There’s nothing quite like pottering around the garden with your dog at your heels, watching them relax in the shade of a tree as you tend your flower beds or plant up containers. Many gardeners are also dog lovers – including famous faces like Gardeners’ World veterans Monty Don and Alan Titchmarsh – and spending …
It can feel as if you’re being told every day about the benefits of exercise and how it can help you on all levels, not least living a longer and happier life. But the truth is, as you age, your body changes. And even if you’ve worked hard at staying fit all your life, exercising …
You did it! You aced the interview, and the promotion you’ve had your heart set on is yours. But where you expected to feel elation, the ultimate sense of achievement, there’s a nagging voice in your head interrupting your celebrations. ‘What’s next?’ it says. ‘You can do better, you know.’ You’re not alone in chasing …
What do you think about the idea of visiting an art gallery? Perhaps it reminds you of school trips and reminders not to touch the paintings. Maybe they’re somewhere you only go while on holiday. You might visit on a whistle-stop tour of a city, ticking famous paintings off your list. They’re there to be …
As niche jobs go, don’t you think it could be compelling to be the researcher tasked with studying the gaze and brain activity of a group of readers as they embark on a novel? Would the data confirm that while some eyes dart and dance their way across the page, others linger and widen as …
For a long while I saw journalling as a way to capture what had already happened – a place to record the past, to sift through thoughts and try to make sense of tangled feelings. Just as when I began junk journalling, I thought it was simply a way to use up scraps, a creative …
If you’ve ever taken a period of time away from your job, you may have experienced a dip in confidence or rise in anxiety, on your first day back at work. A break of any length can shake your faith in your own capabilities or leave you feeling ‘out of the loop’, research has shown. …
‘You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.’ It’s a phrase you’ve probably heard plenty of times. Reciprocity, or the unspoken expectation of it, is ingrained in social interactions. Even just hearing a heartfelt ‘thank you’ or ‘I owe you one!’ can feel satisfying when you’ve done something nice for someone. And if you don’t receive …
On a woodland walk in spring, there are few moments able to match the magic of stumbling upon a grove of bluebells in full flower. With their vibrant namesake hue and their sweet, earthy scent, these herbaceous perennials, which bloom for only a few weeks of the year, are a rare, spirit-lifting treat to be …
In the late 1990s, the writer Sophie Dahl was a model celebrated for being plus-sized in an era when being skinny was the fashion industry’s norm. But it was her origin story that often hit the headlines: she’d had an argument with her mother, so the story goes, and was crying in the street outside …
