Category Archives: Life and style

This year I achieved nothing. All I discovered were the limits of my unambition

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Did I waste one of the great self-improvement opportunities of my life playing video games, getting into craft beer and cleaning the bathroom too much?

‘Look at this,” I say to my girlfriend. “Pretty cool, right?” I am slowly rubbing a mildly abrasive product called Bar Keeper’s Friend into the white worktop of our kitchen counter, eradicating an almost invisible stain. “It’s mildly abrasive, I guess,” I continue, when she says nothing. “You remember that coffee ring?” Silence.

Seven weeks into the first lockdown, my girlfriend and I have nothing left to say to one another. Every possible human experience that has occurred in this flat over the past two and a half months has been vocalised, analysed and wrung dry. One night before bed, she pleaded: “Say something to me!” and, in desperation, I started talking about a podcast I had listened to earlier in the day, but one I couldn’t remember entirely, so I spent 20 minutes roughly explaining the concept of Nikola Tesla before falling asleep. In comparison, ushering her to the kitchen to watch me almost remove a coffee stain is a vast improvement. “It’ll probably need another going over, but …” I trail off. “How much was it?” she asks. I’m electrified by the chance at having something new to say. “It was two pounds and 99 pence.”

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‘I’m fascinated by power, force and bravery’: the woman who surfed the biggest recorded wave of 2020

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Seven years ago, she was nearly killed in pursuit of the sport she loves, but she defied expert’s predictions and made a stunning comeback

In the photographs of her record-breaking ride, the Brazilian surfer Maya Gabeira is a tiny blade on the water, cutting a line of white spume down the deep ridge of the vast grey wave that climbs behind her. The wave in question measured 22.4 metres (73.5ft), the highest ever surfed by a woman, the first to be measured and verified by Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and a couple of feet greater than the one surfed by her nearest rival. It is also the biggest wave measured this year, surfed by man or woman.

Gabeira, who broke her own previous Guinness world record of 68ft, attributes her achievement to what she calls “taking a critical line”. In short, she takes her board to the fiercest and tallest part of the wave, “where the most powerful energy is, where it is actually breaking”. This, she says, is how “you put value into your wave”.

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‘Everything tastes better’: Guardian readers on their culinary discoveries of 2020

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From turning up the heat with exotic chillies to the ubiquitous and ultimately rewarding rise of sourdough, readers share their ingredients of the year

Discovering – or rediscovering – the joy of cooking has been one of the few bright spots of a year spent largely at home. We asked 43 of Australia’s leading chefs, cookbook authors and bloggers to share their favourite ingredient of the year. Their answers ranged from the humble and comforting (flour, mince, red lentils) to ingeniously umami (kombu, chilli bean curd, prawn oil), with native Australian ingredients also making many a No 1 spot (wattleseed, karkalla, cunjim winyu).

Now it’s our readers’ turn to share their finds.

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Hilaria Baldwin speaks out amid accusations she faked being Spanish

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Baldwin accuses critics of ‘misrepresenting’ her, and addresses her background and that cucumber ‘brain fart’ incident

Hilaria Baldwin has accused critics of “misrepresenting” her amid allegations she spent years faking being Spanish.

Speaking out in a New York Times interview on Wednesday, Baldwin addressed the controversy surrounding her heritage after it emerged she was born in Boston, not Spain, and was originally named Hillary.

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Boris Johnson stopped me getting fit – but he couldn’t come between me and my guitar

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I’m still no Jimi Hendrix, but after a year’s solid practice I have just about mastered one R&B track

This year, my original new year resolution was to be a two-pronged attack on my unhealthy lifestyle in the form of restrictions on booze and food. Sadly, that was waylaid by the unavoidable catastrophe of coronavirus, paired with the wildly avoidable catastrophe of Boris Johnson being prime minister.

Given that we have been trapped in our homes, I had to rapidly reimagine my ambitions. Without the assistance of chicken so deep fried it practically becomes a sedative, or the sweet embrace of red wine, I suspect I would not have been able to cope with 2020.

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From witchy rituals to sobbing on the floor: how will you spend New Year’s Eve? – open thread

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A terrible year is finally over but are we really in the mood to party? The Guardia Australian team reflect on how they’ll be marking 2020’s demise – please join us in the comments with your own plans and suggestions

In many ways, the end of this terrible year deserves the biggest, loudest and most cathartic party of all time. In a pandemic, of course, that was never going to happen – but it seems to be the last thing many want to do anyway.

