Reader's Digest UK Oct 2018

16 IT’S A MANN’S WORLD

Olly ponders why he always finds himself in a rush

ENTERTAINMENT

20 INTERVIEW: JANE HAWKING

Married to Professor Stephen Hawking for 30 years, author

Jane tells us her own story

30 “I REMEMBER”: COLEEN NOLAN

From the Nolans to Loose Women, Coleen looks back

HEALTH

40 A RARE GIFT

We follow one mother’s moving mission to trace her son’s donated organs

46 8 SIGNS OF STRESS

We reveal the signs that your stress is unhealthy

INSPIRE

58 THE SWEET LIFE

Anna Walker investigates the glamorous world of sugar dating Features

66 BEST OF BRITISH: STREET ART

Not all good art hangs in galleries

75 FROM OUR ARCHIVES

We revisit the Digest of 1955

80 A TRIP THROUGH TIME

Meets the office workers who live a double life in another era

TRAVEL & ADVENTURE

88 HEALTH TOURISM

Eva Mackevic explores the benefits of foreign healthcare

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In This Issue…

What do Reader’s Digest, The Beano and Batman have in common? They all celebrate 80th birthdays in 2018! To commemorate, we’re collecting your fondest memories of the Digest, from stories that have stuck with you to the days of poring over your parents’ backcopies. Email readersletters@readersdigest.co.uk and we’ll print our favourites alongside recollections from a few famous faces in our December issue.

Memory is something of a theme this month. Improve it on page 56, or indulge it on p20 as Jane Hawking takes a trip down memory lane. On p40 one mother is on a mission to honour the memory of her son. It’s a moving read, and a timely reminder of the kind of powerful storytelling that has been the Digest’s mission for eight decades.

There were a few things I was suspecting to find out on my health trip to Bulgaria: high blood pressure, iron deficiency or a malfunctioning liver. What I did not expect was to come back with a handful of anecdotes, a refreshed perspective on life and a new friend (plus a surprising diagnosis, but more on that later) yet that’s exactly what happened.

Health tourism has been attracting a lot of media furore, both good and bad, but wherever you stand on the matter, there are some undeniable—if a tad suprising—benefits to it. Read my account of being a medical tourist in Sofia on p88.

Anna Eva

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Over to You

LETTERS ON THE AUGUST ISSUE

We pay £50 for Letter of the Month and £30 for all others

Letter of THE MONTH

My heart melted and tears welled in my eyes while reading Liam Drew’s “Paris with My Grandmother” in your August issue. It made me think of my own father who is now 94 years old, and frail. He always wanted to travel to different countries when he was young, but the Second World War made it impossible for him. After the war, he got married and dedicated his life to teaching. At the age of 60, they adopted me. So instead of enjoying his retired state, he and my mother devoted their senior years to parenting.

the Reader’s Digest magazine (as old as 1974).

He said that when he read it, he’d be taken into places that he could only imagine visiting. Right now, my regret is that it’s too late to fulfil his dreams. Liam was so blessed that, somehow, he was able to share treasurable memories with his grandmother.

Coincidently, his escape was reading and collecting old issues of

Christine Manejero, County Durham

OTHERWORLDLY ENCOUNTERS

Your article “Opening Heaven’s Door” really resonated with me. To me, spiritual experiences of the kind described are simply an extra facet of life. I know of many people who have had them, including myself. In my school years, among my peers, the concept was not well received. I was soundly mocked, and as a result, kept any future experiences to myself. It was my secret for many years, but at the same time I always held a “watching brief.” I’ve never understood the absolute need many people have to explain away these experiences as imagination or coincidence. And I become incensed when they feel justified in belittling the “experiencer.” My conclusion was that their reaction must be rooted in fear; the harder they

CARDLESS AND CAREFREE

try and explain away these things, the tighter that fear holds them. What are they afraid of? We are all going to die one day and if there’s comfort to be had, from whatever source, then who has the right to belittle those who seek it? A few years ago I finally made the decision to own my experiences. Whatever anyone else thinks, they happened to me and I know what that felt like. In certain circumstances I have shared them and they have given comfort. For me that’s truth enough. If anyone challenges me I never feel the need to argue my case. One day they might have an experience of their own. This was a very thoughtprovoking article and I applaud you for printing it.

Jan Gardiner, Hampshire

I read with interest your feature “What’s the point of loyalty schemes?” A few months ago I cut up ALL my loyalty cards. I had eight. They were ruling my life. They may make an awful lot of sense for the retailers, but they are less attractive for card carriers.

I now shop where I want to shop when I want to shop—I don’t need rewards. I’m saving money all the time by choosing cheaper stores. I prefer low prices to points or other incentives. I feel liberated since I got rid of them. I’d recommend it to anyone.

Maddie Drury Flintshire

SPEAK UP

After living abroad for many years I have returned to this country and agree with Jon Sopel (“If I Ruled the World”) about the sad lack of cordiality here. The traditional English reserve is an unfortunate part of everyday life. My brother commutes daily by train to London. I remarked that by now he must be quite pally with some of the other commuters. But he replied that, apart from the odd remark about the weather, nobody on the train speaks to anyone else.

However, I do find that if one initiates a conversation, most people are only too pleased to have a chat. So, come on guys! Cut the reserve and communicate.

Sheila Chisnall, Devon

I agree with Jon Sopel that it was a very bad decision by the government in 2002 to make it optional for children over the age of 14 to study a second language.

In a world where the benefits of learning and speaking a second language have never been greater, the way languages are taught is changing to meet the growing need. It’s no use saying, “I took French in school, but I can’t speak it.”

Speaking a second language makes a person a better thinker. And language skills are useful to people who never leave home too. Police, teachers, nurses, business owners and others will find language skills useful, whether they want to sell their products abroad or work in communities which are increasingly multiethnic. Well said, Jon.

Jessika Cooper, Devon

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The sun never sets at the Palau de la Música Catalana! This palatial concert hall in Barcelona possesses its very own day star—in the form of a massive, stainedglass dome. The work of artist Antoni Rigalt weighs hundreds of kilograms and curves downward towards visiting eyes. The numerous windows also mean that this breathtakingly spectacular concert hall needs no artificial lighting during the day, making it even more unique in Europe.

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Too Fast, Too Furious

This month Olly Mann examines a bad habit inherited from his father—always rushing things

At the time, I find an excuse. My meeting over-ran. Roadworks were unavoidable. My mother called me (Mum is unable to keep any conversation to under 30 minutes. She’d be the world’s worst emergency call operator). Or, I couldn’t find a car park space. Or: I found a car park space, but it was ages away from the meter, and it took forever to walk back. Or: I paid for the car park with an app, but got a Penalty Charge Notice anyway, so had to appeal it, because otherwise I’d forget to do it later, even though it wasn’t my fault, (thanks for nothing, Mr Traffic Warden).

I’m rushing constantly. When I pick my son up from nursery,

Olly Mann presents Four Thought for BBC Radio 4, and the award-winning podcasts The Modern Mann and Answer Me This!

I arrive on the dot at six. There’s no financial penalty for that, but there’s no time to discuss what he’s been doing all day, either. When I post a letter, I leap toward the postbox at the very moment the postman makes his final collection. Even an action replay couldn’t determine who touched it first. When I depart for the train station, I always remember something I’ve left inside the house—my umbrella, my specs, my smartphone—just as the door slams behind me. Then I’m rushing even harder. It’s important to note, I’m far from an athletic man. Yet I seem to spend much of my life breathlessly dashing about, like Anthony Edwards in ER.

When I find the time to do the stuff other people claim is relaxing, I rush through that, too. If I try to follow a recipe, I’m soon darting about the kitchen like I’m being chased by Gordon Ramsay with a meat skewer. How can I add garlic to the pan, and

chop onions at the same time? How can I lay the table when I need to blend the sauce? Rush, rush, rush.

Reading a book is rarely “time out” for me. I find it almost impossible to stop my eyes glancing down a couple of paragraphs to see what happens next. As if I’m making a professional assessment of whether the prose is worthy of my time, rather than being taken along for the ride.

Even vegetating in front of the TV can be stressful for me. Granted, the glory of on-demand viewing means my bum no longer needs to hit the sofa at an exact specified time-slot— catching the bongs of News At Ten used to be a source of low-level anxiety the whole time I was eating pudding. But the burden of box set binge-watching means there’s always another episode available, always another series to explore, and not enough time to keep up.

Perhaps, I kid myself, this undesirable temperament can be attributed to the solids and liquids I put in my body. Maybe it’s coffee? I’m sensitive to caffeine. That’s why I drink it every morning: it puts a spring in my step. And if I drink too much, I definitely feel tetchy and edgy and impatient. Or perhaps it’s alcohol. I drink wine to relax: ergo, perhaps I never feel truly relaxed if I’m not drinking wine. But… I’ve cut out booze and espressos before. That’s not the answer.

Perhaps technology is to blame. My smartphone pings with constant nudges, notifications, and distractions. Having a regular reminder of my to-do list definitely makes it harder to chill out. But I know in my heart that this very technology is what allows me to work more flexibly, and—theoretically— helps me get more done without rushing about.

So, I have to reconcile myself to the probable cause: I inherited this from Dad. He was the kind of guy who’d sit on the driveway with the engine running for 15 minutes, even though he wasn’t running late and Mum wasn’t ready to leave the house (probably on the phone). He was the

“Isn’t it extraordinary how we repeat our parents’ mistakes?”

first to stand up when a plane landed, waiting with his face pressed up against the overhead containers, just so he could dash off the aircraft and stand in another queue at Passport Control. He’d burn his tongue on microwave meals because he couldn’t wait for them to cool down.

Dad died from a head injury after falling down the stairs at work. The post-mortem revealed he had coronary heart disease, so he may have had a heart attack at the top of the staircase. Or he may have just tripped—he’d recently had surgery

on his eyes. But my guess is that he was rushing.

Despite the darkest lessons from history, isn’t it extraordinary how we repeat the mistakes of our parents, regardless?

I hate rushing around, and I don’t want to die, so I should probably be focusing my energies on, I don’t know… meditation? Playing the piano? Taking long baths? I should probably be implementing solutions like drinking decaf coffee, turning off my phone notifications, and—since I apparently can’t concentrate on books—listening to audiobooks, rather than giving up on reading entirely. I should try to remember that nothing is more important than my family and my health.

But I don’t have time to think about that. Got to run.

FRIGHT NIGHT

These funny jack-o-lanterns spell out what we’re really fearing this Halloween…

(via boredpanda.com)

“What’s the difference between a leap of faith in physics and a leap in religion?”

Jane Hawking

Known as the wife of the brilliant Professor Stephen Hawking for 30 years, Jane Hawking tells us her own story

BY JOY PERSAUD

Jane Hawking’s voice is soft as she speaks about her extraordinary life, which was brought to the big screen in 2014’s Oscar-winning film, The Theory of Everything.

From her young husband Stephen’s two-years-to-live diagnosis, to sacrificing her early career, not to mention hostility from academics, Stephen’s carers and his mother, Jane has faced myriad challenges.

So how did the young woman from St Alban’s cope with the trajectory her life took when, at just 21, she married an aspiring astrophysicist who quickly became a household name, feted

by the public as the possessor of the world’s best brain?

The source of Jane’s strength seems rooted in her upbringing. She describes her parents as “darlings” and says her Christian faith has helped her persevere.

“I think my parents were rather taken aback, but they were very supportive of me when I married Stephen, and my mum, Beryl, encouraged me to keep faith as the way forward,” she says.

“And, of course, there was Stephen and his determination and brilliance, and I wanted to give him as much

I thought I could perfectly well give two years of my life to this person I loved” “

support as I possibly could because I believed in his theories and he thoroughly justified it. And then, there were my tiny children and they were the most beautiful children anyone had ever seen. They kept me going. But it was pretty hard.”

She recalls her childhood dreams of becoming an air hostess, following her father George into the civil service, or joining the foreign office, but these hopes “went out of the window” when she met Stephen at a party in 1962 and, two years later, became engaged.

“Stephen had been given two years to live so I thought I could perfectly well give two years of my life to this person I loved—he was obviously very clever and I wanted to help him fulfil his ambitions.”

“Back in the 1960s we all lived under the nuclear cloud and we were told that in the event of a nuclear attack we would have four minutes and this overshadowed my adolescence. I thought, Well, if Stephen has been given two years to live and yet we are all being given a four-minute warning about this attack that was going to obliterate us all, what was the difference?

AT THE TIME OF STEPHEN’S

DEVASTATING DIAGNOSIS, little was known about motor neurone disease, an incurable illness that affects the brain and spinal cord in different ways. Undaunted, Jane took on her role as wife and carer, taking her husband to conferences worldwide and ditching her studies. The

frequent travel, she says, was omitted in the film, but was a constant theme in the Hawkings’ lives.

She says, “The first conference we went to was actually on our honeymoon at Cornell University in upstate New York. It was the first time either of us had been to the States and the first time I’d ever flown such distance, but it worked out well.”

“Then, Stephen was invited in 1967 to the summer school in Seattle and that was a ten-hour flight away with an eight-hour time difference. I was very young and optimistic and I had no idea what was involved with a tiny baby so off we went to Seattle.

“I had Stephen on one arm and a six-week-old baby in the other. It was crazy. I would never, ever in a million years advise anybody to do

Jane recalls wanting to help Stephen to achieve his ambitions

When I settled in Cambridge, most mothers were simply ignored by Cambridge academic society. You were a nobody” “

that, but we did it and when we got there everything was provided on a lavish scale. I was expected to drive an enormous limousine and I had only just passed my test in my Mini. The house we were given… well, you could’ve fit our tiny house in Cambridge into it about four times.”

As Stephen’s illness progressed, Jane chose to pursue her own academic career. The reasons were twofold. First, she wanted to be in a position to provide for her family and, second, she wanted to counter the attitudes of Cambridge academia towards those not in the inner circle.

“My PhD [in medieval Spanish poetry] was about the only thing that was compatible with bringing up a family and looking after Stephen, and so I would take the children to nursery first thing in the morning and then pop off to the university library.

“While I was doing that, I felt I ought to be playing with the children

and when I was playing with the children, I felt I should be doing my thesis. I finished it two days before my third child was born.

“When I settled in Cambridge, I found that most mothers were simply ignored by Cambridge academic society. You were a nobody. It has changed tremendously. There’s still quite a lot of antagonism in places for women who are not scholars or in the academic life but I don’t care about that now.”

JANE BECAME A LECTURER in modern languages and is now retired, focusing on her creative writing. She’s working on the third novel in her Immortal Souls trilogy, to follow up Cry to Dream Again, which was published in August 2018.

Jane’s memoir, Travelling to Infinity, was the basis for the 2014 film that won Eddie Redmayne an Oscar for his portrayal of Professor Hawking.

While she’s full of praise for the film— particularly for Redmayne and Felicity Jones, who portrayed Jane (see both above)—the scant detail about her parents was saddening.

“[My mum] and my dad were ready to come over to Cambridge at the drop of a hat to help out. They were such enthusiastic grandparents and so wonderful to the children and did all sorts of things that I wasn’t in a position to do. They used to take them out to London to the theatre or Dad would take them on walking tours of London and they really completed my children’s education.

“Unfortunately they don’t really get a look in, in The Theory of Everything and that upset me. The ironic thing was that the premiere of the film was on December 9, 2014 and that would’ve been my dad’s 100th birthday. It was painful; it was hurtful. But, otherwise, the film was beautiful. “Eddie Redmayne was unbelievable

and when they were filming in a Cambridge college, I went to watch. I saw this person coming towards me and I thought, Oh, that’s Stephen. He was walking just as he did in the 1960s —he was very unsteady and jerky—and I was almost on the point of passing out.

“And Felicity Jones playing me, oh my goodness, she captured all my movements, my gestures, my speech patterns, my voice—everything—and a shiver ran up my spine when I saw her for the first time.”

JANE SAYS THAT BEING PORTRAYED in a film during their lifetimes was a privilege, though Stephen “would have preferred it to be more about science and less about emotions,” she laughs, adding that her reaction was the opposite.

“The film rather accentuated the differences between Stephen and me. When he says he is an atheist… well,

The Theory of Everything

when you think about his diagnosis at the age of 21, how can you say that there is a loving God?

A lot of good things happened to him but, on the other hand, it was a very cruel illness.

“One day I asked him, ‘How do you decide on a theory?’

He said, ‘Well you have to look at all the possibilities in various areas of research and decide what you’re interested in. Then you decide which area of research is most likely to give you the positive result. So you choose your theory, your area of interest, and then you have to take a leap of faith.’

I said, ‘What? What’s the difference between taking a leap of faith in

physics and other people taking a leap of faith in religion?’ He laughed.”

ALTHOUGH JANE’S MARRIAGE

TO STEPHEN ended in 1995, their relationship has been largely harmonious, apart from a time when “certain people came on the scene and went through our lives with a bulldozer”, she says, quickly changing the subject.

When Stephen died in March, Jane found the reaction to his death profound. While the public interest made for an overwhelming experience that added to the family’s pain, she says the funeral and memorial were “beautiful”.

Jane arrives at her former husband’s funeral in March 2018

Stephen always had to have fireworks—I’m surprised he wasn’t arrested” “

“The one thing that surprised me most of all and took my breath away was the memorial service and the burial in Westminster Abbey. It was magnificent and I had to pinch myself to believe that I was there and that this was all in Stephen’s honour, to be buried among the good and great. It was just an extraordinary thing to witness.”

Jane is now married to musician Jonathan Jones, who was a close family friend. Jane and Jonathan spent many family occasions with Stephen, popping in to visit him on a weekly basis, as he lived close by. Their children, she says, were similarly loyal, “never going off the rails” despite having a severely disabled parent and a life that was often difficult.

“We always celebrated Christmas and birthdays together and Stephen would put on the most extraordinary parties—very lavish. He always had to have fireworks and I’m surprised he wasn’t arrested as he commissioned huge displays in a very small space. It was terrifying. He was very, very mischievous, that was one of the lovely things about him— it was one of the things that attracted me to him in the first place.”

Jane Hawking is appearing at the Raworths Harrogate Literature Festival, October 18-21, at the Crown Hotel, Harrogate. Visit harrogateinternationalfestivals.com for the full line-up

Coleen on The Real Full

Monty: Ladies Night

Coleen Nolan I Remember…

Coleen Nolan, 53, is a singer, TV presenter and author, best known as one of the panellists on Loose Women as well as a member of the family girl group, The Nolans.

