The time you wake up every morning is baked into your DNA – and it could have an impact on your mood and wellbeing
Name: The lark advantage.
Age: Suspected for years, but recently ratified.
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‘I found a snake in the toilet!’: Guardian readers on their holiday disasters
Holidays, especially abroad, are off the cards for many this summer. So it’s good to remember they aren’t always the idyllic break we dream of. Here are our readers worst experiences
We went on holiday for Christmas to a friend’s parents house in Marlo – a village in Victoria, Australia. We got there on Christmas Eve to find the only shop was pretty bare – so Christmas lunch was a frozen turkey roll, Fanta, chips and some frozen peas. I made a Christmas tree out of a stick and some toilet rolls, determined to be cheerful. On Christmas morning, I woke up and went outside. It was nice and hot – yay, beach day! Then I stepped on a very large brown snake on the doorstep and screamed. I found another snake in the lounge room, one in the toilet, and others all around the house. It was my idea of hell. I had no idea whether they were poisonous but it didn’t matter. I was terrified. Lesley Podesta, retired, Australia
Continue reading...‘On a rampage’: the African women fighting to end FGM
Female genital mutilation has revived under Covid but activists are pushing hard to save girls at risk
It was when the phone started ringing with calls from worried mothers in Somalia that Ifrah Ahmed knew she was making an impact. The women told her their daughters had been bleeding for hours after undergoing female genital mutilation and asked what to do. Ahmed told them to seek medical attention, and probably saved lives by doing so.
The mothers called because they had heard the story of a 10-year-old girl who had bled to death after being cut in central Galmudug state in July 2018. It was the first confirmed death in years in a country where any complications arising from FGM are generally denied and it gained worldwide attention. The death was first revealed by a local activist who had been trained by Ahmed’s foundation in how to use the media to publicise her work.
Continue reading...Revert to type: how Goa’s last typewriter repair shop defied the digital age
Luis Abreu once thrived on servicing India’s many typewriters but computers are eclipsing his trade
In Goa’s capital, Panaji, on Rua São Tomé, not far from the main post office, is a shop that offers packaging services. For a small fee, they will wrap your parcel in a sheet of muslin sewn with precise stitches to protect its contents from being damaged in the post.
It started as a sideline to the main business of the store, but now it is the main earner for Luis Francisco Miguel de Abreu as he struggles to maintain one of the last typewriter repair shops in this Indian state.
Continue reading...The Peequal: will the new women’s urinal spell the end of queues for the ladies’?
Research shows women in the UK spend 34 times longer queueing for public loos than men do. Now, two young designers think they have the solution
Name: The Peequal.
Age: Brand new.
Continue reading...How we met: ‘I’d had girlfriends. Being gay hadn’t crossed my mind’
Mark, 71, and Andrew, 73, met at university in Scotland and have been together for almost 50 years. They live in London
Mark was deeply unhappy when he started at St Andrews University in Scotland in 1967. He had grown up feeling conflicted about his sexuality, and though sex between two men had been decriminalised in England and Wales that summer, it remained illegal in the rest of the UK, and attitudes towards gay people remained extremely hostile. “Sex education taught me that my feelings were abnormal. I was waiting for the phase to end,” he says. In his first week, he met Andrew, who had moved from the US to study. “We didn’t know each other well. He was on the fringes of my social group,” says Mark, 71. Andrew found Mark attractive, but had never considered a relationship with another man. “I’d been in a fraternity and had girlfriends. Being gay hadn’t really crossed my mind,” he says.
After completing his degree, Mark moved to London in 1972 and found work in the film industry. “I realised my sexuality was nothing to be ashamed of and told all my friends,” he says. Andrew, 73, spent a year in Virginia after his studies, before moving to Edinburgh to complete a PhD. By the early 70s, he too had begun to explore his sexuality, and was secretary of the Edinburgh University GaySoc. “Some friends told me that Mark had come out. They said: ‘He’s done just about everything bar putting out a personal ad to tell everyone he’s queer.’” In the autumn of 1974, he called Mark. “I was going for dinner with a mutual friend of ours, so I invited him to come along,” says Mark. “I spotted Andrew on Shaftesbury Avenue and he looked totally different. He’d shaved off the Gilbert and Sullivan sideburns he’d had at university.”
