Lucy Mangan

I have a small number of favourite columnists, Lucy Mangan being one of them. Here's a snippet typical of her humour:

"...why not take your holidays separately?

This has been my parents' practice for the last 30 years. My father likes to go to Italy and spend his days sitting in the sun drinking wine, taking strolls around art galleries where attractive middle-aged women mistake his innate taciturnity for charming English reserve, or spending a few ruminative hours in Florentine duomos, contemplating the storeyed centuries of human history rising around him and the mysterious evocation of the infinite wisdom and mercy of God that surroundings of such grace and beauty inspire. My mother, meanwhile, likes to go to Garstang and drink gin with her sister until her head falls off. "