk/courses-tours…

WHO WAS Boethius? The philosopher Boethius died 1,500 years ago, in 524 AD – but who was he? Born in Rome in around 476 AD into a wealthy, patrician family shortly after the fall of the Roman Empire, he was steeped in classical learning from an early age. He duly became a senator, consul, statesman and adviser to Theodoric the Great, the Ostrogothic king of Italy, as well as a theologian and philosopher. He was instrumental in translating ancient Greek works and sought to reconcile Plato and Aristotle with Christian theology. He also wrote numerous philosophical commentaries and treatises on music, mathematics and theology. In 522 AD, Boethius was awarded the distinguished administrative position of magister officiorum. But as a result of the machinations of his political rivals, he had…

Angela Rippon THE OLDIE OF THE YEAR A s the late great Sir Bruce Forsyth would have said, ‘Didn't she do well?’ She did better than well – she did brilliantly. In November 2023, Angela May Rippon, born in Plymouth on 12th October 1944, waltzed, tangoed, rumba'd and cha-cha-cha'd her way to the Blackpool Tower Ballroom as the oldest-ever contestant in the 20-year history of the BBC's most popular talent competition, Strictly Come Dancing. If you follow the show, you will know that, apart from winning, ‘getting to Blackpool’ is what it's all about. The Tower Ballroom, a late-Victorian Frank Matcham masterpiece, is the Mecca of ballroom dancing. All the ballroom greats have strutted their stuff on its fabulous sprung floor. Every year, the Strictly contenders simply want to survive…

Competing match companies once produced the most colourful and imaginative range of labels. Foreign labels were available, especially from countries such as Sweden and India. And there was a large domestic match industry. Early match-workers often worked in very poor and dangerous conditions. In the late-19th century, the Salvation Army began to make their own brand, Lights in Darkest England, produced by well-treated workers. By the early-20th century, many smaller match-manufacturers had been taken over by the big three: Bryant & May, Masters and Morelands. They went on to form the British Match Corporation. Early labels were multicoloured with an endless variety of designs, including strange animals and birds. Patriotic labels were also common, along with naval ships and royalty. Really keen collectors would soak the labels off in water…

Years ago, when I was a poorlypaid editorial assistant, I shared a flat at the far end of Wood Lane – which we optimistically called Ladbroke Grove – with a glamorous starlet living on credit. She loved parties and wanted us to throw one. Black tie, she decreed, and guests must bring either a bottle of vodka or a bottle of champagne, so they could cram into our tiny sitting room and drink it out of plastic cups while we served crisps. I was firm. This broke the host/guest pact. We couldn't demand so much and offer so little in return. She relented and said that she would accept a half-bottle of vodka. This was still too much, to my mind. There is a delicate balance in these particular scales.…

Country Mouse ‘House-hunters, escaping rocketing rents in London, are targeting Wiltshire, as they seek more space for their money, as well as a better work/life balance,’ droned Mary. She was reading aloud from the local rag, but I was absorbed in the study of Beechcombings, Richard Mabey's view of woodlands through the exclusive lens of the beech tree, and was only half-listening. Most of the time when I react to Mary's voice, it turns out that she has not been talking to me at all but to someone else on the telephone, or dictating a voicemail. Normal social cues are therefore hard to ‘read’ in the echoey, lavatory-sized rooms of the cottage. Any interruption of her verbal flow actually intended for my own ears has led to accusations of ‘heckling'.…

Sophia Waugh: School Days We have a new, young teacher who is often overwhelmed by the whole business of teaching. She is a second-year ECT (Early Career Teacher) and is still in many ways finding her feet. She is sweet and gentle – definitely Miss Honey, not Miss Trunchbull – and this is not easy for her. Sometimes I worry I am a little mean to her; a bit ‘Come on, brace up – it's all fine’. It's not that I'm unsympathetic, but sometimes if you're too kind to people, they cry – and I am just not patient enough for that in the middle of the day. However, when I found her panicking by the printer first thing one morning, I thought it was time I was a bit…

The Doctor's Surgery The vice-president of a small country once came to me to ask my advice about a serious medical problem. ‘Every day after lunch,’ he said, ‘I feel sleepy and fall asleep, even during cabinet meetings.’ Especially during cabinet meetings, I would have added, had he been a British minister. It was not necessary to be Dr Conan Doyle to solve the problem: the vice-president drank eight beers at every lunch. I suggested gently that this might be the problem and, to do him justice, he saw the point. Whether the country as a whole benefited from his new-found state of post-prandial alertness, I am unable to say. Drowsiness after a lunch is a problem, even for those who do not drink. I suffer from it myself. To…

