-an OD of Toughts-

I didn’t binge-watch Guilt . That would imply some sort of lack of self-control. What actually happened is that I watched one episode, thought, “That was rather good,” and then somehow found myself watching another. And another. And before long I was sufficiently invested in the lives of a collection of deeply questionable people who appear to have made bad decisions their full-time profession. Guilt is a Scottish black comedy, although calling it simply a “black comedy” feels a bit inadequate. It is dark, funny, uncomfortable, twisted and, at times, completely bloody bonkers. And I mean that as a compliment. The basic premise involves two brothers whose lives take a spectacular turn for the worse after a rather unfortunate incident. From there, things begin to unravel in that uniquely British fashion where nobody simply admits they've made a mistake. No. They lie. Then they lie about the lie. Then they involve somebody else. Then that person has to lie. And suddenly you have a s...

T here is a peculiar thing that happens when life starts going well. You begin by wanting to make things easier. Then, before you know it, you have spent half your income making sure that absolutely nothing mildly annoying ever happens to you. And this is where things get interesting. Because inconvenience, it turns out, may actually be good for you. I know. Ridiculous. We have spent the last 50 years inventing machines, apps, services and enormous corporations specifically designed to prevent us from having to do anything ourselves. You don't need to cook. Someone will bring food to your door. You don't need to walk. The car is outside. You don't even need to go to the supermarket. Someone will bring the supermarket to you. And if the delivery driver takes seven minutes longer than expected, civilisation is apparently on the verge of collapse. The Great Human Quest to Do Absolutely Nothing Money is brilliant. It can solve genuine problems. It can stop you worrying about wh...

There are two ways of looking at Homer’s Odyssey . The first is the traditional approach: a heroic tale about a Greek bloke called Ulisse who spends years trying to get home after a war, encountering monsters, witches, angry gods and various other inconveniences along the way. The second is to look at it properly. It was, quite possibly, an extremely long Mediterranean wine tour. And frankly, this makes rather more sense. Because if you plot Ulisse’s journey across the Mediterranean, you begin to notice something rather interesting. The places mentioned in Homer’s epic correspond remarkably well with some of the ancient wine-producing regions of southern Italy and Sicily.  So while everyone else was concentrating on Cyclops and Sirens, it seems Ulisse may simply have been following the wine list. The original Mediterranean road trip The Greeks were very good at travelling. They didn't have motorways, airports, or a Ryanair app telling them that their gate had changed to somewhere a...

There are many great discoveries in human history. Fire. The wheel. The internal combustion engine. And then there is the moment someone put an onion in a pan and realised that food could smell considerably better if you stopped being impatient. This, essentially, is the soffritto. In Italy, it is usually a simple combination of onion, carrot and celery, gently cooked in olive oil until the kitchen begins to smell like something worth eating. It is the beginning of ragù. The beginning of sauces. The beginning of stews. The beginning of an enormous number of meals that would otherwise be considerably less interesting. But here's the thing. It isn't just Italian. Almost every serious food culture on Earth has looked at a pan, some fat, and a handful of aromatic vegetables and thought  "Right. Let's make this taste better." The ingredients change. The fat changes. The cooking time changes. But the idea remains remarkably similar. And frankly, this is one of the great...

Paris has a problem. It is one of the most beautiful cities on Earth, packed with magnificent buildings, extraordinary art and enough restaurants to feed the population of a small country. And yet finding somewhere to eat without selling a kidney can sometimes feel like a competitive sport. Particularly in the 16th arrondissement. This is the sort of Paris where the buildings are elegant, the streets are immaculate, and the price of a sandwich can make you briefly consider eating the pavement instead. Then along comes Bistro Blandine. It is on Avenue Kléber, just a short distance from the Arc de Triomphe, which means you can spend the afternoon looking at one of the world's most famous monuments before discovering that the best thing you've seen all day might actually be a plate of beef. This is not a restaurant trying to reinvent French cuisine. Thank God. There are no foams. No mysterious gels. No chef explaining that the three peas on your plate represent "the emotional...

There are two types of restaurants in Venice. There are the ones designed for tourists, where the menu has been translated into six languages, the waiter has the emotional warmth of an airport security officer, and somewhere in the kitchen a frozen pizza is being quietly defrosted. And then there are places where actual Venetians still eat. These are considerably harder to find. Venice has become so spectacularly overwhelmed by visitors that finding a restaurant genuinely used by locals can feel like finding a functioning parking space in central London. You know it must exist. You just don't know where. But a short walk from Piazza San Marco, hidden beneath a bridge, is Trattoria La Rivetta. And this is not some newly invented "authentic Venetian experience" created last Tuesday by a marketing consultant. It has been here since 1973. More importantly, it has been serving gondoliers for generations. Now, if a gondolier chooses to eat somewhere, I tend to take notice. Thes...

Drug-driving is becoming a bigger problem. But perhaps the answer isn’t another police press conference. There is some worrying news coming from Malta’s roads. And when I say worrying , I don't mean the usual Maltese sort of worrying, where someone has parked his BMW diagonally across a pavement, and everyone spends twenty minutes discussing it on Facebook. This is rather more serious. Drug use among young people is becoming an increasingly worrying problem, and there is growing concern about people getting behind the wheel after taking drugs. Naturally, the first response is predictable. More police. More roadside checks. More testing. More penalties. More powers. And, presumably, another government press conference in which six people stand behind a table while one of them explains that "the authorities are taking this matter very seriously". Which is reassuring. Although I'm not entirely sure what the person who has just taken cocaine at 2am in Paceville is going t...