Innehållsförteckning för February 2024 från The Oldie

Gyles Brandreth’s Diary Sir Alec Douglas-Home had a passion for flower-arranging. Harold Wilson adored the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan. Winston Churchill was an accomplished artist and recreational bricklayer. Gordon Brown once invited me to an evening of poetry-reading in Downing Street. Whenever I visited Sir Edward Heath at his home in Salisbury Close, he talked as much about music and sailing and orchids as he did about politics. Heath was especially proud of his orchids. ‘Fidel gave me the orchids, you know,’ he’d say, his shoulders heaving happily. Castro also sent him a fine box of Cuban cigars every Christmas. To remain happy beyond your political heyday, a prime minister needs a passion beyond politics. That was Margaret Thatcher’s problem. Politics were her life. My wife and I were…

WHAT IS DNA printing? DNA printing is a technology you should be worried about. You were worried about boring old artificial intelligence? You should probably be more worried about DNA printing. We’re talking benchtop synthesisers that allow you to move bits of genetic material around like letters in a Word document and then print them in interesting new forms. The technology has been around since the 1980s. It used to be expensive, fiddly and under the control of a few vaguely responsible people. However, the cost of the machines is falling rapidly. I just found one online for €25,000. The complexity of forms you can print using them is improving, too. A deadly pathogen is now theoretically possible. One that is resistant to all treatment. And the website makes it…

Restaurants thrive on disfunction and misery. Sensible, successful people, happily married and with 2.4 children, a cleaner twice a week and a foreign holiday at least twice a year, don’t go to restaurants. Apart from anything else, they can’t afford them, what with all three boys destined for Radley. There are no smart restaurants in Richmond or Hampstead exactly because the residents are too posh. Restaurants thrive on Tolstoy’s unhappy families, each being unhappy ‘in its own way’. They thrive on disfunction and divorce, acting as cover for the lack of a happy home. They thrive on diversity and dodgy dealing - the use of a restaurant is to persuade somebody to something they might not have agreed to without the help of a couple of margaritas and a rather…

For actors, killing and being killed are all in a day’s work. Their real dread is ‘dying a death’ on stage. In The Archers, we eagerly await the arrival of our new scripts, with trembling fingers. We turn to the final scene to see if we are being killed off. Sentenced to death, a desperate actor will (lightheartedly) suggest returning as his own twin! As Captain Bellamy in Upstairs Downstairs, I was due to be killed off in the Great War. But when the show won a Golden Globe in the US, my fate was upgraded to missing presumed dead - and eventually I was declared fit for action in a further series. My agent believed that dying would be good for me. ‘Darling, everyone’ll know you’re available.’ (Availability is…

‘Rats!’ was not the four-letter word I uttered when I saw the oily rodent scuttle across the kitchen floor and disappear into a hole the size of a champagne cork under the fridge. For the first time since moving to London in 1980, I had encountered a sewer rat - perhaps not surprising given the estimated UK rat population of around 150 million. I have drawn many cartoons about the old adage - “You’re never more than six feet away from a rat’ - but now the cliché had become a grisly reality. And the distance was considerably less than six feet. Once my wife had bravely blocked the hole (with a champagne cork) and I had climbed down from the kitchen chair, we called in the experts. Where had…

I was chatting to my Iranian fishmonger the other day about the oral tradition in poetry. His grandfather had lived in a small village, with no electricity or running water, and only dust roads. Being one of the only literate people in the community, he would entertain the other villagers, either by reading aloud to them, or, just as often, by reciting poems and telling old tales. I asked if they still read Omar Khayyam. He said his grandfather could never understand how Khayyam, one of the brightest stars in that scintillating galaxy of Persian poets, had managed to survive without being killed as a heretic. Great poetry, said the fishmonger, was for knowing by heart and it bound whole communities together. Unlike religions or politics, which often bind people…

Postcards from the Edge It’s said that you always know when you do something for the first time, but you don’t always know when you do something for the last time. But I’m fairly sure that something I’ve done for the last time is cross the English Channel as a foot passenger. Popping on to a ferry ’twixt Dover and Calais was a day trip I often enjoyed in times gone by (Newhaven to Dieppe was also a delight). But it has now become a grindingly disagreeable experience, as I discovered recently. It seems the ferry companies don’t want foot passengers any more. Most of the carriers no longer allow crossChannel transport on foot (as opposed to motor transport). Of all the ferry companies plying the waters of La Manche,…

