The latest Madness of Crowds column:

My kids as a rule don’t say the cutest things, but the weirdest. As a result, I’ve learned to strip-mine ruthlessly their inchoate brains for ideas – which is why, presumably, they can’t wait to leave home. My youngest is still only ten, so he can’t get away, and I’m glad of that because he’s proved especially helpful in furnishing topics for this column. Yesterday morning, on our way to his school, as the bus grumbled along the Wandsworth Road, I asked him if he could come up with anything for this week’s Madness of Crowds. He thought for a second or so, then said: “What about all those shops that open knowing that they’re going to have to close down again?”   More...

The latest Real meals column:

For those of us not so much bitterly disappointed by the Obama presidency as predictably disillusioned (I knew he’d gone to the dark side when he snuggled up big-time to the lokshen soup lobby), the GOP primaries present a somewhat ambivalent spectacle. On the we-like side there’s the spectacle of one clown after another performing political pratfalls, but on the we-no-like recto is inscribed the saddening truth that to win against any of the current contenders – Gingrich included – would be like beating a dolphin at table tennis: it’ll say nothing whatsoever about the incumbent’s record except that he can, at least, hold a bat.   More...

The latest Madness of Crowds column:

To Mortlake Cemetery for the funeral of an elderly acquaintance – it was only my second funeral in the past year or so and I was struck by the sparse turnout compared with the previous one, which had been for a considerably younger person. But then it’s difficult to reach a ripe old age without the windfalls having rotted away already, while the funerals of the young have at least this small compensation: they’re mostly pretty well attended, unless the deceased was especially loathsome.   More...

Here’s the latest Real Meals column in the New Statesman:

Well, here we all are – this is the last Real Meals of 2011 and I for one would like to go out with a bang, rather than a whimper. My charming editor at the Statesman suggested that I might like to write something “Christmassy” but why would I want to do that? I made my feelings about Christmas dinner perfectly clear in this column at about this time two years ago and they haven’t changed one jot during the intervening months. Frankly, I’m about as likely to set out on the highways and byways of Albion as a sannyasin as I am to begin at the age of 50 rhapsodising about a meal I’ve never ever enjoyed or even seen the point of.   More...

I meet Francis Kerline for lunch at the Terminus Nord, opposite the Gare du Nord in Paris. Francis, who is himself an accomplished writer, has been translating my books into French for 18 years now – and peerless work it is, too, taking my flocculent verbiage and shearing it into beautifully coiffed French. Back in the day, I always felt he looked at me much as Salieri does at the puerile and scatological Mozart in Amadeus: as if he couldn’t quite believe he was spending his time on works produced by such an idiot. Still, as we’ve grown older together, I detect a certain mellowing.   More...

Periodically throughout my working day the retro-Bakelite phone in my writing room starts into life with a loud drrring-drrrring! Which is strange: the number is unlisted, the line has a call-blocker on it, hardly any of my friends or even family has the number, and over the years I have done my level best to discourage anyone who does from dialling it.

I’ve had cause before to remark on the oddity of the phone era, when, between roughly 1960 and 2000, anyone in the country felt a perfect entitlement to start whispering into anyone else’s ear unannounced while the other person felt duty-bound to listen. The mobile phone may be a scourge, but thank God it put paid to that mind-bending mandatory intimacy with the masses.   More...

I’ve been coming to the small Devonian port town of Dartmouth for 20 years. When the kids were still in scale with this dinky ville, we’d rock up for a few summer days to coarse fish for crab from the harbour wall, ride the vintage steam train to the beach at Paignton or take the river cruiser up the Dart to the crystal-dangling delights of Totnes. But the bulk of my time in Dartmouth has been spent alone and off season. Courtesy of friends who own a cottage wedged up one of the town’s vertiginous wynds, I am able to retreat there to write.   More...

I remember 31 October 2001 well enough. I’d just flown in to Minneapolis and was staying at some spooky chain hotel or other. There was a sign on the reception desk that read: “We regret we’re unable to offer candy to our guests as we would normally do, because of the current terrorist threat.” The background rumour was that al-Qaeda was widening the ambit of its evil to include poisoning Hallowe’en treats – all across the US already traumatised kids were being urged to stay home, lest they get a gobful of lethal Islamofascism. In truth, there was an aptness to this febrile myth, as Hallowe’en is now so entrenched in the American collective psyche as an antic pagan counterpoint to the society’s workaday religiosity. Americans take their Hallowe’en way seriously, and in the larger cities it’s an excuse for all sorts of adult devilry as well as the usual juvenile japes.   More...

The sweet pork with savoury rice (or potatoes) at £3.40 doesn’t seem so bad to me, especially when it’s perfectly tasty and comes piping hot on a damp, autumn day. I could’ve had spaghetti bolognese for the same price or spicy chicken and special rice for 10p less. I could even have gone for the more Dickensian lamb’s liver, mash, steamed cabbage and onion gravy – a snip at £3. And there were several healthy options, including a cheese or ham salad with a jacket potato and coleslaw, weighing in at £3.16.   More...