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Wednesday

Robin Ashenden

The timeless beauty of Shropshire’s canals

Shropshire is a strange county, little known by those beyond its border, and perhaps that’s part of its appeal. It not only has no coastline, but no city officially either. Phone cover is shaky and transport links sparse (at some times in the day, only one bus every two hours will leave my market town, and they cease abruptly around 6 p.m.). But what it does have are medieval towns, lush green landscapes, and enormous numbers of farm animals – cows, sheep, and horses (for someone coming, as I do, from relatively arable East Anglia, this has a certain H.E. Bates charm to it). The town I’ve moved to, built

Zoe Strimpel

Gen-Z mean girls are aggressive and progressive

When Black Lives Matter created the figure of the Karen, it was a sign of that movement’s darker, bullying qualities. What exactly was wrong with a white middle-aged woman who asked to speak to the manager when things were unsatisfactory? The answer seemed to be in the white part and the woman part, and perhaps also in the middle-aged part. In short, the Karen was a racist, sexist, ageist construct, and as a middle-aged white woman myself, who makes her dissatisfaction known from time to time, I felt extra defensive. But if that original Karen caricatured the wrong person, then there are some modern female types that deserve closer scrutiny.

Tuesday

Arabella Byrne

How to survive the start of the school year

At long last, the day has come. After nearly two months of summer holidays, institutions beckon their children back for another school year. The television will resume its status as a post-school treat rather than an indispensable tool to fill the dead hours between events. The kitchen will no longer resemble an all-day canteen, and the house will take on the solemn quiet of the middle of the day. But this kind of peace is only won after a great deal of preparation. First up, school shoes. Unfortunately, children grow at a disproportionate rate to your bank balance. This means that the start of the new school year heralds the

Zak Asgard

The rise of the rogue bouncer

Bouncers – or ‘door supervisors’ – are a pillar of the ‘British night out’. They can sneak you into an exclusive club or send your teeth skating across the pavement with their Wreck-It Ralph fists. They can take a selfie with you and call you ‘mate’ or they can hit on your sister and emasculate you on your 19th birthday. We’ve all tried to sneak past them, to argue with them, to convince them that your best friend ‘is like that normally’ and ‘definitely not throwing up in his mouth right now’. We’ve all tried to high-five them. We’ve all been scared of them. We’ve all seen them hit a

James Innes-Smith

Hollywood’s youth obsession is draining the life from films

Can anyone name the actors in the new Alien: Romulus movie? No, me neither. Which seems odd for such a massive franchise, but then I struggle to name a single film star under the age of about 35, and I consider myself a movie buff. As is often the case with the release of a new sequel, I returned to the original for reappraisal. Yes, Ridley Scott’s masterwork is still frightening and expertly paced, but what makes the film exceptional is the diversity of the acting talent. And by diverse, I don’t mean the sort of DEI casting-by-numbers that turns every movie into a shiny Benetton commercial. No, I mean