You would be forgiven for thinking that your wood pulp top is sustainable. But you might be surprised to hear just how many forests are being felled to make it
You might think that wearing a top made from wood pulp would give instant eco-credentials – it is renewable, biodegradable, and, having once been a tree, it has soaked up some carbon along the way. What’s more, it’s not plastic. This is why many brands are opting for viscose, Lycocell, acetate and modal – soft, silky, semi-synthetic fabrics made from tree-pulp – as an apparently more sustainable option.
Except that the chances are that your wood-pulp top may not be so green. “Deforestation continues to be a problem,” says Nicole Rycroft, who founded Canopy, a Vancouver-based NGO, 10 years ago to help protect ancient and endangered forests. The NGO’s initiative CanopyStyle focuses on fashion. “It’s 2024 – surely we are smarter than mowing down 1,000-year-old trees to make T-shirts.”
Do you have a friend you contact only when you need to be mean-spirited? Or someone you would categorise as a chaos friend? If not, you just might be one ...
The New York Times recently explored “the vexing problem of the ‘medium friend’”: people who aren’t your ride or die, but more than mere acquaintances. How much of each other’s bandwidth should you take up? Is there an imbalance in how you perceive your friendship?
I am less interested in the problem than the expression (and the man in the article who, mind-bogglingly, ranks his friends in a spreadsheet). We are increasingly attuned to the importance of friendships for our wellbeing and becoming more thoughtful about how we make and maintain them. Perhaps it is time to try labelling friends, like plastic jars in tidy people’s pantries on Instagram?
For 15 years I read the books, took the courses and downloaded the apps to try to become a better person. None of it helped
I was in my mid-20s when I fell into one of the most toxic relationships of my life. I remember buying my first self-help book, which promised I could be healed of anything if only I banished my limiting beliefs. I devoured it in days and even though I was still the same depressed, broke, single mother I had been when I picked up the book, that didn’t matter. I was hooked.
Over the next 15 years, I bought hundreds of self-help books, courses and apps, and tracked down every self-styled personal improvement guru on TikTok and YouTube in the hope that they could teach me how to become happier, more confident and more lovable. I internalised messages, such as: “Stop being a victim to take back your power.” I even dipped my toe into manifesting and hypnosis: “Start thinking you are slim and healthy even though you probably need to lose a few pounds and have a chronic health condition.”
Emily Goddard is a production subeditor at the Guardian and a freelance writer
Got a beauty dilemma? Our expert is here to offer advice. This week, Joanna wants to know how to look after her skin
Sensitive skin is almost the norm these days, and, as dermatologist Dr Sam Bunting explains, a common culprit could be our skincare regimes: “Some people have underlying concerns, like rosacea or eczema, but the most common explanation is using too many products that weaken the skin’s barrier.”
There are active ingredients in everything from face wash to SPFs, and “advice” often comes from voices on social media who don’t know how they should be used safely. “TikTok is great for spreading ideas but lacks the depth of longer-form content to explain how to build an effective skincare routine without doing harm,” says Dr Bunting.
When Fiona Burke saw the shocking images in lockdown, she knew she had to help. Now she spends four months each winter volunteering on the border, helping migrants who are battling the odds
When travel resumed after the first pandemic lockdown in 2020, Fiona Burke, who was 60, boarded a plane to Austin, Texas. She was one of the first post-Covid volunteers to arrive at a migrant centre for people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the US-Mexico border. “Stuck at home during lockdown and seeing images of children in cages, I felt compelled to help,” says Burke.
This idea of helping others, she believes, was drilled into her from a young age, growing up in Ireland and attending a Catholic school. “I am not a practising Catholic and have rebelled against the church in many ways but the nuns had a very big influence on me, subliminally. I always wanted to help people and we were fed that message a lot,” she says. This idea informed Burke’s first career as a Montessori teacher before she moved into a finance job later in life.
What can we learn about style at the UK’s biggest music event? Chain belts are back, leopard print is a neutral – and Lidl is the biggest label right now
The only thing that unifies fashion at Glastonbury is the need for sensible footwear: no other festival is as much a walking holiday as it is a great day (and night) out. But other than that, all bets are off. From kimonos to fancy dress, these were the big trends this year.