The necessity for my New Year’s resolution became apparent several weeks ago. It is going to have to be the avoidance of prejudice. Paul, in his first letter to Timothy, very specifically warns us against favouritism when passing judgement (1 Timothy 5:21). The usual person one favours is oneself, often without taking nearly enough time and trouble to think about other people’s opinions and indeed feelings, which may be hurt. I was harrumphing to an Anglican clergyman friend from the Norwich Diocese about how disgraceful it was that those in charge of the beautiful, numinous and awe-inspiring Norwich Cathedral should have installed a helter-skelter in its nave, back in 2019. He told me I was wrong, and gave several reasons why. The main one was that it encouraged people who…

Liverpool's wage bill SIR: I read in AN Wilson’s column on higher education (January issue) that in 1960 the Professor of English Literature at Liverpool University earned more than the striker of Liverpool FC. This is very probably true, as until 1961 professional footballers were subject to a wage cap of £20 per week. This was overturned in 1961 by a campaign by Jimmy Hill, which has led to the obscene sums that footballers are given today. Yours, Richard Churn, Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire Kind Mrs Charles Wheeler SIR: Shirin Wheeler was Charles Wheeler’s daughter, not his widow (Old Un’s Notes, January issue). Her mother was Dip Singh, whom I remember well for her generous hospitality in Bombay some years ago. My family and I had just arrived in India…

Downsizing Here we go again. Yet another survey – this time by the property website Zoopla – has found that 42 per cent of the over-65s live in a home that is too big for their needs, and that older homeowners have 10 million spare bedrooms between them. Why don’t we do the decent thing, the survey asks, and downsize, so that families can occupy the homes we selfish old people insist on continuing to inhabit? My friends and family are always on at me to consider downsizing and freeing up my home to more deserving, younger people. At the age of 80, why don’t I move to a bungalow in Bicester, they ask, or into a nice retirement complex where I can play bridge and practise chair yoga? Why…

It’s the curry time of year. I launched this season in NeoByzantine style at the Criterion in Piccadilly Circus, which has been joyously taken over by Masala Zone. While feasting on their excellent starters, I realised that, 160 years after its opening, Ranjit Mathrani’s MW Eat Group is not just the ideal heir of the Byzantine Revival but also well suited to the innovation of the Criterion’s founders, Felix Spiers and Christopher Pond. They met in Melbourne during the gold rush. Unlucky in their search for gold and unsuited to sloshing around muddy streams, they launched the Café de Paris there for successful miners to bathe in champagne. Brilliantly entrepreneurial, they were the first to invite out a team of English cricketers, thus paving the way for the Ashes. Following…

We accept that it’s unsafe to use handheld mobile phones while driving and that we can be punished for it. Your eyes maybe on the road but your mind is elsewhere. You can witness this on every city pavement, when other pedestrians, engrossed in hilarious or troubling exchanges, walk right into you, eyes wide open. They can see what’s before them but they're not paying attention to it. But what if they can’t see, because their eyes as well as their minds are elsewhere? Wouldn’t that be even worse? Yet it’s what car manufacturers including Volvo, of all people - are encouraging in their flight from buttons and switches to touch screens. The latest example is the new electric Volvo EX30. I haven’t yet seen, let alone driven, one but…

The bittern (Botaurus stellaris) is an extremely frustrating bird to study. So said David Lodge in his talk on the bitterns at Stodmarsh, Kent: ‘Sometimes, I have come home. The first words to wife: “Bugger the bitterns!’” The most recent (2022) UK ‘booming’ male count was 228 individuals. It is the ‘booming’ mating call that makes the bittern an avian celebrity. The boom explains its Latin name: bos/ox and taurus/bull. Boatum tauri means a bull’s bellow. Today it is invariably compared to a foghorn; in Suffolk, a ship’s foghorn became a ‘sea bittern’. Stellaris/starry refers to its plumage, myriad black speckles on a honeyed ground. The elegance of their breeding plumage made them victims of the 19th-century fashion industry. Their resident number is boosted to 1,000 by winter migrants. News…

