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To cheer myself up, I think of other people’s dreadful marriages
When I encounter the words “my wife” or “my husband”, I get, in some dark moods, a choking sensation beneath the breastbone.Na-na-na, can't hear you: wife or husband does not always mean the wind...
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A day spent sole-searching affords me an unlikely victory
My motto, when it comes to buying shoes, is “as rarely as possible”. A shoe will have to be hanging off my foot and making flapping noises as I walk before I buy another one. Neigh bother: an Indian...
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Terror of standing on chairs is why men of a certain age put off changing the...
Nicholas Lezard's Down and Out column.Photo: Getty There has been a photographer in the Hovel, because the Sindie wants to have pictures of the kids and me to illustrate the big Father’s Day piece I...
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I wear my egg-and-bacon tie with pride – MCC membership is my last link to...
My politics may place me firmly on the left of Labour, but confess to owning an MCC tie and people start looking at you in a whole new light.Full English: the MCC's chief executive (centre) and others...
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My nerves can’t cope with three random midsummer encounters in the space of...
I’d long planned to go up to the Heath on Midsummer Night to frolic under the stars.Midsummer revelry at Stonehenge. Photo: Getty Midsummer’s Day was unusual. That’s good: a usual day, these days,...
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Those most offended by John Adams’s Death of Klinghoffer haven’t seen it
It's a case of knee jerk by proxy, says Nicholas Lezard.Pathos: Tom Morris’s 2012 production for ENO. Photo: Rex Features Here we go again: another controversy about The Death of Klinghoffer. This...
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How my literary life became an ever-lengthening index of people to avoid
With the editors to avoid and the editors to endure, book publishers’ parties can be a minefield – thank heavens for the Pogues’ accordionist...Latest squeeze: James Fearnley of The Pogues performs in...
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Most writers’ pay doesn’t amount to a hill of budget baked beans – or even a...
Nick Lezard's Down and Out column.The writer's lot is not a happy one. Photo: Getty Great news: professional writers’ average pay has now reached levels that the award-winning children’s book author...
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Nicholas Lezard: A trip down memory pain on the way back from the Heath
Nicholas Lezard’s Down and Out column. Lazing on a sunny afternoon: summertime on Hampstead Heath. Photo: Getty A call from an 0845 number. I ignore it at first but it turns out that someone in Miami...
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My tobacco of choice is “rich and mature” – which is more than you can say...
Nicholas Lezard’s Down and Out column. Zimbabwean tobacco growers and merchants inspect tobacco at the start of the annual selling season in Harare, 2010. Photo: Getty I like to think that it takes a...
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I think I might be dead – it would explain a lot about the past seven years
A friend comes round with some old copies of the New Scientist and I read a piece about Cotard’s syndrome, whose symptoms present as the conviction that you are dead.Dead man walking: a man dressed as...
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The night the Estranged Wife and I decided to take a look at our investments
I’m not planning on retiring, but sometimes the world has other ideas, so it is wise to make plans.A few columns of meaningless names and numbers pop up on screen. Photo: Getty Once again, we come to...
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I’m lying in bed with a cold – but at least I have access to limitless toast
Nicholas Lezard’s Down and Out column. Limitless toast: nine out of ten offices don't have toasters. Photo: Getty And so one struggles on. At the moment, this is not as much fun as usual because I...
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This week I am trying to get inside the head of a young woman who’s new to...
Learning that someone is new to the city you live in calls for reassessments of it; or even assessments.Soho’s characters have gone – what now? Photo: Getty So the new inhabitant of the Hovel is here,...
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It’s not paranoia that makes me walk down Paddington Street looking up to the...
Nicholas Lezard’s Down and Out column. Gentler times: a greengrocer on Marylebone's Paddington Street in 1975. Photo: Getty I think it was Arbuthnot who complained to Jonathan Swift that Curll’s...
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My marriage has become a kind of devo max and our children are the Forties...
We’re formally under a union but technically going about our very different lives.David Cameron carves up the UK. Photo: Getty Well, that was a bit of a let-down in the end, wasn’t it? I mean the...
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Nicholas Lezard: It’s one thing to have a reputation, another to have one...
All over London, men who should know better are going on the lash and then claiming that they’d been with me, simply in order to remove all notions of their own agency or responsibility.Booze run:...
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I used to chop logs like a man. Now I stay in bed and it’s exhausting
Nicholas Lezard’s Down and Out column. He's a lumberjack... A man in Ukraine goes to chop wood. Photo: Getty I appear to have taken to my bed for a week. It seems like the sensible thing to do when...
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The eldest has left for university – so I’ve finally grown out of avoiding my...
Nicholas Lezard’s Down and Out column. Red alert: a traditional telephone box in a snowy London. Photo: Getty A call from my mother. In days gone by I would routinely let her leave a message on...
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“Don’t say anything nasty,” my son pleads, as we head for a university open day
A couple of years ago, I’d gone with his big sister to another university, where a lecturer had mispronounced one of the most prominent authorities in her discipline and I had got into a fight with...
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