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Nell FrizzellThe Guardian |
This morning, I walked past an advert for something described as the anal gland revolution. I didn’t know anal glands had been calling for a...
Last week, I interviewed the journalist, podcaster and author Hattie Crisell about her new book, In Writing. It’s a collection of writing advice and...
Have you recently seen a sweating woman with a watermelon stuffed up her fleece, wheezing her way behind a bush mere metres from a towpath to have a...
There is a particular sort of box that lurks in every home, full of “memorabilia” or “mementos”. Baby teeth, divorce certificates, spare keys...
It is giant spider season and I am delighted. As someone who is ravaged by flying insects all summer, I welcome these eight-legged death machines into...
It was at the back of a school hall, sitting on a blue plastic chair, watching my son erratically kick a chest-height dummy while a medley of synth...
Until I’d woken up in the middle of an orchard at 2am with a child so covered in bites it was like trying to share a tent with a bag of feral cats,...
This isn’t one of those social media writing challenges or book trends you’ve missed such as NaNoWriMo or #ReadWomen. But perhaps it should be....
When I was growing up, the sum total of New Zealand’s contribution to global culture was, essentially, the singer from Crowded House and Shortland...
Here is a short and by no means comprehensive list of things that have been at the bottom of my fruit bowl for about a year: two screwdrivers, a small...
If you’ve ever spent £40 and a whole weekend trying to paint out the scrawling of your young children from your rental walls in the futile hope...
Pull on your effluent suits and ring the sewage bell because, friends, Thames Water is being fined. Or at least it might be. The industry regulator,...
I wish refugees didn’t exist. Of course I do. I wish war, persecution, violence and discrimination didn’t exist, too. But people have been fleeing...
I don’t want to undermine my international standing as a gourmand (you are, after all, looking at the woman who once ate the entire Bella Italia...
There is a particular summer weather that I – and perhaps I alone – love. Hot, overcast and damp. The days when the air feels like the breath of a...
A brilliant author and artist recently opened my eyes to the wonderland of jaw exercise videos. Smiling women in pastel-coloured vest tops chew the...
The other night, I spent half an hour cleaning the mud kitchen of a city farm, surrounded by sand, goat hair and mulch. I have never cleaned the...
I don’t follow recipes. In fact, I think anyone who does is a giant baby. Which isn’t to say I hate cookery books. I have several in my kitchen. I...
How do you entertain a group of small boys for the day? Take them to a skip, of course. This week, my son’s school was closed for an “inset...
While on my way to look at an iguanodon skeleton the other day, at the Museum of Natural History in Oxford, I bumped into three people I knew. Each...
Most of us in Britain don’t know quite what to do with grief. You don’t hear funerals announced on local radio, as I did in the west of Ireland,...
Please excuse the state of my leggings, but I have an idea. What all major cities need – other than better social housing, affordable childcare,...
Few things bring me greater joy than someone taking two weeks to reply to a WhatsApp message. I mean it. This week, my friend and former teacher...
Some days I would rather get my bikini line waxed in the window of Dunelm than walk into another bookshop. Not that bookshops aren’t wonderful...
The Tory party is carrying out a postmortem on Rishi Sunak’s leadership before it has expired. It is a gruesome spectacle. Simon Clarke, a former...
There is a particular queasy disquiet that comes from looking at blossom in January. Or daffodils just weeks after Christmas. At seeing catkins...
What I understand about money could be scratched on the edge of a 2p piece. With a stick. As the self-assessment deadline rolls towards me like a...
My dad lives on a boat. Despite the earrings, tattoos, missing teeth and bare feet, he is not a pirate – just a man with an expensive divorce and a...
Being able to sew is radical, liberating and canny, which is why I’ve taught my six-year-old to fix his own socks. This may sound like the...
I am currently having my 10th unwanted period in a row. There are all sorts of reasons a period might be unwanted: you are on a long train journey;...
What price would you put on a wee? After three months of having such a debilitating urinary infection that she couldn’t leave the house, my...