Standing in the offie last night I witnessed a happy interchange between the proprietor, who I assumed to be from Pakistan, and three, blonde, giggling customers who I assumed to be Polish. The proprietor had very little English and the Polish girls hardly any at all, yet they all seemed to get along just fine. Of course, I doubt these are the kind of “skilled workers” who, the Prime Minister announced yesterday at the TUC conference, will henceforth have to learn English before they’re allowed to permanently settle in Britain. For a start, the new rules only apply to those from outside Europe, and I doubt the offie proprietor pitched up at immigration with a business plan in broken English: he’s somebody’s son, father or husband.

Evening Standard, Journalism | No Comments »

A Q&A about Will’s home town, from the Evening Standard, 8.11.01

Evening Standard, Interviews with Will, Journalism | No Comments »

Glencoe. It’s late August but already there’s a hint of autumn in the air, along with the droplets of smirr and the midges dancing between them. Further south the heather is still in full flower, but up here in the central Highlands, the stark triangles of the mountains are at first tawny, then swathed in grey mist, then tawny again. I unload the car and pitch the tent, while the small boys head off to explore the riverbank. I want them to fetch firewood, but they return empty-handed: over the summer the campsite has been picked clean, bucolic louts have even hacked at the living alders and birches.

Independent, Journalism | No Comments »

It’s the time of year when we forego the pleasures of the beach in order to visit Dr Thurm Angstrom, in his claustrophobic office at Reading University’s Department of Comparative Environmental Science. Regular readers of this column will be familiar with Dr Angstrom, whose laughable excursus, Sweaty Hearth: Transliterating Domestic Space in the Age of Climate Change, was one of the great publishing failures of last year. An initial print run of 100,000 copies, printed on non-biodegradable polyurethane sheeting, were instantly remaindered then dumped off the coast of Cornwall by the psychotically depressed publisher.

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“Today I made the ascent of the highest mountain in this region, which is not improperly called Ventosum. My only motive was the wish to see what so great an elevation had to offer. I have had the expedition in mind for many years …” So begins Petrarch’s justly celebrated account of his ascent of Mont Ventoux, a peak at the west end of the Luberon massif in Provence.

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