That's Life

All Things Bright and Bee-utiful
That's Life

All Things Bright and Bee-utiful

So, what did you do in your summer holidays?    I rescued 217 bees. I was going to add “from a fate worse than death” but actually, no: just from death. Which seems bad enough, really; considering all the problems the poor things are facing these days.    I saved them in Britain. From my mother-in-law’s pool, where dozens ditched after their internal GPS’s went on the fritz (“Turn around where possible!”), and where they faced either drowning or poaching,…

September 13, 2017

The PM's Pantsuits
That's Life

The PM's Pantsuits

Rarely do I talk politics in this column (apart from the family kind, obviously). I may feel like having a rant about something, or someone, in January, when I’m flailing about for ideas. But will it (or they) still be…

May 3, 2017

Inconvenient Truths of Convenience
That's Life

Inconvenient Truths of Convenience

If you had told me 30 years ago that in the future my big shop would be delivered every Friday afternoon, between 5:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., by a man called Barnaby, driving something called “Cabbage Van,” I would have…

December 17, 2016

Give Peas a Chance
That's Life

Give Peas a Chance

MY SON HAS GONE over to the dark side. The dark green, leafy side. Yes, he’s become a vegetarian.He announced this momentous news on New Year’s Day—about ten minutes before we were due to tuck into a standing rib roast,…

November 8, 2016

That's Life

Walkies!

Dog walks come in three flavours. The good. The bad. And the ugly.Pretty much all my walks before I moved to this country were, I realise belatedly, of the first variety. Strolling through the Botanical Gardens at sunset, our German…

May 15, 2016

That's Life

That's Life! Hip-hip Hair-ay!

  Beards are big at the moment in the UK. I don’t mean big and bushy (although certainly some of them are). I mean big news. When I first started work in London, they were banned in our office. Not…

December 1, 2015