Rowley Leigh (p19) set up Kensington Place and Le Café Anglais restaurants. Together with Tom Hodgkinson (p40) on the Idler team, he beat the Financial Times on University Challenge in 2008. Lulu Taylor (p21) is a Sunday Times bestselling novelist, editor and interviewer. Her latest book, The Forgotten Tower, is out now. She lives in Dorset. Simon Williams (p23) was Captain Bellamy in TV’s Upstairs, Downstairs. He and his wife, Lucy Fleming, play her parents, Peter Fleming and Celia Johnson, in Posting Letters to the Moon. Prue Leith (p33) is a judge on The Great British Bake Off. She set up Leith’s restaurant and founded Leith’s School of Food and Wine. Bliss on Toast, her book of Oldie columns, came out in 2022.…

Grumpy Oldie Man An email advocating an iPhone update has arrived from Apple. It arrived a few weeks ago, to be more precise. But I have been saving it, unopened and unread, for a New Year morale-booster. There must be those to whom January is either an active pleasure or a neutral irrelevance, and to them I doff my cap. To me, the New Year is a torment of bleakness and despair; a waking midwinter nightmare when the Godfearing take to slippers and dressing gown, and shuffle aimlessly about an underheated residence questioning, with heightened intensity if less expectation than ever of stumbling upon an answer, the purpose of human existence. This is why I have been husbanding that email. Apple is a vigorous communicator, Sending several weekly emails of…

My name is John Rattigan and I’m a colour-blind artist. Even in ray chromatically challenged condition, I have a fine-art degree and an MA and I taught art for over 30 years. Not in the rarefied atmosphere of an art college, where colour-blindness may not necessarily be a drawback in the world of installation, video or performance-based art, but in the secondary sector with its attainment targets, GCSEs and A levels. As a practising artist, I haven’t taken refuge from the world of colour by turning to sculpture. I’m a painter who uses colour in an unabashed full-on way. There are some common misconceptions surrounding colourblindness. It is very rare to be totally blind to colour; to live entirely in a monochrome world. More often than not, those who suffer…

The Royal Border viaduct bridge, whose 28 arches soar high above the River Tweed at Berwick-upon-Tweed, takes all the plaudits. But meander upstream for a mile or so and you’ll come face to face with an even greater masterpiece and one that warms the cockles of unionists’ hearts on both sides of this expanse of water, which has England on one bank, Scotland on the other. ‘Vis Unita Fortior’ (United Strength Is Stronger) reads a plaque high up on the English side; ‘Vis Unita Fortior’ echoes another on the Scottish side. This is the Union Chain Bridge, which, completed in 1820, was the first iron suspension bridge in the world and so remains the oldest surviving one. ‘It’s right up there with the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, the Golden…

Town Mouse Cities can be dangerous places for a mouse. There are hazards everywhere. As Dr Johnson noted in his poem London: ‘Here malice, rapine, accident conspire Now a rabble rages, now a fire.’ To these ever-present threats, we could add the new motorised menaces that prowl the streets. In this mouse’s words: Now kamikaze drivers cause mouse to burrow-creep And juggernauts unfeeling disrupt his precious sleep. Conscious of the dangers of speed to life, limb and tail, I have welcomed the recent introduction in London of a 20mph speed limit, whether driving a car or riding my bicycle. At first, slowing the car down to 20mph required a bit of an effort. It seemed unnatural. But soon you get used to cruising at a slow speed. It makes driving…

Charlie Taylor, Chief Inspector of Prisons, gave a tribute to his predecessor Lord Ramsbotham at a thanksgiving service at St Margaret’s Church, Westminster Abbey. ‘Stephen Tumim. the Chief Inspector of Prisons, had retired, a successor was urgently sought and the Home Secretary, Michael Howard, wanted someone who would back his tough stance on crime policies. Who then could be better, it was suggested, than a recently retired general called Rambo? ‘And so, in December 1995, he began in the role that was to redefine the next 25 years of his working life. ‘Within days, he set the tone for his tenure as Chief Inspector, leading his team into Holloway Women’s Prison and then, almost immediately, leading them out again - refusing to continue with the inspection until something was done…