Tributes pour in for former sheep farmer who broke record for most peaks climbed in a 24-hour period three times
Tributes have poured in for the veteran fell runner Joss Naylor, known as the “King of the Fells”, who has died aged 88.
Naylor, from Wasdale Head, Cumbria, is famous for breaking the record for most fells climbed in a 24-hour period three times. He also ran the fastest known times on the Three Peaks, Welsh 3,000ers and Pennine Way.
The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts
My 13-year-old daughter just came to me and said: “I have a much longer tongue than my friends. Does that mean I have more taste buds?” I don’t know who else to ask; can the readers help? David Wynne, West Sussex
Post your answers (and new questions) below or send them to nq@theguardian.com. A selection will be published next Sunday.
Should you struggle on when you’re really not feeling it? As I’ve learned, sometimes it’s much better to ditch your plan
I don’t record every single run that I do, so I can’t tell you precisely how often I have laced up my trainers, or how far they have taken me in the last 10 years. But I track enough to know that I have run more than 1,849 times and 13,948km. That’s 8,667 miles, or about a third of the way round the world. Go me! If I wasn’t trying to eat less sugar, I would give myself a biscuit.
After all that sweating and chafing, you would think I’d have it down pat. I would have my pre-run pee, head out of the door and simply stick one foot in front of the other until I had finished whatever distance I had set out to do.
Since the pandemic, remote properties have been marketed for off-grid living. But a life spent gardening and eating cormorants is not for me
I have just been to the Hebrides, because trudging across tussocks in the rain is my ancestrally transmitted idea of fun. The weather was fine, actually, and the midges hadn’t reached peak summer blood lust, which meant we could indulge in that universal holiday activity: fantasising about living in the destination.
On one walk, we stumbled across the perfect beachfront cottage, utterly isolated, accessible only on foot or by quad bike. Was it the perfect end-times home, we wondered; was there enough growing land, a fresh water source, high ground for spotting marauding – possibly mutant – attackers?
It felt selfish, but at home I couldn’t finish a thought without being interrupted by my kids – so I packed my bags and headed to the coast
As the windscreen wipers cut back and forth, and my house disappeared in the rear-view mirror, I wondered if I was going to cry. I tried reminding myself that I was on my way to do something lovely: I’d booked a three-night stay at a hotel in Devon to work on my novel: my first ever solo writing retreat.
I was driving away from a world of chaos, leaving my seven-year-old weeping at the front door, my nine-year-old worrying about a science project, my mother-in-law unexpectedly in hospital, and my husband juggling it all.
What does it really mean to be mixed race today? When Nicole Ocran met Emma Slade Edmondson they discovered an instant bond in their shared experience
Emma Slade Edmondson and Nicole Ocran are doing what they do best: riffing. Theirs is a comfortable, free-flowing conversational volleying, the result of countless hours spent together recording their award-winning podcast, Mixed Up. Ocran is logging in to our interview from her bedroom in Croydon; fellow Londoner Slade Edmondson from Paris. After brief introductions, they quickly find their rhythm, talking – as they so often do together – about the experience of being mixed race.
“I came to the podcast totally unsure of myself,” Ocran is explaining, by way of introduction. Her co-host nods in agreement. “I was sensitive to other people’s reactions towards me and worried about what I could or should say and where. It was such a rare thing for me to open up about being mixed. So often, in the spaces I’m in, it’s met with some pushback, judgment or dismissal.”
Most UK children have their own phone by the age of 11. But what if we didn’t give them one? A group of parents wants their kids to enjoy a phone-free childhood – and their numbers are growing
Last year, Daisy Greenwell and Clare Fernyhough, longtime friends who have eight- and nine-year-old daughters, began having drawn-out conversations about smartphones. Rumours were swirling that children in their daughters’ classes were asking for their own and both Greenwell and Fernyhough were apprehensive about the knock-on effect. If their daughters’ friends owned smartphones, wouldn’t their daughters eventually demand them, too? And what might happen then? Talking to the parents of children who already owned smartphones only helped to increase their concern. “They told us about kids disappearing into their screens,” Greenwell said recently. “They don’t want to hang out with family any more. They don’t want to go outside.” A local teacher told Greenwell he was able to speak with his daughter only when the wifi was turned off. “And these are the lighter problems,” she said.