Continue reading...‘Alice the rat was so special’: readers on their brilliant, beloved pet tattoos
During the pandemic, every pet became an emotional support animal – and many people decided they wanted to commemorate them indelibly and incredibly
Alice was a double rex rat we adopted from the local RSPCA. She was such a special girl and we had a great bond, so she was the natural choice for my first tattoo. Sadly, Alice died earlier this year, so I’m getting a second tattoo in tribute in a couple of weeks, on the spot where she loved to sit.
Sarah, student, Greater Manchester
My best friend at school moved in with us – and taught me to trust again
How a close and enduring relationship forged in the school playground turned my life around
My school bully came in an unlikely package. She was a bushy-haired, bespectacled, briefcase-carrying pocket rocket who made my life miserable for a significant portion of Year 8 when I was 12 years old. I met her on the first day at our large and rowdy comprehensive school. With all my existing friends assigned to different forms, I was on high alert for someone to attach myself to as soon as possible. With her outwardly gawky appearance, she seemed like the ideal candidate and I approached her with the rather arrogant assumption that she would jump at the chance of my friendship.
It didn’t take me long to realise I’d severely misjudged the situation. Her meek physical persona belied a serious rebellious streak and I struggled to keep up from the start. When she dared me to join her in “the jungle” – a wooded area of the school grounds off limits to students, I shakily agreed. We eluded capture from the lunchtime supervisors who patrolled its perimeters, but my time in the jungle brought me little exhilaration or pleasure. More tests and challenges soon followed, all proposed with a glint in her eye that I came to dread.
Continue reading...Hyram Yarbro, Gen Z’s skincare saviour: ‘YouTube gave me a reason to live’
How did a boy from a Mormon farming family become social media’s most powerful ‘skinfluencer’?
Truthfully, I didn’t expect to blow up to this scale. And yes, I know this is going to sound clichéd, but if you told me, even a year ago, that it was going to be this big, I would not have believed it.” Considering the trajectory of Hyram Yarbro, the 25-year-old Gen Z skincare guru set on making skincare “accessible”, it is easy to believe him.
His success in the past year, driven by a lockdown-fuelled obsession with skincare and social media, has made Yarbro the world’s most powerful “skinfluencer”. His young, captivated, skincare-obsessed disciples – 1.2m on Instagram, 4.5m on YouTube, 6.8m on TikTok (pre-lockdown 1.0, it was 100,000) – all diligently follow his skincare recommendations via his unfiltered, straight-shooting videos. At the beginning of the pandemic, he says he was uploading content on YouTube five to six times a week and posting three TikToks a day. “But I’ve scaled it back a little,” he says now, “because I was literally not sleeping”.
Continue reading...Just don’t do it: 10 exercise myths
We all believe we should exercise more. So why is it so hard to keep it up? Daniel E Lieberman, Harvard professor of evolutionary biology, explodes the most common and unhelpful workout myths
Yesterday at an outdoor coffee shop, I met my old friend James in person for the first time since the pandemic began. Over the past year on Zoom, he looked just fine, but in 3D there was no hiding how much weight he’d gained. As we sat down with our cappuccinos, I didn’t say a thing, but the first words out of his mouth were: “Yes, yes, I’m now 20lb too heavy and in pathetic shape. I need to diet and exercise, but I don’t want to talk about it!”
If you feel like James, you are in good company. With the end of the Covid-19 pandemic now plausibly in sight, 70% of Britons say they hope to eat a healthier diet, lose weight and exercise more. But how? Every year, millions of people vow to be more physically active, but the vast majority of these resolutions fail. We all know what happens. After a week or two of sticking to a new exercise regime we gradually slip back into old habits and then feel bad about ourselves.