It was in Trieste, in 1949, when I, aged 7, and a schoolfriend were protected from the violence of a mob by a tiny woman of indomitable strength. Nanny. In 1949, the Italian population were not certain that the Allied administration would return Trieste to Italy instead of to Yugoslavia. That is why Italians were rioting. The cause of my adventure. We lived in Duino Castle, 15 miles from the city. We disregarded or were in ignorance of the risk in the city. So the large, open Mercedes staff car, liberated in 1945, set out on the school run. Nanny, with umbrella, was in the front seat. Nanny was special. Four foot 11 of iron will, with unbending adherence to the standards of the Plymouth Brethren of her birth, including…

I've won an argument. At last. The only way to travel into the West End of an evening is by tube. For years, I've been losing this argument while watching angry high heels clatter down the escalator as if entering purgatory, while ranting that ‘It's hardly a glamorous start to a Big Night Out’ or ‘Glad I dressed up … for the Northern Line’. I used to try getting away with catching the tube back after dinner, but there were too many tantrums. Last month, I booked a table at The Portrait, Richard Corrigan's transformed restaurant up above the National Portrait Gallery. My guest insisted on driving to Trafalgar Square from Clapham, with 40 minutes to spare. I hate being late; she doesn't. At 55 minutes, we were still stuck…

A ‘tappit hen’ was an old Scottish drinking jug, made from pewter and featuring a topknot on its domed lid, like the crest on a hen. The rather evocative name was later appropriated by the whisky and port trade for a bottle of normal height but containing three bottles’ worth of liquid: half a gallon, or 2.25 litres. This squat bottle, also known as a tregnum or a Marie-Jeanne, is now more or less obsolete, joining the piccolo, the snipe, the chopine, the jennie and the pony in the great cellar in the sky. Modern, highly automated wineries are not geared up for eccentric bottle sizes. But the measure itself, perversely, is becoming more popular than ever. The bag-in-box (BIB) revolution has ensured it: many, if not most, BIB wines…

My neighbour asked if he could use my lawnmower and I told him of course he could, so long as he didn't take it out of my garden. Eric Morecambe Minds are like parachutes. They function only when they are open. Sir James Dewar (1842-1923), Scottish physicist Time wounds every heel. The comic epitaph Ian Fleming wanted on his tombstone. In fact, his wife, Ann Fleming, chose a line from Lucretius: ‘Omnia perfunctus vitae praemia marces’ – ‘Having enjoyed all life's prizes, you now decay’ The world is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit. Try, if you can, to belong to the first class. There's far less competition. Dwight Morrow (1873-1931), American lawyer From birth to 18, a girl needs good parents. From 18…

Taking a Walk A 17-mile stroll in the rain between towns in Staffordshire and Cheshire did not sound very alluring. But this walk came with a prize. If I could defy the wet and gloom between Kidsgrove and Macclesfield, I would link Birmingham to Manchester on the Slow Ways walking network. Slow Ways came to keen walker and all-round ideas factory Daniel RavenEllison when he took a hike from Winchester to Salisbury and realised his destination did not feature on any footpath signs. ‘It's almost like it's the Second World War and footpath signs have been removed to baffle people,’ he said, when we met at Kidsgrove station at the dank and grisly hour of 7.30am. Of course we have wonderful Ordnance Survey maps, but many people can't read maps.…

IN COMPETITION No 300 you were invited to write a poem called Three Tons. Your creativity varied a lot in register, which makes the winning entries below read almost shockingly together. Anne Drysdale threw three tons of stuff into a skip but then reflected, ‘To see the back of it should bring relief / And not this synthesis of guilt and grief.’ Frank McDonald celebrated the annual household ‘Three tons of coal converted into flames / Far kinder than cold electricity’. Terry Baldock asked, ‘Should you weigh your heart / Before you give it away?’ He concluded that you should. Basil Ransome-Davies's narrator bought three tons of Northern Lights cannabis and ended up living ‘in a lonely tent, / A lifestyle choice indeed'. Commiserations to them and to Gail White,…