The first thing I hear when I wake up is the sea, which is so close to our house that its reflections from the sun dapple our bedroom ceiling. – Craig Brown
People think of waves as going in an orderly crash – whoosh – crash – whoosh, but in fact there are lots of different crashes and whooshes, all at different stages, and all going off at the same time. – Craig Brown
Like many men who play tennis, when I hit a ball into the net, I tend to look daggers at my racket, reproaching it for playing so badly when I myself have been trying so hard. – Craig Brown
When cars honk and hoot and drunks squeeze out of car windows and scream, you can be sure that football is in the air. – Craig Brown
When I was young, I used to expect Parisians to wear little black berets, to bicycle about with strings of onions around their necks, and to brandish long sticks of bread, just like they used to do in school textbooks. – Craig Brown
Over the years, the idea seems to have grown up that brightly coloured flowers are vulgar, and that the only flowers to be admitted to the walled garden of good taste are discreet and pastel-hued. – Craig Brown
Children are perfectly happy to sit next to spiders; it is only grown-ups who are frightened away. – Craig Brown
As life goes on, we accrue more and more loseable objects. Providence dictates that objects that are too large to lose, such as houses, always come with tiny little keys, specially designed to give you the slip. – Craig Brown
As a rough rule of thumb, I would say the smaller the pond, the more belligerent the fish. – Craig Brown
There’s nothing wrong with procrastination. Or is there? I’ll leave it to you to decide, but only if you have the time. – Craig Brown
Many people see the chance to eat something for nothing, without the need to cook or wash up, as the great consolation of going out to dinner. But they forget quite how difficult it is to talk to a stranger and eat at the same time. – Craig Brown
A decent beard has long been the number one must-have fashion item for any fugitive from justice. – Craig Brown
I have twice met Jeffrey Archer, and on both occasions was struck by the firmness of his handshake – and the way he looked me straight in the eye, too. – Craig Brown
You might think that religion was the one area in which professional jealousy would take a back seat. But no: ecclesiastical memoirs are as viperish as any, though their envy tends to cloak itself in piety. – Craig Brown
Comedy is the slave of time. What seemed funny then is unlikely to seem funny now, just as what strikes us as funny now would not have seemed funny then. – Craig Brown
There are few things quite so effortlessly enjoyable as watching an eminent person getting in a huff and flouncing out of a television interview, often with microphone trailing. – Craig Brown
Looking back, some of the happiest moments of my childhood were spent with my arm in packets of breakfast cereal, rootling around for a free gift. – Craig Brown
It is hard being a football loather, a football unfan. I sometimes feel as lonely as the sole survivor in the last reel of a Zombie film, as, one by one, old friends reveal themselves, with their glassy stares and outstretched arms, to have succumbed to the lure. – Craig Brown