Continue reading...Education for girls and vaccines can save Africa from disaster | Phillip Inman
Parts of the continent potentially face a decade of crisis. These two measures are more important than any other in avoiding it
There are so many good causes in the world it is often difficult to know where aid money should go. As leaders line up to attend the G7 summit in Cornwall, the most effective destinations for aid money have become clearer – a global vaccination programme and improving girls’ education.
This is especially true in sub-Saharan Africa, where so much can go wrong over the next 10 years – a population explosion, massive biodiversity loss, desertification, famine and mass migration to mention just a few – that unless we focus our efforts on vaccines and girls’ education, whatever is done to alleviate poverty or tackle the climate emergency will be threatened or even sabotaged in almost every other region of the world.
Continue reading...Why self-belief is a superpower that can be harnessed
Lockdowns may have eroded people’s swagger, but research suggests there are ways to remedy the situation
In July 2007, the Irish golfer Padraig Harrington won one of golf’s most coveted competitions, the British Open. The story of how he did this, one of the most remarkable finishes in golfing history, illustrates one of the ways confidence works.
The Claret Jug – the Open’s famous prize – was within Harrington’s grasp as he teed off at the penultimate hole of the tournament. He had a one-shot lead on his arch-rival, Sergio García. He was entirely in the zone – “I am literally the most confident person at that point in time,” he said later. Then, something strange happened – a twinge of doubt came out of nowhere at the top of his back swing and he sliced the ball into the murky waters of the notorious Barry Burn river.
Continue reading...‘We are born hungry for faces’: why are they so compelling?
We’ve spent a year obscured by masks and pixellated by Zoom. Are you ready to go back to reading real-life facial expressions in all their fascinating glory?
This has been the year of a thousand faces. Every face is an inch or two high on my laptop screen, and trapped inside a rectangle. The rectangles form a wall of faces that builds up brick by brick. As each new face arrives, the wall shifts and rearranges itself. Outside, in the real world, other people’s faces have been frustratingly elusive, half-hidden by masks. Or they have averted their gaze, focused on completing their essential journeys and not wishing to exchange their spittle with mine. But here the faces keep coming, popping up magically from wherever they are in the world, happy to be seen.
During lulls in meetings, my eyes scan the virtual room. You can look long and hard at people’s faces online in a way that would be rude in real life. I have never before paid this much attention to how a hairline runs along the top of a forehead, or an eye sits in its socket, or a jawline segues into a neck. I hadn’t noticed how vulnerable faces are – so soft, fleshy and bruisable – and how mercurially they move between moods. The faces look by turns dazed, dogged, sweetly attentive, full of faraway thoughts that no one could guess at, and as if they are trying hard to be bright-eyed and smiley but might suddenly dissolve into tears. It’s been that kind of year.
Continue reading...The new summer of love: ‘People are desperate to have sex – it’s been a long year’
Whether single, curious or just plain horny, many people are planning to make the most of life after lockdowns. Are we ready to get up close and personal?
The past year has changed 35-year-old Georgie’s outlook on dating. Several disappointing socially distanced dates and limp text exchanges meant she stopped using dating apps at the beginning of 2021. And now her parents have been vaccinated, she feels confident about returning to physical dates, “but not to the apps”, she says. “As things open up, I’m going to lean into spontaneity; I’m going to say yes to every invitation and seize every opportunity. If I feel a connection with someone at a social gathering, a festival or even a bus stop, I’ll go and talk to them. I’m going to be way more carpe fucking diem about it.”
Liam, 25, lives in Manchester and has never had a serious relationship. He can’t wait to meet people in real life: “If I never have another conversation via Zoom or WhatsApp, I’d be very happy – especially within my love life.” He gave up on dating apps this year, and is looking forward to the return of proper flirtation. “Vibing with someone on an app or a screen is not the same as seeing someone across a room and feeling that excitement in your stomach. That’s what I need right now.”
