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10 ways to keep fit at home

If you’re avoiding the gym because of coronavirus and you want to shake up your exercise routine then it’s easy enough to work up a sweat and torch those calories, either in a park or in your garden. Some of these exercises can even be done inside. Team Be Military Fit have created the ultimate bodyweight workout to keep you fit even as you skip the gym or work from home. You don’t need any expensive kit; simply pop on your running shoes and find your nearest green space. Exercise 1 Curb steps Curb steps are a great way to ease yourself into the workout by elevating your heart rate.

Lara Prendergast

10 of the best florists that deliver

The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is on this week. The gardens are impressive, but my favourite part of the show has always been the enormous tent in the middle of it all, in which flowers from all round the British Isles are displayed. Radiant pots of daffodils sit alongside obscene-looking collections of orchids – and people come from around the world to ogle at them. So at this time of the year, thoughts naturally turn to flowers. If, like me, you only have limited space in your garden – or window box (where I am currently attempting to grow sweet peas) – then you may find yourself in need of

7 reasons a no-deal Brexit will be good for Millennials

The end of March is nigh, and thanks to the EU’s latest pronouncements, a no-deal Brexit is still a very real possibility. The idea of No Deal causes most millennials to quake in their Balenciaga boots. But there’s nothing like a bit of positive thinking to get you through a crisis, right? Here are 7 reasons a no deal Brexit will be good for millennials. 1. Brexit provides a faultless scape goat We all need a go-to excuse to get us through life’s ups and downs, and now Brexit can be that for everyone. No longer do you need to rely on permanently delayed tubes, or numerous dying aunts –

Sex and Relationships: the seven sexual ages of men

In As You Like It, Shakespeare suggested that there were seven ages of man. Sadly, he himself didn’t experience all of them; he shuffled off this mortal coil at the age of only 52, precisely 400 years ago. You could also say that the human male has seven sexual ages, marked by a gradual decline in activity. But can we stress that word ‘gradual?’ The fall-off over several decades really is very slow. Even some doctors don’t appreciate this. Only recently one of us acted as an expert witness in support of a man who had wrongly been told by a surgeon that ‘males can’t expect erections after the age

Ten underrated thrillers

As we are now well into the unwanted Lockdown sequel and winter approaches, time perhaps to enjoy an enforced home cinema experience with a selection of movie thrillers that you may have missed the first time round. Titles range from big budget star vehicles to smaller scale pictures that introduced us to some of the possible on and off-screen icons of tomorrow. The Coldest Game (2019) – Netflix I came across this Polish-produced Cold War thriller one night when searching for movies similar to Bridge of Spies (2015). Whilst not in the same league as Spielberg’s picture, The Coldest Game has enough twists and turns to engage the viewer, with

The best Scandi Noir to watch this winter

With the dark evenings rolling in and the headlines sounding gloomier than ever, what better way to enter winter than by getting stuck into a good Scandi noir? Once the preserve of late nights on BBC Four, the genre has become a bankable success for streaming services – and a source of friendly(ish) competition between the Nordic nations. Here are eight of the best recent offerings currently available on Netflix: Bordertown Brooding crime drama Bordertown has attracted praise from such luminaries as horror supremo Stephen King, as well as smashing viewing records in its native Finland. The plot follows a detective inspector, Kari Sorjonen, who relocates to a small town

What to eat at Diwali

Diwali, which falls this year on November 14th, is a festival of family, fireworks and food. Here are the dishes to try to keep the Diwali flame alive in a Covid winter. Covid has already put paid to regular Diwali celebrations. It was inevitable: eight people around the table to tuck into a Christmas turkey is one thing; a Diwali gathering involving your typical Asian extended family— aunts, uncles, fourth cousins and all—is quite another. But, as a festival celebrating the triumph of light over darkness, we should all get in on the cheer and do our best to salvage the festivities by rustling up some celebratory food. The extent

Olivia Potts

Chicken forestière: a simple yet sophisticated stew

I have always been a bit of a stew-pusher; it tends to be my answer to any of life’s dilemmas, culinary or otherwise. Friends coming round? Stew. Cold and dark outside? Stew. Feeling sad? Stew. To be honest, it doesn’t matter whether or not the weather demands it, I am always in the mood for stew. I’d eat mince and dumplings in June, a slow-cooked sticky oxtail ragu in high Summer. But once Autumn arrives, and my obsession is legitimised by the cold and the dark evenings, there’s no stopping me. In our household, it’s casseroles from now until Spring. I struggle to think of something more comforting and cosy

Isabel Hardman

‘As good as an orgasm’: how to go wild swimming in winter

Wild swimming has become almost tediously fashionable recently, and no heatwave is really complete without a flood of articles on how it feels to take a dip in the outdoors (and even more tedious ones about how ‘in my day, we just called it swimming’ from people fortunate enough not to have grown up with chlorine and floating plasters as their introduction to the water. But the strange thing is that as the weather chills, so does the trendy interest, even though winter swimming is far more fun – and even better for you – than its summer equivalent. Only recently we’ve seen more research suggesting there is a ‘cold-shock’

12 items to stockpile for a No-Deal Brexit

When you hear the word ‘stockpiling’, the first thought that pops into your head is probably the image of forest-dwelling folk in remote reaches of the US, usually bearded, always armed, with hunting vests, baseball caps, a few tonnes of canned food buried beneath their shack and enough kerosene to defrost Svalbard. Yet with the prospect of a hard Brexit edging ever closer, stockpiling has become a major pastime of businesses across the UK. The Economist have set aside 30 tonnes of paper to print their magazine, whilst Majestic have secured up to 1.5 million bottles of wine (should the worst happen, I know which warehouse I’ll be looting). Medicines

The rise of the luxury camper van

Anyone who has recently tried to buy a second-hand van will know that they have become difficult to find at sensible money – so much so, in fact, that a leading British broadsheet recently felt moved to report on the boom in sales, citing one of the major ‘drivers’ being the increase in people turning to courier work after being laid-off from their previous jobs due to the economic downturn caused by Coronavirus. But vans are not only enjoying a surge in popularity among those who want to put them to work – they are also having their day in the sun as versatile recreational vehicles in the form of

Is it time to say adieu to avocado toast?