When asked how they’d be marking New Year’s Eve – amid Covid restrictions, bad weather and general 2020 exhaustion – many people on Twitter shared the same sentiment: they would not be doing much. One is looking forward to “a quiet night with my dogs”; another a “rousing boardgame”; a third replied: “glass of wine, bed early.”

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Crammed with my wife and adult kids into a tiny one-bed flat, I realised I loved my home

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In March, our house was a cold, rubble-strewn building site. As supply chains broke down, it became clear we wouldn’t be moving back any time soon


My wife is a goal-oriented person. When she learns, it is deliberate. For her, lockdown presented an opportunity, so she began learning Danish. I didn’t. I am deeply lazy: as I sit here writing, I am staring at an empty packet of Wotsits that has been sitting by my laptop for three hours; the bin is 6ft away. The notion of actively learning something seemed a bit needless. Why waste all that time when I could be doing nothing?

I did learn something, though. I learned that I love my home, which came as a surprise. I guess there is nothing quite like being trapped outside your house, as we were, to make you appreciate it rather more.

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Giving birth seemed to spell disaster for my mental health. Were my anxieties unfounded?

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I feared isolation, sleep deprivation and an end to the activities that had been keeping me well. I never expected to be filled with such love and wonder

I hadn’t expected to have a baby. But when I turned out to be wrong about that, I found myself expecting the whole thing to be a disaster. It wasn’t just that people tend to be rather negative about what early parenthood entails, focusing on the sleepless nights and endless nappy changes. It was also because I had a mental illness that I thought would make it impossible for me to cope at all, let alone enjoy motherhood. Neither had I expected to be giving birth in the middle of a pandemic, in which I would be cut off from much of my support network.

In the three years since I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, as a result of a serious trauma in my personal life, I had spent a great deal of time trying to work out how to manage my illness. I planned my weeks around activities that research told me would help mend my mind a little. I knew that cold-water swimming, for instance, appears to help us control the fight-or-flight instinct that often goes so awry in mental illness. I knew that running could encourage the body to produce chemicals that lift the mood. I had discovered that birdwatching and looking for wild flowers were much more effective for me than mindfulness apps, with their calls to sit in silence in a room. I had just written a book about the healing power of outdoor pursuits and was starting to feel mildly in control of my life.

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The food quiz of the year: from sexualised mac’n’cheese to celebrity doughnuts

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The pandemic couldn’t put a stop to pretentious restaurants or angry chefs – but can you tell which was which?

Before we had a pandemic to stress about, bakers in southern India entered Guinness World Records by baking the world’s longest cake. Roughly how long was it?

65 metres

650 metres

6.5km

65km

According to a spoof WhatsApp message that went viral in March, why was the government about to requisition Wembley stadium?

To turn it into a food bank

To host its own version of Bake Off

To cook the world’s biggest lasagne

To use as storage for the nation’s leftover sourdough

Muse in Belgravia, London, was this year labelled the most pretentious restaurant in Britain. Which of these is not a real item on the menu?

Conquering the beech tree (langoustine, pork fat, burnt apple)

Neither black nor white (cauliflower panna cotta, pickled gold raisins, caviar)

A date with Pablo (’nduja, thyme mist, polenta)

Mother’s puzzle (lemon, fennel pollen, yogurt)

Which public figure did Donuts Delite in Rochester, New York, pay tribute to with a special doughnut bearing their likeness?

Donald Trump

Bernie Sanders

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Dr Anthony Fauci

This year the Guardian ran a widely commented on guide to making the perfect burger at home. According to Honest Burger’s Tom Barton, where should the pickle in a burger go?

Under the meat patty

Above the meat patty but under the cheese

Outside the bun, as a side accompaniment only

In the bin – there’s no place for pickles on a burger

What started going missing from boxes of Quality Street after Covid-19 disrupted production lines?

The chocolate caramel brownie

The purple hazelnut caramel

Wrappers around each individual chocolate

The orange one that no one likes anyway

This year Kraft was accused of “sexualising mac’n’cheese”. What had it done?

Placed billboards featuring models bathing in the creamy pasta dish

Set up a promotion encouraging fans to “send noodz”

Added “sexy” anthropomorphic pasta shapes to the package design

Mistakenly advertised its snacks on a pornographic website

What was described by this newspaper as “Jamie’s Oliver’s worst nightmare”?