Continue reading...Why I started streaming video games on Twitch at the age of 43
Over lockdown, comedian, mother of two and former games journalist Ellie Gibson took up livestreaming, loved the community – and learned to love playing again
Like so many things in my life, it began as a daft experiment. I love learning new stuff, and over the course of my 43 years I’ve tried all sorts. Some things have stuck, like comedy, running, and having kids. Some haven’t, like kung fu, olives and holidays in Germany. To be honest, I thought that livestreaming games on Twitch would fall into the latter category.
For those who aren’t familiar (I wasn’t until this year), Twitch involves playing video games live on the internet while providing a running commentary. People watch you, and chat to you via a message window, and sometimes give you money. It’s sort of like exotic dancing, but with fewer breasts.
Continue reading...‘Unchain your wife’: the Orthodox women shining a light on ‘get’ refusal
Orthodox Jewish men give their wives a ‘get’ as the couple is divorcing, which seals the divorce according to religious law
On Route 59 in Monsey, New York, an Orthodox Jewish enclave in upstate New York, there is a large billboard that says in big block letters: “Dovid Wasserman. Give your wife a get!”
A “get” is a document Orthodox Jewish men give their wives as the couple is divorcing; it seals the divorce according to religious law, meaning that the husband decides if and when the divorce is final. Without it, the woman cannot move on with her life.
Continue reading...The Beatles in India: ‘With their long hair and jokes, they blew our minds!’
Two new documentaries offer intriguing insights on how the Beatles’ 1967 escape to study transcendental meditation shaped the band and India, baffled the KGB – and saw Ringo survive on a diet of baked beans
In 1968, Paul Saltzman was a lost soul. The son of a Canadian TV weatherman, he was working as a sound engineer for the National Film Board of Canada in India when he received a “Dear John” letter from the woman he thought was going to be his wife. “I was devastated,” he says. “Then someone on the crew said: ‘Have you tried meditation for the heartbreak?’”
Saltzman went to see the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi – the founder of transcendental meditation – speak at New Delhi University. Emboldened by promises of “inner rejuvenation”, Saltzman then travelled to the International Academy of Meditation in Rishikesh. It was closed, due to the arrival of the Beatles.
Continue reading...I’m 24 and my life was pretty sorted out, until I fell deeply in love with a man of 51 | Leading questions
Staying with this man will mean bracing for uncomfortable questions, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. But it’s what you feel, not what others think, that really matters
I am a 24-year-old lawyer. I like to think that my life is pretty sorted out but nine months ago, I fell deeply in love with a man of 51. This is hugely surprising to me – but it’s the most amazing relationship I could have imagined. He’s sensitive, kind, funny, generous and in my eyes, very good looking. The problem is ... the age gap! I wonder what I should think about this. I’m generally a conservative person who doesn’t like to shock public opinion.
Now, for the first time in my life, I’m facing a big decision: whether to go with this beautiful man or to give him up and go down a more traditional path. I should add: I don’t want children ever and nor does he.
Continue reading...Cuprinol Shed of the Year 2021 entrants – in pictures
This year, 331 entrants are vying for the title of Cuprinol Shed of the Year, including a Catholic oratory, a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang-inspired ‘inventor’s workshop’ and a haven for bats.
Continue reading...‘I felt nauseous in Topshop’: why a fashion editor gave up buying new clothes
The truth about mass-produced dresses - that everything is commodified and nothing is sustainable – did for me. I decided that if I really wanted a new dress, it had to be old
It was April 2019. I was seven months pregnant and in Topshop, looking for something large in which to rehome my body.
I was wearing a maternity dress that, if you had seen me pregnant, you would have recognised – a cheap, pleated wraparound in a red floral print that expanded as I expanded. I imagined Issey Miyake, but increasingly looked more like an armchair. It had served me well, but I was determined to buy something, anything, to see me through the next few months.
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