Articles

  • 1 week ago | theguardian.com | Emma Beddington

    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.

  • 1 week ago | theguardian.com | Emma Beddington

    I expect certain things from a Gwyneth Paltrow interview. Breathless outfit details. Her cooking something unexpectedly indulgent for the interviewer, or appearing more laid-back than her image suggests. Spacey pronouncements. What I don’t expect to read is: “I need to optimize EBITDA” (that’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation, for the non-business-speaking people) or “impacting my P&L” (profit and loss).

  • 3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Emma Beddington

    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”.

  • 3 weeks ago | msn.com | Emma Beddington

    Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.

  • 3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Emma Beddington

    “You’ll never eat a good meal in a restaurant that puts caviar on scrambled eggs”; “Your dining companions should have a say in what you order”; “There is nothing wrong with making multiple reservations for the same evening and then cancelling them.” The Financial Times asked its food writers to produce a set of commandments for restaurant dining, which were reviewed by industry experts (and, erm, Brooklyn Beckham).