…GOING ON STAGE AGED TWO. Me and the family all sang together and I remember walking out into the ABC Theatre in Blackpool and singing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” I walked out in a little nightie with a teddy bear tucked under my arm. I remember everyone going, “Aaah,” as I walked out.

…LIVING IN BLACKPOOL UNTIL

I WAS NINE. All my family moved from Ireland—they were all born over there—I was the only one born in England, which was hilarious because I was the only one with an English passport. In those days the TV always ended with the national anthem and I used to stand up and all my family used to go, “Sit down, you’re Irish. And I’d respond, “I’m not. I’m English.”

…OUR HOUSE IN BLACKPOOL WAS A REALLY SMALL, terraced house with three bedrooms, one tiny bathroom, a lounge and a kitchen and the ten of us lived in there. I don’t think my brothers ever got to use the bathroom because obviously there were six girls and two boys. It was crazy and loud and just great, really. I remember noise, neighbours in and out and playing on the street.

…BEING OBSESSED WITH HORSES.

I used to spend my life down at the riding stables. I used to go and help with the horses and stay there all day, and then we were normally gigging at night, which was very bizarre.

…WHEN WE FIRST MOVED TO LONDON, we stayed in businessman Joe Lewis’s house for about six

months and he had this big mansion in Wentworth overlooking the golf course. He had a swimming pool—it was incredible. And then we found a house in Ilford and it was a big double-fronted detached house so it was just amazing for us all.

…MY SISTERS WERE CONTRACTED TO SING at a cabaret club but it turned out to be a nightclub and so I wasn’t allowed to do it. All of a sudden, I went from having this weird childhood of going round all the clubs to having a normal childhood where I would go to school and come home, and my friends would come round because I didn’t have to go to any gigs. It was a lovely time for me.

…THE FIRST TV SHOW THAT WE GOT WAS the It’s Cliff Richard show. So, although I couldn’t perform with my sisters at the cabaret club, I could

(Clockwise from top left) Coleen aged seven taking her first Holy Communion; aged four at working men’s club in Blackpool; aged nine with her sisters

“My parents always assumed we were all going to be singers so we didn’t need to worry about what grades we got in geography or history”

perform on telly. Thinking back now, it was a huge deal. Those were the days when there were only three channels and you would get 20 million people watching. But, because I’d sung with my family since I was two, it didn’t feel any different. It just felt like what we had always done.

…AS A CHILD I WANTED TO BE A VET, then I thought about being a social worker. I don’t know why— they’re so opposite ends. I think it was because one of my friends at school, her mum was a social worker and I absolutely loved her mum.

…ALTHOUGH MY MUM AND DAD HAD EIGHT KIDS in the house they never stopped any of us from having friends over, so on top of having eight kids we also had friends sleeping over. It was never a case of, “No, there’s no room.”

…GETTING VERY LITTLE IN TERMS OF AN EDUCATION because I was always moving. I missed a lot of school through going round the country and singing. I don’t think it was ever on the top of my parents’ agenda. I think they always assumed that we were going to all be singers so we didn’t need to worry about what grades we got in geography or history.

…JOINING MY SISTERS WHEN I WAS 15. We went off touring to Japan, Australia and Russia and places like that and I had kind of left school. It sounds weird, because nowadays they come down on you if your child misses one day of school, but no one ever seemed to question it back then. It was certainly an incredible experience—there aren’t too many 15-year-olds who manage to tour the world and perform on stage.

…THERE WERE TIMES WHEN I JUST WANTED TO BE A TEENAGER. Sometimes, my friends would be going out and I’d think, Oh I really want to go out, but I couldn’t because I was gigging. I really wanted to join the Brownies but I couldn’t because we had a gig that night and I remember being really upset about that. There was a massive part of me that, although very, very happy, very much yearned for a normal life.

…WHEN I HAD MY ELDEST SON, SHANE [with Shane Richie], we weren’t married or anything and obviously The Nolans had this squeaky-clean image. People didn’t think we even kissed boys let alone got pregnant. Initially it was a bit nerve wracking, like, “How am I going to break this?” I just phoned my dad and said, “Dad I’ve got something to tell you and I’m really happy about it and I hope you are OK with it but I’m pregnant,” and he was brilliant, actually.

…CHRISTMAS WAS A SPECIAL TIME and my mum and dad made it so magical. They loved it and made sure we loved it and I still love Christmas. We watched all the Christmas films and we had Christmas songs and Santa was so special—they really didn’t have any money but every year there was one main present under the tree for each of us.

“The Nolans had this squeaky-clean image. People didn’t think we kissed boys, let alone got pregnant ”

We used to have about 24 dishes for dinner—Mum used to cook. We didn’t have any microwaves or dishwashers and she had a four-ring hob, and to this day when I’m doing Christmas dinner, I always think, How the hell did my mum do it?

…GETTING MY JOB ON LOOSE WOMEN when me and my husband Shane Richie split up. I did a documentary called Celebrity Heartbreak, which was hosted by Trisha Goddard and they had five or six celebrity women who had gone through, or were going through, divorce. And to promote the show I got invited on to Loose Women. I got on so well with them all that they asked, “Would you like to come back and be a guest panellist?” It

just went from there and I soon became a regular. I love it. I can just be myself. It’s just like sitting with your girlfriends.

…THE FIRST TIME I DID CELEBRITY BIG BROTHER I came away thinking I had enjoyed it. I love social experiments and I love watching people and it was fascinating. Big Brother are the best at what they do, which is to play a mental game with

you. There was the odd test now and again but there was no massive fall-out or anything like that.

…THE SECOND TIME ON CELEBRITY BIG BROTHER, the one

I won, was horrific. It was nearly five weeks, and Big Brother was much crueller. If it hadn’t been for James Cosmo, Brandon Block, James Jordan and Calum Best, oh God...

In the end I was really mentally damaged by it. You have nothing to do for five weeks—you’re incarcerated and you just have these people who keep going mental. I was just sitting

(Above) Daughter Ciara’s christening; (Left) Coleen with her ex-husband Ray and children Shane, Jake and Ciara

there and had to keep reminding myself, “Okay I’m in here because I need a new kitchen.”

…WHEN I WENT TO BED AFTER WINNING BIG BROTHER, I CRIED. I’d been with 17 people for five weeks and here I was in this room on my own. It was a scary feeling, like I wanted to go back in the house. I wanted them to put me back in with the people I liked, shut the door and not play all the games like I did on telly.

…MY MANAGER PHONED ME AND SAID, “You’re going to do The Full Monty, they’re doing a women’s one to raise awareness of breast cancer”.

Every time I spoke to the producers they said, “We want to make sure that people are comfortable and make sure you’re comfortable”. I phoned my manager and said, “I think they think I’m getting my kit off.”

She replied, “Oh, did I not tell you? You are.” It was too late then. It was nine weeks filming and I enjoyed every single day of it.

…THE FULL MONTY WAS VERY, VERY CLOSE TO MY HEART, as it was for all the women who took part. The amount of women who got in touch afterwards and said, “I went to the doctor’s after your programme,” and then either, “I got the all-clear as it was nothing,” or, “They found it but

they found it really early”. It was an incredible feeling because you think, We did actually get the point across.

…I WAS PRESENTING THIS MORNING—my daughter Ciara was only two months old at the time and the boys were still young. We moved to London and then nine months later I lost the job, so we had to uproot and move back to Blackpool because I couldn’t afford London living , and that was a tough time. It was quite stressful.

I’m not blaming This Morningh; it’s just the way the cookie crumbles.

about what’s going to happen in ten years time. I guess her death made me question if I was happy in my marriage and I thought, I’m not.

…MY SISTER BERNIE’S DEATH FROM BREAST CANCER WAS VERY HARD. I’d only just done The Nolans reunion tour. It was the best thing we ever, ever did. We loved it so much and then we were going to do it again and then of course she was diagnosed and we never got the chance. That was a really hard time and in that time my second marriage split up too.

I got through it by thinking, Whatever happens will be fine, we’ll be happy. You can either let it force you under the duvet and never come out again or you can just get up and face it. There’s no point in worrying

…I DEFINITELY HAD A MID-LIFE CRISIS. Not that I wanted to go out clubbing or wear miniskirts but I started to reassess everything. So, Bernie’s death had a massive impact on my life, but I think for the better because I feel stronger, I feel more independent. Me and Ray, my exhusband, now get on so well as friends, as really good friends. Everything is really exciting.

As told to Joy Persaud

Tickets for Coleen Nolan’s 2019 Never Too Late tour are on sale now! The 36 date tour runs from January 11— February 28, all tickets cost £32.50. Visit ColeenNolanTour.com for tickets and information.

Coleen on Lorraine Live with Bernie Nolan; (Right) Performing with her sisters Maureen, Bernie and Linda

TICKETS

Dear Readers,

Autumn in Theatreland is a time where we can appreciate and welcome plays old and new to the stage and Reader’s Digest Tickets is your guide to what to see.

This season, the vibrant lights of London’s West End will be putting a spotlight on some exceptional new plays including The Height of the Storm starring theatre royalty Jonathan Pryce and Dame Eileen Atkins. This compelling family drama about the fragility of love is directed by Jonathan Kent and written by Florian Zeller who has been described as the most exciting playwright of our time.

Last performed in 2011, Foxfinder makes its West End debut starring Game of Thrones star Iwan Rheon and Poldark actress Heida Reed at the Ambassadors Theatre. Written by Dawn King, this dystopian fable is an unsettling, darkly comic tale that explores the fallibility of belief.

The Inheritance transfers to the West End after a sold-out run at the Young Vic earlier this year. Matthew Lopez’s astonishing play is recognised as a modern classic and one of the most important plays for many years. This major two-part play explores profound themes through the turbulent and often hilarious experience of a group of young, ambitious New Yorkers. Whether your taste is the top new plays or revivals such as Pinter at the Pinter Season or Shakespeare, well-known productions such as The Mousetrap, The Woman in Black or The Play That Goes Wrong, be sure that Reader’s Digest Tickets is your box office for the best seats in the house.

Book now and take a bow!

Regards, Reader’s Digest

BY MATTHEW LOPEZ

DIRECTED BY STEPHEN DALDRY DESIGNED BY BOB CROWLEY

BY ARIEL ZAMBELICH

When one of her identical twins died shortly after he was born, a brave mother decided to donate his tissue to science. Then she followed it wherever it went

Rare Gift DISCOVERING A FAMILY’S

BY SARAH GRAY

IWAS THREE MONTHS PREGNANT with identical twin boys when my husband, Ross, and I learned that one of them had a fatal birth defect. Our son Thomas had anencephaly, which means that his skull and brain were not formed properly. Babies with this diagnosis typically die in utero or within minutes, hours, or days of being born.

This news was devastating, and also confusing. I had never heard of this before, and it didn’t run in my family. I wondered, Was it something I ate, was it something I drank, was it something I did? But then, even if it was, why was one of them perfectly healthy?

So I was wrestling with a lot of questions that would never have

answers. And I had to make peace with that. It was like having an annoying hum in the background.

Six months later, the twins were born, and they were both born alive. Thomas lived for six days. Callum was healthy, and Ross and I moved on the best that we could. We had a beautiful, healthy boy to raise.

We decided early on to tell Callum the truth about his brother. We have a few pictures of Thomas in our home.

It was a few years later that Callum started to comprehend what we were trying to tell him.

Sometimes he said things that were sad, and sometimes he said things that were kind of funny. We visit Thomas’s grave a couple of times a year, and one time we told Callum that we were going to bring some flowers to put on Thomas’s grave.

I WAS ALSO CURIOUS ABOUT

Thomas’s afterlife, but in a totally different way. Ross and I had decided to donate Thomas’s organs to science. While his death was inevitable, we thought maybe it could be productive. We learned that because he would be too small at birth to qualify for transplant, he’d be a good candidate to donate for research. We were able to donate his liver, his cord blood, his retinas, and his corneas.

We were able to donate his liver, cord blood, retinas, and corneas—I was curious about whether these donations made a difference

Callum picked up one of his little Matchbox cars and said, “I want to put this on the grave too,” which I thought was really sweet.

Later on, we were on the sofa watching cartoons, and Callum said, “Mummy, what is it like in heaven?”

I don’t really know, so I did my best. “You know, some people think it’s a place you go when you die. Some people don’t believe it’s there.”

I was curious about whether these donations made a difference. A short time later, I was on a business trip in Boston, and I remembered that Thomas’s corneas had gone to a division of Harvard Medical School called the Schepens Eye Research Institute. So I looked, and I saw it was only a few miles from my hotel, and I thought I would love to visit this lab and learn more about where Thomas’s donation went.

I’d given them a donation, but it wasn’t just signing a check or giving a bag of clothes—I had given them the gift of my child. However, in order to donate, I had to sign away my rights to any future information about the donation.

So if they didn’t welcome me, I would understand. Although I felt in my heart that I wanted to visit, that I should be allowed to visit, and that if I asked the right person, I might even be invited for a visit. But I also wondered, If they reject me, am I emotionally ready for that? What’s that going to do to my grief?

So I called. I explained to the receptionist, “I donated my son’s eyes to you a couple of years ago. I’m in town on business for a couple of days. Is there any chance I can stop by for a ten-minute tour?”

There was a pause. And lucky for me, the receptionist was very compassionate. She didn’t laugh or say it was weird, when it was a little weird.

Instead she said, “I’ve never had this request before. I don’t know who to transfer you to, but don’t hang up.

I’m going to find somebody for you. Don’t hang up.” She connected me to someone in donor relations. It wasn’t organ donor relations, it was financial donor relations, but she knew how to give a tour. So we set an appointment.

I showed up the next day, and she introduced me to one of the people who requested corneas, Dr James Zieske, an associate professor of ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School. I stood in his doorway, and the donor relations woman explained who I was. Dr Zieske was eating a salad at his desk, and he stood up, and thanked me for my donation.

He shook my hand and said, “Do you have any questions for me?”

I was so emotional at meeting him. I said, “How many corneas do you request in a year?”

Thomas lived for six days. Years later, doctors still relied on his donated tissue

He said, “My lab requests about ten a year. We would request more, but they’re hard to get, and infant eyes are like gold to us.”

My heart was just in my throat. I could barely choke out the words.

I said, “Could you tell me why?”

He said that infant eyes are unusual because most of us are older when we die, and that’s when you donate your eyes. But unlike adult eyes, infant eyes have the potential to regenerate longer in the lab because the cells are younger and divide more easily.

He said, “If you don’t mind my asking, how many years ago did your son die?”

I said, “About two years ago.”

Durham, North Carolina, and this time I took my husband and our son.

I was blown away when the researchers told me what they were doing with each donation

He said, “We’re likely still studying your son’s eye cells, and they’re probably in this lab right now.”

So the tour concluded, and my guide said to me, “I’ll never forget you. Please keep in touch with me.”

I felt something in me starting to change. I felt that my son had found his place in the world, and that place was Harvard.

So my son got into Harvard, and I’m now an Ivy League mum.

But I also got the bug, and I thought maybe I could visit the three other places too. I made some phone calls, I set up two appointments in

OUR NEXT VISIT WAS TO Duke University, at the Centre for Human Genetics, where the cord blood had gone. We met the director of the centre, who had also worked on the Human Genome Project. He explained that being able to study the blood from each twin’s umbilical cord was extremely valuable to them. He was studying a field called epigenetics, which means “on top of genetics.” Epigenetic changes can help determine whether genes are turned on or off, and it’s one of the reasons that identical twins can still be different. Our twins’ cord blood was able to help the researchers establish a benchmark to learn more about how anencephaly first develops.

We then drove down the street to Cytonet, which is the place that got Thomas’s liver. We met the president and eight staff members and even the woman who’d held Thomas’s liver in her hands. They explained to us that his liver had been used in a six-liver study to determine the best temperature at which to freeze infant liver cells for a lifesaving therapy. They also said we were

the only donor family who had ever visited. A few years later, I set up the final appointment, in Philadelphia, and Ross, Callum, and I went to visit the University of Pennsylvania. That’s where we met the researcher who’d received Thomas’s retinas. She was studying retinoblastoma, which is a potentially deadly cancer of the retina. She explained that she had been waiting six years for a sample like Thomas’s. It was so precious to her that she had saved some of it, and five years later, she still had some of it in her freezer, and did we want to see it?

Yes, we did.

She then gave Callum a Penn

T-shirt, and she offered him an internship in the future.

So I had thought when we made these donations—in the abstract, in the generic sense—that it was a nice thing to do. But I was amazed and blown away when I met the researchers and they told me specifically what they were doing with each donation. My feeling of grief started to turn into pride. I felt that Thomas was introducing us to his colleagues and his coworkers. He was introducing me to people I never would have met and taking me to places I never would have been. The humming in the back of my mind stopped.

Recently, Ross, Callum, and I went to Philadelphia to accept an award from the National Disease Research Interchange for advocacy. We went on stage, and Callum accepted the award. He was so proud. I took the opportunity to ask him a question.

I asked, “Do you know why we are accepting this award?”

And he said, “For helping people.”

I know as he grows older, there will be more tough questions. I’m going to have to teach him that there are times in life when there are questions that are important, but you’ll still never get the answer. But it’s worth the try, and you never know until you ask.

Ross, Callum, one-year-old Jocelyn and Sarah in their living room

Silent Signs 8

Stress Is Making You Sick

BY ALYSSA JUNG

Unusual Weight Changes

“Stress triggers the release of the hormone cortisol, which changes the way you metabolise fat, protein, and carbs,” says Dr Shanna Levine, a primary care physician and clinical instructor of medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. Stress can also cause you to overeat or undereat.

WHAT TO DO Snack on nuts. The protein will help if you’re undereating, and the fibre will fill you up if you’ve been bingeing.

Breaking Out in Hives

When your body experiences stress, it releases a chemical called histamine and—boom—hives galore. When your immune system is weakened by stress, your skin can also become irritated by things it never used to be sensitive to, such as heat, lotions, or detergent.

WHAT TO DO Put a cool, damp towel on the affected area. If that doesn’t work, take an antihistamine.

A Fuzzy Brain

Too much cortisol can also make it harder to concentrate, causing memory problems as well as anxiety and depression, says Dr Levine.

WHAT TO DO Relax until you regain your focus. Practise closing your eyes and breathing in and out slowly, concentrating only on your breath.

