FraserWords

As the clock struck three, I whistled down the garden for the dog. Three o’clock means it’s time to collect the boys from school, and the dog always comes along for the ride. As ever, she came trotting round the corner of the house to the garden gate, but less eagerly than usual: twitching in […]

‘A generation of unruly toddlers’. Thus screams the headline in the Daily Mail. Imagine! Unruly toddlers? Whoever heard of such a thing? Mine, of course, sat when they were told, waited patiently, said “please” and “thank you”, never ran or shouted or fought or jumped or kicked or repeated any of the bad words they […]

“Baldrick,” Lord Blackadder famously lamented, “the path of my life is strewn about with cowpats from the devil’s own satanic herd…” Characters like Blackadder were loved because they so beautifully captured the frustrations we all feel as we negotiate the devil’s cowpats littering our path. I forgot my youngest’s daily dose of asthma prevention this […]

No, I’m not celebrating. I loathed her, but I don’t wish anybody dead. I’m not mourning, though.   Margaret Thatcher did more than any other politician in the history of this country to hurt and to divide. She will be remembered as a figure who was adored by the haves, by the sort of people […]

What a party week it was for those vandals at the gates. They must have been doing whatever it is that vandals do when they can’t quite believe their luck. Normally, when their hordes descend, naked bodies painted in garish woad, waving their great big weapons, townsfolk flee – or at least lock the gates. […]