Category Archives: Life and style

Memories of office life: at 20 and blind, my workmates pranked me mercilessly – and I loved it

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The first time I worked in an office, I was the boss of a group of sceptical youngsters. They looked for my weak spots – then became my first full-sighted friends

My first experience of office life was daunting. You might expect one’s first experience of working in an office environment to be pretty gentle: making the tea, a bit of filing, running errands for the boss. Not a bit of it, in my case. Aged 20, with no experience of office life, I was the boss. And, just to add a little spice to the task, I was totally blind.

My job as a community service volunteer at Youth Action York was to persuade a sceptical group of teenagers to give a helping hand to local elderly or disabled people who were struggling – assisting them with their shopping, perhaps, or tidying up their garden. It felt like a challenge, and my teenage volunteers made sure it was.

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‘I read all 27,000 Marvel comics and had a great time. Here’s what I learnt’

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Did Dark Reign foresee Trump? Was Iron Man about US military might? Who was Unbeatable Squirrel Girl – and was her superpower really non-violent conflict resolution? Only one man knows …

This should not be too hard, I thought, as long as I stay disciplined. All I have to do is read 27,000 comic books, then write about them. I had just signed a contract to write All of the Marvels, a book about reading every superhero story Marvel has published since 1961 as one single gigantic narrative. The Marvel story is omnipresent – its characters are everywhere, in movies, on television, even gracing shampoo bottles and bags of salad – yet also unknowable. It purports to be one big story: any episode can refer to, and be compatible with, any earlier one. But not even the people telling the story have read the whole thing. That’s not how it was meant to be experienced.

I did not, however, read six decades of stories in order. That would have been unbearable – and it is one of the two mistakes Marvel-curious readers often make. It is a surefire route to boredom and frustration as the fun lies in following your whims. The other error is trying to cherrypick the greatest hits, the pivotal single issues. Taken in isolation, these are peaks without mountain ranges. Their dramatic power comes from their context.

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Memories of office life: as a temp, I was self-conscious and disillusioned – until John arrived

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I worried that I didn’t fit in and that my uninspiring admin role meant I couldn’t be creative. But my work pal made me feel part of the gang

The office was a strange and alienating terrain for me when I arrived in it at 23. I had dropped out of university years before, expecting something to happen to me that would focus my future and simultaneously bestow a great windfall. It hadn’t. But I was sick of being poor and I had a boyfriend I wanted to play house with. When a temporary admin contract at a medical institution in Dublin came up, I jumped at it.

Immediately, I felt overwhelmed, and self-conscious about my stupid little outfits – pastiches of what professional women wear, which I had cobbled together from Topshop sale racks and charity shops. I was prickly, wary of saying the wrong thing, unable to relax.

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Zimbabweans put their country on the map in the world of wine

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After rising to the top of a white-dominated industry, a new generation of Zimbabweans are bringing their talents home

Like many young Zimbabweans before and since, Tinashe Nyamudoka left the economic chaos of his country to find work and a better life for himself in neighbouring South Africa.

When he left in 2008, Nyamudoka had never tasted wine. Now, he ranks among southern Africa’s top sommeliers and has his own wine label with international sales.

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Memories of office life: I demanded a decent cup of tea – and sparked a workplace feud

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Now that I work from my boat, I miss the comfort of the office – and the long-running war I waged over my contraband kettle and illicit cider

For the past five years, I’ve been “working from boat”, sailing in a crystal Mediterranean sea, with turtles nibbling at my anchor. Sounds fun. It’s not. I miss the office.

There are problems with working in paradise. Imagine spending your tea breaks checking the anchor isn’t dragging your workspace towards treacherous rocks, stupid jet skiers swerving by while you type. Imagine wondering if the sun has provided enough power to charge your laptop, or assessing whether a storm is likely to hit before deadline – should I sail 20 miles to shelter before I file?

