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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Leah Harper
Mary Ann Kenny first met her husband in 2000, at a conference in Dundee. “It was a coup de foudre – ‘a bolt of lightning’,” the 60-year-old languages lecturer says with a smile. “We had finally found what had taken both of us a very long time to find.”John was from Chester, Kenny was from Dublin, and the couple had a long-distance relationship until he moved to Ireland to live with her in 2008.
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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Leah Harper
Mine is a familiar story: I used to hate even the idea of running. But, in 2020, when gyms closed their doors, I downloaded the Couch to 5k app, and ran approximately three times a week for the next four years, culminating in a half marathon in 2024 – and, predictably, an injury. Physios treating my persistent hip pain didn’t tell me to stop running – but they did suggest I might want to explore other, lower impact options, such as swimming. But where to start?
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Feb 25, 2025 | 
theguardian.com | Leah Harper
Matthew Reum was driving home late on a dark, foggy night in Indiana when his headlights landed on what looked like a deer. As he swerved, his truck barrel-rolled down a ravine,into the creek beneath Interstate 94. It was 20 December 2023, and Reum, a boiler-man, was 27. He was flung between his seat and the ceiling, losing consciousness as the airbags activated and the windows shattered around him.
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Jan 1, 2025 | 
theguardian.com | Zoe Williams |Rachel Dixon |Nigel Kendall |Arwa Mahdawi |Amy Fleming |Sam Pyrah | +9 more
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Oct 31, 2024 | 
theguardian.com | Leah Harper
Have you ever felt more stylish than when popping out for a pint of semi-skimmed milk? No? Well, that is surprising – because supermarkets and their produce are one of fashion’s greatest muses. This week, Moschino launched its Sedano bag – a celery-shaped clutch that first appeared on catwalks earlier in the year.
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Sep 11, 2024 | 
theguardian.com | Leah Harper
A drink at the bar is rarely the highlight of any trip to the theatre. Beers are swiftly decanted into bendy plastic tumblers; wines are often an underwhelming choice of “red, white or fizzy”; and prices can be extortionate. But with most theatre bars opening about 90 minutes before curtain-up, that’s a lot of time to kill clutching a mediocre glass of merlot. The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more.
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Jun 27, 2024 | 
theguardian.com | Leah Harper
You know the drill: you scrape the remaining crumbs of your dessert from the plate, finish off the last of the bottle of wine, settle the bill and leave the restaurant, full and content. While it’s certainly possible to forget to pay, for a small number of diners, this “mistake” is deliberate: they never intended to pay at all.
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Jun 22, 2024 | 
theguardian.com | Savannah Ayoade-Greaves |Marina Hyde |Chris Godfrey |Leah Harper |Philippa Perry |Briony Rawle | +1 more
Marina Hyde on poor Rishi, who had to go without a Sky subscription as a teenager; Chris Godfrey spent a decade trying to quit smoking, then he tried hypnotherapy and it changed his life; when Jordan Hatmaker pulled the string of her parachute, she realised something was very wrong; and ‘My grownup son is gaming all day and lives on takeaways’ - Philippa Perry offers advice to a mother How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know Please note that after 23 June 2024, you will no...
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Jun 11, 2024 | 
theguardian.com | Leah Harper
Jordan Hatmaker knew something was wrong as soon as she tried to open her parachute. “You’re meant to look up to check: is it there? Is it square? And is it stable?” she says. It was none of those things. This was the second time that day that she and her skydiving coach had leapt from an aircraft 13,500ft above the fields and farmland of Suffolk, Virginia. Hatmaker was 35, a fairly experienced skydiver, just 10 jumps away from securing her skydiving licence.
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Apr 25, 2024 | 
nationalobserver.com | Leah Harper
This story was originally published by The Guardian and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Attention home cooks: Do you, like me, have half a lemon, perhaps encased in a beeswax wrap or clingfilm, sitting in your fridge? Half a cucumber, going dry at one end? Or maybe an open jar of capers, barely used, but well past the two-week recommended refrigeration period? So often, a recipe requires just half an onion, or a third of a block of tofu — especially when cooking for one.
