Well, here we are. Sixty-eight. Not one of your grandstanding ages. Not a nice, neat multiple of ten, not a coming-of-age, not an “over-the-hill”—though, let’s be honest, the hill is well and truly behind me now, and I’ve been strolling down the other side for a good while. But sixty-eight, I think, is a respectable sort of age. It’s solid. It’s lived-in. It’s like a comfortable old armchair—the stuffing’s gone a bit, but it still holds together, and when you sit in it, it feels like home. The thing about birthdays is that people expect you to look back. To tot it all up, weigh your successes against your failures, and see if you come out ahead. And I suppose at sixty-eight, I’m happy to say I do. Just about. There have been some personal lows—times when life gave me a bit of a kicking and didn’t even have the decency to let me get my breath back before the next one came along. But there have also been highs, and I find those tend to linger longer in the memory. At sixty-eight, the...
For the second time in my life, I have bought a new car. I say that with the kind of pride usually reserved for first-time parents or those who manage to grow tomatoes in hanging baskets. Most of my twenties were spent driving my dad’s cast-offs — including a white Ford Escort estate, which felt less like a car and more like a penance. I ask you: a white Ford Escort estate. It was less “motor vehicle” and more “mobile filing cabinet.” Then came a series of small, second-hand affairs: a green 2CV that got me through a year in Stratford — though the first time I pressed the accelerator, it went through the floor like a cartoon. That was followed by a bright orange Mini called Sebastian who gamely carried me through late-night rehearsals and even later-night chips in Soho. After Sebastian, there was Tristram Polo — a tank by comparison. Tristram was the scene of a minor disagreement with the law over the alcohol content of a bottle of Pinot Grigio. He was sold off quietly and cheaply, li...
I’ve always read in bed. Always. For as long as I can remember, really—since before the age when memories begin to settle into things you could recount. It’s never felt like a habit. More like an instinct. A deeply ingrained, highly enjoyable ritual, as natural as brushing your teeth, only infinitely more rewarding. In the little back bedroom of my parents’ house—next to their shops in the Soviet Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire—my first lamp stood on a marble-topped wash-hand stand. The only other furniture was my bed and a chest of drawers that looked like it had given up trying. The lamp itself was a silver lady, balancing on one leg, arm raised to the heavens, in the manner of the Rolls-Royce Spirit of Ecstasy, only this one had a perforated purple lampshade and an air of resignation. It was by her light that I discovered my first loves: Enid Blyton, the Fife-Finder Outers, the Seven Seeker Uppers, and Alfred Hitchcock Investigates—anything in a series. I was mad for a serie...
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