An EU law banning the use of the word “pukka” on food items

Toploader splitting up

Uber Eats getting banned from delivering on Vespas

The return of the Turkey Twizzler

Who did chef Tom Kerridge blast as “selfish” and “disgraceful”?

Dominic Cummings

Customers who fail to show up for their reservations

Diners who refuse to socially distance

People who don’t tip

Which would-be food critic came out with the unforgettable take down: “One thing I will say about Italy in general … the food is actually shocking! It’s meant to be the home of pizza and pasta and I really can’t see how”?

Selling Sunset’s Chrishell Stause

Fitness guru Joe Wicks

Love Island’s Molly-Mae Hague

Nigel Farage

2020 saw the return of the “wine window” … but what is it?

A tiny crack in a wine bottle that allows the precious drink to seep out undetected

A house window that uses bottle-green instead of clear glass

A hole in a wall through which wine can be passed to people on the street

The brief period of time in which parents can have a sneaky glass while their kids are napping

11 and above.

100%! You deserve a (socially distanced) meal out to celebrate!

8 and above.

You’ve clearly spent isolation gorging yourself stupid (on food knowledge)

0 and above.

Oh dear, have you spent your year eating nothing but homemade sourdough?

4 and above.

Your correct answers came around as often as an Ocado slot during lockdown

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Fearne Cotton: ‘I have found clarity’

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She was the face of popular culture, but then Fearne Cotton reached crisis point. Now she has found her voice again...

Fearne Cotton keeps a pile of notebooks next to her computer, each brimming with plans for projects. Many of us have struggled to focus during the pandemic, but for Cotton, the past nine months have been among the most productive of her professional life. “I’ve found this time really creative,” she says, in that presenter voice of hers, so soothingly familiar. “It’s like when I go on holiday. In moments I’m forced to do nothing, I find this clarity.”

It’s 10am on a grey December morning when we meet over Zoom and her schedule, when she takes me through it, sounds exhausting. Her lockdowns have been busy. She’s written two books since the pandemic started and has kept up her popular wellness podcast, Happy Place, alongside her weekly Radio 2 show. And though the second instalment of her annual summer wellness event, Happy Place Festival, could have become another Covid casualty, Cotton and her team took the programme online. She juggled all this with home schooling her kids.

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The menopause is ruining my sex life. How can I stop feeling so numb?

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Losing your libido is a symptom, not a life sentence

The dilemma I am a 52-year-old woman who has had a difficult perimenopause. I have read extensively on the subject and tried various supplements to ease this transition. My experience has included hot flushes, night sweats, depression, anxiety, insomnia and heavy periods. I was suffering the most debilitating anxiety to the point where I could barely function. I am on bio-identical HRT (Oestragel and Utrogestan), but these had little effect in easing the symptoms. I had no choice but to take antidepressants even though my symptoms were due to hormone fluctuations.

As a side effect my libido fell drastically (a healthy sex life had been maintained until this point and I have always found it easy to orgasm). What I did not expect was that my clitoris physically shrunk and orgasms become almost impossible to achieve.

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‘I’m getting clarity, a time that will feel lighter’: psychics share their 2021 predictions

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From astrology to tarot, interest in the mystical arts has flourished during the pandemic. So what is in store for the year ahead?

This age of uncertainty has been a boon for crystal ball gazers. From New York to New Delhi, fortune-tellers have seen spikes in business; in the US, Forbes magazine reported a 136% rise in people seeking supernatural readings. In societies where religious belief is dwindling, and trust in the establishment under threat, the idea of looking elsewhere for guidance – to the stars or beyond, if you believe in a beyond – has made a kind of sense.

2021 will present an opportunity to reassess what’s important. It brings a chance to rebuild

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17 ways with leftover turkey, from warming ramen to rich risotto

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With Christmas gatherings reduced in size this year, you may have more poultry than usual to eat up. But there are myriad ways to make that more interesting that in sounds

On top of all the problems we have faced in 2020, we could be experiencing a larger-than-ever glut of turkey this season: restrictions on large gatherings, combined with high demand for – and a corresponding shortage of – smaller birds, may have left a lot of us with more meat than we can eat in one, two or even three sittings.

Fortunately, help is at hand: here are 17 easy, delicious and slightly different ways to use up your Christmas turkey.