Oh the avo. The fruit that launched a thousand tweets. This millennial Holy Grail has done more to divide generations than anything save perhaps Brexit. It has been three years since Australian property developer Tim Gurner became a hate figure for suggesting in a TV interview that it was not economic difficulty that was keeping millennials from getting on the housing ladder but a tendency to spend $19 on smashed avos for brunch. Millennials vented their anger in the only way they know how—by twitter tirade. Perhaps it would have been more fitting to pelt Tim with over-ripe avos for his audacity. To eat avocado on toast in public is

What to watch on Netflix this Autumn

Even with filming and production stalled, Netflix is set to deliver an impressive slate of new content this autumn. From the return of Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown to new work from Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher, here’s our guide to what’s coming up. The Crown (Season four), 15 November To call The Crown the highlight of Netflix’s autumn season would be an understatement. After all, even the release of the official trailer – due any minute now incidentally – is usually enough to send the internet into a tizzy. For those who don’t already know, this year’s outing – covering the 1980s – sees the

The best Michelin star restaurants outside of London

Foodies traditionally flock to London to check out the best new chefs and restaurateurs. But by doing so they’re missing a trick. The number of Michelin-starred establishments outside the capital has been growing rapidly and there are now 97 restaurants holding the coveted accolade dotted around the country – two of which have been awarded the maximum three stars. In Cumbria, which has a population not much larger than the borough of Croydon, there are seven restaurants with Michelin stars to their name. Follow our guide to the best gastronomic experiences the rest of Britain has to offer. The Red Lion, Wiltshire A thatched cottage next to a babbling brook:

Six spy films to watch this weekend

As Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending, time-travelling espionage extravaganza Tenet finally makes it to British cinemas (America, amusingly, has to wait a while longer) and with the much-delayed release of the new James Bond film No Time To Die apparently just a few months away now, big-budget films dealing with glossy espionage in all its forms are very much in demand. Yet cinema of the past couple of decades has found numerous different ways to portray spying, from the banal to the glossily explosive. It has encompassed literary adaptations, unrecognisable resurrections of Sixties television shows, deconstructed Cold War sagas and even sly updates of classic Seventies films. Here are half a dozen

Titania McGrath: ‘I can’t forgive Florence Nightingale for her silence on non-binary rights’

How has Titania found lockdown? I conduct most of my activism through Twitter, so lockdown has not prevented me from spreading my important message of social justice. The trick to Twitter is always to include a rainbow flag and pronouns in your bio. That way, when you’re calling your opponents evil, lowlife scumbags, trying to get them fired, or gloating if they die, everyone will know that you’re actually incredibly compassionate. You cite the likes of Meghan Markle, Hillary Clinton and Joseph Stalin as key influencers for children growing up today. Who were your own role models growing up? I did used to look up to Florence Nightingale, but then

Six sequels that outdo the original film

‘Sequels are whores’ movies’, the great screenwriter William Goldman once opined. As with so much that Goldman said, it’s pithy, witty and often accurate. All of us have been lured into cinemas with the promise of the continuation of a great film, only to be sorely disappointed by the cynicism of a lazy cash-in. Several of these have deservedly gone down as some of the worst pictures ever made: there is no need for any sensible person to watch Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights or Jaws: The Revenge. Yet there are also examples of sequels that equal, even surpass, the original, where either the original filmmakers return to a story

What to watch on Amazon Prime this Autumn

Whether you’re stuck at home in quarantine or just looking to spice up those weekday evenings, there’s plenty coming to Amazon Prime over the autumn. Here’s our round-up of the shows and films you don’t want to miss: The Boys (Season Two), 4 September Set in a parallel universe in which superheroes are real – and form a crucial part of America’s police industrial complex – The Boys is a smart and timely satire that packs a serious punch. Don’t let the familiar capes and claws aesthetic fool you: this is no Marvel rip-off. For all their YouTube-friendly stunts, this is a series about how latex-clad ‘supes’ aren’t always as

The reinvention of Robert Pattinson

Britain is about to have a new leading man. Robert Pattinson, who made his name more than a decade ago in the UK in the Harry Potter films, and then in the US in the Twilight films, has finally emerged as a bona fide, grown-up film star. Following hot on the heels of his starring role in Tenet, Christopher Nolan’s cinema-saving summer blockbuster, Pattinson will be on our sitting room screens this September alongside Mia Wasikowska in The Devil All the Time on Netflix, a psychological thriller produced by Jake Gyllenhaal. Then, in 2021, he’ll appear in his biggest role to date: The Batman. In donning the iconic superhero’s black

I love my Le Creuset dish – and I’m not alone

If you’re trying to determine someone’s class and the accent is hard to place, you could do worse than check the brand of their pans. Le Creuset has been a staple of upper-middle class British kitchens for years – the sort of Eurocentric brand that contains just a hint of francophile exoticism whilst conjuring up the British comfort food of old: casseroles, stews and soups. And, if Instagram is anything to go by, Millennials are also cottoning onto the appeal. With the rise of #cottagecore and the boom in home cooking that came about over lockdown, Le Creuset doesn’t seem to be disappearing any time soon. While to own a