Stephen Jardine

5 days ago | scotsman.com | Stephen Jardine

Until I was 10, I believed my father had been shot by a Japanese sniper. It made sense. He’d served in the Far East during the war and had a wound on his hand as a souvenir. I never doubted the story he used to tell, despite the fact that his service on an aircraft carrier would have made that one remarkable shot. Then one day my mum tired of the old joke and the truth emerged. The mark was actually the result of my dad trying to remove a wart one day with a cigarette.

1 week ago | scotsman.com | Stephen Jardine

This weekend I’m in London. There is a lot to see and do but one place you definitely won’t find me is in the Darwin Brasserie in the Sky Garden skyscraper. Fun as it is to watch people teeming like ants in the streets 36 floors below, I’m not prepared to pay £15 for a seat by the window. That’s before you pay £25.50 for your salmon fishcake (without chips). Charging to guarantee a certain seat is the latest trend entering high-end hospitality.

2 weeks ago | scotsman.com | Stephen Jardine

When Armageddon comes, only two things will probably survive. One is the tardigrade, an indestructible eight-legged bug that endured a trip into space as well as enormous pressure in the deepest ocean. The other is advertising material from Richard F Mackay. Despite never actually buying anything from them, “the country’s largest family-run complete house furnisher” regularly send me letters detailing their amazing bargains. I’ve asked them to stop but they persist.

3 weeks ago | scotsman.com | Stephen Jardine

It didn’t start well. My first experience with alcohol produced my first hangover. It turns out many cans of cheap cider on an empty stomach at a tender age are not a good idea. After that, I avoided Britain’s oldest drink for a long time. Along the way, I learned moderation but also the joys of beer, wine and various spirits. Cider was left in the past, like acne and the skin on custard as school dinners, a rite of passage but something I really didn’t want to encounter again.

1 month ago | scotsman.com | Stephen Jardine

It was the saddest thing I’d ever read. Grimmer than my ‘Day in the Life of Gregg Wallace’ article. Worse even than children’s books by David Walliams. A different level of bleak. In a newspaper feature about the changing face of motorway service stations, the writer spoke to passing customers. Families with kids who needed the loo, lorry drivers stopping for fuel, business travellers grabbing a quick sandwich. And an elderly couple who drove from their home to the same spot for lunch every Sunday.