Just to check that I can get pics up onto my blog - will circulate the address of this and you can all log on.

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British Airways: A Masterclass in Mediocrity

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We’ve just returned from holiday. And if you asked whether I’d go away again tomorrow, I’d say yes—not for sun or sea or spiritual replenishment, but because I’d need another holiday to recover from the one just gone. Not the destination. Madeira was, in a word, sublime. Mountains above clouds, sunsets like oil paintings, a sort of dignified warmth that didn’t singe the scalp. Even the famous wicker toboggan ride—lunacy in a linen hat—was delightful. No, the trouble wasn’t the island. It was the journey. And by “the journey,” I mean British Airways. Though if we’re being honest, British Airways has become more of a concept than a company—a sort of floating rumour of service with the occasional aircraft attached. We stayed overnight at Gatwick. Business class—our little indulgence. Not for the champagne, but in the faint hope someone might actually answer a question. At 6.25pm we arrived, to find a queue that could only be described as biblical. If Moses had parted these people, he’d...
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Tick

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In my grandparents’ shop in the Soviet Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire, debt wasn’t so much a matter of money as a sort of permanent fixture — like the weighing scales or the flypaper. Nobody thought of it as debt. It was just “tick,” and everybody had some. The shop was the beating heart of the village, and part of that was letting people have things on trust until Friday. Mrs Whittaker, say, popping in for her twenty Park Drive, would be told by my mother — or my grandmother, depending on whose turn it was — “Oh, and there’s six and seven on your slate.” If Mrs Whittaker paid up, fine. If she didn’t, my mother would sigh in the manner of someone taking on an additional personal bereavement and say, “All right, love. But I will be putting your name in the window.” I never recall her actually doing it, though the possibility was enough to keep the village in a state of mild moral vigilance. In a mining community where everybody knew everybody’s business — and some of their unde...
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We're All Going On A Summer Holiday

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It’s that time again: the holiday. Or a holiday, I should say. I hesitate to make it sound more momentous than it is. Holidays for me have never been great set-piece events, carefully rationed out in annual quotas, as they are for most respectable people. I’ve always taken the view that if an opportunity for a few days away presents itself, it should be grabbed — like a reduced pork pie on a supermarket counter. That said, my partner Brayden has a proper job. You know, emails, policies, and somebody called Deborah in HR who approves his holiday requests. So we can’t just swan off as and when. We have to pick our moment, like a vicar choosing his text. This year, aside from a quick week in New York which barely counts — more an exercise in walking and ordering coffee wrong — we’ve not been away. So we’re off next Saturday. Madeira. Now, Madeira — if I’m being honest — has always existed for me primarily as a punchline in Up Pompeii — that wonderful seventies sitcom where Frankie Hower...
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