Country Mouse: Hell is other people at breakfast. By Giles Wood

Thanks to the miracle of tech, my wife can send me regular updates of her participation in a house party in a fishing lodge in Scotland. Amazingly, not just photographs but short film clips are transmitted almost in real time, showing what my father referred to as ‘Piccadilly Highlanders’. I was instantaneously transported from the dank and silent cottage into a drawing room with tartan sofas, a crackling log fire, and full ashtrays, along with occasional tables with glasses quivering from heavy nearby footfall. No kilts, but a large mixed gathering of old and young was cavorting, capering, and whooping to the deafening soundtrack of whining bagpipes. In the past, I might have spotted myself lurking at the back of the room, looking shifty, my lips set in a nervous rictus of a smile. That was in the days before I resigned from house parties on grounds of nothing more...

I’m afraid this isn’t one of our four free articles available in full, which are set out in the first two rows of the ‘Magazine’ page.
Please click here to find them.

To buy a digital version of this issue for just £2.99, click here