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The Confidence Game: The Psychology of the Con and Why We Fall for it Every Time by Maria Konnikova Canongate, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 338, ISBN 9781782113881 This book, the [...]

My contempt for vaping deepened as vaping contraptions became more ostentatious and people started hanging them from lanyards around their necks. When Trev starting vaping, I lost what little hope […]

After lunch on Christmas Day my father always stood at the sink in his apron and yellow Marigolds and did the washing-up. Rolling up his shirtsleeves the gentleman's way, as [...]

Good morning, sir! How are you today?' 'I'm well.' 'Thank you so much, sir. Welcome.' This is a typical exchange of greetings between a passenger and a member of staff [...]

At the end of the affair she gathered together everything of mine that was lying about in her flat, packed it all into the suitcase I'd left behind, and left [...]

My boy's mother's husband was plastering a wall last week when a sack of lime fell off the scaffold and landed on his dog, which was lying at the foot […]

One of the main drawbacks to living on the south Devon coast is the number of drivers on the road who are over 80. I'm not saying they shouldn't be […]

The moment the announcer stated that the 9.05 to Newquay was leaving from platform four, virtually the entire crowd on the concourse at Paddington station arose like a Zulu impi […]

I open my eyes. It's morning. I'm lying on a sofa in a sitting-room I don't recognise. This'll have to stop. Apart from anything else, it's getting boring. I'm reflecting […]

The most contentious aspect of our relationship was my habit, in her words, of using her flat like a hotel. I'd turn up unexpectedly, she says, kick the cat, break […]

When I was six or seven I went up to London with my father in his car. As we passed through Whitechapel in the East End, he pointed out a […]

My sister was round at our house at the weekend, trying to give up cannabis after 35 years. It's her idea but she was absolutely furious about it and her […]

The first day of June. A golden evening. I've been shopping and bought myself a pair of flip-flops. Fifty quid for two footprint shapes of recycled rubber, two straps and […]

On the last day of the football season we were away to Manchester United and we wanted at least a draw to be safe from relegation. Lose, and we were […]

My father was a tyrant at the dinner table. A family member briefly leaving the table to refill the water jug, perhaps, would be furiously denounced as 'hopping up and […]

On Thursday last there were two guided twilight walks on offer to the Dartmoor tourist. One was A Bat and Moth Walk, the other Antiquities of Dartmoor. High Dartmoor's stark […]

Of the 35 wedding guests, one other person, I noticed, was wearing a suit. On the strength of our being the only men in suits, I went over as the […]

Sharon's chucked in her job as a child protection officer and gone to live in Birmingham. She's met a chap there who measures up to her ideal, and she wants [...]

The intricate cunning with which the rebel faction of my mind tries to convince Captain Conscience that alcohol and me are the greatest of pals, and that we must spend […]

I'm back in the gym. I put it down to the lighter evenings and the rising sap. It's been so long since I last worked out that I had forgotten […]

We love this old house and can't imagine living anywhere else. But needs must and we've finally bitten the bullet - the house is on the market from today. Twenty […]

Since my boy passed his driving test, just one month after his 17th birthday, I no longer drive the ten miles to his mother's house to pick him up at […]

At Cheltenham this year I was once again a guest of racing tipster and bon viveur Colonel Pinstripe. The Colonel is famous for his rambling, gossipy, sexist, often libellous telephone [...]

We didn't get to Sheffield till after dark. But when the Renault Megane drew up as we waited beside the station taxi rank, the boredom and discomfort of the interminable [...]

Supporting West Ham this season has been so full of drama and surprise, it's been like living in the Book of Revelation. A brief summary. Last season the newly promoted [...]

For the six weeks that I was in Las Apujarras, I bought provisions from the backs of rural delivery vans. The arrival of one of these vans, one for bread, [...]

During the last week of my stay in the Alpujarras, the almond trees flowered. It happened almost overnight. There was an exceptionally warm afternoon and evening, and next morning the [...]

Las Alpujarras A succession of loud explosions reverberated across the ravine. I went and stood at the door of the shepherd's hut and looked out. A dense fog had descended. [...]

Las Alpujarras There's a man in one of the high mountain villages who lives with a cow and spends much of his time studying the cloud formations. By all accounts [...]

Las Alpujarras In 1919 a young outer satellite of the Bloomsbury set called Gerald Brenan came to Spain looking for somewhere quiet to read and recover from the shellshock he'd [...]

Las Alpujarras When I was in Spain at Christmas, I bumped into the guide who had led the walking tour of the Sierra Nevada that I'd been on nearly a [...]

The check-in queue was constrained by portable barriers into one of those snaking, pointless and unexpectedly intimate queues that are all the rage at British airports. Every time I made [...]

Winston Churchill's secretary John Colville records that one of the first signs that the great man's phenomenal memory was beginning to fail him, and that dementia was setting in, was [...]

To escape the foul weather and the inevitable family bust-ups over the Christmas period, I holed up in a tiny rented cottage in the Sierra Nevada in Spain until it [...]

My deadline was past. I could imagine the editor drumming his fingers impatiently on the desk. I had the article all written up on my handsome new laptop computer, however. [...]

It must be very dispiriting to be born into this world and find that you are an intensively reared hen. But maybe, if a representative of the human race explained [...]

The ticket office window was open for business, but the woman was out the back performing a delicate operation with a stick of purple lip-gloss. The imminent arrival of a [...]

I studied the seating plan of the Club Taurino of London's 47th anniversary dinner without recognising any of the other names. (I'm a relatively new member. ) The CTL is [...]

During the war, our village was one of a cluster of four coastal villages that Churchill loaned to the Americans to practise on prior to the D-Day landings. The villages [...]

The last mile or so back to her flat was punctuated at 50-yard intervals by speed bumps purposely designed to punish drunks in late-night cabs. I had my head between [...]

It's ten o'clock on a Saturday night. The custody centre at Charles Cross police station, Plymouth - normally the second busiest in Britain (after Glasgow) - is unusually quiet. The [...]

'We're getting closer to a new vaccine. Can you help finish it off?' Below this, a red, white and blue archery target with the word 'Flu' superimposed across the bull's-eye. [...]