In 1980, for one day only, I had an access-all-areas pass to Wormwood Scrubs Prison. Martine Burnaby, in whose house I was lodging, was a prison visitor, a volunteer who would go into the jail and liaise with inmates, represent their concerns to the management and aim to settle disputes. No locked door was barred to her. I was a law student - so she swung it with the Home Office that I could shadow her. It took just a phone call from her; no cumbersome checks or risk assessments. Previously, Martine had taken her friend Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, later editor of the Sunday Telegraph, on one of her visits, during which they went into an isolation unit housing IRA inmates, A few days later, the very recognisable Perry received…

JUSTIN MAROZZI My Friends Viking £18.99 Hisham Matar is the real deal. If you haven’t yet heard of, or read, this New York-born Libyan writer, this is your chance to discover someone who writes like an angel. It will be little surprise if My Friends, his latest novel, wins an award or three. Matar has a habit of scooping them up. Published in 2017, The Return, a memoir that manages to be at once bleak, redemptive, annihilating and uplifting, won the Pulitzer Prize, in addition to a clutch of other awards. In the Country of Men, his debut novel of 2006, was shortlisted for the Man Booker. The Return tells the story of Matar’s real-life return to post-Gaddafi Libya after decades in exile in the West. In My Friends, he…

History The first big exhibition at the British Museum this year (light-fingered employees permitting) will be Legion: Life in the Roman Army. We are promised a show tracing the fortunes of a typical Roman legionary from recruitment to retirement, a career minimum term of 25 years. The legionary in question is, thankfully, not an imaginary Roman to be filed alongside Asterix’s would-be nemesis, Crismus Bonus, or that bane of the modern schoolkid’s Latin life Caecilius, forever sitting in horto while his servus does all the work. No, the curators bring us a real-life legionary, Claudius Terentianus, a collection of whose papyrus letters survives from the second century AD, written to his ‘father’ (who may have been his godfather), Claudius Tiberianus. Terentianus was not one of those shivering soldiers writing home…

It’s a common challenge for actors these days: portray a well-known figure in a drama set in the recent past. Everyone who saw Bradley Cooper’s Maestro in the cinema and then watched five BBC4 documentaries about Leonard Bernstein will have admired the uncanny likenesses. Ditto fans of The Crown. But I’ve just heard a radio play that sets a high bar for 2024. Jeremy Mortimer’s Radio 3 production of Bacon in Moscow tells how the late Francis Bacon’s exhibition in the Soviet capital in 1988 - the first glimpse of Western art the Russians got to see under Gorbachev’s glasnost era - came about. On every count, a thrilling exercise. First, the excellent writer Stephen Wakelarn (one of whose previous radio plays revealed why the late Samuel Beckett married his…

The Oldie cannot let the death of the Pogues’ Shane MacGowan pass unremarked. As his evergreen festive floor-filler - Fairytale of New York - crested the charts yet again in memoriam, it hit me: this is more duet than Christmas choon. As Kirsty MacColl and Shane slug it out, full of piss and vinegar, ‘You’re a bum/ You’re a punk/You’re an old slut on junk,’ I thought - now this is romance. If music be the food of love, then the duet is the sensuous prelude to the feast. Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin’s mouth-breathing, mid-coital gasps of Je t’aime… Moi non plus; Sonny ‘I Got You Babe’ and Cher; Kenny and Dolly declaring they are islands in the stream - all these are date-night bangers, even if Sir Tim…

My wife grows several varieties of dahlia successfully every year. Either they are left in the ground and covered with a mulch after the first frosts, or the roots are lifted and stored in sand over winter. However, there is another use for the roots - which she would not allow, but was favoured by the Aztecs of Mexico centuries ago. They can be eaten. Anyone who doubts the edible qualities of dahlia roots should refer to the Royal Horticultural Society’s book Vegetables for the Gourmet Gardener, in which two pages are devoted to them. They became less popular in Mexico with the arrival of potatoes from South America, But when the plants were introduced to Europe in the late-18th century by the Swedish botanist Anders Dahl, he recommended dahlia…

