Category: Lifestyle

In Goa’s capital, Panaji, on Rua São Tomé, not far from the main post office, is a shop that offers packaging services. For a small fee, they will wrap your parcel in a sheet of muslin sewn with precise stitches to protect its contents from being damaged in the post. It started as a sideline […]

We’re all catching up with family and friends: a joyful but also fraught process, judging by the snippets wafting my way from neighbouring gardens and streets. Me too: it had been 10 months since I had seen my best friend until she came to stay last week. It was wonderful, but also evidence of how […]

When parents tell Denise Pope, an adolescent well-being expert, they’re worried for their children’s mental health, she responds with a question. “How many hours are they sleeping?” Concerns for youth depression, anxiety and suicide have risen amid a deadly pandemic that disrupted schools across the country and isolated teens from their friends. Experts agree that […]

My mom and I moved to a small house in the Northeast when I was a little girl, after a difficult divorce from my father in the 1980s. After the closing, the man who sold my mom the house had his say on his way out the door. “Well, I wish you luck!” he said. […]

My wife gave birth to our first child, a beautiful baby girl, a few weeks ago. It’s all been a bit of a milk-scented blur, but the whirlwind of early parenthood has also helped me realise my true purpose in life: becoming a Baby Truther™. I’m not saying there’s a vast conspiracy of silence about […]

Name: The lark advantage. Age: Suspected for years, but recently ratified. Appearance: Happy, sprightly, ready to go. Ugh, what’s this rubbish now? Hello, friend! If you might be so kind, could you tell me what time you woke up on this wonderful day? I don’t know, 10am? Too early, anyway. Well, old chum, have you […]

After years of selling cheap copies of designer shoes and handbags, Barcelona’s street vendors have set up a co-operative and launched a line of trainers under the brand name Top Manta. Unlike an earlier attempt to establish a brand in 2017 by sticking a logo on shoes imported from China, the trainers are made in […]