DR MAX PEMBERTON: We're becoming a nation of can-oholics: This is why our love of summer tinned cocktails could spiral into a drinking problem
No matter where you go, from barbecues and picnics to cinemas and commuter trains – everyone seems to be consuming ready-mixed drinks whether a simple gin and tonic or a more elaborate blood orange margarita. Their appeal is pretty obvious. They may just be re-imagined alcopops, but they've been cleverly rebranded to appear classy, sophisticated and fun.
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BBC News
6 hours ago
- BBC News
'Side Quest' sightseeing cycle routes for exploring London
Themed cycling routes to help people discover parts of London they are less familiar with have been launched by Santander Cycles and Transport for London (TfL).The Side Quests route generator provides people with randomly selected routes around the capital, each of a different difficulty level and a theme, such as food spots or film commissioned by Santander and TfL found 55% of respondents wanted to explore more of London. "This scheme helps Londoners and visitors discover hidden parts of the city, stay active and enjoy the summer weather," said Will Norman, walking and cycling commissioner. To mark the launch, Santander Cycles is offering floating water bikes for one day only on Wednesday. The water bikes, which can seat two people, will be available to use for free in 20 minute slots on the canals in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, from 12:00 BST to 17:00. David Eddington, head of cycle hire at TfL, said he was "excited to see more Londoners and visitors explore the capital in an affordable way".
Times
6 hours ago
- Times
Dragging a reluctant child on holiday? Bring these books along
A surprising number of children's books about summer begin with reluctance to go wherever the summer is to be spent. Little-known relatives, newly blended families and resisted summer camps feature heavily. And yet summer still casts its spell in so many cases, and there is a good deal of falling in love with new places and communities, long sunny days, jolly larks, and the magic of the outdoors. For anyone taking recalcitrant children on summer adventures, here are some hopeful books that capture good times and prolong them in a shimmering heat haze. For the very young, and in the run-up to a new collaboration by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury (Oh Dear, Look What I Got!, out in September), the picture book that most encapsulates the breezy outdoorsiness of summer holidays is We're Going on a Bear Hunt (Walker £7.99, age 2-4), a bestseller since 1993. The story revolves around four siblings making their way through the long grass and mud of a Suffolk landscape. Oxenbury's vision makes that exciting even before the bear appears. An old favourite from 2000 that conjures up the seaside, with dreamlike additions, is The Visitors Who Came to Stay by Annalena McAfee and Anthony Browne (Walker, 4-7). It's out of print but easily available second-hand. This picture book is about Katy, who lives contentedly with her dad until his girlfriend and her son move in. The special alchemy of this book, besides the happy ending, lies in its surreal shape substitutions, which bring together distinct elements of holiday joy — fairgrounds, ice cream and the beach — all rendered in colours as intense as summer light. • Seven books to get kids reading again — Dr Seuss, Wimpy Kid and more Also about a blended family is Julia Moscardo's Changing Tides (Little Tiger £12.99, 3-6), in which little Lula gradually warms to her new big brother and stepmother. Dappled light, sand dunes, foaming waves, shells, sandcastles, a summer storm and a cosy caravan combine to create a setting that's highly evocative of the season. The author-illustrator Jeff Kinney sustains the originality and comedy of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series in its 19th instalment, with the British Book Award-winner Hot Mess (Puffin £14.99, 7-11). The book finds hilarity and chaos in Greg Heffley's beach house family gathering, with stress that will feel universally familiar — and inevitably daft things happen. Perfect for anyone who doesn't want summer reading to feel like a chore. In CS Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe it is always winter, never Christmas. But in the fifth chronicle, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (various publishers, ages 8+), Edmund and Lucy are struggling in the summer — 'It was dreadful having to spend the summer holidays at their Aunt's.' But then seawater splashes out of the frame of a picture of a Narnian ship. The pair are transported (with their odious cousin Eustace Scrubb) on board the Dawn Treader alongside the boy king Caspian and Reepicheep, the swashbuckling mouse. On a quest to the world's end, they visit islands where they end slavery, close down nightmares, engage in battle and witness Eustace's transformation from a dragon — saved by Aslan — into a nicer person. Not your average summer experiences, but the book is full of the smell of the sea and the light of sunsets. Saffy's Angel by Hilary McKay (Hodder Children's Books £6.99, 8-11), is the first in the series about the unmissable and hilariously quirky Casson family, and follows a secret trip to Italy for the adopted heroine to find something from her past. It is somewhere she dreams of from the beginning: 'In the dream was a white paved place with walls. A sunny place, quiet and enclosed. There were little dark pointed trees and there was the sound of water. The blue sky was too bright to look at …. In the dream was the word, Siena.' This place will lodge in your memory just as it does in Saffy's. • Read more book reviews and interviews — and see what's top of the Sunday Times Bestsellers List First published in 1965, Over Sea, Under Stone (Puffin £7.99, 9-12) is the first book of what went on to become Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising sequence, continued ten years later. In it, the three Drew siblings, staying with their great-uncle Merry in Cornwall, must overcome the forces of Dark. It merges Arthurian legend with a perilous treasure hunt for the Grail, with fishing trips and the local landscape woven in. An ideal way into the fantasy genre for children aged eight and above, it also bathes