Headaches

It’s common for your muscles to tense up when you’re stressed, which can cause a headache. Prone to migraines? Stress can trigger them or make them worse.

WHAT TO DO If you don’t want to take ibuprofen, try dabbing lavender oil or peppermint oil on your temples when a headache starts.

A Sour Tummy

Stress can cause the body to produce more digestive acid, which can lead to heartburn. “It can also slow the emptying of food from the stomach, which causes gas and bloating and may increase the number of times your colon contracts, leading to cramping and diarrhea,” says Deborah Rhodes, MD, a Mayo Clinic internal medicine physician.

WHAT TO DO Take an over­thecounter antacid or drink ginger tea.

Hair Falling Out

Hair follicles might be pushed into a resting phase by stress. A few months later, those hairs fall out. Stress can

also cause the body’s immune system to attack your hair follicles, resulting in hair loss.

WHAT TO DO Be patient. Once your stress level returns to normal, your hair should start growing back.

A Cold That Just Won’t Quit

Stress suppresses the immune system, which makes it harder to fight off bugs. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, US, infected volunteers with a cold; those who reported they were dealing with stress were twice as likely to get sick as those with fewer problems.

WHAT TO DO

One study found that zinc supplements or lozenges can shorten the length of a cold by about a day if taken within 24 hours of feeling sick. Meditation, regular exercise, and plenty of sleep can also help you destress and boost your immune system.

Acne… Again!

Cortisol is the culprit here, too—it causes skin glands to make more oil. Along with dirt and dead skin cells, the oil can get trapped inside hair follicles, producing pimples.

WHAT TO DO Topical creams

containing benzoyl peroxide or salicylic acid can clear up acne if applied regularly. For a more natural approach, wash your face with green tea or dab on some pure aloe. Their antibacterial properties are known to promote healing.

Breast Cancer— Fact And Fiction

What’s true and what’s fake news when it comes to breast health and breast cancer?

Tiredness is a symptom of breast cancer | Fiction

Feeling shattered is not a sign that you have a tumour in the breast. What’s significant is a lump or other changes to your boobs, in particular, in the size or shape, to the texture of the skin or to the nipple—for example, its position. Liquid coming from your nipple, a rash or redness of the skin, and frequent pain are other warning signs. Fatigue is more of a side-effect of breast cancer treatment.

You can reduce your risk of breast cancer | Fact

Some risk factors you really can’t change—like being over 50, female and having a significant family history of breast cancer. But beyond that, there’s a lot you can do to lower

Susannah Hickling is twice winner of the Guild of Health Writers Best Consumer Magazine Health Feature

your risk. It’s mostly about lifestyle. Keeping to a healthy weight, exercising, not drinking or smoking, and limiting the length of time you take the pill or HRT will help cut your chances.

Breast cancer is the biggest killer of women | Fiction

Not so. It does feature in the list of the ten most common causes of death in women. But more women die of dementia and Alzheimer’s than anything else, and heart disease, stroke, chronic lower respiratory disease, flu and pneumonia all kill more women than breast cancer, which accounts for 3.7 per cent of female deaths.

Cancer of the breast kills more people than any other cancer | Fiction

In fact, lung cancer is a bigger killer of women and men, and deaths from prostate cancer have recently overtaken deaths from breast cancer. The good news is that deaths from breast cancer are in decline, with the

mortality rate dropping by ten per cent. Screenings and new, better treatments are paying off.

You have to check your breasts in a particular way | Fiction You absolutely don’t have to check them at a particular time or using a particular technique. It’s more important to know what’s normal for you. Check your breasts regularly, making sure you feel the armpits and up to the collarbone as well. You can do this in the shower, in bed or while applying body lotion. It’s up to you.

Most breast changes are benign | Fact Breast changes happen a lot and most are not cancer. Benign cysts are common as women get older. They can be painful but breast pain, whatever the cause, is rarely a sign of cancer on its own. Other breast conditions that can occur as you age might seem alarming but, once diagnosed, can be left alone. One example is duct ectasia, where the milk ducts shorten and widen. It can cause a watery or blood-stained discharge, a lump behind

the nipple and pain. The nipple might even be pulled inwards. The important thing is to see a doctor if you experience any changes at all, so that anything sinister can be ruled out.

How To Manage Anxiety

We’ve all dealt with anxiety at some point in our lives; here’s how to keep it in check…

Nausea, cold sweats, palpitations— anxiety has physical symptoms as well as the emotional discomfort. But there are ways you can cope:

Exercise A brisk walk, run or yoga will all produce endorphins and reduce the stress hormone, cortisol, helping relieve those debilitating symptoms of anxiety. Try to get some exercise at least once a day.

Deep breathing When you’re very anxious your breathing can become rapid and shallow, which in turn can make you feel dizzy and panicky. Inhale and exhale deeply a few times, focusing on your breath. This will then calm you down enough to practise 4-7-8 breathing: inhale deeply for a count of four, hold for a count of seven and then slowly breathe out for a count of eight.

Avoiding trigger foods Digestive troubles go hand in hand with anxiety. Feeling sick and having diarrhoea are

both common. It may help to avoid foods and drinks that could set you off, including caffeine, alcohol, sugar and refined carbohydrates, such as white bread, pastries and white rice.

Progressive muscle relaxation This is much simpler than it sounds and, like many relaxation techniques, it works. Clench different parts of your body and then release the tension, starting at the feet and working up the body. This helps with increased heart rate and that sensation of breathlessness that often accompany anxiety.

Accept your feelings Instead of telling yourself you shouldn’t be feeling this way and resisting it, accept your sensations without judging. That’s the first step towards dealing with them.

Distraction Doing something else when your symptoms are getting the better of you can work wonders. Opt for a calming activity such as reading or listening to relaxing music.

Ask The Expert: Grief

Lianna Champ

Funeral director and bereavement counsellor Lianna Champ has over 40 years’ experience working with people who are grieving

How did you become an expert in grieving? I always wanted to be an undertaker, and became the youngest female qualified funeral director. I’m also a certified grief recovery specialist. My overriding passion has always been to help people and give them their life back after loss.

What are the different ways in which people respond to a death? Each loss is different. How we grieve depends on who we are as people and on the relationship we had at the time of the loss. If we had a complete relationship with someone, we might experience the natural sadness of separation without the gnawing anguish of regret. We need emotional completion.

How important is it to manage grief properly? It’s absolutely vital because it can affect your capacity for moving forward and your future happiness. It’s important to recognise if we’re using negative coping mechanisms

such as retail therapy, sleeping or drinking more.

What tips can you give people to help them cope with grief? Find someone you trust and talk about your feelings. Eat well, get plenty of rest. Accept that it’ll always be OK to have those moments of sadness and don’t pretend you’re OK if you’re not. Accept how you feel in the present moment and be honest about your feelings.

What advice can you give people who are trying to support someone who’s bereaved? Actually listen. Don’t jump in with your own experience—it minimises the importance of the other person’s feelings. Each experience of loss is unique.

Lianna’s book How to Grieve Like a Champ is published by Red Door Publishing

Difficult Decisions

Dr Max Permberton ponders the heavy weight of authority over other people’s lives…

Hospitals are scary places. Most people come into contact with hospitals when things go wrong: they’ve had an accident, become unwell or have been referred for more tests. Nobody, except the staff, is there by choice. And it can be touch-and-go with some of the staff. But patients aren’t the only ones who are scared. The overriding memory of my first year as a doctor is that of persistent, unadulterated fear. As the junior doctor, you’re faced with the unknown on a daily basis, and it scares you.

You might think that psychiatry is free from all this high-level angst. It’s just lots of talking isn’t it? But it has its own sort of traumas and its own emergencies every bit as scary as in other branches of medicine. I was

Max is a hospital doctor, author and columnist. He currently works full time in mental health for the NHS. His latest book is a self-help guide to using CBT to stop smoking

recently on call. As I sat in the doctor’s room, the peaceful evening was abruptly interrupted by the slamming of a van door, shouts of several men and screams from another.

Several minutes later, my pager goes off. The extension number shown is for PICU—Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit. The noise I had heard from outside was someone being transferred in a police van to PICU and I have to go and assess them.

After getting through the numerous security doors I’m met by six policemen, all with cuts on their faces. “He’s in there,” one of them says. I peer through a small reinforced-glass observation window in a door. The man inside the small room immediately lunges for the door and tries to smash the glass. This is Mr Kilshaw. He’s acutely psychotic and very angry at having been brought into hospital. There’s no reason to be scared as he can’t get out, but I am. In fact, he’s so disturbed that he’s being kept in “seclusion,” until he calms down and treatment can be started. This is only reserved for the

most unwell patients, and means that they’re kept in isolation in a small room, with nothing else except a mattress, so that they can’t harm themselves. There’s CCTV in the room relayed to the nursing station so he can be monitored constantly. The decision to put someone in seclusion is not made lightly, and there are protocols in place to ensure that it’s not abused. It’s not a punishment, but a way of managing and containing the patient until they’re calmer. I look at the policemen that Mr Kilshaw assaulted while being brought in and am overwhelmingly relieved that he’s locked up behind a secure door. He’s not normally an aggressive man. His aggression is because he doesn’t think he’s unwell and thinks he’s being

wrongfully detained. I’d be trying to assault people if I felt they were locking me away without reason. I sign the forms agreeing to Mr Kilshaw being kept in seclusion, and walk outside into the night air. I hate the idea that on my say-so a man has been locked up in a tiny window-less room, stripped of his liberty.

Psychiatry is fraught with dilemmas like this, because it deals with things that the rest of society doesn’t want to have to think about. Out of everyone involved, the person who’s really scared is Mr Kilshaw. He doesn’t understand what’s happening to him or why. It might be for his own good, but it’s brutal. And it scares me to think of the authority I have over other people’s lives.

The Doctor Is In

Dr Max Pemberton

Q: “I’m the heaviest that I’ve been in years, and although I want to lose weight, I’m too embarrassed about my size to join a gym. What’s the best way to get started when your confidence is low?”

- Brenda, 50

A: It’s strange how we seem able to be so kind towards others, but when it comes to ourselves, it’s often in such short supply. We’re often our own worst critics, never congratulating ourselves when we’ve done something well, instead focusing on our failures. So let me congratulate you. Well done. Loads of people have difficulty with their weight. You’re not alone—the majority of the adult population in the UK is classed as overweight so your struggle is incredibly common. But you—unlike many people—have decided you want to do something about it. First of all, try to remember that while you might be very selfconscious in the gym, no one else is going to be bothered. Trust me, all those people with toned abs and

sculpted bodies are far more interested in themselves to notice anyone else. Besides, remember that everyone has to start somewhere and a fair few of them will have been just like you, unsure and uncertain. If you’re really nervous about starting out in the gym, why not get a personal trainer for a few sessions to help you devise a plan.

Remember though, going to the gym is only part of weight loss—it’s far more important that you focus on your food. Why not consider paying for a few sessions with a private dietician to help you build confidence around changing your diet. You’ll find that at weight loss classes everyone is in the same boat as you. Some may have been going longer, but everyone will remember what it’s like to start off and they’ll give you lots of encouragement. Go for it, I know you can do it.

Got a health question for our resident doctor? Email it confidentially to askdrmax@ readersdigest.co.uk

BY JAVIER MUÑOZ

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A Memory To Count On

Learning digits is difficult—which makes it a great way to train your brain, as our memory expert Jonathan Hancock explains

If you find it hard to remember alarm codes, hotel rooms, birthdays, PINs, don’t worry: it’s normal, because numbers are hard. They’re abstract, confusing, often arbitrary, and you’ve got to get them exactly right. They’re essential to so many aspects of everyday life, but not really made to be memorable.

There are things you can do to boost your chances but first, you have to practise holding numbers in your short-term memory.

The first step is to make numbers easy to say aloud, activating your memory’s auditory loop. Do what many companies do when choosing their telephone numbers and chunk digits

into groups; use rhythm and make the most of patterns.

For example, 2 4 7 1 2 3 1 0 6 6 is easier to hold in your short-term memory if you chunk it as 2 4 7-1 2 3-1 0 6 6, and say “twenty-four seven; one, two, three; ten sixty-six.”

As you repeat the numbers aloud, also try to see them in your mind’s eye because hearing and seeing greatly improve recall. Could you even move your fingers as if you were dialling on a phone? Get muscles working in support of your mind.

From dates to barcodes, hold onto more of the numbers that come your way, even if it’s just for a few seconds, once or twice a day, to keep your memory flexible and fit.

The technique: choose the easiest way to read the numbers above aloud. Then switch to saying them in your head. As well as hearing the numbers, see them in your mind, especially any significant digit groups. You could even move your fingers as if you were writing, adding extra layers to your learning.

The test: Put one of these numbers in your head, think about something else for a moment, then see if the original information is still within your grasp. Find out which short-term number-juggling strategies work best for you, and get used to the very healthy feeling of stretching the limits of your memory power.

Are you looking after your BONE HEALTH?

50% of women and 20% of men are at risk of getting osteoporosis. By the time we reach 30, our bones have reached peak bone strength. Beyond that we start to lose strength and density in our bones, particularly for women through the menopause.

Many diet studies across the world have shown conclusively that the majority of older adults are deficient in many of the key nutrients needed to support bone health. This can be avoided by sensible supplementation to ensure our bones remain healthy and strong.

Prime Fifty have formulated a strong bones supplement, aimed at supporting the health and wellbeing of those in their 50’s and beyond.

What do you need for strong bones?:

Calcium

Scientifically proven to contribute to the maintenance of bone strength.

Vitamin K

Another ingredient used by Prime Fiftythis vitamin contributes to the maintenance of bone strength.

Magnesium and Zinc

These two key minerals are essential for bone health which is why Prime Fifty have used these nutrients in their bone strength formula.

Vitamin D

The vast majority of people, especially over 50’s, are deficient in vitamin D and supplementation is now being recommended by all health professionals. It ensures that calcium and phosphorus are absorbed efficiently from the gut.

Vitamin C, Manganese and Copper

Vitamin C has been shown to contribute to the formation of collagen which plays a key role in laying down new cartilage between bones and therefore bone movement. Whilst manganese and copper contribute to the maintenance of tendons and ligaments that are connected to the bone.

Healthy Ageing Blend

Prime Fifty have also added a blend of key nutrients relevant to the ageing process, together with enhanced absorption.

THE SWEET LIFE

Sugar relationships seem to be on the rise. Seeking Arrangement, the leading sugar dating site, boasts over 1.5 million users in the UK. But how often do these relationships bloom from genuine romantic connection, rather than material desire?

Anna

Walker

investigates.

When he realises he’s fallen for Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly, Paul Varjak of Breakfast At Tiffany’s asks his older lover if they can “end this stylishly”. He’s a sugar baby, and the older woman, his sugar mama, though they never use those terms—it’s far easier to call her his “decorator” instead. Today, the culture has changed. And so it is that I find myself in London’s exclusive Kensington district lunching with a group of sugar babies, sipping champagne and swapping secrets.

Sugar babies are young, beautiful men and women who date older, wealthy partners who reward them for their time, either through a monthly allowance, a payment per meeting or generous gifts and travel.

One girl, Abby*, who wears a crisp white shirt and has neatly cropped hair and piercings, is gesticulating enthusiastically, a selection of dainty finger sandwiches forgotten on the pristine plate before her. “I’ve travelled to several different places [with sugar daddies]: London and New York. I want to branch out into Scotland, Ireland and Amsterdam next because of my academia.”

All this international dating must be slightly exhausting, another, less experienced girl ponders. “I wouldn’t say it’s particularly emotionally difficult,” Abby muses. “It can be tricky when I’ve got 12 boyfriends in seven different countries but, you

know… someone’s got to do it!” The group dissolves into peals of giggles. Abby strikes me as an inverted James Bond: international travel, a man in every city, the glamour of a five-star lifestyle and all in exchange for the simple thrill of her company. It’s an intoxicating concept.

Guys my age won’t spend money on a girl unless they’re in a relationship, but these men don’t care: They've got the money

At Seeking Arrangement (seeking. com), the world’s leading sugar baby dating site, there are over 10 million profiles, split into what the site likes to call its 8 million “attractive members” (sugar babies) and 2 million “generous members” (sugar daddies and mamas). 1.5m of those profiles herald from the UK, with some 500,000 members joining in the past year alone.

In the fortnight I sign up to the site to research the scene, I’m approached by some 20 men, including a Buddhist who boasts that he “still has his own hair and teeth” (though they aren’t evident in his photographs), an elderly, masked man who professes an interest in being “treated like a slave”, and many thoroughly everyday men

I get a lot of satisfaction from spoiling women but I don't want to break up my marriage

seeking simple romantic courtship: a privilege they’re willing to pay for. The odds are in their favour—sugar babies outnumber daddies here four to one.

When I consult Dr Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist and expert in the science of human attraction at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute, she assures me that

there’s really nothing new about these relationships.

“Historically, there have always been ‘camp followers’ and in just about every culture you find women who hang around men to get resources from them. Men have always been willing to pay for younger women and younger women have always been interested in taking the goods and services of older men.”

According to Dr Fisher, this experience is symptomatic of a larger societal shift away from early marriage and towards “slow love”.

“What we’re seeing is an extension of the courtship stage. Young women aren’t interested in marrying early and so during this long period of getting their career together and learning about themselves, they have time to be sugar babies.”

“Young women have always needed to get ahead,” she laughs, “and these days they’re not scared of pregnancy, they’re not scared of disease, and they don’t even have to walk the "walk of shame"—they’re not called hookers, harlots or even mistresses: they’re sugar babies.”

At 24, full-time model and blogger Shay has been dating sugar daddies for just over a year. “My ex-partner was older, and we always had fun and went to nice places. When we broke up, I left my career, moved back with my parents and really missed the lifestyle.”

“I don’t want to settle down yet and most [sugar daddies] are just looking for someone to have a nice time with. Guys my age won’t spend money on a girl unless they’re in a relationship, but these men don’t care. They’ve got the money, and they say, ‘Yeah OK, I’ll treat you to a nice holiday or five-star experience.’ It’s really nice.”