The year 2024 marks the 50th anniversary of the Good Beer Guide, the Campaign for Real Ale’s annual survey of Britain’s best pubs for traditional, well-kept beer. A stapled, 18-page newsletter preceded it, but 1974’s Good Beer Guide (75p) was properly bound and ran to 96 pages. It also ran into trouble. The entry for Watneys - the Red Barrel brewers of abominable memory - advised readers: ‘avoid like the plague’. Worried about a libel suit, the publisher recalled the first print run, changing the phrase in the reprint to ‘avoid at all costs’. My father, a Cambridge don with a penchant for real ale, was an early devotee, to the extent that the Good Beer Guide - which, by 1977, had grown to 256 pages - more or less…

I’m just back from a trip to San Francisco. It was for a suitably Oldie-style event, my uncle’s 100th birthday, not to be missed. As you might expect, digital life was not much in evidence at the party, but it was in control almost everywhere else. A smartphone is becoming a necessity for travel of almost any distance. When it all works, it’s painless and efficient, I wonder how long it will be before our passports are built into our phones? Surely that’s coming. However, in San Francisco the real evidence of digital advance was on the street, with the fascinating sight of the many driverless cars buzzing around. There were often passengers sitting in the back, and nobody in the front; even stranger, some of them were completely empty,…

IN COMPETITION No 301 you were invited to write a poem called The Cold. I was quite chilly by the time I had waded through the drifts of entries. Rhona Taylor wanted ‘ice-cold - but nice cold, like in Alex!’ Martin Elster wrote in the voice of the tufted titmouse, crying Peter-peter-peter in the cold. Basil RansomeDavies’s narrator celebrated his Uncle Jim, who always fed a cold and always had one: ‘Jim’s cold meant cash was running low/ While fattening up our Jim./ He was a parasite, and so/ The family murdered him.’ Commiserations to them and to Robert Salamon, Christine Acres, Ted Lane, Alastair Carmichael, Mike Morrison and Dorothy Pope, and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25, with the bonus prize of The Chambers Dictionary…

Traffic delayed as car hits hedge Suffolk Free Press Person taken to hospital Wrexham Leader Camber Sands Pontins will not be used to house asylum seekers Kentish Express £15 for published contributions NEXT ISSUE The March issue is on sale on 7th February 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 Annual2024 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…

WHAT WAS the British Berlin Tattoo? In August 1947, the British Army went foxhunting at Berlin’s Olympic Stadium. It was part of the British Berlin Tattoo put on to entertain Berliners and show off the capabilities of the British Army of the Rhine. Thousands of Germans watched military bands marching on the Maifeld, where polo matches and the dressage competition had taken place at the 1936 Olympic Games and the Nazis had held May Day rallies. The 16th/5th The Queen’s Royal Lancers re-enacted an 18th-century cavalry charge in full dress uniform and Scottish regiments performed Highland dances. A stagecoach was held up by highwaymen, and the foxhunting was performed by the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars and their foxhounds. There had been criticism in Britain. MP Stephen Swingler asked how many…

When my best schoolfriend (let’s call her Maria) married many years ago, I was living in Kenya - so I missed her wedding. I didn’t meet her husband with her until about a year later - and what a night that was. It remains memorable as the joyous, laughterfilled recommencement of a deep friendship that endured until Maria’s death a decade ago. Her widower remains one of my dearest friends, and the fact that he and I hit it off immediately undoubtedly enhanced my friendship with Maria. I have met many couples and become - and remain - firm friends with both partners, as I did with Maria and her husband. Yet the older I become, the harder I find it to adapt to friends’ new partners. We all depend…

Most of the time, I have a very easy time of it on social media, with tweeters being nice about my colourful necklaces or glasses, or liking my cooking hacks. But I’ve occasionally had doses of toxic hate. Once because I suggested on Question Time that Laura Pidcock, Jeremy Corbyn’s loquacious supporter, give it a rest so the panel could answer the question, which was about housebuilding. I was accused of being indifferent to the homeless and an uncaring Tory bitch. That’s a bit rich - I’ve voted Conservative only twice in 60 years: once for John Major, in the election when Tony Blair got in, and last time, to my shame, for Johnson. Another time, my son, Danny Kruger MP, who is a Tory, was unwise enough to say…