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Hong Kong to cull thousands of hamsters after Covid found on 11

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Authorities call for animals to be surrendered for ‘disposal’ after traces of virus detected at pet shop

Hong Kong has ordered thousands of hamsters be surrendered for “disposal” after traces of Covid-19 were found on 11 animals in a pet shop.

The order includes pets that were bought days before Christmas be handed over, with a warning not to “kiss or abandon them on the street” as Hong Kong and mainland China attempt to sustain a zero Covid strategy, attempting to suppress all outbreaks internally while maintaining tight border controls with the outside world.

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Memories of office life: I hid under my desk, screaming down the phone at my husband

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New to marriage and my job, an almighty row threatened both. But my colleagues’ stoic determination to ignore the cacophony was the silver lining

Having personal conversations at work, in the days before mobile phones existed, could be perilous. Usually, you had to duck into an unoccupied desk space or wait until everyone was at lunch. But I worked on a trading floor – each desk crammed next to another, with everyone eating lunch there, too. Perilous didn’t begin to cover it.

In addition, phones rang constantly, people shouted across the room or at each other, and market information was broadcast over the Tannoy while overhead TVs blared CNBC and Bloomberg News. Private conversations had to wait.

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How an ancient rainmaker inspired a quest to nurture female writers in Malawi

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I was struck by how few authors I could name who are women. With Makewana, the ‘mother’ responsible for rain, as our namesake, my group set out to end the literary drought

I have often tried to imagine what Makewana, the original female rainmaker of ancient Malawi, must have looked like.

There is a statue of her with long hair at Mua Mission in Dedza, since to cut her hair would have signified drought.

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‘It’s mind-boggling’: the hidden cost of our obsession with fish oil pills

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The market in this prized commodity is worth billions – but are the supposed benefits worth the cost to global ecosystems?

• Revealed: many common omega-3 fish oil supplements are ‘rancid’

Scanning the shelves and internet for fish oil is a dizzying task. There are dozens of brands available and, although the typical consideration for the popular supplement is that quality matters most, it is not the only factor.

These prized products travel a long way before being labelled as “pure” and “fresh” – starting with the industrial-scale grinding down of a tiny fish that is crucial for healthy ocean and food systems.

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How we met: ‘None of my Indian friends had girlfriends. But I liked her too much to say no’

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Emily and Cyril, both 27, met through their school choir. As Cyril’s family favoured arranged marriages, Emily didn’t think a relationship was possible. But they married in 2019

As a music lover, Emily was excited to join her high school choir on a trip to San Francisco from Riverside, California, in 2011. They attended a competition, which went well, but on the journey back she became fed up of sitting with her friends. “They were talking about boys and being a bit annoying,” she laughs. She spotted Cyril sitting on the coach alone and decided to join him. Although they knew each other through the choir, they had never spoken for very long. “He had taken over playing the piano from me and I’d noticed he was better at it, so there was a bit of rivalry,” she admits. “I did think he was cute, though.”

They spent the nine-hour return trip talking and bonding over their similar tastes in music. “I knew who Emily was before that, but she wasn’t much more than an acquaintance,” says Cyril. “The bus ride was really a turning point for us.” Emily agrees. “It sounds cheesy, but it feels like that is where we fell in love.”

Want to share your story? Tell us a little about yourself, your partner and how you got together by filling in the form here.

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‘She chopped her hair off’: Pakistani women’s struggle to play cricket

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In such a conservative country, young women often have to fight their own families first just to play the sport they love

Bisma Amjad plays cricket. She aspires to play internationally and was picked for Pakistan’s under-19 World Cup squad.

But when the pandemic came, because she was a woman, there was nowhere for her to practise, so she dressed as a man to play alongside male cricketers at “gully cricket” – the street game.

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Prada’s Milan fashion week show ends with Jeff Goldblum on the catwalk

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Hollywood heavyweights including Kyle MacLachlan bring coronavirus-hit week to a close

Prada called on Hollywood heavyweights Jeff Goldblum and Kyle MacLachlan to bookend its catwalk on Sunday afternoon, bringing a close to a quiet menswear fashion week that saw multiple brands cancel their shows in light of increasing Covid cases across Europe.