Shay is charming and intelligent

with a deep, smoky voice and it’s easy to see why a flush CEO might enjoy her company. She’s exactly the sort of woman self-professed sugar daddy Jay enjoys spoiling. A highflying Los Angeles tech executive in his mid-fifties, his marriage became strained when his wife lost interest in sex. They’re now in a platonic union— “for the kids”—and he moved onto sugar dating after finding his experiences with escorts lacking in intellectual connection. He claims to have spent over $100,000 on one sugar baby, and typically dates around three girls at any one time, though the most he’s balanced is six.

“I get a lot of satisfaction from spoiling women,” Jay explains. “I enjoy giving them anything from job advice to a pair of Louboutins.”

“I don’t want to break up my marriage because we have a lot at stake and I’m very good friends with my wife. When I date outside of Seeking Arrangement, girls fall in love with me, and they want a relationship. Even when I’ve stated that it’s very casual and very nostrings-attached, women can still get very emotionally involved and that doesn’t work for me.”

I can't help but wonder whether romance can truly blossom when a relationship’s fundamental dynamic seems to manipulate a basic human need—our craving for love

and companionship. The daters I interview insist that romance—and even love—is possible within the sugar dynamic however, and it’s a view that Dr Fisher shares.

“I put people in brain scanners to study the brain in love and what we see is that the brain circuitry for romantic love is like the fear system—it can be triggered in an instant. This is particularly true when you have sex. With orgasm comes a flood of oxytocin and vasopressin that link with feelings of deep attachment, so sugar daddies and sugar babies can fall for each other.”

But with the giddy promise of romance comes the threat of manipulation. Despite considering himself a connoisseur of the sugar bowl (as those in the know refer to the dating pool), Jay recently fell victim to a scam.

“A girl reached out to me with a beautifully crafted email. She told me that to make sure people are serious, she always asks for a cash gift for an initial meet up. I’m not opposed to that, but I was cautious, my gut told me something was wrong.”

“When she showed up, she was a strung-out drug addict. I realised that she had a pimp writing emails for her and within five minutes I told her, ‘You don’t look like your pictures, you’re clearly not capable of writing those emails, here’s your $100’ and I just walked away. I took a calculated risk and I lost.”

The prospect of young women being used by pimps in this way is deeply troubling and it’s uncomfortable to hear Jay speak of the meeting in terms of a fun flutter. Because Seeking Arrangement—and many of its users—don’t class sugar dating as sex work, it’s hard to get a handle on how common such occurrences are.

Brook Urick, Seeking Arrangement’s spokesperson explains, “A lot of women get on the site assuming someone wants to give them money. In reality it’s for finding a relationship with someone successful who may be able to support you but isn’t there to hand out cash. The misconception goes so far that people sometimes get scammed. Our people are watching for that kind of behaviour but if a lonely guy gets someone off the site…”

For Shay—who has travelled to Barbados, Portugal and Sweden with her sugar daddies—the disparity in wealth between millennials and older generations explains why these relationships are thriving. Indeed, as young people struggle with an average £50,800 in student debt** and are increasingly shut out of a brutal housing market, it’s easy to see why many seek alternative ways to earn.

“The lifestyle that girls want to be living nowadays just isn’t feasible. You work 9-5, you don’t have time for yourself, you can’t pay for luxurious

Living in East London when would I meet people with this life experience? CEOs aren't going to be in Dalston

holidays. You’ve got to save, save, save if you want something, or you’ve got to get it on finance. Before doing this, I was in debt, but now half of it has been reduced.”

I hear several stories of girls using sugar dating as a networking tool— Jay estimates that half the women he dates are seeking mentors. Over dessert in Kensington, a striking Kiwi with peroxide, buzzcut hair

reveals that she’s been using the site to meet men who can help her budding business. “I want to take all the advice I can get,” she explains. “Living in East London, when would I ever meet people with this life experience? CEOs aren’t going to be in Dalston.”

Shay too has used her dates to build business acumen. “I started my own online clothing business

It's my hobby! Some guys play golf, some guys sail… I sugar date. It keeps me young

and I got advice [from daddies]. One even put me in touch with one of his designers who designed my website for me.”

Everyone I meet has a strong stance on one question in particular—is sugar dating—sex work? According to relationship expert and life coach Ben Edwards, “As long as money or gifts are exchanging hands it’s a

transaction. You have to wonder, even if they have got a connection, whether they would still be there if they weren’t getting the financial compensation. And if not, then what’s the difference between that and prostitution?”

Dr Anna Machin, evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Oxford, takes a different stance. “At the most fundamental evolutionary

level they represent a good match. The human dating market is like the stock market, we all have a ‘mate value’ based on the likelihood that we’ll be reproductively successful. A sugar daddy and sugar baby have the same high mate value. The man’s because he is high in resources and the woman’s because she is young and attractive and thus likely to be fertile. If there’s an attraction and the solid foundations of a successful relationship—compatible attachment styles, shared values, compatible personalities—then they can be as successful as any other.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the overwhelming consensus within the sugar bowl is that these relationships don’t amount to prostitution. Sugar daddy Jay insists, “Prostitution is very different, this is mutual. Any woman who wants to go to bed on the first date is a red flag for me. I want to date her and court her and make sure it’s the right fit for us both.”

Shay shares his frustration. Although she does sleep with her sugar daddies if she feels a connection, she insists she feels no obligation. “There’s a misconception that women are subjecting themselves to older men for money. I have to tell people, ‘it’s not prostitution, it’s not selling sex’. It’s got nothing to do with an older pervy man and younger girl. For me, it’s about connection and companionship. I’ll be out with a

sugar daddy and you can just see the looks. I hope that one day the taboo goes away.”

In a society in which over 1 million people aged 65+ admit to feeling lonely*** and younger generations are struggling more and more to make ends meet, it seems—for

Sugar dating has nothing to do with an older pervy man and younger girl. It's more about connection and companionship. I hope one day the taboo goes away

better or for worse—sugar dating has become a way of answering these intergenerational needs.

When I ask Jay—who has been sugar dating for eight years and met “scores of women”—if there might be something addictive about the sugar lifestyle, he laughs. “It’s my hobby! Some guys play golf, some guys sail… I sugar date.”

“It keeps me young and engaged in what’s going on with more than just my own generation. I just took a girl to Miami and we went to all the hottest clubs. It might kill me, but I’m having fun doing it!”

* Some names have been changed to protect privacy

STREET Art Best of British

Not all great art is confined to galleries. These cool cities are taking creativity to the streets…

BY ANNA WALKER

Artist Ant Carver painting on the final day of UpFest; (right) Banksy's The Girl With the Stick

Bristol

When most of us think about street art, one name inevitably springs to mind: Banksy. So, where better to take in some of Britain’s best street art than the home of the man himself?

Emerging from the Bristol Underground Scene of the 1990s, the anonymous Banksy’s work has a distinct stencil style and often carries politically charged or darkly humorous messages.

Visitors hoping to catch a glimpse of Banksy’s work have plenty of opportunity, with 16 of his artworks scattered across the city. Our personal favourite is The Girl With the Stick, stealthily painted on the wall of Bridge Farm Primary School in 2016 after a school house was named after the artist.

Be sure to visit during the Upfest Urban Paint Festival—which welcomed some 50,000 visitors in July—for a flavour of the other street artists decorating Bristol’s walls. Held along North Street in Bedminster, it’s Europe’s biggest free street art and graffiti festival showcasing work from over 70 artists.

Shoreditch, London

London’s hipster capital, Shoreditch, boasts several magnificent works by artists from all corners of the globe. So extensive is the selection of street art on show here that several companies now offer guided graffiti tours of the area.

Check out Great Eastern Street where graffiti-covered tube trains watch over the streets below from the rooftops, constantly-changing murals

line the road and huge lettering spells out the sweet message, “Let Us Adore And Endure Each Other”.

Globally renowned artist Stik’s work—which now peppers the entire city—is perhaps at its best in Shoreditch. Visit Princelet Street to see his iconic red shutter doors then take the short, five-minute walk to Brick Lane for delicious street food as you admire the ever-changing murals of Pedley Street.

Cardiff

Cardiff’s colourful streets are defined by the illustrative quality of the street art that graces their buildings, walls and car parks.

Thanks to the Empty Walls project in 2014, many public murals now dot the city, including pieces by Phlegm, an internationally renowned Welsh artist known for his narrativedriven murals.

His giant rendering of a Welsh dragon (above) presides over a nondescript garage on City Road while his beastly skeletal creature curls itself ominously around Cardiff Central train station.

One particularly inventive artwork stretches across the Crwys Road railway bridge (right) depicting a

parade of prehistoric animals, evolving from fish and dinosaurs through to kangaroos, apes and armadillos. Known as The False Evolution of Man, the piece was created by Wendy Bridges and Stuart Reeve back in 2015.

Aberdeen

It’s known as the grey “Granite City”, but since the introduction of the Nuart Street Art Festival in 2017, Aberdeen has been flecked with colour.

Street Art is given a three-dimensional twist off of Union Row where a huge horse portrait (above) has been constructed from brightly coloured recycled plastics by Portuguese artist Bordalo II. His art is centred around a mission to create beauty from waste, with the motto, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

One of the city’s most spectacular pieces was inspired by the sometimes-uncomfortable union between England and Scotland— Argentinian artist Hyuro’s An Affective Bond (right). Find it in the East Green Tunnels, a passage popular with graffiti artists that leads through to Netherkirkgate, one of the city’s most ancient streets.

Newcastle

Way back in 2006, Newcastle’s Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art held one of the UK’s first major street art exhibitions, and the city has been paving the way for great graffiti since. There are beautiful Geisha murals from renowned, Newcastle-born artist Hush, a huge blue mural from the famous London Police (below) at The Ship Inn, and several pieces by the elusive guerrilla artist Karl Striker.

One of our favourite British street artists, Faunagraphic, creates graffiti art inspired by her love of nature and birds. Head to Arch 4, Stepney Bank to take in her magnificent owl mural bearing the inscription, “An ancient place of lead and stone and steel and scrap, sluice gates water, tunnels, mud, children, artists, beasts and birds, where future grows and shakes its wings.”

Manchester

No two trips to Manchester’s Northern Quarter are quite the same, thanks to the rapidity with which its walls are spray painted with beautiful images, words and colours, painted over and then decorated anew.

For the most jaw-dropping art, be sure to stop in at Stevenson Square, maintained by local graffiti collective OuthouseMCR, Tariff Street where a huge, finely-detailed piece in the guise of a giant blue diamond by Swiss duo Nevercrew (below) looms over the streets and Tib Street where every other wall offers up its bricks to a splash of creativity.

Wherever you wander, expect to encounter bee designs: it’s the city’s symbol and an emblem for solidarity for its residents. One of the biggest bee homages can be found on Oldham Street, where a mural by artist Qubek featuring 22 bees swarming around a honey heart acts as a memorial to the 22 people who lost their lives during the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017.

Leeds

Kick-started by 2016’s A City Less Grey project—which endeavoured to subvert the city’s grey walls with street art, installations and events— graffiti is now an inseparable part of Leeds’s cultural fabric.

The Platform Building is a mustsee for street art seekers, where gigantic owls seem to swoop down from the rooftops in a piece entitled

Athena Rising (left). At 154ft tall and 36ft wide—that’s taller than Brazil’s Christ the Redeemer statue—the mural is Britain’s tallest work of street art and it took weeks of work and hundreds of cans of spray paint to complete.

It’s also worth paying a visit to the now-derelict Lyon Works’ building on Templar Lane, where local artists and students from Leeds College of Art have filled the boarded windows with giant hand-painted letters spelling out the inspiring Einstein quote, “Learn from yesterday, live for today, design for tomorrow.”

Do you have a favourite piece of British Street Art? Email us about it at readersletters@readersdigest.co.uk

JOIN US FOR THE UNMISSABLE SEASON OPENING

the new world order

one for the road mountain language

ashes to ashes

the pres and an officer

6

I am extremely proud to present this unprecedented season of Harold Pinter’s one-act plays on the 10th anniversary of his death, opening with a collection of his most political works, and continuing with two comedic masterpieces.

Together with a world-class cast, many of whom were Harold’s friends and collaborators, we’ll present all twenty of his short works in repertoire. They have never been performed together in a season of this kind.

Our extraordinary company includes Keith Allen, Jessica Barden, Ron Cook, Phil Davies, Danny Dyer, Paapa Essiedu, Lee Evans, Martin Freeman, Rupert Graves, Tamsin Greig, Jane Horrocks, Celia Imrie, Gary Kemp, John Macmillan, Emma Naomi, Tracy-Ann Oberman, Kate O’Flynn, Jonjo O’Neill, Abraham Popoola, Antony Sher, John Simm, Hayley Squires, Maggie Steed, David Suchet, Meera Syal, Luke Thallon, Russell Tovey, Penelope Wilton and Nicholas Woodeson, with further

casting to follow. Alongside myself, direction is by Patrick Marber, Ed Stambollouian, Lyndsey Turner and Lia Williams, with my regular collaborator Soutra Gilmour overseeing an exceptional season design.

Alongside famous pieces such as A Kind of Alaska, One for the Road, The Dumb Waiter, Moonlight, The Lover and The Collection, there’s a unique chance to discover Pinter rarities such as his very first play, The Room, the funny oddity, Night School, and his final hilarious play, Celebration. Special rehearsed readings of Tea Party, The Basement and Silence will complete the season.

We hope you’ll join us for this unforgettable celebration, and find that Harold’s words feel as fascinatingly rich, witty and resonant as ever.

Jamie Lloyd

Image by Cecil Beaton © National Portrait Gallery, London

by harold pinter directed by jamie lloyd and lia williams

starring paapa essiedu kate o’flynn antony sher maggie steed jonjo o’neill

starring john macmillan hayley squires russell tovey david suchet the lover the collection

by harold pinter directed by jamie lloyd

From Our Archive

JULY 1955

THE JOYFUL GARDENER

By Agnes Rothery

Those who have experienced the joy of gardening know that there’s no joy which precisely parallels it. One of the mainsprings of a happy life—always looking forward to the future—is generously accorded the gardener. Nor does it diminish as he grows older.

I once journeyed to the funeral of a friend, and, arriving a few hours before the services, went into her garden. For a long time, she’d known that she would not recover from her illness, but the last morning she’d been able to be outdoors she had trimmed and reshaped a recently planted evergreen shrub. It was spreading its branches now against the wall, neat and glossy and growing symmetrically as she had intended. My friend knew she would never see this lovely tracery covering the wall, but she acknowledged the persistence of life and, as I stood before the work of her hands, I acknowledged it too.

This belief in the future, which gives quietness to the mind and buoyancy

to the body explains, I think, the astonishing vigour with which the aged often apply themselves to garden tasks. For while they are thus occupied, they aren’t conscious of being old or young but only of being part of surging, growing life. Flowers bud, open, wither, fall. They draw in nourishment from earth, air, water, sun. They attract birds and bees, are pollinated, make seed, scatter it, in a cycle as irresistible and synchronised as the movements of the stars and planets. They are part of the rhythm of life just as we are part of it and they accompany us through every mood.

This is the blessing which belongs to those who work in their own gardens. Thus, it is that every true gardener is forever a beginner and always confident about the future that lightens the way like a flame. And thus it is also true, that the gardener, from his first awkward essay with the spade to his last expert pruning of an evergreen, is conscious—with deepest gratitude—that he is blessed.

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Snorkel in the sheltered coral lagoon and view the reef from the semi-submersible reef viewer or underwater observatory Optional tours in Cairns include a scenic railway journey to Kuranda, and a day trip to the World Heritage listed Daintree Rainforest

Day 12: Uluru (Ayers Rock)

We enjoy a refreshing glass of sparkling wine and witness the changing colours as the sun sets.

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Visit the Royal Flying Doctor Service, the School of the Air, and the Old Telegraph Station Take an optional tour of the Western MacDonnell Ranges

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Experience one of the world’s most iconic rail journeys Covering 1,555 kilometres, we pass golden wheat fields, rugged mountain ranges and the contrasting landscapes of fiery red earth and cobalt blue skies Whilst on board, all our meals are included as are a wide selection of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks.

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A sightseeing tour of the city’s historic buildings and attractive parks and gardens

Perhaps visit the Barossa Valley wine region

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Our tour includes beautiful Bondi Beach, Hyde Park, Parliament House and the Royal Botanical Gardens The tour finale is a fabulous luncheon cruise with amazing views of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. Why not use your Freedom Days in Sydney to visit the spectacular World Heritage listed Blue Mountains?

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Actress Jenny Agutter OBE, 65, is known for her roles in TheRailway Children, Call the Midwife and Logan’sRun

IF I RULED THE WORLD Jenny Agutter

I’d have various counsellors. The whole premise of my world would be that of shared responsibility. I’d have counsellors like Sir David Attenborough, who has created such empathy for the world we live in through his programmes.

I would get back to real communities. Communities have become very disparate. We seem to be ruled by a centre that’s outside

ourselves, as opposed to relying on the community we’re living in. My husband and I visited Tobago and one thing we’ve noticed is that every town has a harvest festival. The people in each village gather to celebrate and have a meal—it’s all about sharing.

I would get rid of exams. Exams are solitary things that test how much you know but the point of school would be problem-solving and working with

other children. So many kids come out of school with masses of information but don’t know what they want to do or what they really enjoy.

I’d prioritise studying music, drama, and sport. When children work together in drama, they’re not only studying the literature, they’re looking at emotions and learning how to communicate. That also happens in music because if you’re learning an instrument, you learn to play with other people.

I would eradicate homelessness. Families can break down for all sorts of reasons. Whatever it is, sometimes people just need support from people outside, which is why I work for Action for Children. The youth homelessness project works with homeless young people and we help them through the things that family normally would such as form filling and getting a job.

We’ve got to make the NHS work. We’re hugely privileged to have it and we’ve got to pay whatever taxes required to ensure the money is there. Educators and health workers should be celebrated and paid the most in our society, because we need them.

I would open up places of worship. Places of worship should be used by people who have faith, but they should also be open to the community and become centres of thought.

Instead of saying, “this is our religion and it’s separate from everybody else,” they would invite other people and denominations in so that people can understand each other better.

Schools would invite older people in. The children’s parents would collect older people who live alone and take them to big tea parties. Then the children could ask them about things. It’s important for the elderly not to be left on the edges of society and it’s nice to be celebrated when you come to the end of your life.

I’d arrange more for young people to do. When I was young, there were clubs, dances and sports events but [now] people are disengaged. I’d love to bring back the idea of the community centre so kids are able to do other things aside from being on the streets.

