Category Archives: Life and style

‘Shadow pandemic’ of violence against women to be tackled with $25m UN fund

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At least 30% will go to the women-led grassroots organisations that have been ‘critical’ through Covid pandemic

The UN is to spend $25m (£19m) from its emergency fund to address what has been called the “shadow pandemic” of gender-based violence against women displaced by wars and disasters.

The money will be divided between the UN population fund (UNFPA) and UN Women, and at least 30% of it must be given to women-led local organisations that prevent violence and help survivors access medical and legal help, family planning, mental health services and counselling.

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Go floret: 17 delicious ways with cauliflower

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Roasted, fried or raw, this versatile vegetable is great for salads, curries, steaks and tapas. And don’t forget the always comforting cauliflower cheese

In culinary terms, cauliflower is often described as a blank canvas, partly because it does not taste of much on its own, but also because it is so very, very white. These days, cauliflower also comes in coloured versions: yellow, orange, purple or the pale green of the fractal-patterned romanesco variety.

But if you are buying the white stuff, it should be snow white, with no grey or brown patches or dark flecks. The florets should be dense and firm, and should not smell in the least cabbagey – past-it cauliflower will only become more sulphurous with cooking. Remember, a blank canvas is what you are after.

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‘Biggest sin in the programme’: How a coat from The Undoing divided the internet

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The ugly green coat in the HBO drama The Undoing has usurped a starry cast that includes Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant. But what are the show’s makers trying to say, exactly?

The real star of The Undoing, HBO’s absurd marital melodrama, is not Hugh Grant, the Manhattan skyline or even the pair of David Hockneys hanging inside a vast penthouse in episode one. It’s a coat.

Sludge-green, calf-length, with wide lapels and a hood, this coat is worn again and again by Nicole Kidman’s character, a gnomic therapist called Grace, as she floats down Madison Avenue, through Central Park and even into the prison on Rikers Island, brooding over her marriage to a man who may, or may not, have just murdered his lover with a lump hammer.

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‘Not normal times’: health experts on how they are spending Thanksgiving

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Top public health officials are taking their own advice about scaling down the holiday amid the Covid-19 pandemic to heart

In October, Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s foremost infectious disease expert, said in an interview that his children would not be coming home for Thanksgiving this year and encouraged other Americans to avoid large celebrations in order to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Related: Thanksgiving won't be the same this year – but there’s plenty to be thankful for | Nancy Jo Sales

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I’m a survivor! How resilience became the quality we all crave

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During the pandemic it has become a buzzword for successfully steering through adversity. But what exactly is resilience - and can you cultivate more of it?

It was after her block of flats burned down that Sadi Khan thought, finally, things could not get worse. She had married at 19, and for four years her husband had subjected her to horrific violence on an almost daily basis. She had been punched and kicked, financially controlled and constantly told she was stupid; once, a friend arrived at her flat and found her lying unconscious after an attack. So the day she accidentally set fire to her flat while cooking was simultaneously the day she lost everything and the day she started again. “He’s beaten me, I’ve lost everything,” she says. “What more can go wrong?”

Her father arrived the following day, and wanted to take her home. “I think that was the turning point,” says Khan. “When my dad was in front of me, saying: ‘Come home, let me look after you.’ I thought: ‘No, I don’t need looking after. I’m still alive. I burned the flat down, I’m still alive. I’ve been beaten up, I should have been dead five times over, but I’m still alive.’”

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How we met: ‘I was checking out the men in the theatre. He looked lovely’

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Peter Taylor, 73, and Mary Moogk, 72, met in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, in 1976. They live in Oshawa, Ontario

Peter Taylor moved to Niagara-on-the-Lake, a historic town in Ontario’s wine country, in 1975. “I joined a yachting company and started work building sailboats.”

The following February, his mother introduced him to an old family friend, who had a daughter about his age. “Our fathers had met in the forces,” he says. “I didn’t know Mary at the time.” Afterwards, he was invited to their family home for dinner.

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How can you tell when someone has a dog? Don’t worry – they’ll tell you

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I hadn’t seen my friend for months, but when we did meet, it wasn’t the Labour party’s problems, her MA or my house move we talked about …

There is a shortage of rescue dogs in the UK, particularly staffordshire bull terriers. No one knows why. Maybe all the existing staffs lost their mojo during the first lockdown, and it has interrupted supply. People might be stockpiling staffs, ahead of Brexit shortages. This is only of the mildest imaginable interest when you are not actively seeking a rescue dog, but my friend B was and, for ages, it was all we talked about. She would send links from Spanish dogs’ homes, and now I could probably get a translation job, provided all you needed me to translate was “un perro sociable y amigable”.

