Category Archives: Life and style

It’s time to start talking about kink – and take the shame away from it

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It wasn’t long ago that kink was so forbidden as to go largely unmentioned. We hope our book will help in the work of destigmatizing kink by making it more visible

It started in the fall of 2017. I was staying at an artists’ residency in New Hampshire, and I was thinking about what it can mean to be afraid of one’s own desires, to feel ashamed of what the body wants.

I had just published a story in Playboy, Safeword, about a couple arranging a first-time session with a professional dominatrix. By then, I’d published short fiction for almost a decade, but the story was by far the most sexually explicit piece of fiction I’d written, and I’d tried to brace myself for the odd, hostile notes I would surely receive from titillated strangers. As it turned out, I did hear from a lot of readers, but the notes weren’t hostile – instead, for the most part, people thanked me. The story had helped them feel less alone, they said.

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How we met: ‘He said I was the nicest girl he’d ever seen – he looked so awkward!’

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Alice, 51, and Ian, 55, Glass, met in a restaurant in Johannesburg in 1990. They live and work together on a farm near Kruger national park, South Africa

Alice Granville was in her final year of university in August 1990 when she met a friend for dinner. “Her husband was meant to join us with one of his friends, and he was going to be my blind date,” she says. However, the two men were late, so Alice and her friend continued to drink in the bar. Ian, who was out with friends enjoying the live music, spotted her from across the room. “She caught my eye and I smiled shyly,” he remembers. Alice and her friend gave up waiting for their dates and moved into the restaurant dining room. “I noticed she’d disappeared, and I had this really strong feeling of missed opportunity. My friends were completely unaware,” says Ian.

I was half looking at the menu, half wondering how I could meet her

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Jackie Kay on Bessie Smith: ‘My libidinous, raunchy, fearless blueswoman’

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As a black girl growing up in 1970s Glasgow, poet Jackie Kay developed a passion for Bessie Smith. In this extract from her new book, she remembers the wild spirit who helped her find her true self

I was adopted in 1961 and brought up in a suburban house in a suburban street in the north of Glasgow. A small, semi-detached Wimpey house. Outside our house is a cherry-blossom tree that is as old as me. It doesn’t seem the most likely place to be introduced to the blues, but then blues travel to wherever the blues lovers go. In my street and in the neighbouring streets to Brackenbrae Avenue, I never saw another black person. There was my brother and me. That was it. The butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker were all white. (Although I never actually met a candlestick-maker – has anyone?)

So the first time I saw Bessie Smith, it really was like finding a friend. I saw her before I heard her. My father – a Scottish communist who loved the blues – bought me my first double album. I was 12. The album was called Bessie Smith: Any Woman’s Blues and produced by CBS Records ( John Hammond and Chris Albertson; Albertson went on to write her biography). I remember taking the album off him and poring over it, examining it for every detail. Her image on the cover captivated me. She looked so familiar. She looked like somebody I already knew in my heart of hearts. I stared at the image of her, trying to recall who it was she reminded me of.

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‘Adoption has been a journey from ignorance to enlightenment’

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When I decided to adopt orphaned twins from Ethiopia, it felt like the most natural thing to do. But it raised many questions about motherhood and the bond we have with our children

I assumed I would conceive naturally when John and I decided to start a family. I didn’t. We turned to fertility drugs with ambivalence. Reports of the mood swings the drugs sometimes caused worried me. I had only gone through one round when I broke a wooden dish-drying rack over John’s head. I don’t remember what he said, but I’m sure it was something I’d otherwise have considered innocuous. Instead, a growling, uncontrollable rage emerged from nowhere and then overcame me like an emotional tsunami. We decided the drugs weren’t for us.

I had gone along with fertility treatments for the same reason I went along with other non-decisions I’ve made in my life, like having an enormous wedding, because people whom I loved wanted it for me. I thought I was supposed to want it, just like I was supposed to want to get pregnant by any means. Yet I cried genuine tears when, month after month, I was unable to conceive. I felt like a failure.