I would reverse the trend for smart phones. I wish when they were developed it had been made very clear that “this is an adult toy”.

As told to Joy Persaud

Jenny Agutter is helping Action for Children support vulnerable young people at risk of homelessness. If you can help too, text BYTE18 £5 (or the amount you wish to donate) to 70070. For more information visit bytenight.org.uk

Time The Real-Life Travellers

They may seem like ordinary people by day but in their spare time, these office, shop and school workers bring history to life…

BY JO CARLOWE

During the week they work in shops, offices, clinics and schools, but at weekends they transform into Vikings, Romans and Medieval peasants. The world of re-enactment is burgeoning with more and more men and women taking up the hobby of travelling to bygone times.

Here, three living history enthusiasts reveal how it’s done:

FACTORY MANAGER OF A BUSY PRINTERS, BRETT FREEMAN, 46, FROM NOTTINGHAM, MORPHS INTO "PADMORE," A VICTORIAN STREET-SELLER PEDDLING STATIONERY.

His teeth blackened with theatrical stain, in top hat and frock coat, Brett looks every bit his Victorian alter-ego.

Already a veteran of military re-enactments, Brett joined the "Ragged Victorians" when middleage kicked in.

“I was too old to portray a soldier but I wanted to get back into the hobby and the Ragged Victorians looked the best in terms of authenticity.”

At his first event, group members gave him "loaner gear" and a year to research his character, equip himself with an outfit and essential props.

Seeking inspiration, Brett dipped into the works of Victorian journalist,

Henry Mayhew, who wrote about the working people of London.

“My character is inspired by the description of a stationer in Mayhew’s London Labour and London Poor. I mixed that up with my own background in print, and local historical sources to create street stationer, Padmore, which is the name of my Victorian greatgreat grandfather.”

Padmore’s stationery box contains period and reproduction items such as pens, ink wells, and sealing wax. Brett reproduced his outfit using period patterns, the correct fabrics and sewing techniques, employing a cheese grater to create wear and tear, shoe polish for dirt, and Vaseline for grease.

“Getting into kit helps immensely and once you are in the public area you try to remain in character wherever possible.”

Events take place a few times a month. A regular haunt is SS Great Britain with the group taking over steerage cabins and lining the quayside.

“All modern trappings are banned. Even tattoos must be

Normal life can seem very dull after a particularly good weekend

hidden and any piercings or jewellery removed.” For extra authenticity, Brett smatters his language with Victorian selling patter, replacing the word "envelope" with the archaic "hangflups."

His partner Gail, and eldest son, Louis, are supportive of Brett’s "eccentricities" but not involved.

Youngest son, Byron, 15, however, plays a Victorian street rogue.

“Re-enacting is great fun, but we’re always glad of a hot shower and a comfy bed at the end of the weekend,” says Brett. “Normal life can seem very dull after a particularly good weekend.

It would be wonderful to go back in time for a visit, but studying the period as I have done, makes you realise just how hard life was for our ancestors.”

raggedvictorians.co.uk

JULIA ROWLAND, 34, FROM SOUTHENDON-SEA, VISITS SCHOOLS TO TALK ABOUT HISTORY, BUT AT WEEKENDS SHE GOES BACK IN TIME…

“We call it Post Re-enactment Distress Disorder,” says Julia, describing the deflated feeling she gets having spent the weekend as a Second World War Land Girl.

“The weekends are so lovely, the values of that era are so strong that modern living feels rather mercenary and soulless in comparison.”

Formerly a gardener, Julia helps bring history to life as a member of a Second World War re-enactment group, "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Conduct," (named after a secret branch of the Special Operations Executive).

She oscillates between playing a Land Girl and a "Lumber Jill"—the name given to workers in the Women’s Timber Corp (WTC)—a specialist force tasked with felling trees for the war effort.

“I use the role to raise awareness of what women achieved, and to show, that despite not being on the front lines, their contribution was valid and necessary,” Julia explains. “I’m lucky enough to be from Essex where a lot of

the WLA were trained at Writtle College in Chelmsford, so I have some local information.”

Authenticity is key, and Julia’s character carries a period make-up compact and a ration book as well as a cigarette case “filled with sweets,” (she doesn’t smoke).

“Just getting into the outfit makes a massive difference, especially for me, as I have to wear make-up and put my hair in rollers—I’m not normally that kind of girl, preferring a natural look.”

The experience feels all the more real due to the re-enactors sticking to the food of the time and adhering to rationing.

“I’ve cooked sausages in cider with onions and tinned peas in a hay box with a side of mash (sausages weren’t rationed until 1942). Lunches are

The weekends are so lovely, the values of that era are so strong that modern living feels rather mercenary and soulless in comparison

tinned meats or bully beef. Preserves and chutneys go down a treat with these. Rationing makes you creative—we’ve used recipes for ersatz devilled eggs with the yolk made from grated carrots, and the white from mashed potatoes.”

Julia’s husband, Alex, plays an Essex Regiment Infanteer, and her step-son Ulrich, 12, an evacuee—representing the many thousands of children who were sent to the countryside for safety.

“If I could choose, I would rather live back in a time where you worked hard but cared for each other than working hard and getting nowhere,” says Julia. “I know it wasn’t all "Blitz spirit," but reading through so many memories that aren’t rose-tinted, hasn’t changed my mind. I’ve always felt like I’m in the wrong era. The Second World War, Vikings, or even Mesolithic period would suit me fine!”

For information contact Julia at: tessa1603@yahoo.co.uk

CHRIS FELTON, 58, FROM SHEFFIELD, MANAGES IT SYSTEMS FOR THE DEPARTMENT FOR WORK AND PENSIONS, BUT ON WEEKENDS HE’S A MEDIEVAL BARBER-SURGEON…

recipes on cookbooks of the time. Tents with modern kit are kept closed, only fully authentic ones are open for the public to see inside.”

Chris loved his combative role as the audacious Giles Fitzroy, but sadly arthritic hands put paid to this.

“It was hard to accept because it had been the centre of my life for 30 years.”

“My 13th-century character, 'Giles Fitzroy, le Comte de Falaise', was an arrogant so-and-so because that was the easiest way to overcome my initial stage-fright,” explains Chris, who joined re-enactment group the Knights in Battle Medieval Society (KIBS) in 1984.

When he first started, other members trained him in combat and taught him about the history and costumes.

“We have a strict policy that things must look right, so visible seams must be hand-stitched, but invisible ones can be machined. All fabrics must be authentic or of such quality that you can’t tell there is a manmade element. Our primary bible is a very well-researched volume called The Medieval Tailors’ Assistant.

During events, modern trappings are kept out of sight. “We don't eat modern food in sight of the public. Indeed, there is a whole sub-culture of authentic food. Some members are very knowledgeable and base

Fortunately, there were other roles to fill: Lords, Ladies, monks, nuns, merchants, farmers, peasants and undesirables. Having hung up his sword, Chris became "John Barber," clad in doublet and hose, a coat, and fine hat, complete with the tools of his trade: amputation knives and saws, cauterising irons, shears for nose and ear hairs. During events he dons a leather apron before demonstrating a series of grisly procedures.

“Arrow extraction is the noisiest. The moment where the hot irons sizzle into flesh is the climax (we use a bit of pork-fat for the noise, steam, and smell).”

Chris participates in around 20 events a year. His girlfriend, Saxon, is also a member. “She’s now a grandmother so has less time. One of my finest memories is of her fighting me with sword and

We don't eat modern food in sight of the public. Indeed, there is a whole sub-culture of authentic food

buckler in the aisles of Beverley Minster—the look on her face as she took me down!”

On weekdays, it’s back to work as normal. “They're separate worlds. As a civil servant it’s my role to explain how to make IT accessible to people

with disabilities. As a barber-surgeon I explain how to make people better, and, knowing what I do about medieval healthcare, I wouldn’t really go back in time.”

knightsinbattle.com

Things I Learned As A 7

Health Tourist

Having spent three days in Bulgaria, been seen by seven doctors and undergone six medical examinations, Eva Mackevic reveals what it’s really like to travel abroad for treatment

If you’ve ever encountered horror stories about infected wounds, lost dental implants or botched nose jobs on forums like mumsnet.com, medical tourism may seem like a plunge into a nightmarish Louis Theroux documentary-like scenario.

Yet with NHS waiting times verging on the brink of comical and private healthcare prices reaching astronomical heights, it’s no surprise so many of us are actually considering it. Curious to find out how it works for myself, I travelled to Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia, for an

extensive health check-up. Here are the seven things I learned…

1 The language barrier… is probably one of the first things that’ll cross your mind when considering medical tourism—it’s sometimes hard enough to find the right words to explain something to a doctor in English, let alone a language you don’t speak a word of, in a country you’ve never been to before.

And yet, while some miscommunication is inevitable, it was never an issue during my trip. In fact, it proved to be a joyous

Through vibrant gesturing, we arrived at an understanding that there was something unwanted in my abdomen

source of unexpected comedy on numerous occasions.

First and foremost, don’t panic. Medical travel companies such as BMT Partner appoint a person who accompanies you during each doctor’s visit and assists you with anything you might need, including translation services. In my case, that person was an eagle-eyed but pleasant Bulgarian lady named Vesselina, who speedily and expertly translated every bit of information relayed to me by

the doctors (even casual chit chat between themselves, addressing everything from the weather, to the recent marriage of the nurse’s friend’s brother’s co-worker) making sure that every fragment of conversation was crystal clear to me. Similarly, any medical records and test results were translated to English within hours of the procedures and presented to me straight away.

2 Leave enough time. Some doctors were more confident about their English skills than others. As Vesselina and I were about to step into an internist's office, she cheekily stopped the interpreter at the door, insisting that she was perfectly capable of handling our conversation without any help. I loved this little display of bravado.

As she was examining my torso with an ultrasound, she suddenly paused over the right side of my ribs. “Breathe in again?” she asked, and I obediently

followed. And then again. And again. The doctor stared into the screen with serious concentration. When she started explaining her concern, it suddenly dawned on me that her English might not be as up to scratch as she claimed in the first place. Through vibrant gesturing and awkward attempts at charades, we finally arrived at an understanding that there was something unwanted in my abdomen. Great, I thought, the beginning of the end. But what was it exactly? We turned to technology for help, and after a few moments of heated googling, we concluded that I had gallstones. A bit surprising since I’ve never experienced any pain, and my cholesterol levels—a frequent reason for these pesky intruders— were normal, according to the blood tests done earlier. The internist seemed unphased. “When are you leaving?” she asked. “Tomorrow,” I replied, prompting her to glance at her watch and say, “We can get you

on the operating table in a couple of hours,” as casually as if she was offering to give me a manicure.

After quickly weighing my options, I declined a same-day gallstones removal, opting instead to get a second opinion back home. The doctor warned me, “They will grow bigger and block the ducts—it’s very painful.” It was tempting to get it sorted there and then, but the prospect of travelling home right after surgery was overwhelming. If you find yourself going abroad for treatment, make sure you give yourself enough time to resolve any possible outcome.

If, once your tests and scans are completed, any of the results come back as abnormal, you’ll want to see a specialist who can refer you for further treatment, so it’s best to allow at least three extra days for any potential further treatment.

3 Speed and efficiency... were a constant during my trip. Bouncing

"The types of clinics I visited were as varied as the people I met"

back and forth between doctors and dentists, I felt like I was on a long medical conveyor belt, getting examined and patched up by specialist after specialist with clockwork proficiency. “Here in Bulgaria we have the quickest access to doctors—any kind of doctors. If you have a headache, you may see your neurologist within two or three hours. Our approach is the quickest in Europe,” I was told by Dr Dimanov, the

no-nonsense but goodhumoured hospital director.

Considering that the average waiting time for treatment within the NHS is up to 18 weeks,* it’s not surprising that the number of British citizens seeking treatment abroad grows higher every year.

And, as I was told with a hint of bombast (a surprisingly common quality here) by Dr Dimanov, they frequently perform surgeries that are not widely practised in the UK, such as the anterior approach hip replacement— where an incision is made on the front of the hip rather than the side or back. “The anterior approach is the most modern approach for hip replacement surgery. It’s only practised by two per cent of doctors in the UK because it’s so difficult to do. There’s a huge waiting list for it,” explained Dr Dimanov.

4 Culture clash. I asked Dr Dimanov if the way they deal with UK patients is any different from Bulgarians, citing the subtle differences in culture between the two nations, expecting him to give me a zealous, affirmative answer filled with funny anecdotes about awkward encounters. Looking somewhat baffled, as if wondering why I’d ask such an arbitrary

Hospital director, Dr Dimanov

question, he replied, “It’s no problem. Our doctors speak English, so everything’s OK.” Short and to-thepoint. This humorous exchange itself was the perfect illustration of what I meant by my question.

If there’s one thing I learned about Bulgarian doctors, it’s that they don’t waste time on social pleasantries. Unlike their British counterparts— soft-spoken, easing their patients into the simplest of procedures—they’re direct and matter-offact, a trait which upon first encounter might even be interpreted as rudeness.

Later that day, it was time for my ECG scan. As I lay on the examination table, I made clumsy attempts at chummy small talk with the cardiologist, trying to distract my brain from predicting the impending results of the neglected tachycardia I was diagnosed with as a child.

off the conductive gel—and we were done. As I was leaving, however, he rewarded me with quickest flash of a friendly smile, muttering, “Sorry, my English is not very good.”

If there's one thing I learned about Bulgarian doctors, it's that they don't waste time on pleasantries

5 Facilities. The standards and types of clinics I visited turned out to be as varied as the people I met. While some places still bear strong evidence of Bulgaria’s communist past (I was presented with a sharpiesigned plastic water cooler cup for my urine sample at the hospital), others are uber glamorous, such as the sleek dental clinic I visited the next day. Visitors are required to don shoe covers upon entry and there’s shiny, beige marble everywhere you turn.

Yet my charmingly gruff, stocky cardiologist with a slightly resigned expression, was having none of it. Swiftly clamping the cold metal electrodes onto my ankles and arms, he instructed me to stay still with a few wordless motions, vigorously adjusting my awkwardly flailing limbs into place. Once the reading was done, he nonchalantly threw a few paper towels on my chest to wipe

I found that the extreme self-confidence that defined Dr Dimanov’s attitude towards medical treatment was echoed here at the dental practice as I chatted to the oral surgeon, Dr Uzunov. “We have days when we place eight implants a day and we never have any complications,” he tells me. As we chat in more detail about some of his recent dental implant cases, he turns out to be something of a miracle worker, performing surgeries that other doctors simply refuse to do. “We had a really difficult case with a

British patient who had a horizontally retained tooth in the lower jaw, which was just one millimetre above the channel so I was really afraid not to damage the nerve. But we were extremely careful and we managed to remove the tooth successfully.”

The before-and-after pictures of some of the case studies are almost too good to be true. Patients who come to the clinic with virtually no teeth, return home with a beautiful set of pearly whites in just ten days.

After my chat with Dr Uzunov, I had my teeth whitened, which, while not the most flattering procedure in the world (imagine having your mouth stretched by a retractor the size of a hefty grown man’s fist for two hours), was smooth and mostly painless, leaving me with a set of fresh-looking gnashers and a thorough after-care pamphlet in English (coffee from a straw and no red wine for two weeks).

meals in great restaurants, read books I’d been putting off finishing for months, went on long walks down the sun-drenched streets of Sofia, taking respite from the heat in cool, spacious Orthodox churches. My bit was done and I naturally slipped into an oddly soothing “come what may” attitude.

The medical aspect really enhances the tourist experience— you're suddenly more alert and in the moment

6 Healing for the mind as well as the body. There’s a peculiar bi-product to travelling to a foreign country solo to seek medical treatment.

A strange feeling of liberation and peace set in once all my medical tests were done and all I had to do was wait for the results. I enjoyed solitary

Somehow, the medical aspect enhances the tourist experience— you’re suddenly more alert and in the moment, contemplating how lucky you are just to be exploring this part of world in the first place. The uncertainty of the forthcoming test results serves as a potent reminder that you never really know what waits around the corner in life. With that notion in the back of your mind, you begin to appreciate the small things and live each moment to the fullest. Revelations like these don’t usually occur on a regular family holiday, when you’re busy rushing from place to place, looking after your kids or posting pictures on Instagram.

7 A friendly face. On the other hand, I was never really alone in Sofia. Vesselina, my diligent companion, was by my side whenever I needed her. From interpreting during the doctor’s visits, to showing me around

the city, she was caring, kind and genuinely keen on making my stay as stress-free and enjoyable as possible.

We’re at our most vulnerable when we’re ill, so having someone to look after you throughout the trip builds an instantly sincere relationship between two strangers: something Vesselina cares about deeply. That's why she’s always there, at the ready, whether her clients need translating, a bit of reassurance or just a pair of hospital slippers.

“I’ve been a patient in a foreign country myself, so I know what people need. I know what it means to be sick, and what you need in critical moments in your life. I try to support people emotionally during the process because the psychological aspect of the process is just as important as the medical one,” she told me. It’s such a visceral reminder that we’re all just human, united by our need for understanding and someone to just lend a friendly ear.

Bulgaria Medical Travel Partner is a medical tourism facilitator that acts in the territory of Bulgaria and offers fixed price medical services.

For more information on servives and price list, visit bmtpartner.co.uk/services

+44 20 3778 0379 , info@bmtpartner.co.uk

Sofia, Bulgaria

My Great Escape:

Idyllic Istanbul

TAtika Firasat from Cambridgeshire discovers the treasures of Turkey’s most populous city

his summer I finally came face-to-face with Istanbul, the city of my holiday dreams.

We’d been trying to meet each other for years. When you’ve waited for something this long, you want to savour and soak in every sight, smell and sound—and that’s what I did.

Istanbul’s awe-inspiring surroundings and marvellous architecture make you feel as though you’re in a trance. No matter, the city still moves around you, at its fast pace, as madly as ever.

For art, history and architecture lovers, Istanbul boasts mosques, churches, palaces, courtyards, squares, monuments and museums. As a first time traveller, Sultanahmet is the place to be. We started our trip from the magical surroundings of the Blue Mosque. After drooling over its architecture in travel magazines and stalking local photographers on Instagram, I can only say that no pictures or words do justice to the feeling of awe, peace and magic when you experience its blue Iznik

tiled interiors and six minaret exterior for the first time. The beauty here lies in simplicity.

