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Emma BeddingtonThe Guardian |
I’ve often mentioned the cardboard removal box where I dump my worn-but-not-dirty clothes, craving, I think, the cleansing fire of public shame. Who...
No more croaky, fake phone-in-sick voice for the employees of one regional Chinese supermarket chain: the founder of Pang Dong Lai, Yu Donglai, is...
Chioma Nnadi, who has taken over at British Vogue, says she has settled back in seamlessly after 20 years out of the UK. “I realised just how much...
I devoured the journalist Hamish Bowles’s recent account of his recovery from a severe stroke, not just because good writing on life-altering events...
Of all the weird gen Z behaviours I have read about, this latest trend may be the most surprising: they are rambling. Yup, sturdy boots, waterproofs...
How alike are parents and kids? Quite, right? Surely we all play that game. I, for example, am competitive like my dad (but without a shred of his...
Recently, I went on an adventure to an alien and intimidating place, a real no-go area: Belgravia’s interiors shops. My best friend is trying to buy...
I don’t like to blow my own trumpet but I’m really good at worrying. If a family member fails to answer my message within 30 seconds, they’re...
A lifetime enveloped in a benign, insulating cloud of oestrogen left me ill-prepared to be this nakedly, shockingly angry as it ebbs away in...
‘I want to know Jubilee, Piccadilly, Northern, I want to know Edgware … Your system here is exquisite.” That is Sarah Jessica Parker raving...
As winter (black elastic-waisted trousers, four motheaten jumpers) gives way to spring (khaki trousers, two jumpers), the harsh April light forces me...
I have belatedly discovered the phrase “move in silence”. Apparently, Lil Wayne instructed people to do it in 2011 with the line: “Real Gs move...
Opening ceremonies to Olympic Games are an opportunity for nations to tell a positive story to the world and to themselves. In 2012, Danny Boyle’s...
I’m sad English midlifers are the loneliest in Europe: poor Gen Xers, sitting at home, wishing we had someone to go to the pub with. Researchers at...
What would really make you happy? More money, more fulfilling work, more time to spend with your loved ones? All good, but have you considered a box...
I don’t worry about my health. It’s a failure of imagination, I think, plus I’m busy worrying whether I use excess exclamation marks in emails...
I actually gasp when I read the news. “Sainsbury’s is closing down!” I tell my husband, waving my phone in his face. “Which Sainsbury’s?”...
I’m working on something right now that involves reading a book I don’t understand. It’s on a topic so abstract and vast that I’ve cried...
My younger son just turned 20. We went to visit and, at his suggestion, hiked up a hill together. A birthday hike! Only a few years ago, he barely...
‘The average woman with a pet now spends more time ‘actively engaged’ with her pet than she spends hanging out face-to-face with fellow humans...
I am living minimally for February – not a Veganuary sequel, just poor planning for my month in the US. Our last-minute Airbnb is exceptionally...
I was excited to experience a Boston winter – being in snow country was a genuine attraction of our trip here – and last week looked set to...
I was sucked into the new Netflix adaptation of One Day in the first episode, grabbing the remote to pause it as Dexter sits on Emma’s bed after...
I almost never leave Europe, so spending a month in Boston is expanding my provincial horizons and blowing my tiny mind. Wild turkeys (huge!) wander...
February is a double festival of love for me because my wedding anniversary falls just before Valentine’s Day. Most years we share nothing more than...
A few weeks ago, Bob Iger, the boss of Disney, stood in the latest outpost of the hugely profitable Frozen franchise – a theme park in Hong Kong –...
News so grave for France I can’t quite understand how it hasn’t provoked a general strike of its own: camembert is facing extinction. The French...
I’ve been dipping pruriently into a kerfuffle that kicked off in the ruddy-cheeked and sourdough-scented world of the tradwife lifestyle influencer...
A startling discovery in the Atlantic: apparently not closing your curtains, or not even having any, is a status symbol. “Americans who earn more...
I might be particularly attuned to this stuff, but I feel I’m always reading about women – mothers – I admire powering triumphantly through the...
I subscribe to Vittles online magazine, because reading evocative writing about food I’m too lazy and incompetent to prepare or seek out is one of...
Thoughts and prayers, please, for those of us born in 1974, as the global news event that is Kate Moss turning 50 continues. Given the blanket...
Here’s something I didn’t expect to be typing: pioneering performance artist Marina Abramović has released a wellness range. The Marina...
As we head towards Blue Monday, supposedly the worst day of the year, where are we all, emotionally? For my part, I have just discovered I completely...
I often wonder why birds speak so universally to the sagging middle-aged soul that it has become a comic trope – the vertiginously swift passage...
I am just back from New York and I’ve brought home a new anxiety dream as a souvenir. I’m paying in a cafe and a giant touchscreen asks me to...
Be careful out there: it’s boasting season. Maybe you’ve already been cornered at a party, received your first round-robin email, opened a card to...
I feel a bit left out by the whole Spotify Wrapped thing, where the music streamer reveals what you have been listening to this year. I use my...
‘If you’re thinking of going to York Christmas market on a Saturday,” says an exasperated local on TikTok, “can you just not?” I thought...
It’s hard not to feel personally attacked by some research (does that make me a raging narcissist? Probably). With crisps and now sitting down...
In a development more chilling than its -10C temperature, the Swedish city of Luleå is encouraging people to say hello to each other. The Säg hej! ...
Martha Stewart, the queen of hospitality, has issued a retraction of her recent declaration on The Kelly Clarkson Show that she had “cancelled...
Christmas in York has lost a bit of its sparkle. Residents of Twin Pike Way have decided they won’t be putting on their traditional light display...
Are you sitting down? Not because I am about to say anything shocking. Sorry – I shouldn’t scare you. I bet you are sitting. So am I. Because...
Barbra Streisand is looking for fun. “I haven’t had much fun in my life, to tell you the truth,” she told the BBC. “And I want to have more...
I started HRT in August and whoa, it’s good stuff. I said a few weeks in that I was still very angry, but my oestrogen level has now risen to the...
It’s a bleak reflection on 2023 that the Covid inquiry – painstakingly detailing how sloppy, hubris-fuelled mismanagement led to thousands of...
I’m getting used to not having a dog, but it’s possible I haven’t really accepted he has gone. Surely Oscar must be lurking in his bed...
Have you seen Maggie Smith’s advertising campaign for the fashion house Loewe? I can’t stop looking; I’m rapt. The styling, clothes and bags in...
Nina Stibbe is back in London. It has been 20 years since she left, and 40 years since she first arrived from Leicester to nanny, ineptly, for...