Five partners whose love has endured seismic changes, from refugees forced apart by war to a couple left with horrific injuries
Charlotte, 27, and Jak, 25, survived a serious car accident; both spent weeks in intensive care. They live in Lancashire and plan to marry this summer.
Continue reading...A year after her husband Joe Hammond’s death from motor neurone disease, his widow reflects on grief, parenting through loss, and survival
How do you decide upon a day to die? For my husband Joe and me, that meant finding out when the doctors we needed were available, then we took note of our two sons’ school holidays and, finally, we looked at the carer rota for that month. Who could we trust with Joe’s death as much as we had trusted them with his life?
The next step was a meeting with the relevant doctors; what incredible women they had been throughout our whole, surreal journey. They asked us how we imagined the process might unfold, during which Joe would receive a huge amount of morphine to sedate him enough that his ventilator could be removed. We were bemused. What were the options? Apparently, some people choose to watch television and the programme of choice is Countdown. This gave Joe and me the giggles. We said we thought we’d manage without more conundrums than we already had.
Continue reading...Iona, 23, journalist, and Francesco, 25, musician
What were you hoping for?
Someone chatty, attractive and funny. Ideally, a spark.
I realise that the last time my fixed notion of what I weighed was affirmed by actual measurement was at a doctor’s appointment five years ago
On my third pass through the kitchen in the morning, I see a recently delivered box sitting on the floor. I consider the possibility that it might be for me. The package is addressed to my wife, but there’s still a slim chance I am the final intended recipient. I lift the box: it’s heavy. For the moment, I can take the investigation no further – my wife is not at home.
At some point in the afternoon, I look out the window of my office shed towards the house and see my wife standing in the kitchen. I cross the garden. My wife does not look up when I enter – she is staring intently at her feet. The box is on the table between us, empty.
Continue reading...Can we do more as individuals to help slow the spread of coronavirus? We ask the experts
Covid-19 infections in the UK are reducing but remain stubbornly high, despite a month of lockdown measures. So could we be doing more as individuals to curb transmission of the virus? A virologist, a psychologist and a public health expert share their views on some of the Covid-19 mistakes that we are all still making.
Continue reading...Woniya Thibeault, the runner up on Netflix’s Alone, is offering an eight-week survival course, teaching more than how to skin a deer and tie a knot
Left to fend for herself on Arctic land, with only 10 pieces of gear – among them a sleeping bag, a pot, and a bow and arrows – Woniya Thibeault didn’t just want to survive. She wanted to find joy in the process of surviving.
Scattered miles apart in the same rugged wilderness were nine other contestants looking to outlast one another and win big on the History Channel’s popular survival reality series Alone. In it, contestants compete to stick it out in the wilderness for the longest time with limited resources – all have the option to tap out if it gets too much. The prize money – $500,000 – would have changed Thibeault’s life, but winning wasn’t her top priority. She was there for the experience.
Continue reading...Already a fashion sensation, the 22-year-old joins IMG Models, the same agency as Gigi and Bella Hadid
Amanda Gorman, whose performance of her poem The Hill We Climb during Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration drew widespread praise, has signed to IMG Models, the same agency as Gigi and Bella Hadid.
The 22-year-old US national youth poet laureate, has already become a fashion sensation. The red satin Prada headband she wore during the inauguration ceremony led to the item selling out, while her yellow coat (also Prada) caused searches for “yellow coats” to increase 1,328% (according to fashion search engine Lyst) in the wake of her appearance.
Continue reading...From cake to pudding to panna cotta to pork ribs, this seasonal treat is endlessly flexible. And let’s not forget the cocktails …
We may never know how many surplus jars of marmalade were created during the lockdown year, just for something to do. There is, however, still time for one final push: marmalade – as detailed in this masterclass recipe from Felicity Cloake – is traditionally made with sour Seville oranges, which have a notoriously short season, due to end in just a few weeks’ time.
You don’t have to use Seville oranges, of course. You can make perfectly serviceable marmalade from regular oranges, or even from spent orange rinds, following Tom Hunt’s example. Non-traditional marmalades can also be derived from other fruits, such as pink grapefruit, as Nigel Slater demonstrates.