While you’re in Sultanahmet, don’t miss the Hagia Sophia—the best of Byzantine and Ottoman architecture. Queue the Istanbulite way, which is to buy a simit or Turkish bagel from one of the many vendors selling them in the square and munch while you wait.

I’m a sucker for food markets so to not visit Istanbul’s Grand and Spice Bazaars would’ve been nothing short of a crime! These divine markets sell everything from Turkish saffron, the iconic Turkish delight, exotic spices and varieties of tea to ceramic works, rugs, lamps and gold. But beware— they are human hoovers and keep sucking you in as you wander around. And when they eject you out, some unknown force will find you many Turkish Liras short and several shopping bags richer.

Tell us about your favourite holiday (send a photo too) and if we print it we’ll pay £50.

Email excerpts@readersdigest.co.uk

View to Haghia Sophia and Sultan Ahmed Mosque

CITY LIFE

FOR BARGAIN-HUNTERS: LVIV

Now served by four-weekly Wizz Air services from Luton, Ukraine’s westernmost city has Viennese architecture, cobbled streets and plenty of greenery. It’s also absurdly cheap. Regent has packages (regent-holidays.co.uk).

FOR STEP-COUNTERS: BOSTON

Over in Boston—especially lovely in autumn—a Hotel Commonwealth package rewards walking. Tread 10,000 steps a day and your stay will be discounted by ten per cent; register 20,000, and it’s 20 per cent off (hotelcommonwealth.com).

FOR SIGHTSEERS: ROME

TripAdvisor’s new “Waking up the Vatican” guided tour lets visitors access the Pope’s home before opening time. Dodging four-hour queues, you’ll join the clavigero (key holder) as he unlocks the doors to the Sistine Chapel (tripadvisor.co.uk).

FOR GALLERY-GOERS: VIENNA

2019 marks the 450th anniversary of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s death. Only 40 of the Dutch painter’s works survive—and many of them will exhibit at the Kunsthistorisches Museum from October 2 to January 13 (khm.at).

FOR TAN-TOPPERS: MARRAKECH

Missing the heat? Morocco’s most famous city is balmy all autumn. Buy pretty slippers, argan oil or green glass to start your Christmas shopping, and relax nearby at the Es Saadi hotel’s extensive spa and gardens (essaadi.com)

by Richard Mellor

Travel app of the month

MITTY, FREE, IOS

Mitty collates the best apps for 14 global cities under various categories—taxis, takeaways, transport-planning—and then cloudstreams them to save you valuable screen space.

Holidays for solo travellers

A Venetian Christmas

Hotel La Fenice Et Des Artistes ★★★+ Italy | Solos Board | 7 Nights

Experience the magic of timeless Venice at Christmas. The weather may be grey but with twinkling colourful lights, Christmas markets and plenty of local festive cheer we’ll be sure to experience a warm welcome in this enchanting city.

Included in the Price

• Return flights & transfers

• Double room for single use

• Welcome drink

One of the best places to spend Christmas in Italy is Venice. With a week to explore and a spattering of lovely inclusions over the festive period, our new Italian Christmas tour has a traditional feel yet o ers something for everyone.

solosholidays.co.uk/venetianchristmas

22nd December

From £1,729

• Breakfast daily, 2 lunches & 2 dinners in local restaurants including Christmas Lunch and Christmas Dinner

• Guided tour of Historical centre of Venice with entrance to Doge’s Palace

• Calle & bridges tour in Venice

• Return train tickets to Verona & Padua

• Accompanying Solos Tour Leader

Extra

• Extra: Tourist Tax - €3.50 pp per night payable on departure

Winner Best Singles Operator 2017

To book, visit solosholidays.co.uk or call 0208

Cut The Cost Of Your

Train Travel

They’re a constant cause of stress and yet many of us rely on trains to get us from A to B. Here are our top tips to save money when you travel

Delays, cancellations and overcrowding are enough to put many off travelling by train, but the price of a ticket can often be the final straw. Even so it’s often the easiest or only way to get from A to B. Fortunately it is possible to reduce how much you pay with the following tricks…

Book in advance

Buying at the ticket office just before you travel is usually the most expensive option. Instead you should be getting an advance ticket. The cheapest are usually available 12 weeks before you travel and can be purchased online or at the station. Sometimes there’s limited availability so the closer you get to

Andy Webb is a personal finance journalist and runs the award-winning money blog, Be Clever With Your Cash

travel the smaller your saving—if you save at all. But even if you’re booking the day before and— sometimes—a few hours ahead, it’s worth seeing if you can still pick up a slightly cheaper ticket.

Travel off-peak

Rush-hour trains will cost more, so if you can avoid them you’ll find your journey costs less. If you have to travel during these peak hours, it’s worth seeing if splitting your ticket will save you cash, particularly on long journeys. This involves buying a ticket for the part of your journey at rush hour, then buying a separate ticket for the leg which is out of those hours. Do it right and you won’t even have to change trains.

Take the slow train

If you’re not in a rush, then some trips will have trains which stop at more stations or go via longer route to your destination. These are often cheaper than the fast train. You

might even be able to save by departing from or arriving in a different nearby station.

Check the price of two singles

Sometimes, purchasing two single tickets works out cheaper than buying a return. Most train booking websites will help you here, but not always. It’s worth checking the price of First Class too, as these sometimes work out cheaper if regular advance fares have already sold out.

Use a railcard

The Senior Railcard is available to anyone over 60 and offers a third off most fares. It costs £30 a year, or you can buy a three-year card for £70. If you’re not yet 60 then there are other railcards to consider, including the Two Together, Disabled, Family and Friends, and Network Railcard. If you live in London you can also get a 60+ Oyster card which will give you free travel on trains in and around

London, as well as on the tube and buses. Once you reach state pension age you can then claim a Freedom Pass which offers the same benefits.

Claim for delays and cancellations

If you do find your journey disrupted, don’t forget to try to get some of your money back. If you decide not to travel due to a cancellation or delay you should be able to get all of the fare returned to you. If you are on a train which isn’t going to arrive on time then how much you could get usually depends on the length of the delay. For many operators, you’ll be offered half your single fare back if the train is 30 minutes late, and the full whack if it’s an hour behind.

Renewable Energy…

How a reusable cup will reduce the cost of your coffee

Many high street cafes and coffee shops are now offering a discount if you bring along a reusable cup rather than get your drink in the standard takeaway cup. These disposable cups might be made of cardboard but often can’t be recycled. So one you can use again and again can make a big difference to how many go to landfill.

Simply hand over your cup when you order your drink and you can then start saving. Pret will discount your hot drink by 50p, while you’ll save 25p at Starbucks, Costa and Paul. Many independent coffee shops will do the same. If you’ve a local Waitrose you can even get a free hot drink with your reusable cup as

long as you’ve joined the MyWaitrose loyalty scheme and made a purchase —even if you just buy a banana!

Of course, the cup itself is going to set you back a few quid, with some of the fancier cups such as ones which can collapse when empty going for £15 to £20. But you can pick up a £1 cup from Starbucks, which will pay for itself after just a few drinks.

Most coffee shops will accept any type of reusable cup, though do check with your regular café that they don’t require one bought direct from them.

You can even save a bit more by starting the day filling your cup with a drink made at home. And as an added bonus the cup will hopefully keep your drink warmer for longer.

Money Site Of The Month

GOV.UK/STATE-PENSION-AGE

There have been a number of big changes to state pensions over the last few years with the government in the process of increasing the retirement age.

Women have been hardest hit as the age is gradually brought in line to be the same as for men, rising from 60 years old to the current level of 64. That will go up to 65 by November this year, and then both men and women will see another increase to 66 by 2020. And it’ll go up another year between 2026 and 2028. It’s expected to reach 68 by late 2030s.

Which all makes it a little confusing as to when you’re actually going to be able to claim your state pension, especially if you were born in the 1950s and are now in your mid-60s.

To help you know when you become eligible, it’s worth using the government’s State Pension age checker at gov.uk/statepension-age. Simply enter your date of birth, and whether you’re a man or woman (this does make a difference), and you’ll get the exact date you can start to claim your State Pension. You’ll also be able to use the same tool to see when you can get your free bus pass.

Of course, you don’t actually have to claim the money then. If you choose to defer it then you could get more each month when you finally do receive the payments.

ONE MAN’S TRASH…

When he first started work on his breakthrough novel, Carrie, an exasperated Stephen King threw the first few pages in the bin. His wife, Tabitha, fished it out and encouraged him to keep going. She said she’d enjoyed it, and promised to help him develop the female perspective. It would become his first published novel, successfully launching his $400m career. The book is dedicated to his wife with the message:

“This is for Tabby, who got me into it—and then bailed me out of it.”

SOURCE: STEPHENKING.COM

How Does Equity Release Work?

Secure access to your property wealth could help you enjoy a more financially comfortable retirement. But releasing equity is a big decision, so it’s important that you understand precisely how the process works.

So far in 2018, we have helped more than 16,000 Reader’s Digest Equity Release customers find out whether they can unlock tax-free cash from their homes and enjoy a more comfortable retirement. You may also be considering releasing equity from your property as a practical later life financial option. However, it’s a big decision, and one not to be taken lightly.

That’s why we think it’s essential you know exactly how it works.

Equity release continues to grow in popularity thanks to the introduction of regulation, providing you with secure access to your property wealth. The tax-free cash you release can be used however you want, meaning the retirement you’ve always dreamed of could be within reach.

The UK’s most popular equity release product is a Lifetime Mortgage. Unlike other equity release products, such as Home Reversion Plans, a Lifetime Mortgage guarantees that you and your partner retain full home ownership for life, until you both pass away or until you both enter long-term care. With a Lifetime Mortgage you are simply borrowing against the value of your home.

To be eligible for a Lifetime Mortgage, you must be an over-55 UK homeowner, and the property in question must be your primary residence. You are protected by multiple safeguards. These give you that all-important peace of mind to progress. The safeguards include the no negative equity guarantee. Standard in all Lifetime Mortgages provided by a lender approved by the Equity Release Council, this

guarantee ensures that you will never owe more than the value of your property.

We have a nationwide team of equity release specialists ready to meet you at a location of your choosing, with many customers choosing the comfort of their own homes. The purpose of these meetings is to establish your needs and wants and to assess whether releasing equity is the right option for you. At this stage, its also important that you ask for a personalised illustration, so you can understand what the full range of plans will do for you. Equity release may reduce the value of your estate and could affect your entitlement to means-tested state benefits; our experts will help find the lifetime mortgage that’s right for you if this is a concern. They can even help you find mortgages that allow you to preserve a portion of your equity to provide a guaranteed inheritance.

With no required monthly payments, fixed rates of interest, and tax-free cash available, you could find that equity release is the secret to you enjoying the golden years you deserve. If you think it could be right for you, contact us today and request your free copy of the comprehensive Reader’s Digest Guide to Equity Release.

Crab Pasta

Crab season is just coming to an end, so it’s a great time to enjoy it. Though I’ll let you in on a secret—and that’s tinned crab. Sure, it might not have the romance of a fresh dressed crab, but it’s fantastic value and means you can whisk up this luxuriant little dish at a moment’s notice. It’s a favourite recipe, with the crabmeat, butter and saffron making it both a decadent dinner party dish and perfect for date night

SERVES 4

• 1 head of garlic

• 20g butter, softened

• 1-2tsp chilli flakes (to taste)

• 1 pinch of saffron threads, soaked in 1tbsp hot water for 10 minutes

• 150g crabmeat

• 1/2 lemon, juiced

• 300g fresh tagliatelle or linguine

• 2tbsp flat leaf parsley, finely chopped

Rachel

is a food writer for numerous national publications.

Visit rachel-walker.co.uk for more information

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C, wrap the head of garlic in tin foil and roast it for 45 minutes, until the softened garlic cloves can be easily squeezed out of each section of the bulb*.

2. Mash the slow-roast garlic with a wooden spoon in the softened butter. Cook over a medium heat until the butter is just starting to bubble. Add the chilli flakes, saffron threads and crab meat. Squeeze the lemon juice in and take the pan off the heat while you cook the pasta.

3. Bring a pan of salted water to the boil, add the tagliatelle. Cook it so the pasta is still a little al dente— fresh tagliatelle takes 3 minutes, so stop cooking after 2.5 minutes. Drain the tagliatelle, leaving 1-2tbsp of pasta water behind in the pan.

4. Return the pasta to the pan with the water, add the buttery-crab and the parsley—then put the lid on and shake, so the tagliatelle is coated in the sauce. Divide between two heated pasta bowls, and serve.

*Although a whole head sounds like a lot, the flavour is mellow and sweet once slow-roasted. For a speedier version, substitute this step for crushing two raw garlic cloves and cooking them straight in the butter.

Walker

BY TIM & ZOË HILL

Drinks Tip…

A buttery, oaked Chardonnay is the perfect partner to crab. Try this bottle from Boschendal’s vineyard on the Western Cape, South Africa, (£10.49, Ocado).

LEMON POSSET SERVES 6

1. Zest one of the lemons, and juice (there should be at least 60ml of liquid).

2. Pour the cream into a pan, add the sugar, lemon juice and zest. Heat on the hob, stirring so that the sugar dissolves and allow the liquid to simmer for 2-3 minutes. Tip it into a jug and let the flavoured settle for 5 minutes. Pour into glasses, use a tablespoon to skim off any bubbles and then refrigerate for 2 hours.

3. Divide the blackberries between the glasses, garnish with lemon thyme and serve with a biscotti or finger of shortbread.

• 2 lemons, zested

• 125g sugar

• 425ml double cream

• 150g blackberries

• Lemon thyme, to garnish

• Biscotti or shortbread, to serve

Autumnal Opulence

Embrace the change in season and give your home an on-trend update with a daringly dark colour palette and plenty of luxurious touches

AHomes and gardens writer and stylist Cassie Pryce specialises in interior trends and discovering new season shopping

s darker evenings draw in, it’s the time of year to make your home feel warm and welcoming. Rich colours will instantly help to create a feeling of cosiness and cocooning, compared to lighter tones which can seem stark and cold at this time of year. Experiment with shades such as deep violet and aubergine—their warm undertones are well-suited to bedrooms and living rooms in particular if you’re looking to add a luxury edge.

Winter botanicals offer a dramatic touch and work well against a striking dark backdrop. Go bold with floral

prints on bedding, wallpaper and artwork to give your space a feminine yet graphic twist. Avoid using small, ditsy prints which can get lost easily and introduce large-scale designs to really make an impact. When it comes to soft furnishings, don’t be afraid to layer up and mix and match different textures to give the room depth and make it a cosy haven to snuggle up in.

Lighting your home during the winter months is key to setting the right mood and there are plenty of ways to create a relaxing atmosphere without changing your permanent fixtures. Opt for table and floor lamps, rather than direct overhead bulbs, as these give off a more dispersed glow. Choose bulbs labelled as warm white with a colour temperature of around 3,000 K for a softer output and use dimmer switches to adapt your lighting for different times of the day.

In Bloom

Star by Julien Macdonald duvet cover, £45; pillowcases, £20 for a pair; cushion, £28; pendant light, £300; Chester weave double headboard, £720; glamour nest of tables, £240, all Debenhams

A Place For Reflection

No matter what size or shape of plot you have, there’s a water feature that can enhance it

The sensual quality of water is a pleasure which never fades, and there is seldom a garden, no matter what size, that isn’t improved by its inclusion.

If you’re adding a water feature to the garden for the first time, you’ll find that the size and style of the house and garden largely determine the feature you choose. Where there’s very limited space, small container pools, birdbaths, fountains and wall masks may be the best way to introduce water to the garden—which also happen to be the easiest features to maintain. If you’re less mobile, very busy or away frequently you might

also consider installing a watering system for the garden.

Birdbaths and saucer pools are the simplest way to bring water into the garden, and birds love to perch on the edge of a dish and dip in their beaks. If you’re looking for something more extravagant, consider a raised pool which is a great place for fish to thrive. It’s also safer than a groundlevel one for very small children and people with impaired sight, and is easy to care for. Use broad slabs of stone to offer a tempting place to sit and trail a hand through the water— enjoy the gentle sound and motion in a few minutes of contemplation.

The Stiltz Homelift makes life easier if stairs become too much. A compact, discreet and stylish homelift is the perfect alternative to a cumbersome, unattractive stairlift. Install it in the corner of your living room, hallway or kitchen. It can also be fitted in a cupboard or within the turn of your stairs*.

Whether you need a homelift now or are future-proofing, move safely between floors in your home with a Stiltz Homelift and stay in the home you love. Call us for free today.

I looked at moving costs and worked out that a Stiltz Lift would be cheaper. The lift has already made things much easier. It’s been the best decision. Ms. Turner, Hereford “ “

Technicolour Dream Coats

ALisa Lennkh is a banker turned fashion writer, stylist and blogger. Her blog, The Sequinist, focuses on sparkle and statement style for midlife women

s the evenings get cooler and we move into my favourite season, autumn, I’m dreaming of coats. We may have several months of cold, grey weather ahead, but the upside is that it gives us the opportunity to wear beautiful coats and jackets.

In previous years, I might have bought a charcoal grey or a camel coloured coat here and there, but mostly my quest has been about scouring stores and websites to find the season’s perfect black coat… good quality luxurious fabric, the right weight, stylish statement lapels, the correct length and, most importantly, one that looks as good worn open as it does closed. However, that's all changed. Now, I have to have colour in my life. I still prowl my favourite places for a coat that fits my criteria, but now I only buy colour.

It all started several years ago when I bought a knee-length

powder-blue coat on sale at Benetton. It was cheerful and elegant, and stood out in the sea of black and grey wool on my daily commute into London. After it wore out, I decided to have British custom-coat expert Katherine Hooker create me a new and better-made one to replace it. Instead, she convinced me to commission a raspberrycoloured windowpane check coat with fuschia satin lining. It's an absolute show-stopper and still looks pristine after 11 years of wear. Now I update my closet every few years with another bright coat, partly to preserve the longevity of the ones I already have and partly because there's always a colour I don’t yet own! I've added yellow, green, orange, and red to my collection. I think carefully about my purchases and buy only classic shapes that won’t date, even if the colour isn't "classic".

When I'm dressed brighter, I feel brighter. Not only is colour more flattering than black as we age, but matching or colourclashing a coat with your existing wardrobe also gets you major style points. Stores are awash with mood-lifting colourful coats, so think about what colours you're naturally drawn to, and go get one. Winter is long and grey, but your coat needn’t be!

