On Saturday, I went to visit my friend Julian at his allotment. It’s an unpromising scrap of South London tucked in behind a pub; a chaotic patchwork of plots nestling alongside the waterworks in the shadow of the prison. We sat for a couple of hours by Julian’s shed, hemmed in by peonies and ranunculus, …
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, …
My bike is important to me, despite the fact that I occasionally hobble in here in various states of dishevelment after falling off it. It’s never been to Selsey Bill but I have been up to Muswell Hill. For more than a decade, the best bit of my bike has been my saddle. My parents …
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 …
On Monday, I went to a memorial service for a former colleague. These things are often a duty or an obligation, and it’s true that they're seldom an unalloyed pleasure. But this time I really wanted to be there, to honour the person we were remembering. At first, my colleague and I weren't exactly friends. …
I went to a party last weekend, on the edge of Dartmoor. It was brilliant. Lots of old friends, more fun than I thought possible and even better than I’d hoped or expected. There was a cricket match for goodness sake. The party celebrated a combined 100th birthday for the hosts, an 18th for their …
Later on this evening, I’m going to be meeting up with some people I went to school with. There will be some very familiar faces, some I know less well, and more who’ll barely remember me, but the reason I’m going is for the handful I really love. These are my oldest friends, who have …