They say ignorance is bliss and I’m starting to believe it. For a journ-alist by trade, this is a humiliating volte face. I always thought knowledge was power, that forewarned was forearmed. I based my career on sticking my nose into as many people’s business as I could in the belief that the truth would

When was the last time you told a lie? Honestly, think about it. Perhaps you told a lie without even thinking you were lying, and with no feeling of guilt. It would not be entirely surprising. Not telling the truth is so ingrained in our national life, and such a popular, everyday expedient for achieving

While I wait for my house sale to go through, I am staying with a friend in the country. He and I have been watching the early days of Donald Trump on the television news in his cosy farmhouse snug. From the relative safety of Surrey, it all looks so remote. But we have had

‘Isn’t it marvellous that the Royal Family only give each other one small gift?” said my friend the other day, before adding: “So classy.” Meanwhile, another friend posted on Facebook that he and his partner no longer “do” cards, and instead purchase a hamper which is given to a dog “who is all alone at

Coincidences are God’s way of remaining anonymous. I’ve always liked that saying. Whenever an atheist assaults me with the usual lament – “If God exists, prove it. If God exists, how come he has never shown himself to me?” – I always tell them I find it astonishing they can’t see what’s staring them in

“Let me get this straight,” I said to the mortgage broker. “In order to borrow less, I have to earn more?” That was, she confirmed, the gist of what she was saying. She was apologetic but the bottom line was immovable. The lenders, those invisible men and women in grey suits in a boardroom somewhere,

Over French cuisine in a very fancy Birmingham restaurant, I got chatting with a former Tory minister at a Brexit dinner. I had been invited to the event at Tory conference as a supporter of the campaign to Leave the EU, but after some initial pleasantries about how unexpectedly well that was now going, the

On the hottest day of the year, a friend and I were lucky enough to be having lunch by a rooftop pool in a swanky private members’ club. The sound of splashing water and the chatter of a glamorous crowd made for a pleasing enough way to spend a sweltering August day in London. That

Six months into marketing my flat, I can no longer bear to read the feedback from viewings. This is because I have had a long stream of unpleasable young idealists poking around, being snooty about absolutely everything. It’s a lovely apartment, and I’m gutted to have to leave it to be nearer the horses. But

Whichever result we have woken up to this morning, the EU referendum has been a campaign that has set neighbour against neighbour. How the politicians now work to unite the country when they have alienated so many people with the tactics they have deployed, I do not begin to know. All I do know is

Our connection to the virtual is now more immediate to us than what is happening in the real world around us. This was proved to me beyond a shadow of a doubt the other morning when, as I stood on platform two at Balham station, the train doors opened to reveal a mother talking on

The scare tactics of the EU referendum campaign have left me curiously unmoved. Those who insist it will be “apocalypse now” if we dare vote against the idea of being ruled from Brussels have deployed such mathematical gymnastics as make their arguments barely worth listening to. George Osborne takes the prize for bare-faced cheek by