Crystal Healing

Jenessa Williams takes a journey into the once-derided world of crystal healing to discover what ancient beauty benefits stones could offer…

Previously a penchant of celebrities and hippie-types, crystals are making a dent on the beauty world. As we strive to live purer, less stressful lives, they've become a key ingredient in high-end products and are taken more seriously as a mainstay of holistic beauty that heals inside and out.

If you’re looking to inject some mindfulness into your routine, rose quartz is a great place to start. Known as the "loving gem", it’s used to attract positivity, soothe heartbreak and aid self-love, perfect for a pampering face cream or body mist. Jade formulas are supposedly great for unblocking the heart chakra to ease depression, grief and loneliness, whilst amethyst has been greatly esteemed by some for centuries as an insomnia cure—why not try it in a pillow spray?

Crystal products don’t have to be slathered on your skin to make an

impact. A simple, relatively inexpensive collection of stones can be remarkably comforting to hold during meditation, or simply a quiet moment of self-care during a stressful time. Of course, it could all be placebo effect, but maybe surrounding yourself with such natural beauty is healing enough?

Hero Products

1 Poppy & Someday Gypsy Rose Toner, £35

2 Gemstone Organics Face Crème in Jade, £35

3 Goldirocks X Nordstrom Beauty Rocks Collection, £46

over 100+ superb products for back pain and an independent lifestyle

Best back help ever - Mrs H, Cumbria I’ve been using a Backfriend for driving and wouldn’t be without it. It’s given back my joy of driving, which had disappeared in the years I struggled with persistent low back pain.

I have to admit that the seat has been and still is phenomenally successful and exceeds all expectations I had for it. To be honest, I harboured a few reservations as to the literature's claims when I ordered it. But these were put to bed within three days of receiving it. I have absolutely no reservations in recommending it to anyone as a sure fire workable aid to chronic back pain.

DOGMAN

Italian director Matteo Garrone returns with an astute emotional rollercoaster about dogs, drugs and dodgy friends

If your skin’s been a bit thickened by all the soulless action blockbusters lately, do your inner-self a favour and go see director Matteo Garrone’s latest film, Dogman which, put simply, is just going to make you feel things. The titular Dogman is Marcello—a dog groomer in rural Italy, able to tame angry beasts twice his size. He’s also an adoring father and a small-time coke dealer. He’s an amicable fella who’s well-liked by his buddies and customers alike. Unfortunately, one of his more boisterous “friends” has been getting him into a lot of trouble lately…

Marcello Fonte, who plays Marcello, is sublime; his ocean-deep eyes relay everything from immense love to earthshattering sadness, and his almost caricatural, Peter Lorre-like face is unforgettable. His infantile simplicity and intrinsic goodness make you care for him with a passion, despite his many moments of weakness, cowardliness or even vengefulness.

Dogman fluidly alternates between disarming sweetness and white-knuckle brutality, which makes it a bittersweet and layered watch that could’ve been so oversimplified in a different director’s hands. Watch out for a scene involving a break-in, a chihuahua and a freezer that’ll absolutely floor you (in the best sense possible, rest assured).

DRAMA: THE WIFE In this very serious, very intellectual, steely monochrome drama, Mr and Mrs Castleman travel to Stockholm where he’s due to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. You can tell that something’s off though. Beneath their seemingly tranquil, tender relationship, there’s stifled resentment and a patchy history that threatens to disturb their blissful domestic life. As you’d expect, both Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce are superb, yet even their thoughtful performances can’t redeem this film’s uninspired, heavy-

handed storytelling and plot twists so predictable that their final reveal is nearcomical. If nuanced, heavy-hearted drama is what you’re after, turn to Michael Haneke instead.

DOCUMENTARY: THE GOSPEL

ACCORDING TO ANDRÉ A delightful window into the life of prolific fashion editor, André Leon Talley, whose largerthan-life charisma, beaming eloquence and endlessly entertaining fashion commentaries will sweep you off your feet. It’s a luxurious pleasure to spend time in his company but be warned: you’ll be itching to go on a rampant shopping spree afterwards.

SPORT: SKATE KITCHEN Camille skates alone. She’s light and free—an image of serenity, until she falls, injures herself, and is forced to limp to the hospital. Her mother bans her from skating and so—of course—it becomes more irresistible to her than ever before. She soon runs away to New York to join a girl-only skateboarding collective and embarks on a journey that’ll will teach her about friendship, feminism and the burdens of womanhood. Ethereal cinematography combines with dynamite dialogue to echo that teenage sense of being at once inside and outside of yourself.

by Eva Mackevic

BERLIN STATION (MORE4; 4OD)

What is it? Ten-part drama picking up where Homeland left off in Europe—with the hunt for a CIA whistleblower.

Why should I watch it? Here’s one of the growing number of shows rounding up useful, underemployed players — among them Spooks graduate Richard Armitage, Rhys Ifans and Richard Jenkins—to negotiate altogether more nuanced dramas.

Best episode? Episodes 9 and 10, overseen by indie director Joshua Marston, bring the show’s carefully marshalled tension to an explosive head.

HANG-UPS (CHANNEL 4; 4OD)

What is it? Savvy, funny Brit translation of former Friend Lisa Kudrow’s online series Web Therapy, centred on a shrink attempting to resolve his own issues—personal, professional, technological—during working hours.

Why should I watch it? Firstly, it looks like nothing else on TV: everything’s shot as viewed from a mobile or laptop screen, replicating our Skype and Facetime encounters. Yet top-class character actors flesh out this gimmick, phoning in some recognisably contemporary concerns. Best character?

Stephen Mangan brings his usual droll skill to the therapist’s position; his varyingly anxious correspondents include Charles Dance, Richard E Grant, Steve Oram and Alice Lowe.

by Mike McCahill

WHAT TO STREAM THIS MONTH:

BETTER CALL SAUL (NETFLIX)

Season 4 plays a typically impressive, consummately performed long game as its characters process the fiery events of Season 3.

KIDDING (SKY ATLANTIC, NOW TV) Jim

Carrey reunites with Michel Gondry for a bittersweet comedy-drama about the struggles of an ageing children’s TV presenter.

MANIAC (NETFLIX)

Emma Stone and Jonah

Hill are the human guinea pigs who find their clinical drug trial going off the rails in this expensive, muchballyhooed psychodrama.

ALBUM OF THE MONTH: SWAY BY GERALD

TOTO If you still haven’t come to terms with the end of summer, here’s the perfect audio companion to your longing. This gentle, understated record from the FrenchAntillean artist Gerald Toto is awash in balmy bossa nova, exotic Creole and Caribbean influences and soothing, creamy vocals, reminiscent of such R&B queens as Erykah Badu or Sade.

It’s a clean, subtle and sparse album that’s got nothing to prove, instead exuding the sheer joy and obsessive passion that Toto puts into his music. From the playful guitar fingerpicking, to the inventive vocal melodies via surprising electronic beats, each track brings you something unique, lulling you into a dreamy, summery state of mind.

A son of Antillean parents, Toto was deeply influenced by their love of AfroCaribbean dance music and American soul, which have inspired him throughout his entire career, and manifest themselves beautifully on his latest album, that’s bound to make you feel like you’re on holiday again.

Key tracks: “Day by Day”, “My Girlfriend”, “It’s a Love Thing”

by Eva Mackevic

READER RADAR: SUSAN KING, VOLUNTARY CHRISTIAN MINISTER

WATCHING: JUDGE JOHN

DEED

An excellent judge whose cases are as interesting as is his personal life. His colleagues and attraction to the opposite sex often trip him up.

READING: IMAGINE BIG BY TERRI

SAVELLE FOY

A motivational step-bystep guide book which greatly inspires and encourages people of all ages to dream bigger dreams by kicking out all negativity, fear and excuses.

ONLINE: SHOPPING

Whether it’s for travel ideas, household goods, fashion, or gifts. I can look for hours without getting wet, cold or held up in traffic.

LISTENING: YOUTUBE I can find, watch and listen to my favourite music conductor André Rieu. I also stream many other Sixties favourites, such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Kinks.

October Fiction

Just in time for Halloween, we dance with the macabre for October’s frightening fiction…

Elevation by Stephen King (Hodder, £14.99)

It might seem odd to suggest that Stephen King is underrated. After all, his sales are best measured in the gazillions, and his books have been adapted into more films than any other living writer’s. Yet he’s often dismissed by literary types as a “mere” story-teller, even though his fiction bristles with imaginative ideas and extremely good, if unshowy writing—two qualities firmly on display once again in Elevation.

The main character, Scott Carey, is mysteriously losing weight fast, without his body shape changing. As in Groundhog Day, the cause of such peculiar goings-on remains unexplained—but their effect is increasingly benevolent, as Scott

James Walton is a book reviewer and broadcaster, and has written and presented 17 series of the BBC Radio 4 literary quiz The Write Stuff

learns to appreciate the people around him, including the lesbian neighbours he once feuded with.

Given King’s opposition to Donald Trump, it’s hard not to read Elevation as a plea for a kindlier America. Luckily, the book never forces the issue. Instead, it concentrates on maintaining a perfect balance between a touching, realistic portrait of a growing friendship on the one hand, and the intriguingly strange weight-loss story on the other—until they reach a climax that’s both melancholy and triumphant.

Melmoth by Sarah Perry (Serpent’s Tail, £16.99)

In theory, Melmoth should be the perfect follow-up to Sarah Perry’s huge 2016 hit, The Essex Serpent. There’s the same is-it-or-isn’t-it approach to the supernatural, the same unashamed relish for the Gothic—but this time with a much

broader sweep, and even bigger moral questions to ponder. So why is the result somewhere between disappointing and slightly irritating? Well, for one thing Perry’s writing style doesn’t so much address her readers directly as rather boss them about: “If you kneel (be very careful, very quiet) you’ll see beneath her bed a cardboard box.” More importantly, though, the central myth doesn’t quite work. The eponymous Melmoth is a woman condemned to eternally roam the world looking for people who’ve committed terrible acts and inviting them to join her in her wanderings (or something). Admittedly, this leads to several powerful scenes, from Mary Tudor’s persecutions to the Armenian massacres of 1915. The trouble is that the book struggles—at times almost embarrassingly hard, but ultimately in vain—to find a convincing way of making them hang together.

Name the author

Can you guess the writer from these clues (the fewer you need the better)?

1. He was knighted in June for services to literature.

2. He was born in a city that on August 9, 1945 had suffered a devastating wartime attack.

Paperbacks

Eat Up

by Ruby Tandoh (Serpent’s Tail, £8.99).

The 2013 Bake Off finalist with a rich but unusually down-to-earth celebration of food in all its forms—up to and including the pleasures of a pasty on the M4.

A Spot of Folly

by Ruth Rendell (Profile, £8.99). Collection of previously unpublished stories from the much missed queen of crime.

Rebel Prince

by Tom Bower (William Collins, £9.99). Gossipy and often eye-popping biography of Prince Charles that’s impossible to resist—however much you might want to.

The Good Pilot, Peter Woodhouse by Alexander McCall Smith (Polygon, £8.99).

Standalone wartime romance featuring an American pilot, a land girl and an injured dog. As enjoyably warmhearted—and basically lovely—as you’d expect from McCall Smith.

Auntie’s War

by Edward Stourton (Black Swan, £9.99).

Terrific history, packed with great stories, of the crucial role played by the BBC in the Second World War.

Answer on p128

3. He’s the most recent British winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

RD’S RECOMMENDED READ

A Bird’s Eye View

The ravens of the Tower of London have been a beloved tourist attraction for years. In this heart-warming new book, a Ravenmaster takes us behind the scenes…

This utterly delightful book is dedicated to the seven ravens at the Tower of London. And so, we soon realise, is its author.

Christopher Skaife has been a Yeoman Warder—he’s not keen on the name “Beefeater”— since 2005, and for the past seven years also the Tower’s Ravenmaster: a title that dates back, rather disappointingly, only to 1968.

It’s a job that Christopher obviously took seriously from the start, replacing the ravens’ night boxes with a proper enclosure and quickly developing the habit of “thinking about the birds all the time”. (Being Ravenmaster, he says, is “like going to a supermarket with

The Ravenmaster: My Life with the Ravens at the Tower of London by Christopher Skaife is published on October 4 by Fourth Estate at £14.99

seven young children, who run up and down the aisles in different directions.”) But it’s also a job that he obviously—and infectiously— loves. As he makes clear, each raven has a different personality, with his own favourite, Merlina “the most free-spirited” of the group, preferring to stay out at night rather than sleep in the enclosure.

Along the way, we learn plenty of fascinating stuff about ravens more generally: their intelligence, their monogamy, their fondness for a game of KerPlunk (no, really). On

a more indignant note, Skaife stoutly defends them against the unfair press they’ve received for being harbingers of death. He’s great, too, on the Tower itself, where he lives and acts as a tour guide. (Sadly, it seems the idea that if the ravens leave, the Kingdom will fall was— like many ancient traditions—simply invented by the Victorians.)

We join him in 2014, when ceramic poppies were being laid outside the Tower for the centenary of the First World War—something Merlina flew off to explore. Now all Christopher had to do was get her back…

It’s not hard to spot a wayward raven outside the Tower: they tend to attract a bit of a crowd, with cameras and phones furiously clicking and a great hubbub, everyone wondering how and why such an extraordinarily large black bird is sitting innocently on some bench or fence preening itself, or snacking on crisps from a bin. So I just followed the crowds, and soon found Merlina. She’d positioned herself on an old iron fence overlooking the moat, cronking loudly at the volunteers placing the poppies below.

To capture a raven in full view of the public is a tricky business, and to be avoided if at all possible, since it requires not only a cool head and steady nerves but quite a bit of luck. My first piece of advice to anyone

Merlina reacts to the death of her companion Hugine…

“Immediately after the death, Merlina protected the body: she wouldn’t let anyone go near it to remove it. She paced around the area, constantly returning to peck at Hugine’s face, as if trying to wake her. It was heartbreaking to watch. In the days and weeks that followed she would turn her back to the public, and even to me if I approached. She began to slouch and drop her head down low, as if in despair. In the end, I had to intervene because she’d stopped eating. I put her in the enclosure with the other ravens, in an attempt to break her depressive cycle and to keep her occupied. It took a few weeks of me spending lots of time with her, but finally she recovered and went back to her usual activities. I’d read about ravens mourning, but to see it for myself was quite extraordinary.”

finding themselves in such a predicament would be to stay cool and to pretend you have total control of the situation, which you most certainly do not. Like it or not, you’re about to become a star on YouTube.

If you’re a small, round, middle-aged man in a wide-brimmed bonnet, wearing a royal-blue and scarlet dress—it’s called a tabard, people, for goodness sake! —and you’re going to attempt to catch a raven, I can pretty much guarantee that you’re about to be photographed, videoed and live-streamed on every social media platform imaginable. Prepare yourself: you’re going to go viral.

My second piece of advice would be to make your way slowly— SLOWLY!—and casually towards the offending raven. Don’t attempt to move the crowd —they make the perfect cover for your approach. As you navigate your way through, remember to reassure everyone that you know what you’re doing.

Merlina was clearly having a lovely

And the name of the author is…

Sir Kazuo Ishiguro—born in Nagasaki in 1954 and whose family moved to Britain when he was five.

“ To capture a raven in full view of the public is a tricky business ”

day out, and certainly didn’t want to be returned to Tower Green. One more piece of advice: don’t think for one minute that you’re just going to be able to walk up to your raven and sweep her off her talons by looking lovingly into her beady dark-brown eyes, gather her up in your big strong arms and take her back home. That’s not how raven rescue works. You need to be cunning. You need to be stealthy. You need to be quick. You need to pretend you’re not interested, that you just happen to be in the vicinity—and then, with the speed of a striking cobra, you need to grab her when she least expects it. And that is how to catch a miscreant raven, ladies and gentlemen!

I caught and held tight to Merlina, and I could hear people in the crowd murmuring, some in approval, some in disapproval, some in sheer disbelief. As I returned to Tower Green, I didn’t have it in me to scold her for escaping—in fact, I was glad she’d seen the poppies. Like us, she’d have plenty of ancestors who spent their days on battlefields, so at a time of remembrance it seemed appropriate she was there.

Books

THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

Over nearly 60 years, Prue Leith CBE has risen to the top of the British food scene. Her new cookbook Prue,MyAllTimeFavouriteRecipes, is out now (Bluebird, £25)

Black Beauty

BY ANNA SEWELL

I remember being unable to come down to meals because I was so immersed, or sobbing my heart out because something dreadful was happening to Black Beauty. I got my first insight into how cruel people can be, which was a shock as I’d had such a happy, privileged childhood. It also sparked a lifelong love of horses. Indeed, at the age of 11, I nagged my parents relentlessly until they bought me my first pony, Laddie. I loved Laddie with such devotion I thought I’d like to marry him. My father said “You do realise all your children will be centaurs?”

The King Must Die

BY MARY RENAULT

Growing up in South Africa I had little sense of the rest of the world and it wasn’t until my mother lent me this book when I was 17 that I realised what I was missing. Renault

interweaves myths from the ancient Greeks with historical fiction and the result thrilled and intrigued me.

The Constance Spry Cookery Book

BY CONSTANCE SPRY AND ROSEMARY HUME

I came to London and blagged myself a place at Le Cordon Bleu by pretending that my waitressing at a Paris restaurant had given me cooking experience. We all called this book “the bible”. I still use my original copy. When Caroline Waldegrave and I set up Leiths School of Food and Wine in 1975, we published a range of cookbooks and had to work very hard not to plagiarise Constance Spry. The most famous recipe is Coronation Chicken, which they invented for the heads of state from around the world who came to the Queen’s Coronation. The recipe was an instant success and you can still find it in sandwiches everywhere! As told to Caroline Hutton

Something Old,

Something New

This month, Olly Mann draws inspiration from the past for his favourite gadgets of the present

Technology doesn’t need to look new to be new. Get onboard with the retro trend with these backwards-looking, forwardsthinking gadgets.