Neither Greenwell nor Fernyhough wanted to buy smartphones for their children until they turned 16 (preferably they wouldn’t own them until much later). But they could feel pressure mounting. In the UK, 91% of 11-year-olds have a smartphone – it became common remarkably quickly for children to be given a phone when they began secondary school – and 20% of children own them by the time they are four. (The average age for a UK child to receive their first smartphone is around nine.) With grim acceptance, secondary school parents told Greenwell, “It’s the worst, it’s so, so bad, but there’s no choice” – they couldn’t find a way to prevent their children from having something all of their friends already owned. Both Greenwell and Fernyhough felt trapped; for their daughters, secondary school loomed on the horizon. “We thought, ‘What can we do about it?’” Greenwell told me. “Shall we not get one? But what if everyone else gets one and our children are the only ones without?”
A great homemade pickle goes a long way during the summer months
All those laid-back summer lunches, the salads and cold cuts, smoked fish and simple tarts seem to cry out for a crisp, sharp accompaniment. The answer in this house is a tangle of bright young vegetables that has been left in a sweet and salty marinade. A pickle to bring out at will – I keep mine in the fridge – to complement whatever else is on the plate.
I take shavings of new season carrots, chunks of cucumber and sliced, white-tipped radishes and dress them with a little sauerkraut, juniper berries, rice wine vinegar and fennel seeds. The sharpness they bring is refreshing and the crunch of raw vegetables is always welcome, but especially at a sunny summer’s lunch.
From watching his father star in Lloyd Webber’s mega-hit in futuristic 1980s Japan, to taking his own family to its reboot in London this year, writer Johny Pitts recounts how Starlight Express has been a thread in his life that has also charted his changing perception of the world
If I had to choose a cultural artefact that most underpinned my 1980s childhood, it would be the Andrew Lloyd Webber mega-musical Starlight Express. The show is around the same age as me, and I’ve come to think of it as the prism through which it is possible to unpick more than my own memories, but the dreams and nightmares of the decadent decade that gave birth to it.
When Starlight Express launched in 1984 at London’s Apollo theatre, the world had never seen anything like it before. A truly immersive experience, it involved actors on roller-skates racing through and around the audience in a purpose-built auditorium, and broke ground with its diverse casting, at one point hiring more Black actors than the rest of the West End combined. James Baldwin was often backstage to visit his friend Lon Satton, a longtime cast member, and another member of the cast, Jeffrey Daniel, invented the moonwalk that Michael Jackson made famous (MJ was also a fan of the show, and visited on more than one occasion).
Take a nostalgia trip at a newly-opened hotel in the bohemian heart of the French capital
A visit to Paris’s fifth arrondissement can make you feel unusually nostalgic in the current climate. Home to the Sorbonne, student-filled cafés and all-round Rive Gauche cool, it’s a world away from France on the brink of change. Also known as the Latin Quarter, le cinquième has ready supplies of retro charm and specialist shops to browse and lose yourself in.
On an early-evening wander, I come across a shop on rue des Écoles that sells mandolins and a rare bookshop on rue du Cardinal-Lemoine with a window display of ironic protest material, including a copy of the Watergate Cookbook. Near the Seine, you’ll find the Jardin des Plantes botanical gardens and the Natural History Museum, all just a stone’s throw away.
It was – I thought – a fairly sweet piece about my son’s occasionally remarked preference for his mum, and initial reaction from readers was very positive. But, in the darker corners of the internet, weird men were frothing over my act of unforgivable treason. They pounced upon the concept of a ‘lesser parent’ – a term specifically relating to myself, as even the most cursory read of the headline or article would suggest. To them, however, I had maligned all dads, and men, as part of a sinister campaign of ‘misandry’, a word which was soon being thrown at me with wild abandon.
Choose carefully and you will be rewarded with just the right amount of sweetness
Years ago, my friend Charlotte posited this theory that she had come up with: when people get out-of-the-blue foot injuries (ie not from playing sport or jumping out of planes) it’s their body’s way of telling them to slow down, when they haven’t listened to any of the cues beforehand. Ever since, I’ve thought about this when people have had unexpected foot injuries and, after some gentle interrogation, they tell me they were stressed/busy, etc. Highly scientific.
