Singleness, paradoxically, is not a single thing. There are varieties of singleness. Once upon a time in the olden days, for example, everybody seemed to have an unmarried maiden aunt. My maiden aunt was Auntie Grace. Grace Moore was born when Queen Victoria was still alive and lived to be 93. Once, many years ago, …
Some families are born of Kings: Danny Dyer’s, for example. Some are born of D-Day heroes. Mine, on the other hand, is born of ditch-diggers and shoemakers. Nevertheless, even ordinary families have their legends. And there's a legend in our family that I ruined my brother’s life. But this isn't a story about me tying …
My house is full of boys and I have nowhere to go. There are only three of them, but they are an uncontainable, terrifyingly extensive physical presence. My stepsons, Sam and Linus are 6’2” and 6’4”. My boy Silas, all wiry climber’s limbs and freakishly long fingers, is no bigger than me, but no less …
When I was a boy I went to school with boys in an environment where the cutting comment and the snide remark were regarded as the highest form of wit, or even art. Also when I was a boy, I could not dance. Which put me in a very dangerous place in relation to snide …
Valentines Day. The day for the loved-up and the loving. The day when hope and longing coalesce in an inescapable, incandescent burst of desire. The loveliest, sappiest, soppiest, most intolerable day of the year. On Valentine’s Day we talk about true love but half the time we don’t know whether it’s true or not - …
January is awful. It’s cold. It’s miserable. And above all it’s dark. It’s a month when I don’t see daylight at home between Sunday afternoon and Saturday morning. It’s a month when my students get ill and don’t come to class. It’s a month when the next month is February, which, to be perfectly frank, …
Like many of us, I imagine, I’ve chosen to season any residual Christmas jollity still hanging around in the New Year with a healthy dose of relentless misery. I’m speaking, of course of, Andrew Davies’ brilliant adaptation of Victor Hugo’s crushingly grim Les Misérables. So far it’s been a grindingly joyless miracle of latent and …
Good morning, Paddy, and a happy Boxing Day to you all. I’m delighted to meet you although, to be honest, the circumstances could be better. I’d really rather be in bed right now and yet, somehow, here I am, like Good King Wenceslaus, looking out on the Feast of Stephen. The trouble with the day …
Two things happened on Monday. One was that men came to deliver our new washing machine. And the other was that Stan Lee, the Father of Superheroes, passed away at 95. I’m not comparing the gravity of these events, but bear with me… Our washing machine lives in the cellar. But the washing machine men …
My daughter Esther is not one to waste words. We were talking recently and I made a passing comment on the joys of being in the full flowering of middle age, which, at 54, despite my longing still to be young, is exactly what I am. Esther raised an eyebrow and coughed. 'What?' I said. …