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‘The idea was to put smiles on faces – and it snowballed’: the people who saved 2020

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From the Spider-Men who rescued the children of Stockport, to the women who won the Nobel prize, here are seven people who brightened the darkest days

When Andrew Baldock decided to don a Spider-Man suit for his daily jog in March, to cheer up locked-down children on his estate, he never expected such a huge response. “The original idea was just to put some smiles on faces and then it snowballed,” says Baldock, 45, who lives in Stockport, Greater Manchester. “Everyone loved it.”

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Happy Kwanzaa! It’s so much more than a ‘black Christmas’

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I had my reservations about this celebration of African heritage. Then my father and I shared a very special moment

In 1966, the African American Maulana Karenga created the holiday of Kwanzaa to give black people an “opportunity to celebrate themselves and their history” rather than indulge in the customary traditions of a white Christmas. The celebration starts on Boxing Day and runs for seven days, each marking one of the “principles of African heritage”, which include umoja (Swahili for unity), kujichagulia (self-determination) and ujaama (cooperative work and economics).

I have a complicated relationship with the holiday. I have always been suspicious of Karenga, the self-styled “master teacher” who seems more cult leader than black revolutionary, peddling a highly patriarchal message of African spirituality as some kind of salvation. It is undeniable that this festival, which takes its name from the Swahili for “first fruits”, but is set in the dead of winter, draws heavily on Christmas, yet Kwanzaa is extremely popular in black communities. I once recited a poem during a Kwanzaa celebration at Harvard, defending it as more than a “bootleg black Christmas”. And if a questionable origin story was a reason not to celebrate a cultural event, then we would all be at work on 25 December.

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Stella Tennant obituary

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Model who rose to fame in the 1990s, capturing the attention of Karl Lagerfeld and gracing the pages of Vogue

No one in fashion could guess what would succeed the smiling, buoyant healthfulness of the international supermodels who commanded catwalks and covers in the late 1980s and early 90s. The unexpected next big things turned out to be very particularly British: bad-waif Kate Moss, and cool aristo Stella Tennant, who arrived on the pages of British Vogue in 1993. She has died suddenly, shortly after her 50th birthday.

Tennant’s appeal had been prefigured in the release that year of Sally Potter’s film of the Virginia Woolf fantasy novel Orlando, its hero/heroine (nothing so simple as androgynous) played by Tilda Swinton; pipe-cleaner thin, tall, pale, unpainted, with a body language both male and female, and an ever-unready smile. Totally Tennant.

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Experience: I fell in love in an Uber

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I jumped in the cab to find a tall handsome stranger sitting in the back

It was a beautiful spring day in Manhattan in May 2016. The air was crisp and the skies were blue, so I decided to walk across town to meet a friend for lunch. I had gone only a few blocks when what felt like a tornado hit: my light coat was no match for the heavy rain; my hair blew in 10 directions, and garbage hit me in the face. I tried to hail a cab, but there weren’t any. Uber prices were surging, so I decided to take a punt on an UberPool (you could end up travelling with a stranger, but there’s a discount). I hoped nobody would get in to join me on the short trip.

The cab pulled around the corner immediately. I jumped in to find a tall, handsome stranger sitting in the back. My heart started to race. I casually glanced in his direction before smoothly sitting down beside him (or so I thought; if you ask him about it now, he says I straight up stared at him).

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The film quiz of the year: do you know the Queen’s favourite or which one inspired John Lennon?

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From producers’ faux pas to an actor’s accident with a chainsaw, check out your knowledge of the movie world

Which James Bond film had its release postponed twice this year due to Covid-19?

Die Another Day

No Time to Die

Live and Let Die

Tomorrow Never Dies

Which actor was picked by Pablo Larraín to play Princess Diana in his upcoming film about the end of her married life?

Lily James

Millie Bobby Brown

Kristen Stewart

Vanessa Kirby

Which prominent couple signed a lucrative deal this year with Netflix to make TV drama, films and children’s shows?

Prince Albert and Princess Charlene of Monaco

Danny Dyer and Joanne Mas

Elton John and David Furnish

Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex

In August, Brian Blessed revealed that the Queen told him her favourite film is one of his. Was it?

Santa’s Blotto (Blessed played Santa)

Henry VIII and His Six Wives (Blessed played the Earl of Suffolk)

Flash Gordon (Blessed played Prince Vultan)

Much Ado About Nothing (Blessed played Antonio)

In the autumn, it was revealed that a baseball film inspired John Lennon to record the song Grow Old With Me a month before he was shot dead in December 1980. Was it?

