I am sitting on the floor, watching the priest.
He lays out the banana leaves and begins shaping cooked rice into small mounds, each speckled with black sesame seeds. Around them are marigolds, copper vessels, offerings, flame. The arrangement slowly begins to look less like food and more like a family made visible.
Read MoreWith 97% of our native wildflowers disappearing since the 1930s1 now appears the perfect — and potentially only — opportunity to bring the wildflower back into our gardens. After all, who doesn’t want to see a beautiful mass of wildflower colours evolve throughout the summer season, abuzz with pollinators?
Read MoreHowever fierce the future summer heatwaves are; however torrential the winter storms, you’ll know you did everything you could to make it better. You’ll be able to tell your children and grandchildren you made a difference. You’ll know you tried. And, that’s got to be better than the alternative, right?
Read MoreThere has been an absurd number of videos, posts and comments heavily debating whether disabled people, specifically wheelchair users, should be allowed to use buses when there are parents using pushchairs and occupying the wheelchair user spaces on said bus.
Read MoreArtificial intelligence refers to computer systems designed to perform tasks associated with human intelligence, including problem-solving, prediction, learning, and language processing. Although AI has existed in various forms since the twentieth century, it has recently moved from specialist fields into everyday life, becoming an increasingly visible feature of work, politics, healthcare, education, and public debate. Financially, AI is often marketed as a competitive advantage, creating the perception that those who adopt it will gain opportunities while those who do not risk falling ‘behind’.
Read MoreWhen you think of British Wildlife, what comes to mind? The red Fox with its bushy brush tail? Or a dusk-loving long-eared Bat? Or maybe the prickly little West European Hedgehogs that scurry through your garden at night? Most of us have caught glimpses of these icons of British Wildlife, even if just through a flash of white in the woods. But there is one elusive British creature that I have yet to see: the Badger.
Read MoreWhen discovering a new artist in the information age, it can be hard not to be at least a little parasocial. I started listening to the band Horse Jumper of Love in late summer of last year, and the trio’s angular shifts between chimey slowcore and high-gain maximalist art-rock were the bedrock of my Autumn listening. HJOL, as they are often abbreviated, have been active since 2013, and their debut album remains one of the most successful cult records in its slacker-shoegaze niche.
Read MoreI was scrolling through social media when I came across an advertisement for a service that would send someone to your home to unpack your suitcase after a trip. For a fee, a stranger would arrive at your door, open your luggage, sort your clothes, hang them in the wardrobe, place your toiletries back in the bathroom, and dispose of the suitcase. The service promised to eliminate the post-holiday dread of facing a half-unpacked bag that sits in the corner of the bedroom for days, silently reproaching you.
My first reaction was disbelief. Then amusement. Then something closer to unease.
Read MoreI feel the need to preface this piece with a short disclaimer. None of what I'm about to talk about is laced with any kind of hyperbole, and I've approached it this way deliberately. To me, language choices and phrasing are so, so important when it comes to talking about topics like mental health. The use of sensationalist language creates a very real risk of triggering someone that is also struggling. By the same token, I don't want anything to appear to be too dry or clinical; these are lived, human experiences after all, and what are we without our humanity?
We've all heard it, judged it and likely heard other people judging it too.
To be fair, I don't particularly want to scoff at someone who is probably just as caught up in the rat race of perfection as the rest of us, but as a human, and more importantly, a writer who understands clickbait, I couldn't not mention Steven Bartlett's name in the title. Such is the modern world.
Read MoreThe climate crisis is often described as an environmental emergency. Yet it is equally a political and emotional condition, shaped by steadfast contradiction. Governments speak fluently about sustainability while the economic systems driving climate action remain tied to extraction, growth, and delay. Scientific knowledge expands at an unprecedented pace, even as ecological conditions continue to decline.
Read MoreGrief.
It’s such a deep, personal and unimaginably painfully heavy word.
When most people think about grief, they think of loved ones — friends, family, people you once knew, those that you never got the chance to know, the people that made you the person that you are today — passing away.
If somebody posts about grieving, the immediate assumption and comments are so often ‘I’m so sorry for your loss’.
But grief is multifaceted. It doesn’t have one secular reason.
Read More“80p for a bag of fusilli, £1 for the sauce…if I batch cook, that’s dinner for three days”, I tell myself as I stand in the aisle, overwhelmed, mentally ticking off the cheapest groceries so that I can afford to socialise this week.
Read MoreRingwood is a market town that sits on the Hampshire-Dorset border. It has been a home to multiple breweries since the 1600s, until 2023, when the last standing ‘Ringwood Brewery’ was sold off to Carlsberg and its ornate iron gates officially shut.
Read MoreI had no courage for the spice cabinet at all.
This is not an admission of laziness. This is strategy. Anyone who has ever organised a kitchen knows there are levels to this game. You start with the easy wins, the cutlery drawer, the Tupperware you think you’ll finally match with its lids, the optimistic shelf of “miscellaneous.” The spice cabinet, however, is the final boss.
Read MoreI’ve got it all planned. I know when the photographer turns up, where the button-holes need to be sent to, and the colour of the napkins. There’s just one thing left undecided, and suddenly burning a hole in my brain, and that’s this: do I take his last name?
Read MoreIf the eyes are the window to the soul, the public toilet is a finger up society's colon.
Read MoreIn St George, the worn remains of a medieval relic sit in the car park of the library. It’s now an accidental bollard, guarding the metal railings of the library access ramp.
Read MoreI have to admit my reaction to Chalamet’s statement, like everyone else, was “what an insufferable idiot”, but since he has opened a can of worms, why not delve into it?
Read MoreOften, when we’re chasing perfection, it can feel like everything goes wrong at once. One thing breaks, then another. A friend seems a bit distant and then an unexpected phone bill arrives. Before long, we start telling ourselves that everything has gone to shit and it’s all our fault.
Here’s a lesson that came to me while behind the wheel of a car rather than in a self-help book.
