If you find yourself procrastinating, or stifled by panic, or writer's block, I can reveal that the solution to your troubles is... I first encountered Robert Boice's name about three years ago, somewhere online; after that, it started popping up every other month. Boice, I learned, was a US psychologist who'd cracked the secret of how to write painlessly and productively. Years ago, he'd record..
It's a clever riff on internal training - instead of speeding up and slowing down, you just make yourself heavier and lighter What is it? A treadmill surrounded by a tent that covers your lower body. The tent is inflated until it takes your weight, and then off you go. How much does it cost? Balance Physio in Clapham, London, where I went, charges between 8 pounds and 17 pounds per 30 minute ses..
Go on then, another half, quite a hefty nose on it, though. I'm still getting that weird foretaste. What did I say before? Jelly bean? Packet of salt and vinegar and a pint of Thames Roadkill, please mate - you sure? OK, bit of a well kept secret, I suppose. Got any Headburst? Flayed Cat? Growling Arse? No? OK, what've you got that's super-local - tons of flavor mind, no more than 8% though, I'm..
Get some wine in, iron a few napkins and cook something simple but delicious. It's easy - and what could be nicer? Who is to blame for the media's continuing obsession with the demise of the dinner party? At this point, I'm not precisely sure - though as I write, doubtless some poor PhD student is hard at it, tracing the dots between our postwar literary culture, Katherine Whitehorn's 1963 appro..
I didn't lose my virginity until I was. It was a dismal event and all entirely about him It was almost as difficult to meet boys when I was a teenager as it is now, more than 30 years later. I went to a girls' school and had no brothers, so ordinarily the boys I met were somebody else's brother, or were bantered with at bus stops at 4 o'clock on the way home, or were encountered at city discos. ..
It's all very well asking for directions - until you come up against divided opinions A week ago I had to visit an office. I had the address, I got out of the tube at the right station and I had a small map in my pocket, but I simply couldn't find the right building - until I started asking passing blokes. They were extremely helpful; two got out their mobiles and the last simply took my arm. Su..
A study this month showed that sleeping more at weekends could raise the risk of diabetes and heart disease. so, should you really get up on a Sunday? Could your weekend lie-in kill you? asked the Daily Mail last week. It cited a study in this month's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism(JCEM) that links sleeping more at weekends with an increased risk of diabetes and heart disease. ..
The moment you complain to your waiter, you alter the very experience you are paying for. A restaurateur asks that we consider the kitchen before grumbling about the food In restaurants up and down the country, it seems to have become acceptable for customers to send back a dish because they don't like it. Not because it was cold, or too salty, or because of an untimely delay in the kitchen, but..
It's OK to feel pensive instead of chipper during the holiday season There is something manufactured about the holiday spirit. It is presented to us in the form of sales and incessant music that begins earlier and earlier each year. As I write this, I'm listening to Christmas music, but even that is an attempt to conjure up some warmth and good will rather than an expression of actual cheer. The..
Victims of press intrusion are still in the dark about what happened. By launching part two of the Leveson inquiry, David Cameron could change that It is a curiously unsatisfactory end to a protracted saga: saga: is this how the phone hacking scandal finishes, with a lengthy statement from the Crown Prosecution Service? Four-and-a-half years after a storm erupted over allegations that the phone ..
Anyone for gin and tonic or winter berries and prosecco-flavored snacks? Forget cheese footballs or Twiglets, retailers have raised their game this Christmas to tempt shoppers with an unprecedented range of upmarket flavors in the battle of posh festive crisps. Crisps flavored with pulled pork or with drinks such as prosecco or gin and tonic feature in retailers' snack offerings. Cheese and onio..
Bitter Tears - a cocktail made from real human tears - is just the latest recipe to be created from human excretions. So what else is on the menu? Experimental food artistes Bompas and Parr are offering a workshop teaching London punters to concoct bitters containing real human tears. Music and caldles will be provided to make participants sad or wistful - whatever it takes - and then the result..
US OK! magazine reckons the two are enjoying candle-lit spaghetti carbonara to a Bruno Mars soundtrack. How did they come up with that story? Plus: how Bill Murray got mixed up with a hedge-funder, the Wu-Tang Clan and a future heist A big interplanetary wave to the American version of OK! magazine, which links up with reality around once every six years, before spinning back off into a galaxy o..
If you're looking for a holiday that holds less waste, less debt and less stress, there are many ways to shift the gift-centric nature of the holidays. Gift-giving is a strangely sweet tradition when you think about it. One person holds out an offering to the other, something they thought beautiful or unique or useful, and they hope that this token will be able to convey the words which are some..
Ri Kang spent decades near Kim Jong-il and says he and wife Ko Yong-Suk fled to US in 1998'out of fear of what those in power can do' The uncle of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has described how fear of the deadly power politics in Pyongyang drove him and his wife to defect to the US nearly 20 years ago. In a telephone interview with South Korea-s Yonhap news agency, Ri Kang said they had been..