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Perfect storm: have the influencers selling a dream lost their allure?

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Social media stars, already under fire for trips to Dubai in lockdown, are now involved in a row over Instagram posts

Makeup artist Sasha Louise Pallari started her hashtag #filterdrop in summer 2020. A social media campaign to discourage influencers promoting beauty products by using filters to exaggerate their effect, it paid off last week when the Advertising Standards Authority banned two tanning brands from using misleading filters on Instagram Stories. The ruling means that in future all use of filters will be more tightly controlled – and, so the theory goes, more “natural” content likely to be seen on social media.

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Destined for an arranged marriage, I chose to follow my heart

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As a teenager, true love seemed like an impossible dream, but I was determined to marry for love and not obligation

This year, my husband Richard and I will have been married for 10 years. It may not sound all that long, but it feels quietly significant to me, this decade of us, not least because there was a time that I could not fathom a world in which we could ever be together at all.

I grew up expecting to marry someone my parents chose for me: a suitable young man who would share my Pakistani family background, my cultural heritage and faith. I can’t remember how old I was when I understood this – only that I did, without it needing to be explained. It was what my cousins did and the daughters of our family friends did. It was the way things were.

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Close-ups, cats and clutter: what the online yoga teacher saw

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Teaching via Instagram and Zoom is both more and less intimate than a real-life class

Fifteen people lie down in rectangles on my screen. I am telling them to relax their jaws and soften the muscles around their eyes. I am also having a silent, hand gesture-based conversation with a five-year-old girl in one of the rectangles. This morning the girl’s mother sent me an email that read: “I’m going to attempt as much of the class as she will allow me to do – sometimes she is fine with it, and sometimes not.” In the next box, a cat strolls into view and settles down on its owner’s back as they rest in the child’s pose. Elsewhere, a dog is causing chaos at the back of someone’s mat. This is what I’ve learned from teaching Zoom yoga; mostly, small children and pets rule a household.

I’ve observed couples having conversations in class, giving me a delicious feeling of embarrassment and curiosity

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‘My personal lockdown has been much longer’: on chronic illness, before and after Covid

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Life before was a little different, but not a lot. Now I feel a new resilience and hope

Read more: Laura Barton on how a daily call to California got her through lockdown and Elle Hunt on moving to the other side of the world and the pandemic

I’ve been inside my cramped terrace house for nearly a year now. There haven’t been walks outside, or trips to the shops. Every morning, I wake into a day the same as yesterday. I reach out a hand to the cat who I know will be curled by my right side, listen for the creak of my son climbing down from his bunk bed. He will come and bundle himself under my covers, and we will begin again, another day juggling his schoolwork and my writing work, all conducted mostly from my bed.

I remember, dream-like, two weeks in the summer last year when it felt safe enough for my partner to fly over from Denmark, after six months apart. We drove to quiet places and he pushed me in my wheelchair. I wept, happy to see him and the green trees, and to eat picnics on the warm ground, a family again. It has been six months since then, and so we sit each day in front of iPads, touching fingers to the screen, baffled and smiling to still be in this strange, unforeseen predicament – falling in love, still, because distance does nothing to halt that. My life is one of pain, fatigue, activity, laughter.

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Yotam Ottolenghi’s recipes for Valentine’s Day

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A three-course showpiece to prep in advance, so you can spend more time with your better half: burnt aubergine with feta and harissa oil, prawns in vanilla and rum butter, and a chocolatey coffee mousse to finish

This time last year, many of us were looking forward to a special, one-to-one supper with a loved one. The partner we live with, for example, but perhaps forget to go on dates with; a special meal, quality time, stories saved up to be shared. The past year has, of course, brought a whole new meaning to the idea of “quality time”, and I’m not sure anyone has any great stories they’ve saved for this Valentine’s dinner. Be kind and cut yourself some slack: forget about the top new chat and focus instead on a top new meal. Pat yourself on the back for making it this far, and raise a large glass of something you adore.