WAKE UP HAPPY

Convenient coffee capsules and beans-to-cup espresso makers grab the limelight, but for my money the best home-brewed coffee is still from a traditional drip filter, and Technivorm-Moccamaster (£210£299) is King of Machines. Handassembled in the Netherlands since 1964, mine’s mustard yellow—but they also do apple green, neon orange, soft pink… basically, the

Olly Mann presents Four Thought for BBC Radio 4, and the award-winning podcasts The Modern Mann and Answer Me This!

colour palette of Cadillac dreams. Individual heating elements maintain optimum brewing and hotplate temperatures, and it’s speedy as hell: ten cups in six minutes.

GAME ON

The retro gaming trend refuses to die, as 30 and 40-somethings relive their youth. Some simply plug-in Nintendo re-issues; others go as far as restoring full-size vintage arcades. But what if you never threw away your old games in the first place? If you’ve got a loft stuffed with Sega Mega Drive cartridges, or a drawer of original PlayStation discs, consider investing in a Polymega Modular Gaming Console (base unit £195, modules £47). It can handle titles from all the classic systems, many of which can now be snapped up cheaply on eBay. It comes with a slick wireless gaming controller, and lets you back up your games to its internal memory.

SHAKE IT LIKE A POLAROID PICTURE!

The digital revolution killed the market for film-based photography at the turn of the century—but make-up artists and hipsters continued buying instant cameras, so Polaroid started making them again. Inspired by the 1977 original, Polaroid Originals One Step 2 (£119) includes a rechargeable battery, a timer function for group shots, and is compatible with a range of different films, so you can tint your prints with purples, pinks and teals, just like an Instagram filter. Sadly, the film remains insanely expensive: £17.99 buys you just eight snaps.

GET ON DOWN

Looking vaguely like a vintage Olympus camera, the Geneva Touring/XS (£135) is actually a cracking Bluetooth speaker, with two front-facing active drivers and a 20hour battery life. The Swissengineered retro casing is its secret weapon: the metal volume dial recalling the tuning wheel of a 1960s portable radio; the timeless leather finish adding a dash of 1980s Filofax couture. At just 17cm, it can travel pretty much anywhere and adds a touch of class to any hotel room.

You Couldn’t Make It Up

Win £30 for your true, funny stories! Go to readersdigest. co.uk/contact-us or facebook.com/readersdigestuk

A MALE COLLEAGUE WAS recently showing off at work about how attractive he was to the opposite sex.

He said, "You take away the looks, money, intelligence, charm and success and, really, there's no difference between me and Brad Pitt!"

HANNAH BRYAN, Merseyside

MY LOCAL VICAR GATHERED THE young children from the congregation and, giving them each a piece of paper and a pencil, he asked them to draw their idea of God.

A few minutes later he collected the papers, but one little girl loudly announced: “I didn’t want to draw God, so I’ve drawn a potato.”

STEPHEN GEE, Bath

WE HAD A GREAT AU PAIR for about a year but then she left and my wife was really upset.

"I don't understand," she moaned, "We treated her like one of the family."

Our eldest son, Robbie overheard her and quickly retorted "Yes, and that's exactly why she left!

AMELIE BARNES, Clwyd

“I've got a bad feeling about this Kenneth”

I WAS IN MY LOCAL CORNER SHOP

when I overheard the following conversation between a very elderly man and a very elderly lady.

She said, "Do you know, I came in here this morning with a pound in my pocket and all I came out with was a large loaf! I expect you remember coming in here as a kid?"

He said, "Of course I remember. The number of times I came into

this shop with just a shilling in my pocket and left with two huge bags of groceries!"

She said, "Of course, you couldn't do that today!"

He joked, "Too right you couldn't! Not these days… Not since they installed those hidden cameras!"

DAVID WEBB, Sussex

MY SISTER JENNY IS A TEACHER, and she recently asked her class if they said their prayers at night with their parents.

One boy confidently put his hand up. She asked if he could remember what they said.

"Hmm," he replied. "It's something like, 'Lord… give me strength!' "

RACHELLE HARDING, Cambridgeshire

MY GRANDFATHER, 74, WHO USED to be quite sporty was asked by friends if he wanted to run in a charity marathon. "I haven't run in years" he told them. "I get out of breath just walking up the stairs".

They told him it was a pity as it was a marathon for mostly handicapped people. Grandad thought for a moment and then said, "Wait a minute. I could win this…?!"

JON DRURY, Flintshire

I WAS PLAYING SNAP WITH MY four-year-old grandson, Lucas, and I kept winning. I felt sure that he was letting me win.

I asked him if he was and he

confessed. So I asked why he had been letting me win all the time.

"Because you're very old, Grandma," came his reply.

ANNA HAMMETT, Cheshire

LIKE ALL TEENAGE BOYS, MY grandson is constantly hungry. I went to the refrigerator to find something he might like.

After poking around a bit and moving the milk and juice cartons, I spotted a bowl of leftover chilli and called out to him excitedly. He came running into the kitchen.

"Look! I found some chilli!" I said to him, anticipating his glee.

Struggling to be polite he replied, "If you're that surprised, I'm not really sure that I want it!"

HEIDI CLARK, Yorkshire

WHILE SHOPPING RECENTLY,

I overheard a gentleman talking to one of the shop assistants.

“Do you have a casserole?”

The assistant looked a little puzzled for a moment before taking him over to the casserole dishes.

“Well, one of those isn’t going to keep the sun off my head, is it?” the man said in disgust, turning a dish upside down and holding it over his head. “I need it for the garden.”

“Ah, a parasol?” the assistant asked, enlightenment dawning.

“That’s what I said,” the man insisted. And, of course, the customer is always right.

ESTER NEWTON, Berkshire

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IT PAYS TO INCREASE YOUR

Word Power

Spelling Bees have been part of American culture for years—but can you keep up with our cousins across the globe? These words are all hard to spell, but are they easier to define? Answers on the next page

BY EMILY COX & HENRY RATHVON

1. fracas n.—A: fight. B: winter coat. C: drilling operation.

2. milieu n.—A: huge number. B: environment. C: French chef.

3. sacrilegious adj.—A: worthy of worship. B: of all faiths. C: failing to respect.

4. appoggiatura n. A: embellishing note. B: statement of regret. C: breakdown.

5. kamikaze n.—A: suicidal crasher. B: stand-up comedian. C: labyrinth.

6. cerise adj.—A: steeply inclined. B: shade of red. C: cool and calm.

7. vouchsafe v.—A: swear under oath. B: supply. C: protect.

8. eczema n.—A: skin condition. B: hasty departure. C: ex lover.

9. semaphore n.—A: half circle. B: lover of summer. C: signalling using flags.

10. dulcimer n.—A: stringed instrument. B: period of calm. C: sea monster.

11. gladiolus n.—A: street fighter. B: high praise. C: plant.

12. incisor n.—A: tooth. B: a troublemaker. C: a breed of earthworm.

13. elegiacal adj.—A: approving or complementary. B: menacing. C: lamenting.

14. deteriorating v.— A: stopping. B: growing worse. C: something that’s improving slowly.

15. insouciant adj.—A: uppity. B: nonchalant. C: incomplete.

Answers

1. fracas—[A] fight. Both bars rapidly emptied as a wild fracas erupted.

2. milieu—[B] environment. A sailor’s natural milieu is the ocean blue.

3. sacrilegious—[C] failing to respect. Uncle James considers it sacrilegious if you don’t eat his homemade salsa.

4. appoggiatura—[A] embellishing note. “If you ask me,” Karl sniffed after the performance, “the concerto blatantly abused the appoggiatura.”

5. kamikaze—[A] suicidal crasher. James jumped from the flight of stairs like a kamikaze on a mission.

6. cerise—[B] shade of red. When Abdul gets excited, his face turns a bright cerise.

7. vouchsafe [B] supply. Susan vouchsafed her ID but didn’t look happy about it.

8. eczema—[A] itchy skin condition. Nothing works better than shea butter to soothe my eczema.

9. semaphore—[C] signalling with flags. Unable to get a word

in edgewise at the table, Alison resorted to semaphore with napkins.

10. dulcimer—[A] stringed instrument. Andy’s Appalachian dulcimer didn’t really fit in with our punk rock band.

11. gladiolus—[C] plant. “I’m so sick of the rabbits eating all my gladiolus!” Mum barked.

12. incisor—[A] tooth. I think I cracked an incisor on your grandmother’s biscuits.

13. elegiacal—[C] lamenting. The vicar was remarkably sensitive in mixing in humorous recollections during his elegiacal speech.

WORD OF THE DAY*

HELIOLATRY: the act of sun worship.

14. deteriorating—[B] growing worse. The already tense relations between the North and South are now deteriorating.

Alternative suggestions:

“The WC on a helicopter”

“One of those hellish toilets that’s just a hole in the ground”

“When your helicopter should have been here ages ago”

15. insouciant [B] nonchalant.

Taylor’s boss noted that she has a decidedly insouciant way of attending to her daily priorities.

VOCABULARY RATINGS

9 & below: Contender

10–12: Finalist

13–15: Champion

Brainteasers

Challenge yourself by solving these puzzles, then check your answers on page 139

SURROUNDED

Each of these shapes is a different colour. Here’s a record of the colours surrounding each shape, in clockwise order around its perimeter. When a colour’s initial is repeated, that means two adjacent sides are in contact with it.

Red: BOOGG

Orange: RRBBYYPP

Yellow: POOB

Green: RRPP

Blue: YOOR

Pink: GGOOY

Can you colour in the diagram?

PATH PUZZLE

Draw a path that goes from one of the grid’s openings to another. (There are many openings, but only two of them are part of the solution.) As the path winds from one cell to the next, it can move up, down, left or right but not diagonally. It can’t pass through any cell more than once. The numbers tell how many cells the path must pass through in the corresponding row or column.

(SURROUNDED) DARREN RIGBY; (PATH PUZZLE) RODERICK KIMBALL OF ENIGAMI.FUN

WINDOWS

The six letters shown have been placed, in an unknown order, into the six solid-red positions in the diagram to the right. The two images below reveal what’s visible in the dotted-line squares. What’s the order of the letters?

CHOCOLATE

Dad: “Where are the chocolate bars I bought?”

Daughter: “I gave half of them to Mum and half of a bar to my little brother. Then I gave half of what was left to Gran and half of a bar to my little sister. That left me with one bar, which I gladly ate myself.”

How many chocolate bars did Dad originally buy?

TIMES SQUARE

Fill in each cell with a whole number from 1 through 9. Each number outside the grid is the product of the numbers in its row or column. Important: the number 1 will appear exactly once in each row and column. Other numbers can be repeated, and not every number from 1 through 9 will be used.

Brainteasers: Answers

£50 PRIZE QUESTION

Answer published in the November issue

Unscramble the letters in each circle to produce two words that are synonyms of each other:

The first correct answer we pick in September wins £50!* Email excerpts@ readersdigest.co.uk

ANSWER TO SEPTEMBER’S PRIZE QUESTION

AND THE £50 GOES TO… Christine Weller, Bristol

Laugh!

Win £30 for every reader’s joke we publish! Go to readersdigest. co.uk/contact-us or facebook.com/readersdigestuk

I SEE THAT DRACULA HAS been rearranging his furniture with his teeth again.

Doing a bit of fang shui.

COMEDIAN TIM VINE

MY DOCTOR TOLD ME that I need to lose some weight.

I said, “How?”

He said, “Don’t eat anything fatty.”

I asked, “What, pies, chips, that kind of thing?”

He said, “No, just don’t eat anything, fatty.”

COMEDIAN GARY DELANEY

MY YOGA TEACHER WOULD let me do the modified version of everything.

Blown Away

These incredibly intricate balloon animals were made by artist

Masayoshi Matsumoto (via instagram.com/isopresso_balloon)

So, for example, the class would do downward dog and she would just let me eat ravioli.

COMEDIAN FORTUNE FEIMSTER

FACEBOOK IS GREAT FOR getting upset about things people say even though you haven’t seen them for over 12 years.

COMEDIAN DOV DAVIDOFF

WHY IS IT THAT WHEN owners call their pets their “fur babies” everyone thinks it’s cute?

But when I refer to my children as “skin puppies” they’re just like, “Never say that again”?

COMEDIAN JAMES ETCHISON

I RECEIVED AN ACADEMIC scholarship and then I used that money for my BA in Theatre.

That’s like if you won the lottery and then just spent all the money on Beanie Babies.

COMEDIAN JARED LOGAN

I THINK A TREE HOUSE IS really insensitive. That’s like killing something and then making one of its friends hold it.

COMEDIAN DEMETRI MARTIN

DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE TWO antennas that got married?

It was a nice ceremony but the reception was amazing!

COMEDIAN JIMMY FALLON

WHY DO WE GET SO TIRED after travelling? After a long flight all I want to do is sit down, relax, eat some snacks, watch a show and drift off to sleep…

Which is exactly what I spent time doing during the entire flight!

SEEN ON PINTEREST

I LOVE WOMEN, BUT I FEEL LIKE you can’t trust some of them.

I was in the park the other day and I met a cute girl, and she had a dog. I went up to her and we started talking. She told me her dog’s name and I asked, “Does he bite?”

She said no and I replied, “Oh yeah? Then how does he eat?” Liar.

SEEN ONLINE

I WORK IN AN OFFICE, AND TO pass the time I play Battleship with the person on the other side of the cubicle. Except that they don’t know it yet.

I just lob random office supplies over the wall and every time I hear an “Ouch!” I mark it down as a hit.

SEEN ONLINE

I’M A POSITIVE PERSON. To me, going bald isn’t about hair loss.

It’s about face gain.

SEEN ONLINE

WHY DON’T MUMMIES take time off?

They’re afraid to unwind.

SEEN ONLINE

A Hexed Halloween

Tweeters reveal their worst ever Halloween:

@MasonSnyder07: “My mum dressed me up as a cow with udders made out of hot dogs. The dog kept running up and trying to bite my stomach.”

@DanFrancisco312: “As a prank my wife hid a toy rat under the duvet and I screamed. I hid the rat in the same place the next night and forgot. I screamed again.”

@Angry_Pancakes: “My dad thought it would be funny to jump off the roof and scare local kids as they walked to the door. On his first jump he broke his ankle.”

@Ally_Tinker: “I used to ask my dad to hold my sweets basket while we were trick or treating and he would eat all the sweets and call it a ‘Dad Tax’.”

CROSSWORD ANSWERS

A MAN HAS A JOB INTERVIEW AND is asked, “Your resumé is very impressive. But there’s a gap of four years, what was that for?”

The man replies, “Oh, that was when I went to Yale.”

The interviewer shakes his hand and tells him “You’re hired!”

The man jumps up and yells, “Hooray. I got a yob!”

DAVID ATLAS, London

THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD, but that just sounds like something a pen would write…

COMEDIAN ERIK BERGSTROM

I WANT TO HANG A MAP OF THE WORLD in my house. Then I’m going to put pins into all the locations that I’ve travelled to.

But first, I’m going to have to travel to the top corners of the map so it doesn’t fall down.

SEEN ONLINE

EVERYONE IS SO SCARED OF NARCISSISTS. You can read all these articles online like, “Ten signs your boss is a narcissist”. But there’s nothing to read if you are a narcissist.

What am I meant to read? What about me?

COMEDIAN CLAIRE WEBBER

AS A CHILD I HAD A MEDICAL condition that meant I had to eat soil three times a day. It’s lucky my brother told me about it, really.

COMEDIAN MILTON JONES

Across: 9 Obese, 10 Amazement, 11 Relic, 12 Intrinsic, 13 Own, 14 Nahum, 15 Glassware, 16 Shrub, 18 Eagle, 22 Avalanche, 25 Forgo, 27 Net, 28 Employees, 29 Wrong, 30 Undermine, 31 Aisle.

Down: 1 Soprano, 2 Wealth, 3 Newcomer, 4 Saying, 5 Last page, 6 Genius, 7 Persuade, 8 Sticker, 16 Stampede, 17 Bacteria, 19 Gift wrap, 20 Gaseous, 21 Roughen, 23 Aboard, 24 Ensued, 26 Rhoose.

60 Stand-Up

We spent 60 laugh-filled seconds with awesome Aussie comedian, Felicity Ward.

WHAT’S THE BEST PART OF YOUR CURRENT SET? At the moment, I think it’s that I don’t have a theme, meaning or lesson so it’s just an hour of jokes. I don’t need to get many people on my side I just need to get them to laugh at me.

WHO INSPIRES YOUR COMEDY?

Maria Bamford is the person who really inspired me. Adam Hills introduced me and then I went on YouTube, watched everything she had done and went, “Oh, I should stop comedy because everything I didn’t even know I wanted to do has been done...” Unfortunately, I kept going.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE OF YOUR OWN JOKES? The definition of a slut is a woman who’s had sex with a lot of people, but that’s not a slut that’s an expert.

DO YOU HAVE ANY FUNNY TALES ABOUT A TIME YOU BOMBED ON STAGE? I was doing Late and Live in Edinburgh and someone heckled me

by throwing a biscuit at me. But, to be fair, I was hungry so I just ate it.

DO YOU FIND ANY PARTS OF THE COUNTRY TO BE FUNNIER THAN OTHERS? No, it definitely has something to do with the people. I love playing at all of The Stands, there’s one in Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow and I don’t know what it is about that place but the audience are just ready to laugh.

IF YOU WERE A FLY ON THE WALL, WHOSE WALL WOULD IT BE? Stormy Daniels, I’d go back to her wall… Actually no, I don’t want to watch Donald Trump having sex. But I’d want to be a fly on her wall now while she’s doing negotiations with administration. What a baller, no pun intended.

Felicity Ward is currently touring nationwide. For tickets, please visit felicityward.com

© PHILIP GATWARD

Beat the Cartoonist!

Think of a witty caption for this cartoon—the three best suggestions, along with the cartoonist’s original, will be posted on our website in midOctober. If your entry gets the most votes, you’ll win £50.

Submit to captions@readersdigest.co.uk or online at readersdigest.co.uk/caption by October 9. We’ll announce the winner in our November issue.

August’s Winner

There were some fantastic reader entries to our cartoonist competition last month, but for a change our resident cartoonist finally claimed a win with his caption: “Just a bug, nothing to worry about.” He took home 53 per cent of the vote and can hold his head high… until next month. Enter online for the chance to knock him off his throne.

In the November Issue

Interview: Ethan Hawke

The actor on family life, his dream projects and rock n roll.

Sex After 50

We meet the couples who prove that life in the bedroom starts after 50…

BEST OF BRITISH: VICTORIAN BRITAIN

We travel back in time to discover the Britain the Victorians knew.

LAUGH