The appearance of the actors at the Fondazione Prada punctuated the second physical catwalk show from founder Miuccia Prada and her co-creative director Raf Simons since the latter came onboard in early 2020, marking an unprecedented union of two of the fashion industry’s most influential and famed designers.

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Char siu pork and General Tso’s golden hake – recipes for the lunar new year

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Three food writers suggest celebratory Cantonese, Sichuanese and Taiwanese dishes that will have you over the moon

Traditionally, a whole fish is steamed at the new year to symbolise abundance and unity, because the homonym for fish means “abundance”. I’m using sustainable hake fillets which are tender and succulent. They belong to the cod family so they still have a wonderful texture, slightly smaller flakes than cod but still a delicious sweet taste. For this recipe, I am using hake fillets with the skin on (to keep their shape), sliced into 2cm chunks. I love to shallow fry the fish pieces, make a hot, sour and sweet General Tso’s sauce with dried red chillies, peppers and onions, and then toss the fish pieces back into the dish.

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Being ill is no fun, especially if you don’t even have Covid | Eva Wiseman

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Not catching Covid when the rest of the family have all got it can give you a bad case of Fomo

In December my daughter brought Covid home from school as if a folded permission slip. The feeling, on seeing the two pink lines come up on her test, was complicated and raw, containing both bad memories and relief. Finally (a part of me thought, a part of me quite low down and bloodied), finally the thing we have been waiting for has arrived. I breathed out a breath I had been holding for two years.

There were six or seven other feelings, too, including a now-familiar sense of doom brought on by the realisation that for us, lockdown was to begin again. A gentle PTSD crawled in and made itself comfortable on my lap as I briefly mapped out the next two months of arguments and pasta in my mind. Of course, with rude inevitability, the virus took its time spreading through the house, lingering on our daughter, only taking up residence with our boy toddler when her isolation was nearing its end. He stopped sleeping, his temperature leaping up and down like a cat when the doorbell goes.

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There’s a new till-free Amazon Fresh shop near me – so I popped in for spring rolls and simmering despair

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Capitalism’s great trick is to make us long for the useless and unnecessary. Under the bright lights, I felt that itch starting up

All I can say is that I should have known better. No, my decision to visit the branch of Amazon Fresh that has just opened near where I live was not at all a good match for the sweeping month-long programme of mindfulness and joy-sparking I tentatively set in motion for myself on 1 January. But there I was all the same, curiosity having got the better of me. And yes, the result was predictably awful. As any wellness guru worth the name could doubtless have told me, this way lay simmering despair and an almost overwhelming desire to buy a packet of Jacob’s Mini Cheddars.

I still have no idea how Amazon got the go-ahead to set up a branch of the grocery wing of its rampaging empire in the grade-II listed building it now inhabits: an old tram depot that when I first came to this part of London was the home of lots of little antique shops (RIP). There was, I seem to remember, a bit of a kerfuffle over its alcohol licence, but in the end it got the green light, in spite of the fact that there are already three large supermarkets mere metres away. Now it stands there rather mournfully, its lurid sign seemingly aiming to attract either those who simply cannot be bothered to cross the road, or those who prefer to keep on their headphones as they shop. (Amazon Fresh’s USP is that it has no tills, so customers need not speak to a single soul.) This, I have read, is one of 10 branches in the capital so far; by 2025, the company hopes to have 260 across the UK.

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I grew up in a crematorium – we learned not to look too alive in front of the mourners

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It was a regular family home – just one in which I learned not to run around the garden when the funeral processions passed, and to jump over, never on, any bluish grey powder I might find

When I was eight, roller skates were things you stepped into while wearing your outdoor shoes. They had laced, red leather toe-pieces that you pushed your shoes into, and red straps to buckle round your ankles. Two chunky black wheels sat either side of your toes, and two either side of your ankles. The metal base could be shortened or lengthened as needed. The skates made a loud clacking noise and didn’t roll well on -carpets or bumpy -pavements. If my sister and I were to build up any momentum at all, there was only one place to go. Down the crem.