Continue reading...Nail art dates back millennia, taking in complex social codes, cultural appropriation, modern slavery and the sexism of lockdown rules for beauty salons
“How to Take a Nail Selfie!” “Fruity Manicure Inspo!” “Kylie Jenner Slammed by Fans for Nearly Poking Out Stormi’s Eyes With Ridiculous Claw Nails.”
The glut of hyperbolic nail-related headlines online points to our obsession with the endless possibilities open to the plate at the top of our fingers. In the internet age, the manicure, in all its incarnations, is a traffic winner. It peppers a plethora of Pinterest boards; the hashtag #nails has been posted 151m times on Instagram; nail artists are stars in their own right; and countless women will assert that manicures are a form of self-care. Detractors dismiss it all as frivolity.
Continue reading...Shaun Ryder keeps chickens, while Mel Giedroyc organises chutney tastings. These small, affordable suggestions won’t end lockdown misery – but they might help
If you live with someone else, draw each other. My boyfriend, a professional artist, has a gross advantage – so I hold the most atrocious pose possible to challenge him. Then I challenge the foundations of our relationship by trying to depict him in a fashion that won’t result in him dumping me. Our relationship survived the last time, although we almost died laughing. Laura Snapes, Guardian deputy music editor
Continue reading...Canines in Hungarian study appear to pick up unfamiliar terms through play
Whether you can teach an old dog new tricks might be a moot point, but it seems some canines can rapidly learn new words, and do so through play.
While young children are known to quickly pick up the names of new objects, the skill appears to be rare in animals.
Continue reading...He partied with high society America but caused outrage when he spilled their secrets. Ebs Burnough talks us through his new film about Answered Prayers – the ‘smart, salacious’ novel Capote never finished
When Truman Capote died in 1984, he left the remains of a novel he had been hatching for nearly two decades, and talking about for almost as long. Answered Prayers, the story of a budding writer screwing his way through polite society, was intended to be Capote’s most explosive achievement. He likened it to a deadly weapon. “There’s the handle, the trigger, the barrel, and, finally, the bullet,” he told People magazine. “And when that bullet is fired from the gun, it’s going to come out with a speed and power like you’ve never seen – wham!” Having bragged about the book for years, all he had to do now was write it.
A contract was signed in 1966, but advance chapters published in Esquire magazine nine years later proved to be far below the standard of his defining successes, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the “non-fiction novel” In Cold Blood. There was a cost to his social reputation as well as his literary one. As soon as the socialites and wealthy wives with whom he had mingled happily for years – including Slim Keith, Babe Paley and Gloria Vanderbilt, whom he called his “swans” – saw how casually he had spilled their most intimate secrets, those friendships were dead. Capote hadn’t bitten the hand that fed him. He’d gnawed it off at the wrist.
Continue reading...One of Britain’s greatest designers, she has dressed everyone from Princess Diana to Diana Ross. She discusses punk, pink hair and staying creative after serious illness
Zandra Rhodes was doing a yoga session with a friend in the early weeks of the pandemic when she realised that something was wrong. “It’s a funny story,” she says. “We were lying on our lilac mats in my rainbow penthouse, and I was breathing deeply – and my stomach felt full. And I thought, why is it full? I haven’t had a meal today.”
It turned out she had a tumour. “It was in the bile [duct] and going into whatever’s near it,” she says, vaguely. Treatment involved weeks travelling across a locked-down London for chemotherapy, followed by an immunotherapy regime that she is still on, even though she is happy to say that the tumour is in full remission. Her first thought after diagnosis was “to get my will in order with a power of attorney that included a do-not-resuscitate order. I was very lucky because I had no pain whatsoever. I just got very tired while I was having the chemo.”
Continue reading...Feel the Bern, not the cold, with your own pair of winter-proof hand warmers – here’s how to stitch them at home
While it was Michelle Obama’s hair that brought the glamour to Joe Biden’s inauguration day, it was Bernie Sanders’ mittens that delivered the memes. Sitting at the event in a winter coat and mittens, arms and legs crossed, he was the yin to the rest of the Capitol’s sharp-suited yang – and promptly Photoshopped into Edward Hopper paintings, scenes from Glee and the vice-presidential debate, replacing the fly atop Mike Pence’s head.
