Last year, I did a Bad Thing. It started as a Good Thing, but like so many Good Things, it ended badly: I set the wrong programme on the washing machine. Now, I am the washer, dryer and putter-away of washing in our house. I change the beds, pair the socks and fold the pants. …
I drove across South London with my son Silas last night. I did not distinguish myself on the journey. Before we had got through Brixton it had become apparent to me that everyone else out driving that evening was an idiot; was thoughtless; was incompetent; was to be derided. I’m a terrible judge and cars …
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 …
I spent Wednesday this week with some of my oldest friends, Nick and Kate, and Kim. These are friends I grew up with, went to school with, friends I still love forty-odd years later. I don’t see them as often as I’d like but sometimes we still need each other. And you all, you lovely …
I’ve been thinking about remembering. I flatter myself to think that I have a good memory, for the useless as well as the useful. Sometimes they’re the same thing. For instance, I once won £20 from a quiz machine at Heston services on the M4 for knowing which sport is associated with the Drysdale Cup. …
Like most English people, I'm excellent at saying sorry. Sorry is almost never the hardest word. It’s a piece of cake. I can do the unnecessary sorry when no-one is upset. I can do the polite sorry that suggests someone else’s fault is my own. I can do the ridiculous sorry which means that something …
Since I came off the bike last week, I’ve been very sore. Shaken and stirred. The timing has been bad. The Easter break is hardly finished, and let’s face it, getting injured or sick after the holidays is such a cliché; it’s like saying ‘the cheque’s in the post’. Yeah, right. And because it’s a …
We all do bad things. We hurt those we love and we’re all familiar with the sensation of trying to make up for it. That action, atonement, making amends for a wrong, is some of the hardest work we ever have to do. I have attempted atonement in many ways, I’ve confessed, apologised, performed acts …