The crematory was cavernous. The clackclackroll of skates was loud on the tiled floor, which was cold and hard to fall on, but goodness, you could pick up some speed. On the other side of the immense wall was the chapel. We knew that during the day coffins came through one hatch and were rolled across to three steel ones on the opposite side: cremators 1, 2 and 3. But we only went down the crem – as we all called it – when the room was still and the furnaces empty and cold. Each cremator had a small, nautical-style wheel that, when spun, opened the doors on to the scorched bricks of the incinerators. These wheels were handy to grab hold of when we needed to slow down. Occasionally, we’d spin one to see inside. My sister climbed in once, and her trousers were never the same again.

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Martin Kemp and Steve Norman of Spandau Ballet look back: ‘We were stern young men who wanted to take over the world’

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The bassist and saxophonist recreate an old photo and look back at a mortifying incident in a German sauna

Pioneers of the New Romantic movement, Spandau Ballet’s career launched in the late 70s within the walls of Blitz, an enigmatic club in Covent Garden known for influencing the sound and style of 80s pop. Formed by London school friends Gary Kemp, Tony Hadley, Steve Norman and John Keeble – and later Gary’s brother and former roadie Martin – Spandau Ballet went on to soundtrack the bombast and excess of the decade, selling 25m albums globally. Known for their bitter breakup – Tony, Steve and John launched an unsuccessful case against Gary for a share of the band’s songwriting royalties – they’ve since reformed but are now on hiatus. Martin has gone on to have a successful television career, while saxophonist Steve and his band, the Sleevz, celebrate the 40th anniversary of Spandau’s debut album with a UK tour later this year.

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Ann Dowd: ‘My closest brush with the law? Stealing lamb chops from a Chicago supermarket’

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The Handmaid’s Tale actor on her crush on Clint Eastwood and selling frozen food over the phone

Born in Massachusetts, Ann Dowd, 65, appeared in the films Lorenzo’s Oil and Philadelphia, and had various roles in the TV series Law & Order. She received award nominations for her performances in the 2012 film Compliance and the HBO series The Leftovers. Since 2017, she has played Aunt Lydia in the drama series The Handmaid’s Tale, winning an Emmy. Her more recent movies include Hereditary and Rebecca; her latest, Mass, is in cinemas and on Sky Cinema from January 20. She is married to actor Lawrence Arancio; they have three children and live in New York City.

Aside from a property, what’s the most expensive thing you’ve bought?
My children’s education.

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Panting, moaning and ‘pussy-gazing’: the couple who podcast their ‘elevated sex’ sessions

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Lacey Haynes and Flynn Talbot want to improve the world’s love life – starting by doing it live on air in every episode

Lacey Haynes is a women’s “intuitive healer”, and guides couples in yoga-informed “elevated sex”. When she opens her front door, the first thing I notice about the Canadian podcaster is her fashionable faux fur slippers and chic blunt fringe. Where is the western wellness guru uniform of linen tunic, elephant-print trousers and culturally inappropriate head jewellery, I wonder?

Inside the living room, I spot the hot-pink sofa that Haynes’ Australian husband, Flynn Talbot, a men’s life coach and fellow elevated sex practitioner, calls “love island”. Fans of their podcast – Lacey and Flynn Have Sex – will know it as one of many locations around their house where they take the title literally, recording themselves having sex in the bedroom, on the kitchen barstool, and beyond.

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British Vogue hails new era with nine African models on cover

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February issue cover shot is an important statement of anti-tokenism, says magazine’s editor

British Vogue has hailed a new era that spotlights African fashion. The magazine’s February issue features nine dark-skinned models of African heritage on its cover, including Adut Akech.

Seemingly referencing Peter Lindbergh’s “Supers” Vogue cover from 1990, which introduced the world to the idea of the supermodel, the shot is a challenge to the traditionally white fashion industry, which has, since the murder of George Floyd, been under pressure to change and become more inclusive and diverse.

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