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Nell Frizzell

Nell Frizzell

The Guardian

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Heavily pregnant and devoted to clothing apps, could I survive a return to actual high street shops?

Heavily pregnant and devoted to clothing apps, could I survive a return to actual high street shops?
monday 1

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

You’ve got a great new product for dogs’ bottoms? That’s nice – but please don’t call it a revolution

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...

02.12.2024 10

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

Ideas and originality are overrated – just ask Titian or Michelangelo

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...

01.12.2024 30

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

I’m still running at seven months pregnant. But it’s transformed how I think about exercise

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...

25.11.2024 10

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

Still hanging on to your old diaries and teenage photos? Chuck them out – and start to live

There is a particular sort of box that lurks in every home, full of “memorabilia” or “mementos”. Baby teeth, divorce certificates, spare keys...

24.11.2024 10

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

Great news, everybody! We’re about to be over-run by giant spiders

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...

26.09.2024 40

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

I still haven’t worked out how to use a washing machine. At 39, this is a bitter pill to swallow

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...

25.09.2024 6

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

Desperately need something for a headache or diarrhoea? Good luck trying to find a pharmacy

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,...

29.08.2024 7

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

Want to feel like a teenager again? Just dig out the books you were forced to read at school

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....

28.08.2024 6

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

New Zealand culture is booming around the world – do we have Jacinda Ardern to thank for it?

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...

22.08.2024 8

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

I’ve finally got round to fixing up my house – and it’s given me a radical idea

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...

21.08.2024 10

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

If you can be tried as an adult you should at least be able to vote – or become a Labor politician

14.08.2024 30

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

I love it that a two-year-old’s paintings have created such a buzz. His brush with branding, less so

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...

14.08.2024 10

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

I swam in the Thames last week. Yes, it is full of sewage – but it is also a beautiful river

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,...

12.08.2024 10

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

Want to help refugees - but not sure how? I found a surprisingly simple answer

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...

11.08.2024 30

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

Why I’m swapping ‘adult food’ for bland, hedonistic snacks

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...

23.07.2024 7

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

I am a sweaty woman – and I am not ashamed

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...

22.07.2024 9

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

Face like a partially melted candle? There’s an exercise for that

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...

17.06.2024 10

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

I hate cleaning my home. Can I do yours instead?

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...

16.06.2024 5

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

What’s the secret to making delicious meals? Forget about recipes and just add more butter

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...

06.06.2024 30

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

Forget soft play areas. If you want to entertain your children, take them to a skip

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...

05.06.2024 10

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

Nothing beats a good chat – so long as you can walk away when things get awkward

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...

08.04.2024 7

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

There are many ways to deal with grief. But few as full-on as this …

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,...

07.04.2024 20

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

Sweaty after a bike ride? Hair wrecked by the rain? You need one of my adult changing stations

Please excuse the state of my leggings, but I have an idea. What all major cities need – other than better social housing, affordable childcare,...

14.03.2024 50

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

How long should it take to answer a Whatsapp? About a fortnight

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...

04.03.2024 30

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

I’ve done some shameful things to sell my books. But there’s a line even I can’t cross

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...

03.03.2024 30

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

The Guardian view on the Tory right and Trump: a moral abyss and an electoral dead end

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...

25.01.2024 10

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

I see blossom in January – and feel a sickening swell of solastalgia

There is a particular queasy disquiet that comes from looking at blossom in January. Or daffodils just weeks after Christmas. At seeing catkins...

25.01.2024 30

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

Guardian Opinion cartoon Ben Jennings on Donald Trump’s progress along the Republican nomination trail – cartoon

25.01.2024 40

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

How can I possibly fill in my own tax return? I know nothing about money

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...

24.01.2024 7

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

What I learned when a ‘once in 100 years’ flood hit my city – 10 years after the last one

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...

17.01.2024 20

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

What have I gained by learning to sew? Great clothes - and a clear conscience

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...

16.01.2024 10

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

We need rituals to help ease the pain of unwanted periods

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;...

04.12.2023 20

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

My mum was so desperate for medical care that she went private. Then came the bill ...

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...

03.12.2023 40

The Guardian

Nell Frizzell

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