Mary Kitten s Beauty Tips A woman I have recently made friends with is a proper person. Let me tell you a tale to illustrate this. When Grania (fake name) married her husband, 50 years ago, she inherited a Dame Margaret Rutherford-style formidable aunt, who came complete with bristling beard and moustache. Grama, being a proper person, saw it as her duty to go and visit the spinster aunt regularly, even though she lived an inconvenient distance away. One day, Crania gathered her courage and told the battle-axe, ‘What I’m about to say is coining from a place of love. When ladies get older, they often grow hairs on their face which they can’t see themselves because their eyesight isn’t what it was. But the good news is there is…

Country Mouse I once shared a taxi with Bob Geldof. I don’t recall the whys or wherefores. But I do remember that the problem for Bob, on that particular journey, was not the taxi-driver’s airing of classic taxi-driver’s views, but the views expounded by his fellow passenger namely me. Within a very short space of time, Bob had cottoned on to a truth expressed by my late father, Godfrey, that I am ‘a permanent victim of the idée fixe’. Like a dog with a bone, once I start on a topic, I just can’t give it a rest. And yet I find the chatty habit in others insufferable. The main reason for my unbroken record of not visiting London for three months is my fear of Mary’s unfortunate habit of…

Sophia Waugh: School Days People don’t think much about illness when considering the pressures schools face. And yet it is a real source of anxiety and conflict. The least popular member of staff is the person with the responsibility for organising cover. Those who’ve taken that job soon regret it, and pass it on to someone else as quickly as possible - if only so that people will smile again when they see them walking into a room. Most schools now have members of staff there solely to cover lessons. This is a bonus for the teachers (who always used to take all the cover lessons) but it’s a thankless job. Children cheer when the cover staff arrive, immediately sit in the wrong Seats, do no work and misbehave. We…

The Doctor’s Surgery April is the cruellest month, no doubt, but what is the cruellest disease? There are many contenders for this crown of thorns, and among them must be Parkinson’s disease. Of course, no judgement on this matter can be final, for the many different forms of suffering are incommensurable. A recent paper has suggested that loneliness may be a risk factor for the development of Parkinson’s. The medical records of 491,603 people in Britain aged between 38 and 73 were followed for an average of 15½ years. Of these, 2,822 developed the disease during that period. All the participants were asked at the outset of the study whether they often felt lonely: yes or no. Those who answered yes (18.5 per cent) had an increased risk of developing…

In 1944 I started work aged 15 as a junior shorthand typist in a solicitors’ office. I am now 94 and in a very different world. The following is a satirical evocation of office life in 1944. What I want to say to the boss (but don’t): ■ Don’t telephone when you want to dictate; just press the bell beneath your roll-top desk. Makes me feel important. ■ When dictating, hold a cigarette in your mouth as you mutter. This calls for my specialised form of lipreading and the haze of smoke has an amazing effect on my sinuses. ■ Never make a list of the letters or deeds you wish to dictate before you send for me: erratic stabs at the shoals of letters on your desk will keep…

Sexual harassment at work - is it a problem for the self-employed? Victoria Wood If nobody said anything unless he knew what he was talking about, a ghastly hush would descend upon the earth. A P Herbert Discretion is the polite word for hypocrisy. Christine Keeler It is totally impossible to be well dressed in cheap shoes. A man should look as if he had bought his clothes with intelligence, put them on with care, and then forgotten all about them. To achieve the nonchalance which is absolutely necessary for a man, one article at least must not match. Hardy Amies The things which are common to all (and not capable of being owned) are: the air, running water, the sea and the seashores. Emperor Justinian Your function as a…

Rewind to 2022. It’s season 25 of Silent Witness, and Dr Nikki Alexander (Emilia Fox) is in the Lyell Centre, performing a postmortem. Watching from the gallery is the usual clueless detective, plus hunky forensics expert, Jack Hodgson (David Caves). Whenever he sees a fresh kill, which is more or less every day, Jack licks his lips like a vampire and gives his biceps a little clench. Today they are clenched hard enough to burst the seams of his denim shirt. On the slab is a dead white male in his mid-thirties. ‘The presence of bilateral, periorbital haematomas and a fractured nose indicate a heavy blunt force assault,’ says Nikki, who is loveliness itself. Today her hair is braided in the manner of a Dutch milkmaid. ‘A CT scan indicates…