I was thinking of this, and all I had to do, in a fog of panic and dread, just before I took a step down into the garden to hang out the washing and turned my right ankle 90 degrees to the left. The body always wins.
Interiors trends are all very well, but this is a horrible time to be a renter
There was an interiors trend recently that saw people buying shower curtains printed with grand scenes of glamour and escape, and pinning them to their fence or bedroom walls. One was a lifesize picture of a manicured English garden, another of a winding cobbled path leading off into a lush green distance. Somebody hung a curtain printed with a window just above their bath, the window appearing to open on to a scene of blue and exquisite tranquillity. Someone else printed a huge photo of their childhood garden to hang opposite the sink in their kitchen.
I sifted through the various online responses to this trend, which ranged from outrage (at the laziness of not growing one’s own garden) to mockery, in order to work out why these shower curtains made me feel so terribly, doomily sad. On the surface, the trend should please me. Because, I am a person who loves all that stuff, all that fakery, all that razzmatazz, but it quickly hit me that the reason I felt odd about these trompe-l’oeil walls was because they expressed, on white hanging plastic, the impermanence of a home. Few people are willing to invest hours of time and cash in a garden they might have to leave at a few months’ notice simply because the landlord wants to increase the rent; far simpler to pin up a picture of one.
The naturalist gets up early to enjoy a busy day with rugby, canoeing, a picnic and waterbirds
Up early? We have three small children: our twins are four and Logan is six. I get up early every day, absolutely not on purpose. At 5.30am they climb into bed, clambering all over me. I make up a story about them being travelling adventurers until first light.
Sunday breakfast? Banana pancakes with yoghurt and fruit. I have five frying pans and I’ll often make the mix the night before. The kids’ capacity to consume pancakes, commensurate with their bodyweight, blows my mind. They will eat half an elephant’s worth of pancakes, while I have a very strong coffee.
Morning routine? All three of the children, including our little girl, go to the local rugby club, where I played for 15 years. I volunteer as a kids’ coach now. Every Sunday, 70 to 80 kids run around like crazy people learning the game. It’s tremendous fun.
Sunday outing? We live on the Thames. If it’s a nice day, even in the middle of winter, we’ll pack up a big canoe with a lovely picnic of sandwiches and hot chocolate and paddle upstream to a beach on the riverside. As we drift, we’ll spot kingfishers and great crested grebes. The twins know the names of more waterbirds than your average adult. Sometimes it can be an expedition that lasts three or four hours. My kids start to go a bit bonkers if they’re caged up inside for any length of time. They need to be outside.
Sunday entertainment? My wife, Helen [Glover, professional rower], and I are quite militant about TV. Screentime is something we don’t do unless we absolutely have to. When we get home, we’ll play board games or do other creative projects, – mega drawings on rolls of wallpaper – or we’ll conjure up our own games. We’ve been playing lots of blind man assault courses recently.
Any time to yourself? No. Helen is often away – at the moment she’s training for the Olympics, so there’s no respite for me from the kids. It’s exhausting, but Sunday is my favourite day of the week.
Early night? Yes. My kids are terrible sleepers. They go to bed at 7pm, but don’t usually get to sleep until 8.30pm. I spend most of that time tidying up, and by 9pm, I’m out cold.
Travel-sized products make summer holiday packing a breeze
Many people find packing beauty products for travel a bit of a nightmare. You start to realise how much stuff you use on a daily basis before you even leave the house. Perhaps it’s time to scale back because, let’s face it, does anyone really need a choice of nine lipsticks and five serums for the sake of options? Well, actually, probably a beauty editor (it’s the job), hence we end up carting around everything and the kitchen sink. Decanting your products into smaller containers (Flying Tiger is a good place to get these) helps. But if you can’t be bothered with all that then get yourself minis, aka travel-sized products. They make packing a breeze and won’t weigh you or your luggage down. Their benefits, however, extend beyond travel – it’s an excellent way to trial a product without committing to a full-size option. And it’s much easier to carry around, say, a mini dry shampoo to zhoosh up your hair when you’re going out straight from work, than to lug around its cumbersome 200ml sister.
