Nothing will put a dent in the notion of sentimental value faster than the guys who specialize in house clearances. Two of them arrived yesterday morning, as promised. The boss was little, his assistant a huge man with hands like a bunch of bananas. They zipped through the apartment as I explained t...

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They buried my father today, and it was OK. Well. It was a lot better than I feared, but probably worse than he feared. His fears no longer matter. That’s the thing about funerals. They are perhaps the only one of life’s rituals that matter not one bit to the central person. Funerals are for the living.

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Start: 95.4 Last week: 188 This week: 90.1
Tuesday 9 January: Back on home turf for a few days now and the bad news is that my regular scales are definitely up on those of The Squeeze. I seem to have gone up 2kg in the past month, which is less than the mythical 7 pounds that the average person (...

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So here’s the spooky story, continued. It was supposed to be just a walk. In fact, I had joked with friends about the North American habit of calling an English “walk” a “hike”. But we were both wrong. It was more than a walk. And it was quite a hike. I created a set of photos on Flickr, and...

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On Saturday night, I finished reading David Denby’s article in the latest New Yorker, on the transformation of cinema viewing, and fell asleep. On Sunday night, with supper, I picked up where I left off, with a newly published Primo Levi story called Bear Meat. Spooky to the max, as we used to say...

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