Strangers had sexual relations in our Premier Inn room while we were out and Premier Inn refuses to do anything about it. We are an elderly couple in our 70s and my husband has advanced Parkinson’s and dementia. We had booked an accessible room for two nights in the London Stratford hotel over Christmas while … Read more
I know I’m not alone as a parent when I admit I have often felt like an exasperated failure in trying to restrict what my children see online. There were the times they hacked their devices’ screen time settings, or managed to stumble into inappropriate content in spite of the controls, not to mention the … Read more
I was 21, living in Sydney, working as a glassie at a local pub and feeling a bit lost. I didn’t know what to do in life – the one thing I had going for me was playing the flute. I’d saved for two years to buy my flute when I was 16 and earning … Read more
A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station at 1:35 a.m. Eastern time, paving the way for Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore — two NASA astronauts who have remained in space for months longer than planned — to finally return home. The Crew-10 mission, an international team of four astronauts from the U.S., … Read more
If you had asked me a month or two ago if I had ever had a spatial immersive experience, or what the chances were that at the age of 60, I would become an early adopter of virtual reality goggles, I would have said it was about as likely as a tech giant from Silicon … Read more
In 1992 I arrived for year 9 as a scholarship kid at a boarding school in the Victorian Alps. I was from Canberra and knew no one. Boring suburbia was replaced by a bush shed shared with 14 girls. We had to chop wood for warmth and hot showers, and spent weekends hiking and skiing. … Read more
Heston Blumenthal, one of Britain’s greatest chefs, lives in a small village in Provence. When we meet, on a weekday morning in February, he is in the Hind’s Head in Bray, a stone’s throw from his very famous restaurant, the Fat Duck, which turns 30 this August. Blumenthal is in England to test dishes he … Read more
As the smell of wild garlic fills the woodlands of Britain, it’s time to leave all thoughts of winter behind us and embrace the new. This is a menu to celebrate March, with its tripping lambs and nodding daffs. Verdant shoots give vibrancy to the landscape, urban and rural, and hope is in the air. … Read more
In the late 18th century, London was one of the busiest ports in the world, the docks in the east bustling with clippers, sailors and porters unloading tea, tobacco, rice, fruit, sugar and wine. It meant that industrial warehouses were thrown up along the banks of the Thames for much-needed storage. Almost two centuries later, … Read more
Switzerland isn’t expensive, it’s just very exclusive,” joked our tour guide as we walked along the paved path by the shore of Lake Lucerne. The Grand Train Tour of Switzerland – or GTToS for aficionados – certainly has the feel of an epic journey, complete with trains and boats offering panoramic views of its mountains, … Read more