1. Living Proof Perfect Hair Day Dry Shampoo £14, living proof.co.uk 2. Tatcha Luminous Dewy Skin Mist £23, tatcha.co.uk 3. Westman Atelier Petite Baby Cheeks Blush Stick £23, cultbeauty.co.uk 4. Murad Environmental Shield Essential-C Cleanser £15, johnlewis.co.uk 5. Hair By Sam McKnight Sundaze Sea Spray £14, sephora.co.uk 6. Dr Barbara Sturm Glow Drops £45, spacenk.com 7. Fresh Kombucha Facial Treatment Essence £34, fresh.com 8. Paula’s Choice Skin 2% BHA Perfecting Liquid £12, paulaschoice.co.uk 9. Hermès Hermessence Oud Alezan £176 for 4, hermes.com 10. La Mer The Concentrate £190, cremedelamer.com
Don’t fall out with these people who, apart from their political views, you really appreciate
The question My partner and I recently had our first child. We live in a one-bedroom flat and money is very tight. The biggest help and support we’ve had has been from my partner’s parents, who have been fantastic. My relationship with them, which has never been bad, but always been distant, has improved and I get the feeling that they’ve grown to respect and like me, which is important to me.
The other day, regarding the upcoming election, they said they were deciding between Reform UK or the Conservatives and added: “Keir Starmer can’t be prime minister because he’s an idiot.”
At heart this is a local pub, but everything about it is dialled up a couple of notches
The Hero, 55 Shirland Road, London W9 2JD. Snacks £6-£13, starters £9-£14, mains £13-£18, desserts £8, wine from £32 a bottle
The Hero, a pub in London’s Maida Vale, is currently a middle-class rave fuelled by a crisp gavi and banging scotch eggs. You will hear it before you see it, as the sounds of the west London mob outside, smoking like it’s 1992, float towards you down tidy streets of wedding cake stucco. To get a sense of the place, however, let’s first pop into the gents at the back. There, standing side by side at the urinals, are two chaps who are not quite young but also not quite middle aged: tousled hair, many opinions, saggy jeans that have never seen better days because they came out of the box like this. One of them says: “I think it’s time I tried the country. I love the country.” The other says: “No, no, I’m all about the city. So many possibilities.”
Duty on alcohol and tobacco is nothing new, but pegging tax to the abv level of wine is changing the way producers work
Touraine Rouge Le Bécassou, Domaine des Echardières, Loire, France 2023 (£10.50, thewinesociety.com) It’s never going to be a subject that comes up on the doorstep, and it’s hard to imagine anyone posing a question about it at a local hustings or TV debate. Still, wine, like everything else, does have a political dimension and the decisions taken by whichever party takes power on Thursday 4 July will affect those who drink and make it. The most common legislative interventions involve duty. Successive governments have tended to view alcohol, like tobacco, as a convenient and politically neutral place to raise tax revenues: the Office of Budget Responsibility reckons the current duty regime will bring in £16.1bn by 2028/29. Last year, the Tories added another dimension: pegging duty to alcoholic strength. In wine that’s already had the effect of increasing the number of wines coming in below the 11.5% threshold where a higher rate kicks in – no bad thing when they’re as delightfully fragrant and refreshing as Domaine des Echardière’s summery Loire Malbec.
Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Discovery Collection Chilean Semillon, Apalta, Colchagua Valley, Chile 2023 (£10.50, Sainsbury’s) The problem with pegging duty to alcohol level is that it effectively penalises conscientious producers operating in traditional, warmer wine regions where the combination of grape variety and climate makes it very hard to make a quality wine below 13% or 14% alcohol. It’s a matter of how much sugar the grapes accumulate by the time they have reached what winemakers call full “phenolic” or “flavour” ripeness. The temptation, certainly at the lower end of the market, is to pick the grapes too early, before the grapes are properly ripe, and to leave a few grams more sugar in the finished wine rather than converting it all (or almost all) into alcohol during fermentatoin. That leads to wines that may avoid the higher rate of duty, but which are an awkward mix of sweet, hollow and harshly green. With ever-hotter vintages, the problem is only getting more acute, although, with thoughtful work in the vineyard and the right choice of grape variety, making a relatively light wine is not impossible: witness Sainsbury’s arrestingly incisive fresh, mineral, peachy new 12.5% white from the very warm Colchagua Valley in Chile.
