The dilemma After a gap year, my daughter is in her first year at university. She really doesn’t find her course interesting and wants to quit. However, she wants to carry on living with her friends and has committed to renting a house with them. She thinks we should continue to pay her rent, which we […]
Conditions as extreme as a pandemic will do something to a relationship, in the same way that adding a sharp burst of acid to cream changes it: either giving it zest or curdling it. I’m lucky. I have spent lockdown with my boyfriend, with our usually shared flat to ourselves. Although our relationship has its […]
I’m starting to see friends and neighbours who are anxious and fearful about going out – and for a while I felt it, too. Not so much because they fear catching the virus (although that is, of course, still very important), but because they haven’t been out for so long. A neighbour tells me she […]
It had taken so much for Tina to get to the supermarket; to go home empty-handed left her in tears. Tina, 47, has conditions including chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression. She should not have been out at all, but, although her doctor had told her to shield indoors, she had […]
This is set to be the hottest week of the year so far. Usually that doesn’t matter, because usually your workplace is comfortably air-conditioned. But now you are working from home, in a residence that has been specifically insulated to remain warm in winter. In short, things are about to get uncomfortable. This is where […]
The chef talks about taking up running, his worries for his industry – and why politicians should stop calling restaurant work ‘low-skilled’ “The mix maybe hasn’t risen enough, or the tin is too big,” says Tom Kerridge. “Is it a wholemeal flour?” It’s not every day that an affable Michelin-starred celebrity chef drops by, even if […]
I am having a little trouble with my marriage, sexually. While I am quite kinky and highly sexual, my wife is not as comfortable with her sexuality, or communicating about it. I accept that, and have been encouraging her to open up, feel pleasure and tell me what she wants in the bedroom more. This has recently taken an […]
All non-essential retailers – including clothes, shoe, toy, book and electronics shops, tailors, auction houses, photography studios and indoor markets – in England were able to reopen this week, provided they had followed UK government guidelines to make them “Covid-secure”. That means reopened shops should have carried out a risk assessment using guidance from the Health and […]
When Jenny Brownlees became unwell with chronic fatigue syndrome (also known as ME) in her teens, she never thought love would be part of her future. “By the time I turned 18, I was virtually housebound. I’d left school, and I was constantly in pain.” Despite her illness, she says, her neighbour Adam Meritt caught […]
When Jimi Blake closed Hunting Brook Gardens, in County Wicklow, Ireland, at the end of March, he went into a frenzy of propagating. “I’ve grown 1,000 plants from seed,” he says, including the rare umbel, Monizia edulis (a tree carrot that comes from the cliffs of Madeira), squash, sweetcorn, peas and Florence fennel. “I’ve had time to start […]