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‘They are scared to try new things’: how is home school impacting young children?

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After nearly a year of disrupted learning, primary school children in the UK have missed key milestones - as well as their friends. What will be the long term cost?

• In pictures: pets, plants and cuddly toys: a child’s eye view of home schooling

It is fair to say that Wells, eight, does not enjoy remote learning. “It’s horrible,” he tells a group of fellow year 4 children over a video call. “I can see my friends, but I can’t talk to them.” Emily, nine, finds home schooling tough, too: “It’s really, really boring. I’m sad. But I like being able to play with my guinea pigs.” Flora, also nine, agrees lockdown learning isn’t all bad: “It’s fun solving maths problems with my granny on Skype, and I get to have yummy snacks, like chocolate biscuits, all day.”

But they would all prefer to be at school. “There’s less distraction,” says Betty, who has two younger siblings and is expected to work independently in the afternoons. “When you’re in class, you can talk to your teacher and ask for help,” Ainhoa says. “Privately,” Wells adds. “You get their individual attention.” The children talk about feeling frustrated, stressed and even exhausted at the end of the school day. “Sometimes I just want to scrunch up the paper into pieces,” Ainhoa admits. “I really miss playing with my friends in the playground,” Flora says.

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‘It is only now I realise the toll the pandemic has taken’: a letter from the other side of Covid

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I moved from London to New Zealand, where the sense of normality is surreal

Read more: Laura Barton on how a daily call to California got her through lockdown

New Zealand doesn’t exist. So goes the meme, an internet in-joke arising from the frequency with which the island nation is left off world maps, and amplified by the whimsical news stories that often emerge there. For instance: a city road was recently closed for an entire month to allow safe crossing for a family of sea lions. How is New Zealand even real? As a citizen, with a black-and-silver passport to prove it, I have caught myself asking that question since I arrived back here from London a month ago. How can this place – where you can hug your parents, go to bars with your friends, and live life more or less like it’s 2019 – be only a flight away from the one I left behind?

I left London, where I’d been living since 2017, a few days before Christmas, just as coronavirus cases started rising again rapidly, and the government braced, too late, for another lengthy lockdown. “Getting out, are you,” a man had said, eyeing my bags on the bus to the Piccadilly line. At each stop on my journey to Auckland, totalling three planes over nearly 24 hours, my phone had lit up with news of the rapidly deteriorating situation I’d just fled. Two weeks later, I was released from my government-managed quarantine hotel into New Zealand, where there had been no local transmission of coronavirus since November. It felt as if I had slipped into another world through the back of my hotel wardrobe.

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Experience: I got married with months to live

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The only photos were taken on my phone by an oncology nurse, but they reflect the joy we were feeling

I met Emma at a horrendous “mingling event” one wet spring evening in 2015. We connected immediately, and after a couple of dates I think we both knew we had a future together. By Christmas, Emma had moved out of her flat in Hove and into the house I lived in for my job, as site manager for a Brighton primary school. We’d talked about wanting kids on our very first date; we were both in our mid-30s and it seemed important to be upfront.

Our son, Archie, was born in 2018 and by the time he was toddling he was like my shadow, following me as I fixed things and helping put away tools. It never occurred to me I might not get to see him grow up. I’ve always been fit and healthy, and when I suddenly started losing weight last summer my first thought was, “Great – now I won’t need to spend so much time at the gym.” But I was losing my appetite, too, and soon people were saying, “James, what’s up? You don’t look great.”

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‘When I tell people, they might laugh’ – George Clooney and the men who sew

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More ‘sew bros’ have taken up the fine art of stitching in the pandemic. What’s so appealing about this crafty pursuit?

Good things are rarely described using the suffix ‘bro’ but the rise of the ‘sew bros’ could be an exception. That’s the name that’s been given to the growing number of men who are taking up the fine art of sewing, who can now add George Clooney to their numbers.