There is still months of light and growth ahead, but passing the summer solstice is a moment to appreciate the growing year so far
Whisper it, but it is the end of June, a week past the solstice. The second half of the year starts here. I can’t help but feel a creeping urgency. So, time to sit back, breathe in, take stock.
It’s been an odd allotment year here in northwest London. Our early summer growth was unusually slow and, like many others, we have been a bit plagued by greedy gastropods. Time then to show some appreciation.
It was the early 90s and I was a 22-year-old fringe dweller living under a tarp at a campground at the base of Mount Arapiles – a rock-climbing hub in western Victoria – alongside a tribe of fellow climbers. On weekends we’d often travel down to the coast to meet up with other young climbers and camp by the beach.
One memorable weekend, Jon turned up. I’d met him briefly the summer before at Mount Arapiles and felt an instant attraction to this boisterous and charismatic man.
It wasn’t until David Fletcher left his native Stoke-on-Trent that he realised Staffordshire oatcakes are not widely known outside of the area. Unlike the biscuit-like Scottish oatcakes, the version he grew up with is a savoury pancake served with fillings such as bacon and cheese. “Every shop has its own secret recipe,” he says. “The variations must be very slight, but you still get quite fierce opinions about which are the best oatcakes.” Now based in the New Forest, the photographer has spent the past two years documenting oatcake shops. “If this was a French food it would probably have some kind of protected status of origin, but we don’t do that much in England. For me it represents a cultural and culinary heritage.”
The famously sardonic American author, public speaker and actor, 73, on happiness, bad ideas and life-boosting nature of friendship
I had a very happy childhood – I know that’s against the law. Everybody is suited to certain times of life and I was very suited to being a child. I am very suited to having no responsibilities.
I was really looking forward to my first day at kindergarten. I was only five. The day ended with me sitting in the corner with a Band-Aid over my mouth and holding up a sign saying: “I am a chatterbox.” Now I get paid for what I was punished for.
I grew up in a small town in New Jersey – a very beautiful, old pre-revolutionary war town. There was a portrait of George Washington in every single public room of every single building in the entire town. George Washington was a big part of my childhood.
Algebra was the end of school for me. I only had half a brain. Fractions were hard enough. I still count on my fingers.
I stopped playing the cello after my grandmother gave me a Pablo Casals record. When I heard what could be done on that instrument I thought, forget it, I could never do that. I am a perfectionist – and not just with myself.
Nothing is more contagious than a bad idea.
Happiness is a sensation, a fleeting thing. To me, it’s a pleasure, and there are moments of pleasure and sometimes even days of pleasure. I’m not like, “Why am I not happy all the time?” That’s a thing that came from Los Angeles.
I am a very angry person. I am angry almost all the time, especially when I’m not alone. I know my anger is disproportionate and I don’t express it. I knew from a really young age: do not act on this.
It’s imperative to me that people I spend time with have a good sense of humour. I don’t mean that they’re funny. I just mean that they know that things can be funny. Most things, other than tragedy, of which there is an over-abundance, are funny.
I hate money. I hate it physically; I hate having to earn it. But I’m also extremely materialistic, so I hate money, but I love things, you know? Like clothes, apartments…
People used to say, “If I was a millionaire…” Now they say, “If I was a billionaire…” I always say to these people: “Do you know how much a billion is?” And they really don’t. A couple of years ago I heard the word trillion. No one should ever use that word unless they are an astronomer.
Romantic relationships are not choices, they are some chemical response you have to someone. Friendships are, to me, the most important relationships in life, because they are the only wholly chosen relationships. I believe I am an excellent friend.
Toni Morrisonwas a very close friend of mine. She probably had the biggest influence on me – she was one of the few people I actually listened to. When she died I spoke at her memorial service. I said: “For more than 40 years she was at least two of my four closest friends.” She was also the only wise person I have ever known and she just had this immense humanity. She once said to me, “You are always right, but never fair.” What she meant was I don’t give everybody the same credence for just being human. And that’s true, I don’t. But she did.