A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story (1978), with Blythe Danner as Eleanor and Edward Herrmann as her husband, Lou, stricken with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Angels in the Outfield (1951), starring Paul Douglas as the Pittsburgh Pirates’ tough-talking manager Guffy McGovern, who is soothed by love

The Stratton Story (1949), starring James Stewart as Monty Stratton of the Chicago White Sox

The Bad News Bears (1976), with Walter Matthau as the grumpy old coach

This summer, which film festival moved to gender-neutral acting awards?

Cannes

Venice

Sundance

Berlin

In September, US congressman Ken Buck called for an investigation into what?

The Netflix movie Cuties

The Capitol Hill security administration’s decision in April 2015 to allow Buck to bring an AR-15 assault rifle into the building for a photo opportunity in a year in which one child had already been killed and eight injured during school shootings

Twitter allowing Buck in March 2020 to post a video online boasting about the AR-15 assault rifle in his office, challenging Joe Biden to take it from him, in a year in which two children had already been killed and one injured during school shootings

The NRA spending $829,377 on Buck’s congressional campaign in 2010, a year in which three children were killed and five injured during school shootings

This year, Matt Hancock incorrectly referred to “Daniel Rashford” when he meant Marcus Rashford, the footballer whose school meals campaign had just shamed the government into submission. Hancock later said he had been thinking of a famous movie personality. Who was it?

Daniel Radcliffe


Daniel Craig


Daniel Day-Lewis


Daniel who’s travelling tonight on a plane

Which movie star suffered a chainsaw accident at home during lockdown?


 Judi Dench

Maggie Smith


Cate Blanchett

Sylvester Stallone

At the beginning of the year, producers of the period drama Little Women were embarrassed when an eagle-eyed fan spotted two modern items in the background of one shot, just behind Timothée Chalamet. Were they?

A green-tea menthol e-cigarette and a tablet

A portable Blu-ray player and an ultrasonic humidifier

A Fitbit and a pair of Apple glasses

A Hydro Flask and a plastic Poland Spring water bottle

10 and above.

Cut! What a glorious take, carissimo. Practise your Zoom acceptance speech my darling because we're talking silverware.

7 and above.

Cut! Whoah! Not bad my love. I was really feeling it that time.

0 and above.

Cut! With a performance this bad, I regret casting you. The security guard will escort you out of the studio.

4 and above.

Cut! Mmm. Try that scene again darling, but do try to say the lines as if you haven't got a head injury.

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How to properly load a dishwasher: ‘If you pre-rinse it might actually come out dirtier’

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Should you pay attention to ‘not dishwasher safe’ labels? And what really belongs in the bottom drawer? Experts solve your family washing-up conflicts

If you still feel the sting of parental reprimands for barbarically stacking your plate in the dishwasher without rinsing it first, one good thing 2020 can offer is vindication. While everyone has their own methods, tricks and opinions on conventional wisdom, the misinformation around a machine that’s meant to make our lives easier has caused generations-long feuds – and water wastage.

Fact: You do not need to pre-rinse. Just scrape the solids into the bin, says Ashley Iredale, white goods expert at the independent consumer advocacy group Choice. Most dishwashers have inbuilt turbidity sensors that measure how much dirt is in the water from the first rinse cycle, so rinsed plates may fool the system. “If you pre-rinse everything, your dishwasher’s going to think that your plates are cleaner than they actually are, so it won’t wash as intensely and they might actually come out dirtier,” says Iredale. The food filter is there for a reason, he adds – simply remove and clean it once a month.

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Australia’s grumpy cat: shelter staff bent on finding ‘demonic’ Chester a home

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South Australian eight-year-old has lived in four homes already, but RSPCA says it’s about knowing how to handle him

Returned to the RSPCA by four different families in the past seven years, “demonic” Chester may be the least-loved cat in Australia, but workers at the shelter are still determined to find him a home for Christmas.

The grumpy eight-year-old moggie was described by his last owner as “anti-social” and “a real Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”. On his surrender form, the former owner wrote that while Chester was “great with chickens” and “tolerates the dogs”, he also “attacks our old cat and the neighbours”. She told the RSPCA that she had visitors who would not enter the house unless the cat was locked away.

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