Continue reading...UK footwear brand expected to launch market listing on Monday, with CEO in line for stake worth £58m
The British footwear brand Dr Martens is expected to launch a stock market flotation on Monday that would value the Northamptonshire firm at £3.5bn and generate a huge windfall for its bosses and backers.
The company, known for its boots with chunky air-cushioned soles and distinctive yellow stitching, was owned until 2013 by the Griggs family, who sold to the private equity investment group Permira for £300m but retained a near-10% stake. Just seven years later the business has soared in value and when it lands on the stock market will create numerous multimillionaires.
Continue reading...Our fashion editor on a year in which sweatpants soared, masks went designer, Topshop tumbled – and a pause fuelled hopes of a reset
I was on the Eurostar, somewhere between St Pancras and Paris, when a senior member of the Guardian team called and suggested that it might be a good idea for me to turn around at Gare du Nord and return to London.
It was 3 March 2020. This was not the plan. The plan had been to go to the Chanel show and report for the news pages. Instead, it was the beginning of all plans – work and otherwise – disintegrating.
Continue reading...Humans are designed to touch and be touched – which is why so many who live on their own have suffered during the pandemic. Will we ever fully recover?
There’s only so much a dog can do, even if that is a lot. I live alone with my staffy, and by week eight of the first lockdown she was rolling her eyes at my ever-tightening clutch. I had been sofa-bound with Covid and its after-effects before lockdown was announced, then spring and summer passed without any meaningful touch from another person. I missed the smell of my friends’ clothes and my nephew’s hair, but, more than anything, I missed the groundedness only another human body can bring. The ache in my solar plexus that married these thoughts often caught me off guard.
The need for touch exists below the horizon of consciousness. Before birth, when the amniotic fluid in the womb swirls around us and the foetal nervous system can distinguish our own body from our mother’s, our entire concept of self is rooted in touch. “The human body has built all its models based on touch received from caregivers,” says Dr Katerina Fotopoulou, a professor of psychodynamic neuroscience at University College London. “We’re utterly reliant on the caregiver to satisfy the body’s core needs. Little can be done without touch.”
Continue reading...Our centuries old love of dogs has never been stronger. So what does a study of ‘man’s best friend’ say about us?
Why is he here? Why is my dog lying at my feet in the shape of a croissant as I write this? How have I come to cherish his warm but lightly offensive pungency? How has his fish breath become a topic of humour when friends call round for dinner? Why do I shell out more than £1,000 each year to pay for his insurance? And why do I love him so much?
Ludo is not a special dog. He’s just another labrador retriever, one of approximately 500,000 in the UK (he’d be one in a million in the United States, the most popular breed in both countries). Ludo has a lot in common with all these dogs. He loves to play ball; obviously he’s an expert retriever. He could eat all the food in the universe and leave nothing for the other dogs. He is prone to hip dysplasia. He looks particularly attractive on a plush bed in a centrally heated house very far from the Newfoundland home of his ancestors.
Continue reading...The way we think about pain could change how much we actually suffer
We’ve all got a story about pain. Maybe it’s that time you broke your arm skating, or the time you finished the game on a twisted ankle, or the 10 hours of labour without an epidural. Maybe your story of pain is a story of violence, the injury and trauma of an assault. Maybe it’s a story of terror. Or it’s heartbreak, the seemingly endless depths of grief and despair after a loss. Whatever it is, (almost) all of us have experienced what we call pain and we’re not in a hurry to experience it again.
But have you ever tried to define that pain? When you’re telling the story, how do you explain the pain? Do you try to quantify the injury – how many broken bones, the size of the bruise, the amount of blood? Or do you describe the cause – the type of cancerous cells, the crowning baby, the sharp knife? But what if there was no obvious cause? And how do you communicate the intensity? Is it a searing or scalding burn, a throbbing or dull pressure, a pounding or stabbing headache? Is it worse than a bee sting, but not as bad as a dog bite?
Continue reading...‘Your English is poor,’ I tell him. ‘Your accent is atrocious’
My phone says it’s 7.50am, but the sky outside looks more like 4.15. Rain is striking the window in handfuls, like flung gravel. It has been raining all night, and it promises to rain all day, possibly for the rest of the month. I dress by the light of a reading lamp and close the bedroom door behind me.
“Hello?” says the cat from somewhere in the darkness below.
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