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As drivers desert the city I find myself clinging more and more to my father’s belief that a man without a car is not really a man.

Giles Coren

The way I write possibly shouldn’t be turned on serious things.
GILES COREN

Possible Serious Thing Turn Way Write
When I was 16 my dad taught me to drive too. Furiously. Unable to understand why I couldn’t already do it – for driving, to him, was innate in the human. It was what separated us from the apes. And from the French, who weren’t much good at it either.
GILES COREN

Country Drive Either Furious Good Innate Separate Taught Unable Understand
I sleep nine hours every night, I have a little nap after lunch, and, if I’m going out for dinner, I sneak in an extra one before I head out.
GILES COREN

Dinner Every Extra Head Hour Little Nap Night Nine Out Sleep Sneak
I was 41 when I became a dad. I try to be as much fun as my father was, but I’m at home more – and less of a disciplinarian.
GILES COREN

Alone Become Dad Father Home More
I’m just a bit frustrated that in London we make such an effort to ape the New York restaurant scene. I have good friends who ape the New York restaurant scene and do it brilliantly. None of them would claim that the primary reason for going to their restaurant was the food.
GILES COREN

Ape Country Effort Frustrated Line Restaurant Scene
I think unionization of labour is a great thing.
GILES COREN

Greta Labor Thing Think Unionization
I come from a country where there’s a reputation for bad press.
GILES COREN

Bad Come Country Press Reputation
I have a tailor now, I have a doctor, a wine merchant, a jeweller, a gardener, a cleaner, and a nanny. It was clearly ridiculous that I did not have a hairdresser. So I got one.
GILES COREN

Clearly Doctor Gardner Hairdresser Many Merchant Ridiculous Tailor
My dad Alan loved Westerns and we watched them together when there wasn’t much else on TV. I had toy cowboys I’d call Richard Widmark or Gregory Peck and we’d restage the Battle of the Alamo.
GILES COREN

Battle Call Country Cowboy Dad Else Love Much My Restage Together Watch
He was a staffer at Punch but in the evening he wrote columns for the Evening Standard and The Times.
GILES COREN

Column Evening Punch Staffer Standard Time Wrote
Have you ever been to the countryside? It’s so small. And there’s nothing to do.
GILES COREN

Been Countryside Do Nothing Small
When I tell people I spent almost a year in Paris, I know they imagine something out of a Woody Allen movie, which it wasn’t, of course. I was just working in a clothes shop, but I was aware that it was exciting.
GILES COREN

Cloth Excite Imagine Movie People Shop Sometime Work Year
Where my dad taught me everything about writing, Graham Paterson, who gave me my first job at The Times, taught me everything about journalism, which is that it’s no big deal, and it’s more important to have a glass of wine.
GILES COREN

Dad Everything First Job Laugh Person Taught Time
I tried to leave the city once, for one of those other places. And, my God, the silence. I could hear myself think, and found that I wasn’t. I am not designed to be lonely as a cloud.
GILES COREN

City Cloud Design Ear God Leve Lonely Myself Place Try
We built walls around them with slits through which to fire arrows at scary, cross-eyed rural people, and brought our food and family inside because they were the safest places to be.
GILES COREN

Arrow Brought Build Cross Family Food Inside People Place Rural Safety Scary Wall
When I write I inhabit a personality that is and is not me.
GILES COREN

Inhabit Me Not Personally Write

As drivers desert the city I find myself clinging more and more to my father’s belief that a man without a car is not really a man.

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As drivers desert the city I find myself clinging more and more to my father’s belief that a man without a car is not really a man.

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