Anyway, Jem eventually arrived, speaking no English but with no discernible Spanish either. When we met in the park, B told me how almost everything about domestic life confused the hell out of him. He would stand on the sofa staring at his paws and swaying about as if he were on a boat, and lift a pie clean out of your hand. From this, she concluded that he had been raised not by humans, but by other dogs. Then we talked for ages about his stance and gait, the way his rolling shoulders gave him a beautiful wildness, but also made him look a little bit like a CGI terror robot from The Maze Runner, and how his stocky, slightly bowed legs were reminiscent of a young Dennis Waterman.

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Christmas: scientists suggest outdoor festivities to keep safe from Covid

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Independent Sage proposes community celebrations with food and drink in the street

Christmas could be turned into a communal outdoor celebration – with hot drinks and mince pies consumed in the street – scientists have suggested, in alternative plans drawn up for safer festivities.

In a set of proposals compiled by Independent Sage – a group formed in response to concerns about a lack of transparency in scientific advice given to government – they say the rules over the festive period will depend upon the rate and level of infections at the time.

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Writers retreat: seven authors on their outdoor escapes from lockdown

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Some literary minds crave a full-throttle rush. For others, it’s the peace in birdwatching, kayaking or finding refuge in the trees

Before lockdown, I occasionally got uneasily into a sea kayak with my kids – usually unbalancing it and tipping us all in the water. Then they exchanged the big multi-seater kayak for two lighter two-seaters, which I can actually lift.

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Prep talk: ‘yindies’ revive 80s Wall Street look for generation Z

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Ironic take on corporate attire reboots yuppie look in age of The Crown and new Gossip Girl

In the ultimate moment of fashion revival, the 80s yuppie look is back – but with a difference. The “yindies” (young ironic nostalgic dresser), is bringing back the suited, Wall Street look but with a touch of knowing self-reference and elements of preppy style too.

The first cast photograph of the new Gossip Girl reboot, the current season of The Crown, which features Diana Spencer’s 1980s Sloane Ranger chic and the navy suit jacket of Donald Trump impersonator Sarah Cooper, have all riffed on the classic powersuit silhouette.

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How to fight ‘Covid fatigue’ as America heads for a deadly winter

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Polls suggest Americans are exhausted after months of restrictions, so we asked experts for advice on how to convince loved ones to stay safe ahead of the holidays

Fatigue with pandemic restrictions has hit many Americans at a time when it’s more important than ever that people take the virus seriously and stay home.

While the US contends with a huge surge in cases and record hospitalizations, federal inaction has forced local officials to adopt their own rules and messaging, creating a patchwork of confusing regulations that differ across the country, and are constantly changing. Polls suggest Americans are exhausted.

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My anxious partner won’t come home because of Covid | Dear Mariella

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Your partner is not prioritising you, but now is the time for understanding, says Mariella Frostrup, and to focus on your own life and mental health

The dilemma My partner and I have been separated by Covid for many weeks. I am living in our home, while he has moved out and is looking after his disabled adult daughter. The agreement was that when his daughter went back to her mother, he would return home.

However, the date seems ever-changing. Last week, this week and now next week. This is all down to his high anxiety regarding Covid. First, he delayed coming home because my son, who had recently had the virus, came for the weekend. He then delayed again because my son had met a friend so there could be infection on surfaces in the home for 28 days.

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Boris Johnson under pressure as scientists back tight rules for Christmas

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PM set to announce end to lockdown before trying to broker national agreement on family gatherings

Boris Johnson will meet his cabinet remotely on Sunday to decide how people will be able to gather with loved ones at Christmas, before the announcement of a new Covid winter plan.

The prime minister, who is self-isolating, will then confirm by video to parliament on Monday that national restrictions will end on 2 December and be replaced by the three-tier regional system, with even tighter controls in some areas.

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How we stay together: ‘There is no magic cookbook of relationships’

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Suzanne Harris and Tom McAtee may not agree on politics – but the pair’s pragmatism and ability to talk things out has kept them together for over three decades

Names: Suzanne Harris and Tom McAtee
Years together: 34
Occupations: social worker and HR consultant

When the going gets tough, Suzanne and Tom get into the garden. “In the times where we’ve not had much money, or there’ve been difficulties with work or jobs changing, we’ve gardened,” Suzanne says. “It’s a good way of releasing tension, of working together, planning and being creative.” Tom nods: “Gardening allowed us to be together, to be able to share that tense period together in a joint physical activity.”

