52 m. ago I told a truly weird lie on a first date 30 years ago – and it worked out surprisingly well | Emma Beddington

A new E4 dating show brings the lies we tell while dating into the spotlight. But is bending the truth always a bad thing when looking for love?In 1994, I went on a date. I had just arrived in a new country and I liked the guy: he seemed funny and confident. He took me to a hardware store (weird, but not a dealbreaker) and then for a Tex-Mex meal during which, at some point, I told him I drove a Land Rover.It was a truly weird, dumb, lie – I knew nothing about cars and cared even less. Maybe I thought it made me sound grown up, tougher and more capable than I was, or maybe the margaritas went to my head? I’m sure I told him other lies (I remember giving the impression that I enjoyed clubbing), but that one was memorably stupid. Continue reading...

Politics

6 d. ago Why I can’t stop watching two pandas not have sex | Emma Beddinton

Despite all Copenhagen zoo’s best efforts, pandas Mao Sun and Xing Er have been playing chase, squeaking, wrestling and napping – doing everything but procreate Spring is properly here, potent, pollinated, fecund. The garden is electric with sex and postcoital doings: sparrows are shagging on the roof, nests are being frenetically constructed and grubs transported to nesting mamas. I spend my days voyeuristically peeping at tits (I got a nestcam for my birthday and I’m obsessed). Even educated fleas are doing it and I dread to imagine what filth the squirrels are up to.I tell you who isn’t doing it, though: Mao Sun and Xing Er, the Copenhagen zoo pandas. Since their arrival in 2019, the pair haven’t managed to mate. This is my third year tuning in to the intense will-they-won’t-they soap opera, shared by keeper Nadja Søndergaard on her extremely entertaining Instagram account @thegoodbearsandme. The pandas are solitary creatures, only coming together for Mao Sun’s 36-hour oestrus wi...

Politics

6 d. ago Why I can’t stop watching two pandas not have sex | Emma Beddington

Despite all Copenhagen zoo’s best efforts, pandas Mao Sun and Xing Er have been playing chase, squeaking, wrestling and napping – doing everything but procreate Spring is properly here, potent, pollinated, fecund. The garden is electric with sex and postcoital doings: sparrows are shagging on the roof, nests are being frenetically constructed and grubs transported to nesting mamas. I spend my days voyeuristically peeping at tits (I got a nestcam for my birthday and I’m obsessed). Even educated fleas are doing it and I dread to imagine what filth the squirrels are up to.I tell you who isn’t doing it, though: Mao Sun and Xing Er, the Copenhagen zoo pandas. Since their arrival in 2019, the pair haven’t managed to mate. This is my third year tuning in to the intense will-they-won’t-they soap opera, shared by keeper Nadja Søndergaard on her extremely entertaining Instagram account @thegoodbearsandme. The pandas are solitary creatures, only coming together for Mao Sun’s 36-hour oestrus wi...

Politics

2 w. ago Men get more disgusted as they age? It’s only a matter of time before my husband sees the real, slovenly, me | Emma Beddington

Research shows that while women experience feelings of revulsion from a young age, men catch them up in later years. Maybe I should stop scraping the mould off the jam What disgusts you? I hope it’s not inexpertly summarised research, because I have been intrigued by the recently reported finding that men get more disgusted as they age. Researchers at the Institute for Environmental Decisions in Zurich found that while young women generally “experience more disgust than men”, later in life the difference between the sexes narrows, and “men and women will reach similar levels of disgust when they get older”.I don’t think anyone who has encountered young men’s bedrooms either in person or through the @boyroom social media account (a festival of coverless, unwashed duvets, defrosted bags of Ikea meatballs left to fester and stockpiled used tissues) will be surprised to learn that male disgust doesn’t kick in early. However, the theory is that as physical vulnerability increases with ag...

Politics

3 w. ago What I learned from the woman who does 52 new things a year | Emma Beddington

I definitely can’t match her sense of adventure – and I find real pleasure in my daily routines. But it is time to escape my hummus-tinged comfort zoneAs part of my puny striving towards personal growth, I am choosing not to feel personally attacked by learning about York resident Sally Millington, who has been doing 52 new things a year since 2018. Millington’s 400-plus experiments span standup, bee-keeping, cliff-camping, jazz dance and busking dressed as a turkey (choose your own worst nightmare from that list). She’s clearly a force of nature and it’s an admirable commitment to getting out of your comfort zone. “Why not?” she told Radio York, explaining that her adventures helped to fuel her creative and critical thinking and forge connections with “amazing people I would never have ordinarily have met”.I struggled to stem the rising tide of inadequacy this threatened to unleash in me though, because I doubt I’ve done five new activities since 2018. I’m still struggling with the...

Politics

3 w. ago It’s time to embrace Dugnadsånd – the Norwegian concept we all need right now | Emma Beddington

With its combination of community, cooperation and selflessness, this could offer some small comfort in a terrifying eraA new hygge has dropped, but you’ll need to take off your cosy slippers and put down your cinnamon bun to try it. There is a real danger of getting the wrong end of the stick when we get enthusiastic about other nations’ lifestyles – such as when the New York Times writes about modern Britons enjoying boiled mutton for lunch, or “cavorting” in swamps, and we all get cross – but this comes straight from the Viking’s mouth.That’s Meik Wiking, the perfectly named chief executive of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen. Writing in Stylist, Wiking suggests we consider adopting a Norwegian concept that requires no blankets or candles: dugnadsånd, approximately translated as “community spirit”. He likens dugnadsånd to barn-raising in 18th- and 19th-century North America, describing a “collective willingness of people to come together in the context of community ...

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