Laurie Graham

  This is my poison of the moment: iced espresso. And not even homemade. I recently discovered that the bar at Treviso train station sells three kinds of iced coffee to go, each delicious in its own way and no doubt full of hidden sugar but hell, who ever heard of a comfort food that…

Our cleaning lady called me at the 11th hour 59th minute to say she’d snafu’d her diary which meant she couldn’t come at 1 o’clock yesterday and would 3 o’clock today be okay. Well actually, no it wouldn’t, because we have friends coming up for afternoon tea and I hate having to shout over the noise of the…

  This morning, after I’d carried home two monster bunches of sunflowers, a kilo of peaches, a bag full of mussels and enough toilet paper to get us through the next six months I realised how idiotically happy it made me to close the front door and know I need not leave the building again for 24 hours. ‘But wait’, I hear…

You’d never know it from my home page, but I have a new book out next week. LIFE ACCORDING TO LUBKA feels like it’s been a long time arriving. First there was the year I lay fallow after my publishers declined to offer me another contract. It happens. Fate smacks you round the head with a wet towel and…

We’re now into Week 3 of Mr F’s latest hospital adventure, three weeks in which I’ve learned to make it up as I go along. Particularly the nights. I started off sleeping in my own bed, with the phone by my pillow. Not good. Forty miles is too far away when hell breaks loose. So…

I know I sometimes beef about this city: when I can’t get my jacket out of Maximum Security Dry Cleaning because the owner has gone on vacation for three weeks; when it takes me an entire day to untangle one thread of Italian red tape. Last night I had a reminder of how good life is…

It’s two years, almost to the day, since I met Raia. She was one drop in the flood of women who come to Italy from Eastern Europe looking for work and I was interviewing for a live-in carer for my mother. Raia got the job, and for the remaining six weeks of my mother’s life she cared for her…

So it’s Tuesday afternoon and behind me on the day bed in my office there is a heap of unwearable tat from which I have to find an outfit for A Special Occasion. Tomorrow morning I fly to London for a lunch with the literary great and good, organised to herald the June publication of my…

The prisoner riot at HMP Ashwell has been brought under control after 22 hours. No casualties apparently, but 75 percent of the prison is wrecked and we all know who’ll be picking up the tab for that. Reasons given for the riot breaking out change every time I read the news. Some reports say the…

Okay, hands up, who has had enough of Russell Brand, Ofcom and the BBC? I must now ask the forebearance of my American readers (and I know you’re out there) while I indulge in some strictly British complaining. But here’s the story. Russell Brand is a highly paid paid performer who, last winter, along with…