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‘What he was doing was in plain sight’: more ex-models accuse Gérald Marie of sexual assault

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Exclusive: Another seven women come forward with allegations about the former Elite boss

Seven more women have come forward to accuse the former model agency boss Gérald Marie of sexual misconduct, adding to mounting allegations that have drawn parallels with the disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.

Last month a Guardian investigation revealed that nine women had made sexual misconduct allegations against Marie, who for three decades was one of the most powerful men in the fashion industry.

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10 of the best Christmas songs (that aren’t by Mariah Carey)

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The classics are back in the charts even earlier than usual – alongside the perennial row about the Pogues. So why not discover these lesser-known festive bangers?

Judging by the number of trees and lights going up already, the UK is rounding off the worst year ever by turning Christmas 2020 into a six-week celebration of successful vaccine trials. Sure enough, sales and streams of festive songs are up by 50% compared with the same week last year, with Mariah Carey leading the charge and likely to go Top 40 tomorrow. But to avoid being thoroughly sick of All I Want for Christmas Is You before you have even opened an Advent calendar, consider adding these lesser-known tracks to your playlists.

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Map of the soul: how BTS rewrote the western pop rulebook

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Contrary to their dismissive framing as manufactured robots, South Korea’s BTS use social media, documentary and storytelling to make themselves into profoundly human stars

BTS’s leader RM looks up from under a black baseball cap, then stares back down at his hands. “Doing the promotional interviews, [I kept saying], ‘Music truly transcends every barrier.’ But even while I was saying it I questioned myself if I indeed believe it.”

It’s late September, and the rapper is confiding in over one million fans live from his Seoul studio. His “complex set of feelings” about the explosive, record-breaking success of Dynamite – the first fully English-language single from the South Korean megastars – is not the celebration you’d expect from a band that just topped the US Billboard Hot 100, the first K-pop act to do so. But this kind of frank, unfiltered conversation is exactly what their global “Army” fanbase love: BTS’s candid social media presence has included their fans in every step of their artistic journey, and, as they release new album Be this week, has made them the biggest pop group on the planet.

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When it comes to a family trauma, who gets to tell the story?

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When Fariha Róisín started writing Like a Bird, she thought the traumatic event at its heart was just a dream. She explores the weight of a family secret

In her 1861 account Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs exposed her sexual abuse by her master with lucidity and truth. Yet for more than 100 years, it was accepted academic opinion that Incidents was a novel, written by white abolitionist Lydia Maria Child. It was not until the 1980s that critic Jean Fagan Yellin proved Jacobs to be the true author; Incidents had been autobiographical all along.

In Hollywood, rape narratives are largely penned by men and seen as a motif, because the tension (and tragedy) of the experience creates sympathy, compassion; it formalises emotion. When we see a woman raped and abused on film we absolve ourselves for watching, because we want to understand the ugliness of human atrocity, or so that’s what we say. And when women write about rape, often in literature, its seen as melodramatic, overemotional, too impossible to be true. “Primarily, rape is considered a women’s issue, though this is, of course, hardly the case,” writes poet Moniza Alvi, in the introduction to Feminism, Literature and Rape Narratives, “and perhaps this is partly why it is considered a literary taboo, particularly when conveyed from a female viewpoint.”

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That moule do nicely! 17 ways with mussels

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It’s an ingredient forgiving of an empty cupboard, can be treated in myriad ways, is relatively easy to cook and is utterly sustainable. Perfect!

Before mussels can be cooked, they must first be chosen. The process is a bit like selecting jurors for trial: you start with a random pool assembled by someone else, and eliminate any that are obviously disqualified – the broken, the dead. Some you can interrogate a little: tap any open mussels sharply against the side of the sink, and if they close up in response, they’re OK. One or two may be subject to peremptory challenge – you’re allowed to get rid of them without giving reasons, just because you don’t like the look of them. It’s not hard, but there’s a level of responsibility involved.

You also need to tug off their beards – generally a bit of whatever it is they were clinging on to when they were harvested, in most cases the rope they were grown on. Sometimes, they need a bit of scrubbing, but the mussels sold in nets on the supermarket fish counter are pretty clean – they’ve already been subjected to a level of abrading on your behalf. You can scrape off any remaining barnacles with the blunt edge of a butter knife, but honestly, unless you’re planning to photograph your dinner, I wouldn’t bother.

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