Uncategorized

Wednesday

Zoe Strimpel

I’m cancelling rat girl summer

Rat girl summer is a typically absurd TikTok meme that most women –indeed, most humans – born before 1990 would probably struggle to understand. But it’s a thing. And here’s what it means, according to the Washington Post: it is ‘a TikTok movement that emphasizes living like a rat: scurrying around the streets at all hours of the day and night, snacking to your heart’s delight, and going to places you have no business going to’. After a content creator called Lola Kolade encouraged followers to ‘embrace the rodent energy’ in June, #ratgirlsummer has been shared over 25 million times on TikTok.  Together, rat girls and lazy girls begin to look like a funeral march for

Mark Mason

So long, Crooked House: a guide to Britain’s oddest pubs

Farewell then, the Crooked House. The 18th-century pub, in the West Midlands village of Himley, hasn’t just stopped being a pub – it’s stopped existing, full stop. Just days after its sale to a private buyer for ‘alternative use’, the famously wonky building – where coins and marbles appeared to roll uphill – was gutted by fire and has now been demolished. Unsurprisingly this has given rise to suspicions aplenty, but we’re taking it as a chance to celebrate Britain’s oddest pubs. Step this way for underground tunnels, pubs without bars – and some very single-minded landlords… Oliver Cromwell spent a night here and Inspector Morse visited in a 1990

James Jeffrey

On the death of a pilgrim

John Brierley, who died last month, was a legendary pilgrim that you’ve probably never heard of. Admittedly, these days most people aren’t familiar with any pilgrims. Just going to Sunday mass is unorthodox. The vast majority of us who respected Brierley never met him and probably, like me, never saw a video clip of him or even heard him talk. We knew him only from his series of Camino de Santiago guidebooks. But that was enough. Having been translated into numerous languages and sold around a million copies, his books shepherded countless pilgrims like me on their long travels across continental Europe toward the remarkable city of Santiago de Compostela

Tuesday

John Mac Ghlionn

Conor McGregor is finished

The most recent UFC event, UFC 291, was a fascinating spectacle. Of all the compelling fights that took place, the final one, which saw Justin Gaethje face off against Dustin Poirier, was by far the best. Shortly after Gaethje stole the show with a devastating head-kick knockout of Poirier, Conor McGregor took to Twitter – sorry, X ­– to give his thoughts. More specifically, he took to X to warn Gaethje that, very soon, he would ‘slap’ him around.  The McGregor of today is not the McGregor of 2015. He’s not even the McGregor of 2020 A few years ago, perhaps, such a threat would have carried some weight. It would have been met with

Julie Bindel

Just say no to sourdough

One Sunday morning, in an upmarket bakery packed to the hilt with women clutching yoga mats and men proudly carrying papoose-swaddled babies, I glanced around in search of a fresh loaf to serve for lunch. I saw the myriad of shapes, sizes, colours and textures of the loaves on display, and then noticed something. All but one, a seeded rye, were variations on the dreaded sourdough. When it was my turn to be served, I asked ‘Is there anything in the shop except for damned sourdough?’ Judging by the disgusted looks that came my way, I might as well have been asking whether anyone fancied kicking a few homeless people

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

How to spend 48 hours in Tangier

One of the few highlights of newly-released Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a frantic chase through 1960s Tangier. It’s breathless, edge-of-the-seat stuff with tuk-tuks, motorcycles, a Jaguar and Mercedes tearing through the narrow streets of the medina, guns blazing and quips flying. I’m told so many tuk-tuks got mangled they needed dozens to shoot the scene.  In the medina, we wandered the crammed, twisting streets full of bustling locals, tired dogs, stray cats and laughing children What a crushing disappointment, then, to discover that the sequence was filmed not in Tangier at all but in Fez and Oujda. The 1987 Bond film, The Living Daylights, was filmed in Tangier, as

Monday

Matt McDonald

Why everyone is delighted the US women’s soccer team is out

Americans awoke on Sunday morning to find themselves bathing in wave after wave of schadenfreude. In Melbourne, the unthinkable had happened: the US Women’s National Team had been defeated – and eliminated from the football World Cup. The online criticism was unrelenting. ‘They really are equal to the men’s team,’ said The Spectator World’s Stephen L. Miller. ‘Any men’s team that was as cocky as this US women’s soccer team and got eliminated this early in a shocking upset would get absolutely obliterated by sports media,’ tweeted radio host Clay Travis. The US women are already widely disliked internationally for appearing cocky After a languid and leggy group stage performance that