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Dunelm slashes price of temperature-controlled bedding that's £59 cheaper than John Lewis version as temps to hit 29C

Dunelm slashes price of temperature-controlled bedding that's £59 cheaper than John Lewis version as temps to hit 29C

The Sun17 hours ago

NOW is the perfect time to get your hands on a temperature-regulating duvet as temperatures set to hit 29C.
Dunelm has slashed the price of the summer essential by 20 per cent giving you a great excuse to treat yourself.
The discount has come at a fitting time, with temperatures set to reach 29 degrees next week.
With nighttime temperatures still in the high teens, it's likely to disrupt your sleep routine.
However, Dunelm's temperature-regulating duvet might provide a cooler alternative to help you cope with the increased humidity.
Dunelm's Fogarty Temperature Regulating Wool All Seasons Duvet has been reduced from £70 to £56 for a double duvet giving you a 20% saving.
It is also available in a range of sizes - all of which are discounted - from a single for £48 to a super kingsize for £72.
The Dunelm version is a whopping £59 cheaper than an equivalent product at John Lewis.
While Dunelm' s double duvet is just £56, John Lewis ' Natural British Wool Light Duvet retails at £115 for the same size.
A description on Dunelm's website reads: "This duvet from the experts at Fogarty offers year round comfort."
They add: "The fibres are breathable allowing your body temperature to be regulated as you sleep. Therefore, you will be able to use this duvet all year round to keep you cool in the summer and warm in the winter."
It is filled with 100% pure New Zealand wool and wrapped in soft breathable cotton to ensure you don't overheat on a hot summer's night.
Not only is the duvet good for you, but it is also good for the environment.
Using unbleached and undyed cotton helps to reduce the amount of energy, water and chemicals used to produce the item which also maintains the fibres' natural softness.
The product is clearly a hit with shoppers as its 500 reviews average out to a 4.6 star rating.
One customer wrote: "This product was definitely the right one to help with night sweats. The natural fibres wick moisture away leading to a more comfortable sleep."
Another said: "This is the second Fogarty wool duvet I have bought. I've been using the original for a few years and just love it.
"Great temperature regulation and a great weight. Bought the second one for the guest bedroom."
Others were equally enthusiastic about the product, saying that they had bought more than one for the other bedrooms in their home.
A comment reads: "I have bought at least 5 of these and recommended them to my sister!
"Wouldn't buy any other duvets please don't stop making them!"
Customers seemed impressed at how well the product worked year round as both a summer and winter duvet.
Even without these hot, humid nights, some customers have found that it has helped with their quality of sleep as it has reduced their night sweats.
The item is available online or in-store.
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Maya Jama stuns in a £900 flowery summer dress as she shares an insight into Love Island launch week
Maya Jama stuns in a £900 flowery summer dress as she shares an insight into Love Island launch week

Daily Mail​

timean hour ago

  • Daily Mail​

Maya Jama stuns in a £900 flowery summer dress as she shares an insight into Love Island launch week

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From tradwife to radwife: abandoning perfection in favour of the ‘good enough' life
From tradwife to radwife: abandoning perfection in favour of the ‘good enough' life

The Guardian

timean hour ago

  • The Guardian

From tradwife to radwife: abandoning perfection in favour of the ‘good enough' life