The Higgins, Bedford, 17th February to 13th October Edward Bawden (1903-89) was not just a true Essex man - born in Braintree, he lived for much of career at Great Bardfield and died in Saffron Walden. He was also a quiet national treasure, whose work is still widely loved. He was a commercial artist in the best sense, producing popular posters, book illustrations and witty advertisements, as well as murals, landscapes and an impressive body of war art. And he was the first - the only? - artist to be made a full Royal Academician under the designation ‘Draughtsman’. He left his archive of around 3,000 works to what was then the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery and the Bedford Museum. That trove is the basis for this celebratory exhibition. The…

Once in a blue moon, Ash Wednesday falls on Valentine’s Day, as it does this year. Decisions, decisions. Sins of the flesh or sackcloth and ashes? No need to choose. Cover both bases with a batch of homemade chocolate truffles and a couple of fiery little salsas that’ll make even the shortest of Lenten commons taste good. Chocolate truffles Roses are red, violets are blue and if you’ve already spent the winter-fuel payment, so are you. Make these exquisite little mouthfuls just before you need them - fresh cream doesn’t keep for more than a few hours out of the fridge. Makes about 1½lb. 500g high-quality dark chocolate (at least 70% cocoa solids) 250ml whipping cream Optional: a dash of strong liquor brandy, whisky, crème de menthe, rum About 100g…

This is Olympic year. The 2024 Games begin in Paris on 26th July, with some spectacular locations in the French capital lined up to stage events. There will be beach volleyball beneath the Eiffel Tower, open-course swimming along the Seine and archery in the Esplanade des Invalides. Plus surfing in Tahiti admittedly less accessible by Eurostar. But it is over the coming months, in the lead-up to the Games, that we will all be able to witness one Olympic tradition which never seems to pall: the relentless predictions of doom, gloom and misery. Remember Athens in 2004? For weeks before, we were constantly told the stadiums weren’t going to be ready, nothing had been built and events would take place on a construction site. Or Beijing in 2008, when the…

Saving for a pension is all very well but, for the average Oldie-reader, it’s something you already know all about or it’s too late to start now. More likely, an employer has been incentivised by the government to get you into a scheme, and you can see why. The more you have in your pension when you stop working, the less likely you are to be a burden on the state in your dotage. Had yon been paying attention (you weren’t), you might have heard the Chancellor mention ISAs in last month’s Autumn Statement. He made some technical changes which need not concern us here - yet few understand how attractive these savings instruments are to anyone who can afford to take a long view, especially as the burden of…

Winter may be upon us, but optimism is the order of the day on this month’s deal - from the US Vanderbilt Knockout Trophy last year in New Orleans. You reach six hearts after a cultured auction and West leads a passive trump. You beat East’s nine with the ten, cross to the queen and return to your ace, East discarding a club. 1. Very skimpy indeed (I would pass). 2. 15-19 and forcing to game, facing a two-over-one response. 3. Showing his delayed (threecard) support. 4. Control bid, guaranteeing a fifth heart. 5. Control bids. 6. Signing off, worried about spades. 7. Concern about spades alleviated. You know West began with (at least) five spades and three hearts. East’s easy club discard suggests a five-card suit. East appears to…

Taking a Walk The nature writer Mike McCarthy knows how to sell a walk. ‘What you’re going to see is a geological frontier,’ he proclaimed, as we motored through the holloways of west Dorset. ‘It’s quite a rare thing.’ We parked at a desolate crossroads high on the downs, close to our destination, Eggardon Hill. It felt as though we had driven miles from Bridport and the coast - but these lanes are tricksy: they slow and lengthen time. So, to my surprise, when we set off walking westwards, there were views of a patchwork of rolling green fields and copses - and also an expanse of platinum on the horizon: the sea. The stormy Atlantic air had the effect of putting on a new pair of glasses. It rendered…

Ask Virginia Neighbour from Hell Q I have just downsized from London into a rural area. It’s been a real trauma, giving up so many treasures, memories and possessions. But I’ve done it - and the first thing I did, once I’d got sorted out, was to ask my near neighbour to drinks. He seemed to be perfectly nice when he arrived (though he stayed a bit too long), but since then he has been positively pestering me. He rings up twice a day, often knocks on the door uninvited, brings me flowers and keeps asking if he can do anything for me - mow the lawn, do my shopping. I have explained I’m perfectly capable of doing everything myself. He has now started writing rather embarrassing poems which he puts…