The father of three-year-old twins, who came out as a self-haircutter in December, told AARP magazine: “I do a lot of sewing the kids’ clothes … and my wife’s dress that tore a couple of times. I was a bachelor for a long time and didn’t have any money, and you have to learn how to repair things.”

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We need to talk: the linguistic clues that reveal your relationship is over

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A new study shows that months before a breakup, a partner’s language can change subtly. Here’s what to look out for

Name: The language of breakups

Age: Timeless. Ever since Eve ate that ill-fated pomegranate, romantic relationships have been problematic. And people have to find a way of saying goodbye. But this particular ...

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The real thing: my battle to beat a 27-year Diet Coke addiction

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I have been obsessed with the sugar-free soda since I was four, spending £500 a year on up to seven cans a day. This is what happened when I tried to quit

The greatest love story of my life has been with a carbonated beverage.

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t addicted to Diet Coke. Some memories: I am sitting at the kitchen table at my grandmother’s house in northern Cyprus, screaming because my mother won’t refill my yellow-and-green patterned glass. I am four or five years old. My grandmother looks on, disturbed, as I wail disconsolately. My mother does not give in.

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‘I feel so good I may never drink again!’ Readers on their success – or failure – during dry January

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Readers explain whether they looked, felt and slept better – or if they turned back to alcohol to cheer up a miserable month

I don’t drink every day, but I do drink every weekend and I usually drink a fair amount. I did dry January (and February) two years ago when my wife was eight months pregnant with our son, but I’m finding it much easier this year because I don’t have the opportunity to go out and socialise. The thing I miss most about drinking is visiting the pub with some friends – without that it’s certainly easier. Duncan Ward, operational resilience manager, West Sussex

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‘I document America’s strange beauty’: the photography of My Name Is Earl’s Jason Lee

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He played a redemption-seeking redneck on TV, but lately the actor has found solace off-screen, travelling with his camera. He talks about slackers, the Mallrats sequel and breezing into one-horse towns

Jason Lee knew he was in trouble when he stepped on the set. The year was 1992, Sonic Youth were at their peak and he was starring as a doomed skateboarder in their latest video. As a music obsessed, pro skateboarder with acting aspirations, he felt he had a point to prove. To add more pressure, it was for the song 100% – the band’s classic ode to a murdered Black Flag roadie – and the video was being co-directed by one of his skateboarding friends (some guy called Spike Jonze).

“I was really trying my hardest to focus,” says Lee. “I was like pretending to be Robert De Niro on the set, really trying to get into it and make it count and make it real and believable.”

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‘Making our home safe again’: meet the women who clear land mines

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After decades of war, more and more women are working to remove lethal mines and IEDs from the fields and cities of their homelands. It’s dangerous, but it’s helping to rebuild their lives

As a child, Hana Khider dreamed of Sinjar. Born and brought up in Syria, she remembers her mother telling her stories about the district in northern Iraq where her relatives lived. “I always imagined it in my mind,” she says, smiling over our video call. “It was beautiful and peaceful.” Today, Sinjar is her home. She lives with her husband and three children in a village close to Mount Sinjar, which she describes as “very special to our community”. Khider is Yazidi and they believe the mountain was the final resting place of Noah’s Ark. The rocky peak has long been considered a sacred refuge for persecuted people.

It was the mountain that saved her and more than 40,000 other Yazidis when they fled Islamic State in August 2014. Driven from their villages, they camped on the mountain for months – some for years – after a genocide that, according to the UN, saw 5,000 Yazidis massacred and up to 7,000 women and girls captured and sold as sex slaves to Isis members. “We feared for our lives,” Khider, now 28, says, explaining how Isis fighters surrounded the mountain. Luckily, she escaped to Kurdistan, where she lived in an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp until her village was liberated. Her family returned in May 2016. A few months later, she applied to work as a deminer at the Mines Advisory Group (MAG), a charity that finds and clears mines in places of conflict.

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