I find any food preparation to be immensely tedious. But, of course, I love to eat.
I absolutely don’t care about how I’m remembered. I think people who care about this believe in life after death, which means you don’t believe in death. To me, it’s like someone asking me what I’d like for dinner after I die. You know what? I’m good.
The Leicester-raised musician on avoiding ‘nasty lads’, the power of putting on costumes and his anguish at having to sack the band’s frontman
Born in Salford in 1980 and raised in Leicester, Serge Pizzorno is the co-founder and songwriter of Kasabian. Its four members met at school in the 90s. Inspired by Britpop and rave, they signed to Sony in the early 00s and released a string of hits including LSF, Club Foot and Fire, scoring six UK No 1 albums and headlining stadiums. In 2020, Kasabian announced it had asked singer Tom Meighan to leave the band before his conviction for assault against his partner Vikki Ager. Pizzorno now fronts the band. Their eighth album, Happenings, is released on 5 July, with a hometown show in Victoria Park on 6 July.
This is me in Victoria Park in Leicester. I was a curious, quiet and thoughtful three-year-old, and I loved that jumper. I suppose the colours are like the Italian flag – my dad was from Genoa and he was keen his heritage was passed on to the next generation.
Love Islanders have it, daters want it and TikTok influencers will teach you how to get it – but rizz (a close cousin of charisma) is hard to fabricate
At the end of 2023, the Oxford University Press chose “rizz” as its word of the year. Rizz, which topped a shortlist that included “Swiftie”, “parasocial” and ‘“situationship”, is defined by the OUP as a noun denoting “style, charm, or attractiveness; the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner”. It can also be used as a verb, often linked with the word “up”, as in “to rizz up”.
Etymologically, rizz is said to be derived from charisma, although the person directly credited with popularising rizz – the American YouTuber Kai Cenat – has said that, as far as he knows, it is not.
The photographer updates her 80s teen series, capturing young people in their bedrooms
In the late 80s and early 90s, Denise Marcotte had a project photographing teens in their bedrooms. Decades later, with a teenage son of her own, the Massachusetts-based photographer decided to revisit the subject. Back then she used a Fujica 6x9 film camera with a tripod; this time she used an iPhone.
“There is nothing that makes a teenager feel more comfortable than an iPhone,” Marcotte says. “So using one brings me a sense of freedom on many levels: technically, artistically and in my connection to my young subjects.”
The comedian and candidate for Rishi Sunak’s Yorkshire seat on reintroducing Ceefax and beating the far right
Intergalactic space warrior Count Binface is the brainchild of comedy writer and performer Jon Harvey. In 2017, he made his political debut as Lord Buckethead, challenging Theresa May in her Maidenhead constituency in that year’s general election. As Count Binface he ran against Boris Johnson in Uxbridge and South Ruislip two years later. In 2021, he ran for London mayor and stood again for the post this year, winning 24,260 votes and beating Britain First. He is now fighting his third general election campaign in an incumbent prime minister’s seat, taking on Rishi Sunak in Richmond and Northallerton.
When were you happiest?
Friday 7 June 2024 at 5pm local time. That’s when I secured a place on the ballot for the Richmond and Northallerton seat. And I’m not just saying that as a cynical move to weaponise this article and garner support from local constituents.
It’s got billionaires, world champions and director Ridley Scott on board. But would an athletics competition where taking drugs is encouraged put the honesty back in sport – or cause rifts, risks and addictions?
It’s summer 2025. A large athletics stadium somewhere in Europe buzzes with crowds of people. Down on the track, eight men line up for the 100m final. Eight men pumped full of performance-enhancing drugs. Up in the control room, director Ridley Scott is asking for closeups on their faces. One of these men is about to obliterate Usain Bolt’s 100m world record, which has stood for over 15 years. Perhaps they all are. It’s certainly possible: just the day before, a host of men ran the marathon in under two hours. The world record for the mile, which has stood for over a quarter of a century, has just been beaten by a guy with bionic implants in his legs. Out in the centre field, a javelin thrower wearing AI glasses with real-time decision support has secured another world record. The feats of the previous year’s Paris Olympics are long forgotten amid this celebration of human achievement.