the southwest in an ancient, and sometimes sinister, magic. For older teenagers or young adults, Meg Rosoff's funny, wise and observant The Great Godden (Bloomsbury £7.99, 14+) evokes the feeling of being on holiday so vividly it almost puts sand between your toes. It is also an antidote to the clichés of a holiday romance: when a charismatic boy joins a family in their beach house, his manipulative behaviour reveals the dangers of infatuation. Finally, the pink villa in Corfu where the eccentric Durrell family stay in Gerald Durrell's autobiographical My Family and Other Animals (Penguin £9.99, 9+) is perhaps the most entrancing foreign abode imaginable — and unsurprisingly helped to boost local tourism. This book stirs a deep wanderlust, perfectly captured in its distillation of summer's enchantment: 'Each day had a tranquillity, a timelessness about it so that you wished it would never end. But then the dark skin of the night would peel off and there would be a fresh day waiting for us as glossy and colourful as a child's transfer and with the same tinge of unreality.' It is, of course, also irresistible because it is so funny. Buy from Discount for Times+ members
Daily Mail
11 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Molly-Mae Hague blasted by fans for 'always moaning' as she says 'I've not done one fun thing all summer' despite multiple luxury holidays
Fans have blasted Molly-Mae Hague for 'always moaning' as she told fans she's 'not done one fun thing all summer' despite jetting off to multiple destinations. The former Love Island star and business owner, 26, made the admission in her latest YouTube vlog which landed this week. Molly said in the life update: 'I said to a friend the other day, that I'm going to make it to the end of summer having not done one fun thing.' She then spoke to her sister and said: 'Zoe, I haven't socialised once. I'm going to get to the end of this summer having not done one social fun thing. 'I haven't a life. That's not good is it. Summer will end and I've not done one fun social thing.' It left some fans open-mouthed as they called out how she failed to acknowledge the three holidays she's already been on this year. Some comments read: 'She's a millionaire, she can literally wake up tomorrow and do whatever the hell she wants', 'Wimbledon, lunches, Spain, Dubai, France, Centre Parcs... let's normalise that', 'This was so jarring because she can casually spend 6k in Dior on an outfit to log to Wimbledon then complains she has no time for herself', 'Why does she always want us to feel sorry for her?' The mum-of-one - in this year alone - has been on no expense-spared trips to Dubai, Budapest and even Disneyland in 2025. Back in March she and Tommy Fury took baby Bambi on a family holiday to the United Arab Emirates, marking a reunion holiday for the clan. Just a month later Tommy had treated Molly to a European trip as the pair enjoyed downtime in Budapest. During their break, they stayed at The Pullman, a five-star hotel where prices start from at least £500 per night. Meanwhile, in May the dotting parents took Bambi to Disneyland Paris where they enjoyed a lavish stay at the park's resort. It comes after her candid complaints about a recent £86,000 motorhome holiday her family went on - after Tommy said their daughter Bambi shouldn't be spoilt with five star trips. The family were travelling on a swanky Elddis Avalon 255 motorhome. Yet Molly-Mae revealed the trip had been struck with delays, leaving Bambi 'overtired and overstimulated'. She explained: 'Tommy has bought a motorhome and we spent our first weekend in the motorhome this weekend. Obviously, being us, we went in feet first and decided to go to the Isle of Man. 'Tommy's family were spending the weekend in the Isle of Man. I was feeling spontaneous so we literally booked the ferry to the Isle of Man an hour before we needed to leave. 'We'd never used the motorhome before, we needed to pack it up, sort Bambi, I just had this wave of 'you only live once, have a bit of fun. 'Bambi doesn't need to be so perfectly routine every day, she's not a newborn anymore. 'I've got so stuck in my ways with the fact that her routine is her routine and I don't really steer away from it. 'I'm not gonna feel bad for that because that is what works for me and that is what works for Bambi and Tommy, so that's fine.' She then added of when things started to go wrong: 'So anyway, booked the ferry, packed the motorhome up and nearly didn't make the ferry but that's another story and then there was a two hour delay. 'This ferry, which was already gonna get us in at 11:30pm, which was already severely triggering me because Bambi goes to bed at 7pm, was not fine. It was giving me a prime example as to why the routine works for us. 'It was one of those moments where strangers come up to you and are like 'can I help? Is there anything I can do?' 'She was screaming that much for four hours straight. The boat basically had a malfunction and it wouldn't move for like two hours so we had a huge delay. 'She was so, so, so overtired and overstimulated - Bambi is so routine, she is the opposite of flexible.' And when they arrived things continued to go downhill, as she said: 'We managed to get to the Isle of Man at 1:30am in the morning. 'We didn't know where we were, what we were doing, we were going to a different campsite to Tommy's family. It was just a lot. 'We had to make our bed out of this sofa, I was like 'I'm really out of my depth, I'm struggling. The next day, Bambi was so tired, she was just screaming, literally screaming, so, so unhappy. 'Me and Tommy were looking at each other like 'what were we thinking?. I was having a breakdown.' She went on in the vlog: 'Bear in mind this motorhome of Tommy's is his pride and joy, he's obsessed with it…I kid you not, the next day he was like 'I'm selling it, the minute we get home I'm putting it up for sale, I hate this motorhome.' 'It wasn't even the motorhome's fault. For our first time, stupid move.' They even considered getting an early ferry home but once they met up with Tyson Fury and his wife Paris, things improved. She said: 'We were actually going to get on a ferry that day to come home because we were so out of our depth, we couldn't do it. 'But then, when we met up with them, we were like 'no, we're gonna stick it out, we can do this.'
