Laurie Graham

An early night when we had expected a late one. The Abbey Theatre’s production of The Government Inspector was so dire we felt compelled to activate our ejector seats at the end of Act I. On paper it looked like a winner: a play by Gogol adapted by Roddy Doyle. So where did it go wrong? Well, everywhere, actually. The casting…

  All that’s left of my birthday cake, very kindly baked for me by my step-daughter Kate. My regular reader may remember that I make a ridiculous fuss about my birthday, particularly for a woman who’s reached an age when she should be happy to let it slip by unnoticed.  It’s my mother’s fault. Birthday-wise my childhood was a…

No, not Donald Trump. But this was the best image I could find of a hatless man in a gale. My theme is tradition. In particular the song which to all intents is  –  or rather was  – the national anthem of Yorkshire but which a measly 10 percent of recently polled Yorkshire schoolchildren had even…

  I’ve been encouraged to continue my (probably futile) campaign against automated supermarket checkouts by the way my regular checkout lady remembered a) that I’d been on holiday and b)where to. I now make it a rule to choose a human over a machine on all possible occasions. However… the lure of Internet shopping is very powerful. …

  Mr F has his best buddy coming to stay this weekend so I guess there’ll be some Guy Stuff going down. PSA levels discussed, electric sanders compared, tennis games of yesteryear revisited. I don’t want to get in the way so I thought I’d go off and do some Girl Stuff. The question is, what?…

    Who pooped on the rug? That’s the question before us. The cleaners at St Paul’s say someone did and I’m sure it wasn’t the Bishop of London. The Occupy-As-Near-As-We-Can-Get-To-The-Stock-Exchange spokesperson swears it wasn’t any of them. Who, then? Some agent provocateur from Fox News? I fear we may never know. At Occupy Dame Street in…

I realise this is getting repetitive. At this rate Robbing Hood of Canterbury will soon have featured in as many of my posts as Her Non-Royal Fergieness, but I have to add my voice to the many who’ve  suggested that the Archbishop shut up and put his own crumbling house in order. I haven’t been to…

 Thursday morning Mr F and I are off to Venice to attend the customary pre-pantomime bonding weekend. Only eleven weeks till curtain up. Erk. Where did that year go? I’m a bit concerned about our luggage. Not its weight but its bizarre mix of contents that would take some explaining. There are two pairs of fairy wings, for a start.…

The only heat in this igloo till Friday when the boilerman cometh is that provided by a rather sulky peat fire so I’m keeping warm by a) spending as much time as possible outdoors and b) cooking up a storm. Option b meshes very well with some upcoming catering requirements: a houseful of guests at the weekend, preceded by a…

I love stories like this. At the World Scrabble Championships in Warsaw this week a Thai contestant accused his British opponent of stealing a G and hiding it about his person. He demanded that he be taken to the (G)ents and strip-searched. But the jud(g)es said, ‘Naah. (G)et a life, why don’t ya.’ There was a £20,000 prize at stake but…