Category: Stuff
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Online reviews and movie critics are fantastic - so why do we ignore them?
The carpet is sticky and the smell of hotdogs mingles with sweet popcorn. The trailers are rolling. Even though person’s knee from the seat behind jabs into my back, I don’t care. The summer blockbuster is about to start and I’ve heard great things about it… But two hours, a bursting bladder and numb bottom […]
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Why I hope this is the last Paralympics
Blink and you just might miss it. If you don’t live in the UK, that is. Last night, 80,000 people watched the Paralympic opening ceremony - a slightly more modest, but nonetheless equally poignant affair than its bigger brother. As the kids return to school and the Olympic feel-good fades, it offers a last-hurrah for […]
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The challenge to live a ‘no impact’ life
Of all the consumables I couldn’t live without, it wouldn’t be the internet. Neither would it be chocolate, ice cream or shampoo. I think I could cope without electricity just fine (I learnt how to make camp fires as a child). No, the one thing that would really chafe me (quite literally) would be not […]
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The real legacy of the Olympics: uncomfortable truths.
About 15 years ago, I visited the Montreal Olympic Village. A captivating and beautiful city, the Olympic Village was a complete contrast. Tired-looking vacant stadia and vast, mostly unused concrete behemoths populated by a few shuffling tourists. I found it a depressing place and the slowly flaking paint symbolised a squandered enterprise. Costing Canada $1bn, […]