Most mornings, I'm woken at 6am by my alarm (the baby crawling on to my head). I stretch, go downstairs, fill a bowl with iced water and, the theme of Transformers playing in the background, write my journal (a list of emails-I-forgot-to-reply-to). I drink hot water with cider vinegar to regulate my blood sugar levels, followed by tea using the baby's leftover milk. Dragging a chilled jade gua sha spoon across my face in an attempt to reverse the ageing process, I then make my young sons' porridge. While they eat, I plunge my face into the iced water until I can't breathe, and begin my three-step routine (two La Roche-Posay serums followed by SPF). Some mornings, I run. Others, I cry into a coffee, albeit one made with organic milk, before taking a mushroom gummy to take the edge off the day. My partner and I divide childcare dropoffs – we're late for both and broadly OK with that – and each have one day a week with the youngest. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. This is my routine. You might think it's elaborate and weirdly specific, and you'd be right. Yet we live in an age of routines shared online, often in pursuit of some sort of personal optimisation – I'm aiming for somewhere between writing 2,500 words before breakfast (Anthony Trollope) and 5am cold plunge (fitness guru Ashton Hall). And however elaborate my morning seems to you, to me, it is nothing compared with the pernicious routine of the tradwife. For the uninitiated: the tradwife is a married woman, usually conservative and/or Christian, usually white (though not always), of the belief that her place is in the home. She is feminine, usually kempt, often dressed like Betty Draper, but increasingly workout gear in neutral tones too. Though at home, she is not a stay-at-home mother, rather someone who performs as if she is, documenting her life in dizzying, up-close fashion for us to wonder: who's doing the potty training? The tradwife is not new: in 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft described these sorts of women as birds 'confined to their cages [with] nothing to do but plume themselves and stalk with mock majesty'. But in recent years she has rebranded, growing from traditional role to niche subculture, to full-blown digital movement (her current incarnation is the Maha – Make America Healthy Again – mom, who wangs on about her distrust of vaccines and suncream to camera in head-to-toe florals). Historically, tradwives earned nothing. These days some out-earn their husband through shilling products, presumably to pay for a small team of helpers to do the actual childcare. Last week, I watched Nara Smith, a 25-year-old, South African-German mother-of-three make pannacotta from scratch in a Ferragamo dress. It would be impressive were she and her peers not so clearly sidestepping a traditional career for one that involved packaging their cookie-baking for the algorithm. I am not the first wrung-out mother to take umbrage with this sort of performance. Yet as the cost of living crisis squeezes us ever tighter, the fantasy of escaping into being a wife and mother becomes more vivid. I am, after all, a hard worker, a mediocre baker and a realistic mother whose life is a delicate balance between task and failure, app-reliance and guilt. One colleague describes me as 'frazzled but focused'. So I prefer the term radwife. To be a radwife, you don't need to be married. I'm not. Perhaps you saw children as a choice, not a mandate, or came to them slightly late (mid to late 30s), like me. You're not afraid of giving them plain pasta four nights in a row provided they brush their teeth. You batch cook where possible, bribe your children when possible, and buy fish locally (though largely to offset the amount of parcels coming through the door). You miss deadlines for work, lose sleep over ultra-processed food (UPF), and are overly familiar with the unsung heroics involved in 'leaving the office early' to get the kids. But you can also use a drill, a lawnmower and always finish the veg box. Of course, this is often in tandem with a rad dad or partner, who shares the same tensions, childcare and anxieties. What else? The radwife is aware of trends, would never wear an elasticated waist (unless it's her Adidas Firebird tracksuit – she burned her Lucy & Yak dungarees once the youngest started nursery), but always, always chooses comfort. Her heels are a bridge to her former life, and though she rarely wears them now, she'll never get rid. Other radwife-ish things: baseball caps, a fringe (it's that or botox), one wildly unsensible coat on principle. To unwind, she reads cookbooks like novels, Grazia at the doctor's and the LRB on the loo. She reads the Booker shortlist, though she's a sucker for covers with interesting typefaces. For her holiday, she has packed Ocean Vuong, but will quietly leaf through self-help book of the moment The Let Them Theory when no one is looking. It's with some discomfort that she watched a version of herself in Amandaland (Amanda) and The White Lotus 3 (Laurie) – it's not uncommon for the radwife to be divorced. The tradwife caused a major stir globally; not surprising, perhaps, given that it is largely a fantasy role which hinges on personal wealth, and is almost totally removed from the maternal ideal it promotes (it's also, in part, why Meghan Markle's With Love Netflix series, with its unnecessary pretzel decanting, feels so ill-timed). I'm not bothered by the perfectionism this movement peddles – wake up, it's Instagram! – but I am by the way it impinges on normal life. 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'On the contrary,' Dresner says, 'the ability to be aware of these often painful feelings is essential if the mother is to find the way that works best for her.' The reality is, it's OK to feel bored by your children, but utterly lost without them. It's OK to want to go to work, to drinks – but also OK to want to rush home to do phonics. 'We as partners, friends and society must be aware of this and support mothers to feel validated as they try to find their way,' adds Dresner. Rad is short for radical. But maybe it's about being radically normal. Most mothers I know suffer from what I call 'churnout': burnout from trying to shift back and forth at speed between modes (partner, worker, mother). Writer Frankie Graddon of the Mumish substack talks about the ambient threat of 'The Call' at work (a sick child) and the guilt of 'beige dinners'. This might sound a little obvious. But we live in delicate times. Only the bravest among us are off social media, despite the fact that we know, on some level, that it is full of 'false messages that others are doing far better', says Dresner. 'I don't think it's possible to find the perfect balance or perfect choice. But to be able to observe our conflicts, and to some extent tolerate them, might offer a degree of freedom from internal and societal pressures, and what social media drives in us,' she says. Ideally, we wouldn't shapeshift so much. Ideally, we would live in a world in which there were time and resources to allow for parents to work less, or more flexibly, without barely scraping together the nursery fees. Four-day weeks. Cheaper, subsidised childcare. Instead, capitalism has taken the notion of empowerment and turned it into a world in which all hands must be on deck for the profit motive. For some women, it's a form of feminism that means that if you're not a high-flying earner, then who are you really? As Rosanna, a 35-year-old film producer and mother of two, tells me: 'As much as I value the role of mother, I would feel 'less than' if I didn't work – and I've certainly struggled with that feeling when out of work or looking for work.' Certainly, many tradwives are more interested in marketing than mothering. But if big business is responsible for the idea of putting a career first (see Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In and 'girl bossing', a mid-2010s movement that became a byword for pseudo-woke corporate feminism) and trad-wifing feels like a cop-out, something in the middle seems like a reasonable reaction. Rosanna loves parenting and loves working, but still feels that 'capitalism sucks and rams this idea that unless you're earning a living and acquiring status, you are not quite valued'. The other day, I was chatting to my friend Jo, who is a parent of two. She said that, initially, 'motherhood shook me apart, identity wise, and I clung on to work as something to define me. But now I work to provide – and fulfil myself. I don't need the workplace in the same way I once did.' Taking this metaphorical step away from work – from the churn of the machine – is not a betrayal of the 1970s feminist fantasy. That dream was co-opted, used to sell a life that only meant something if it was dedicated to corporations. When I'm scraping porridge off the pan, and I'm late for work, I think about the tradwife and wonder if she too burnt the porridge. Probably. But at least I'm OK with it. Lighting assistant: Declan Slattery. Styling assistant: Sam Deaman. Hair and makeup: Natalie Stokes at Carol Hayes Management using Tatcha Main photo Red gingham dress: £200, Anthropologie. Sandals, £109, Dune London. Necklace, £118, Astley Clarke. Bow earrings, £38, Anthropologie. Trug, £37.95, The Worm That Turned. Aprons and gloves, stylist's own Above photosPink floral dress: £49.99, New Look. Aprons and gloves: stylist's own. Green quilted jacket: £155, Whistles. All other clothes writer's own. Cycle helmet loan:

EXCLUSIVE I ditched London's luxury hotels to camp on my car's roof - and was surprised by the results
EXCLUSIVE I ditched London's luxury hotels to camp on my car's roof - and was surprised by the results

Daily Mail​

time2 hours ago

  • Daily Mail​

EXCLUSIVE I ditched London's luxury hotels to camp on my car's roof - and was surprised by the results

It was my husband Marc's idea. He'd read about car roof tents being the next big camping trend and wanted to give it a go. But what's a roof tent? Visualise a tent that fixes to the top of a car and extends beyond it, providing a more spacious and elevated experience to a ground tent. They come in all shapes, sizes and levels of grandeur, with prices starting from £800. My husband's an outdoorsy, sleep-under-the-stars kind of guy. His wife prefers boutique hotels. But in every relationship there's give and take, so a few weeks later we arrive at East London 's Abbey Wood Club Campsite, near Greenwich, where James Lewis from the Caravan and Motorhome Club helps attach a roof tent to my Mini. Even petite cars can carry a roof tent. What matters more than size is the roof's surface. You don't want it to be too smooth because you'll need rails to fix the tent on to. As James attaches the boxed up tent onto bars he's screwed to my roof (this is a fiddly, half-hour-or-so process) he explains how roof tents have seen an explosion in popularity over the last five years. Some manufacturers have reported a 100% increase in sales in 2024, with no sign of interest slowing down. Why? Because Brits have become a nation of outdoor enthusiasts who want to experience it in style. A roof tent offers a superior and more robust living space to a ground tent. But what's it actually like to sleep in one? The one I'm road-testing is made by the Australian company ARB (roof tents are particularly popular down under) and is their new Esperance 2 model which sleeps three (two adults and a child) and retails at £2,469. Excitement builds once the box is fully fixed and ready to be opened. I unclip right and left; then tug on the ladder and voila. It's like magic. The tent erects in a remarkable ten seconds flat. Jo says: 'There's a comfortable, quilted, in-built mattress. There's also a window, sky roof and lights (powered by the car battery) to help see in the dark. It's like a canvas Crowne Plaza' Equally remarkable is climbing up that ladder to peek in. There's a comfortable, quilted, in-built mattress. There's also a window, sky roof and lights (powered by the car battery) to help see in the dark. It's like a canvas Crowne Plaza! In go pillows, sheets and duvets (brought with from home) and soon enough the top of my car's been transformed into a cosy boudoir. Sleeping quarters prepared, it's time for dinner. Abbey Wood's a great city bolthole. It feels like the countryside, but is on the Elizabeth Line and only a couple of stops into central London. So we hop on the tube to Tower Hill where I've booked a table for two at The Dickens Inn in St Katharine's Docks. It's a historic pub which was opened by the author's grandson in a neighbourhood Dickens frequently depicted in his novels. It's the perfect spot for a romantic meal and to toast our camping adventure. Creamy mushrooms on sourdough toast followed by grilled sea bass and fruit crumble are washed down with a bottle of Malbec and enjoyed at a table that overlooks Tower Bridge. Everything's delicious and sets us up nicely for the return journey. Contrary to expectations, I'm looking forward to snuggling up in that roof tent. It's warm and welcoming and even though I'd imagined tossing and turning, within seconds I've nodded off. It's the sound of rain that wakes me early morning, but even that isn't a dampener because here's where the benefit of being off the ground kicks in – you're more sheltered and insulated with zero risk of getting wet. And that's because a whole vehicle separates you from the lumpy, uneven, soggy soil below. And the tinkle of rain against the canvass proves strangely soporific. Within minutes I've been lulled back to sleep. There's something special about waking up to the trill of birdsong in a wood with nothing but a sliver of material between you and the outdoors. And being up on the roof means you get the same great view as if you were in a campervan or caravan, but for a fraction of the price. Over a cup of coffee my husband and I consider scarpering while the tent's still attached to my car - possession is nine-tenths of the law and all that. For ease of getting away in comfort, at the drop of a hat, a roof tent really does take camping to new heights.

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