
Hull cemetery installs 'Letters to Heaven' postbox
Richard Barker, bereavement services manager at Hull City Council, said: "The group were inspired by seeing similar letters to heaven postboxes in other parts of the country, and how they've helped people deal with their sadness at what is always a very tough time."We thank them for their donation, which we are so honoured to accept."It was unveiled by the city's Lord Mayor Councillor Cheryl Payne alongside Ms Sutcliffe.The postbox is similar to one in place at the Priory Woods Cemetery, near Cottingham.Listen to highlights from Hull and East Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here.
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Spectator
13 hours ago
- Spectator
Phones are drowning out our inner lives
I'm sitting in a meditation class at a yoga studio in Chicago, neon lights pulsing pink and purple while the instructor talks over a movie soundtrack. I almost can't believe I've paid $30 to be here. When she runs out of scripted wisdom about mindfulness and presence, she starts ad-libbing: 'And that doesn't mean you shouldn't respect yourself…' I try to tune her out, focus on my breath, but it's impossible. She demands our attention. I went to six classes before deciding it was a waste of time. Each week, fewer people showed up. By the sixth class, it was just me and this 40-year-old instructor. Isn't meditation supposed to train attention through silence and stillness? This class was a particular failure, but even 'successful' meditation has become something perverse in our culture. I believe there are people who have genuinely mastered the practice – or are at least trying in good faith – but for most of us, it's been transformed into little more than another hobby, another app, another 15 credits spent on ClassPass. Headspace, Calm, Ten Percent Happier – I download them all, chasing metrics for my mindfulness. But it's not even about mindfulness, per se. It's about recapturing something that used to happen naturally – the drift before sleep, the empty minutes waiting in line, the quiet moments in the bathroom. All of this has been packaged and sold back to us as a product. We are purchasing temporary relief from a world that never stops asking us something, if not asking something of us. There's a scene in The Shining that haunts me. Jack Torrance, trying to write his novel, explodes when his wife interrupts him: 'Every time you come in here and interrupt me, you're breaking my concentration. You're distracting me. And it will then take me time to get back to where I was.' The scene has become a period piece. Now, we're never deep enough in thought to be pulled out of it. The flow state – that mental zone where hours pass as if they were minutes – has become so rare it requires special workshops. I grew up rehearsing for this absence of silence. My childhood home, like tens of millions of others, had the television on constantly. Morning shows bleeding into soap operas bleeding into evening news – an endless loop of ambient noise. We complain now about people who watch TikToks without headphones, but we've forgotten that some semblance of this was standard practice for decades. TV was almost like a heartbeat. Yet it creating a permanent state of half-attention. It trained us never to fully focus on anything. In the 1990s and early 2000s, not having a TV became a badge of cultural sophistication. Parents bragged about having children who didn't even watch PBS, who read books instead. But that distinction was erased overnight with the iPhone's arrival in 2007. The screen wasn't confined to the living room – it was in our pockets, our bedrooms, our every waking moment. My point isn't about boredom. People are constantly bored. Bored while scrolling Instagram, bored while binge-watching Netflix, bored during conversations. This is about something deeper. The absence of silence breeds the absence of thought. A mind kept in constant stimulation never develops the muscle for thinking. We become capable only of reaction: I like this, I don't like that, swipe left, swipe right. But the deeper cognitive work – synthesis, imagination – requires the sustained quiet we've all but eliminated from our lives. Marcus Raichle, a neuroscientist, discovered earlier this century that our brains have a 'default mode' that kicks in when we're not actively focused on tasks. This network, as later research revealed, is where memory is sorted, emotions are processed and our sense of self is constructed. It's not idle time; it's maintenance. But we've become uncomfortable with our own interior lives. In one study, participants chose to give themselves electric shocks rather than sit alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes. Music has withered in this environment. We've gone from sitting and listening to albums – experiencing them as complete artistic statements – to using songs as wallpaper. Walk through Chicago, New York, any American city, and count: everyone is sealed in their AirPod cocoons, soundtracking their lives. We've eliminated not just silence but serendipity – no overheard conversations that change our day, no street musicians that stop us in our tracks, no unexpected connections with strangers. My ex always maintained a strict no-phones-in-bed policy. When we split, my first act of defiance was allowing my phone into the bedroom. Liberation, I thought. But something was lost. In that darkness before sleep, my mind used to unspool. I'd invent stories, have imaginary conversations, build entire worlds from nothing but silence and time. Now I scroll until exhaustion takes over, falling asleep mid-video. In silence, we meet ourselves – and we don't always like what we find. All the questions we've been avoiding surface in our consciousness: am I living the life I want? Am I the person I should be? The silence doesn't feel empty; it's too full. So we reach for our phones. But sometimes you like what you find in quiet. Once you push past the initial discomfort, your mind starts doing things you forgot it could. Strange images drift in – not to-do lists, but actual imagination. A conversation you might have. A scene from nowhere. The kind of weird, associative leaps that used to happen naturally before we filled every pause with content. Your brain, it turns out, is not such a scary place after all. It just needs space to perform. Without being faced with a constant feed of other people's thoughts, your own become more vivid, more surprising. You start having ideas – not reactions, but thoughts that emerge from that strange, private place inside your head. A version of this article first appeared in The Spectator World edition.


BBC News
2 days ago
- BBC News
Combine harvester destroyed in Rushmere St Andrew fire
A combine harvester has been destroyed after catching fire in a farmer's field. Suffolk Fire Service was called to Rushmere St Andrew near Ipswich, Suffolk at about 22:30 BST on engines were sent to the field, off Holly Lane, and the fire was put out by crews wearing breathing apparatus using hose reel service said no-one was injured and the fire was deemed to have been started accidentally. The fire service said farmers had poured water on the field around the vehicle to stop the fire from fire engines attending were:Two from Princes Street, IpswichOne from Ipswich EastOne from WoodbridgeOne from Holbrook Follow Suffolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.


North Wales Live
5 days ago
- North Wales Live
Live updates as town-centre road closed amid reports of building fire
A main road has been closed amid reports of a building fire. Emergency services are currently on Station Road in Prestatyn while the fire is dealt with. A North Wales Police spokesperson said: "Station Road in Prestatyn is closed at present due to an ongoing incident. Please avoid the area if possible." Witnesses said a fire had taken hold at a business premises on the road. This is a breaking news story. We will bring you all the latest as we get it via the live blog below. Get all the big headlines, pictures, analysis, opinion and video on the stories that matter to you. If you have some information you can contact us by following our Twitter feed @northwaleslive - the official North Wales Live account - real news in real time. Or like - your must-see news, features, videos and pictures throughout the day from the North Wales Live. Don't forget you can also keep up to date with the latest via the free North Wales Live app. Download it for Apple devices here and Android devices here.