“It promises to be one of the most compelling television events of all time,” says Aron D’Souza, the man behind the Enhanced Games. His idea is an alternative to the Olympics where performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), and even technological enhancements, are not banned but actively encouraged. It will be a battle of the biohacked.
Flirting in China, sex work in Australia, dangerous liaisons in Nigeria – intimate relations vary wildly around the world, as I discovered while compiling a global special of the Guardian’s This is how we do it column
A friend of mine moved to the UK recently, and tells me English men are bad at foreplay. It’s a culture shock. She’s Spanish, and insists that oral sex is – for a Spaniard – second nature. Whereas English men rarely attempt it, and when they do, she wishes they would stop.
Does where you are born determine how you will have sex? Perhaps this seems like a stupid question. We tend to see sex as being unlearned and instinctive; something humans around the world do in a relatively similar way – with slight adjustments according to taste and sexuality. There is no global “oral sex satisfaction” survey I can find to verify what my friend told me. If you try to define the sexual character of a whole country, you will resort to stereotypes. “Continental people have sex lives; the English have hot-water bottles,” the Hungarian-born George Mikes wrote in 1946. This is a sweeping generalisation, but I can’t entirely dismiss it.
Pre-1950, we just didn’t take plastic to the beach. Now it’s virtually impossible not to, even if it’s just you and your swimmers. “If you’re looking for plastic-free nirvana, you may never find it,” says Anne-Marie Soulsby, aka the Sustainable Lifecoach. Matters are improving – though there’s usually a premium to pay if you want to minus cheap plastic from the mix. So why not borrow the plastic that already exists from friends, family or your local Library of Things. And don’t forget your reusable cutlery and containers for eating and drinking à la plage. If you can’t track down beach essentials from these sources, these are the other best ways to avoid seaside plastic pollution.
RHS reports 35% surge in orders, while garden designers note pond trend at Hampton Court Palace flower show
A pond boom is happening in Britain’s gardens as people try to halt wildlife loss by digging water sources for amphibians and other aquatic life.
Data from the Royal Horticultural Society shows a marked increase in sales of pond greenery; their online store had a 35% increase in sales of pond plants for 2023 compared with 2022.
From Shakespeare in Love to The Sea Hawk, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz
1 Which guide featured illustrations of Charles and Edeltraud Raymond? 2 Which bird sings while flying up vertically above its nest? 3 Who is the UK’s first billionaire musician? 4 Which empire was named after an Arabic word for slave? 5 What type of drink is pét-nat? 6 What New York store has the slogan “18 miles of books”? 7 Members of what would wear a 1% patch? 8 Which capital city is home to the world’s largest bullring? What links:
9 Minehead, Somerset and Poole Harbour, Dorset? 10 Booker; Torv; Deng; Hall; Zhukova? 11 Alabama (13); California (20); Colorado (27); Florida (114); Louisiana (57)? 12 Beneath; Escape; Conquest; Battle; Rise; Dawn; War; Kingdom? 13 Bellingham, Bale and McManaman; Hargreaves; Lambert? 14 Fire Over England; Jubilee; Orlando; Shakespeare in Love; The Sea Hawk? 15 Fordlândia, Brazil; Gilman, US; Pripyat, Ukraine; Wittenoom, Australia?
The handicraft has shaken off its associations with blankets and tea cosies and is a hit with Love Islanders, Taylor Swift – and retailers
Crochet is usually associated with multicoloured granny blankets tossed over the back of a sofa. But recently, the homespun craft has pivoted to fashion’s hottest trend. From high-end stores to high street, hype for the handicraft is everywhere, spanning womenswear and men’s.
Taylor Swift and her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, were photographed earlier this week leaving a London restaurant in his and hers crochet looks. At Glastonbury, baseball caps and denim cutoffs have been overtaken by crochet bucket hats and skirts.
Irregular bleeps have been driving me to distraction for months. And yes, it really was that simple to fix …
I am working in my office shed when my wife texts, ordering me to sit in the house in case the alarm service engineer turns up. I obey, in the hope of finally being freed from torment.
The burglar alarm has been going off at random moments: sometimes at four in the morning, sometimes at two in the afternoon. It can happen on consecutive nights, or it may stay quiet for a week.
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