Lifestyle - Saturday, June 6, 2026

Samantha Ross was suspicious about Adam’s sweet disposition. Then a surprising act of kindness brought her guard down • Find more stories from the moment I knew series It was the year 2000 and my belief in love was crushed. I’d been in a five-year relationship, only to find out my ex had cheated the entire time. In some small part, I saw it as my own fault – I’d always been attracted to proverbial bad boys. Adding to the angst of being betrayed, I’d been writing novels – mysteries set in the Australian wilderness – that kept being rejected. I was not in a sunny place. And then I met Adam. Continue reading...

From spicy South African relish to Scottish tattie scones, food is an integral part of watching the beautiful game. Here’s how fans around the world fuel match day • International recipes inspired by the World Cup The biggest World Cup ever is surely going to mean the most ever watching parties around the world. With 48 countries competing, why not take inspiration from global cuisine to serve your friends and family something more adventurous than crisps and lager this summer? Football, after all, is a sport of rituals – from fans wearing the same “lucky pants” to watch every game, to placing the name of an opposing team in the freezer – and that extends to eating and drinking, too. This doesn’t just mean booze; in nations where alcohol is prohibited, for example, tea and traditional sweets provide the social lubrication. South American fixtures are fiestas of churrasco (barbecues), chimichurri and a lot of cheering, while in regions where cafe culture thrives, baked goods and strong espresso are more commonly enjoyed during matches than half a cider and some pork scratchings – even at 3am. Continue reading...

To age in place, and live near each other, Sandra and Franca Di Diomete decided to build an interlocking home on Sandra’s tiny, odd-shaped lot.

The carefree scene in the ancient Chinese city of Kashgar prompted the photographer to reflect of his own sources of happiness Kuanglong Zhang lives in Shenzhen, in the south of China, and was visiting the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar when he took this photo. Close to the borders of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan, it is ancient and landlocked; distinctly different from the modern port city he calls home. Zhang remembers being captivated by the unfamiliar streets and alleys. As he explored, he came across two brothers playing football after school. “I used the telephoto lens on my phone to make the contrast between the children and the painted yellow buildings stronger, and the composition cleaner,” says Zhang, who is the 2025 Mobile Photography awards’ photographer of the year . “I set up the shot so they’d be on the left and right side of the frame to create a sense of visual balance, and, as both of them are facing left, it gave more space on that side so the image doesn’t feel cramped.” Continue reading...

Supermarket sushi doesn’t have the best reputation, so which selection is decidedly fishy and which one should you roll with? • The best smoked salmon, tasted and rated Most supermarket sushi is so bad that it makes the fact that master sushi chefs in Japan traditionally train for 10 years or more seem entirely reasonable. That said, the products in this test aren’t all bad, though the bar is pretty low. My greatest concern, beyond the freshness of the seafood, was sustainability. Fish stocks are depleted and open-water aquaculture (especially salmon farming, the source of the UK’s favourite sushi topping) can have serious environmental implications and poor welfare standards. Even in-house sustainability claims are minimal, and just two products have any third-party certification. I awarded points for quality, freshness and certifications, and for including all three traditional condiments: soy sauce, wasabi and pickled ginger (most include only soy). Continue reading...

The Amandaland actor on her statue phobia, what she’d like to say to her mum, and lusting after Keanu Reeves Born in Dublin, Philippa Dunne, 44, trained at the Gaiety School of Acting and co-founded a comedy group called Diet of Worms. Her TV work includes Derry Girls and This Is Going to Hurt. Since 2016, she has played Anne Flynn in the BBC sitcom Motherland and its spin-off, Amandaland, now in its second series; her performance won her a Bafta nomination this year. She is married with a daughter and lives in London. When were you happiest? Any time I’m in rehearsals. Continue reading...

A week-long mountain trek with two young children felt like an ambitious undertaking – but they loved every minute It’s said the 19th-century Parisian flâneur , intent on not rushing past the beauties of the street, would take a tortoise on a lead to set the pace. I thought about this as my donkey bent his head to another thistle and I turned my attention to the view, waiting for him to finish. Every way I looked, layers of mountains receded in deepening shades of eggshell blue. There were no sounds but the wind, the squeals of marmots and the giggles of my two young kids. I was extremely, uncomplicatedly happy. Our donkeys were on loan from Burrotrek, a small outfit run by Swiss-born Denise Wirth. Twenty years ago, Denise spent four and a half months walking the Camino from Switzerland to Santiago de Compostela with two donkeys. She liked Spain, and she loved donkeys, so she settled on the idea of offering donkey treks in the Pyrenees. She has not looked back. For much of the year she is based where she settled, near Cadaqués, and offers a variety of self-guided itineraries through the vineyards in the foothills and along the Mediterranean coast, with trips lasting between a day and a week. But for the summer months, when temperatures soar, she relocates with her donkeys to Cal Jan de la Llosa in the province of Girona, a gorgeous ruin of a farm several miles up an unpaved track. From here, she lends her animals to people who, for whatever reason, have a romantic notion of what it might be like to take a donkey up a mountain. Continue reading...

From the ‘Intransigents’ to Simple Comforts and Cookery Bible, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz 1 What began to tilt in 1178? 2 Which deep-sea fish attracts prey with a glowing lure called an esca? 3 Habitat 67 is a Brutalist housing development in which North American city? 4 Which founder member of the Football League no longer exists? 5 What was Barbara Castle’s 1969 plan to improve industrial relations? 6 Vasco Núñez de Balboa was the first European to see what? 7 Which artistic group were originally called the “Intransigents”? 8 Which 1963 fantasy film did Tom Hanks declare the “greatest movie ever made”? What links: 9 Simple Comforts; Cookery Bible; How to Be a Domestic Goddess? 10 I’m a Believer; I Wanna Be Yours; Feel Good Inc? 11 Champagne (Chekhov); Mozart (Mahler); veal pie (Pitt the Younger); whisky (Dylan Thomas)? 12 Altes; Bode; Neues; Pergamon? 13 Estonian; Finnish; Hungarian; Sámi? 14 Dupplin Moor; Halidon Hill; Culblean; Neville’s Cross? 15 Aird; Dickinson & Sawyer; Edgar; Hunt; Mundson; Poulain? Continue reading...

Laurine, who works in forensics, meets Theo, a financial adviser. They are both 27 What were you hoping for? Love! Or someone new, great conversation, a free dinner and feature in my favourite Guardian column. Continue reading...

Thirty years after my parents were pressured into placing me with an adoption agency, I finally reconnected with them. But it was nothing like the neat stories you see on TV One morning in late September 2023, I discovered by chance that my birth mother had been killed almost a year earlier. The revelation came while I was searching my work email for a stray message. In the bin folder, amid a slurry of irrelevant press releases, lay an unopened email, ­flagging a long-forgotten Google alert I had set up for her name, Susan Barras. We had been estranged for almost 15 years, so this in itself provoked trepidation. I had cut contact with her when our relationship had finally become too fraught and emotionally ­exhausting for me to continue. Opening the email, I realised with shock that the alert had been triggered by a probate notice about her estate. Susan was only 69 when she died, and my first thought was that the breast cancer she was being treated for when we were in touch had returned. My second was the realisation that both my birth parents were now dead – my birth father had died of liver failure in late 2018, aged 70. But then the unfamiliar name listed on the probate notice, Suzann Doyle, captured my attention. Underneath this was confirmation that my birth mother had changed her name. Her address at the time of her death posed further questions. It was not that of the large detached house in Guildford I had visited just once, a few months after we were reunited, where she had lived with her husband. This address was for a tiny one-bed retirement flat overlooking Guildford train station. Continue reading...