A third of Britons feel guilty talking about death, poll shows
In polling for The Times, one in three adults reported that they rarely shared their experiences of grief, while one in five said they 'bottle up' their feelings completely.
The survey of 2,000 adults in the UK was commissioned for this year's Celebration Day, on May 26, which is dedicated to honouring the lives of loved ones who have died.
The national day began in 2022 and is inspired by traditions such as Mexico's Day of the Dead, which aim to remember people in positive rather than sombre ways.
Dame Prue Leith told The Times last week she would
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Telegraph
4 minutes ago
- Telegraph
In defence of blackberry picking
On holiday in West Wales last week, the blackberries were the best I've ever seen. They gleamed jet black from the hedgerows, dangling in enticing trusses over the grass verges, glossy fruit the size of cocktail olives peeking through the fences and at field edges. We filled bags, boxes, and even my hat – a few purple stains being small price to pay for another few pounds of the sweet, well-flavoured fruit. As a child in the Seventies and Eighties, I'd have been shoulder-to-shoulder with plenty of other families busily stripping the berries from the bushes. But while passing strangers nodded approvingly at the sight of our brimming containers or flashed thumbs up as they drove past, we encountered no one else picking, and the quantities of over ripe and 'gone over' berries suggested no foragers had made an earlier harvest. The same is true in my home city of Bristol, where I gather blackberries from loaded patches on the Downs alone. I'm not the only person who has noticed a petering out of blackberry picking. In a recent letter to the Telegraph, reader Kate Pycock of Ipswich remarks 'in recent years I have noticed that I seem to be the only person who picks any' of the blackberries plentiful near her Suffolk home. So why the decline? After all, with the cost of living crisis, and awareness of the health benefits of fresh fruit, you'd think that the availability of free berries would be a godsend. I blame the pernicious rise in risk aversion. I don't mean just a few bramble scratches (although stories of unpleasant, but very rare, incidences of hogweed burns suffered by foragers don't help). But worse than that, we've lost the ability to trust food that doesn't come with a label. We have delegated responsibility for the safety of what we eat to the supermarkets, so if something goes wrong, it is their fault not ours. I'm often advised to pick only berries above dog-leg-cocking height, as if the (literally) low-hanging fruit was in some way permanently contaminated. My answer is two-fold: if it makes you feel better, by all means look further upwards for your berries. But also, don't imagine that the pristine-looking produce in sealed plastic on the supermarket shelves has been untouched by wildlife or vermin, both in the field and in the storage units prior to packaging. So pick your berries, and wash them in a large bowl of cool tap water. TikTok may be awash (literally, again) with tips to use vinegar, salt, bicarb, or all three, but there's no need unless you like the flavour of vinegary, salty or soapy fruit... Obviously, we don't wash all of them. Quite a few (yes, ok, high-up ones) make their way into my family's mouth as we pick. Partly it's because there's something very special about sun-warmed berries straight from the plant, but also there's the game of chance – will it be sweet or sour? The different wild cultivars on a single country lane manifest themselves with subtle, and not so subtle, flavour variations. It's biodiversity, the environmental buzzword of the decade, in action on your tastebuds. As Kate Pycock says on the decline of blackberrying, 'whatever the reason, it makes me sad.' Me too, although it does mean I have a freezer full of fruity booty, and a tray of blackberry-and-apple flapjacks in the oven right now. Berry lovely.
BBC News
34 minutes ago
- BBC News
Filter 'temporary fix' to Whitehaven Harbour's orange water
A new filtering system has provided a temporary solution to a years-long problem of a harbour's water turning orange, bosses have have identified iron ochre getting into Whitehaven's Queens Dock in Cumbria through a culvert draining water from the Bransty railway tunnel, resulting in a discolouration to the harbour. Whitehaven Harbour Commissioners (WHC) said the "amazing" transformation to the water was "most likely" the result of a new filter installed by Network Rail in the tunnel, but it was "not yet a permanent fix".Network Rail said the system was temporary while "essential" work was undertaken, but the firm would play its part in seeking a long-term solution. Deanne Shallcross, chief executive of WHC, said the view of the Queen's Dock with clear water was "amazing".She said: "We appreciate this sudden change is most likely a temporary effect of the work that Network Rail are doing in Bransty Tunnel and not yet a permanent fix, but it's great to see the water can indeed return to its former glory relatively quickly when solutions are in place."She said she would "love" for the filtration equipment to remain but it was currently only funded "under temporary permissions", while Network Rail carried out work on the tunnel. WHC and other members of the harbour water task force would "continue to work hard on securing funding and confirming a permanent solution", Ms Shallcross and Workington MP Josh MacAlister, who is one of those working to fix the problem, posted WHC's picture of the harbour on social media with the caption: "Notice anything? It's not orange." He previously described the situation as "mind-bogglingly frustrating" after a number of multi-agency meetings failed to find a solution to the problem. A Network Rail spokesperson said the "temporary water treatment plant" was in place during "essential work to upgrade the track and drainage" through Bransty tunnel in Whitehaven. They said the filter system was a condition of an environmental licence issued by the Environment Agency and would only operate for the duration of the works due to permit and funding issues."We continue to play our part with other partners involved to work towards a longer-term, affordable solution," the spokesperson said. Follow BBC Cumbria on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Nick Kent obituary
My friend and former colleague, Nick Kent, who has died aged 72, was a journalist on the Daily Mirror; he later moved into book publishing. With several others he and I launched the fortnightly Greyound Star newspaper in 1984 while we were both still at the Mirror, and by 1988 we had switched to working on it full-time. Soon afterwards the two of us sold our shares in the business to concentrate on another venture, Ringpress, which published books about every kind of pet, from goldfish to parrots. Along with a third director, Julia Barnes, we sold Ringpress in 2002 and Nick decided to retire. Nick was born in Southend, Essex (a circumstance that gave him a lifelong enthusiasm for jellied eels), to Frederick, a civil servant, and Emily (nee Ficken), a seamstress. After the early death of his father, he and his brother, Michael, moved with their mother to the village of Little Cornard, near Sudbury, in Suffolk, where he grew up. He began his journalistic career while at Sudbury grammar school, writing a fishing column for the local paper. Later at Nottingham University he edited the student newspaper and, after gaining a degree in English and American studies he joined the Mirror Group graduate training scheme in 1974. Working on provincial newspapers in the west of England for two years, he switched to London with the weekly tabloid newspaper Reveille in 1976 and then, in 1979, the Daily Mirror as a features subeditor. By 1984 he had become one of the youngest chief subeditors in the Daily Mirror's history, on the features desk; I was chief news subeditor on the paper at the same time. He also talked his way into being the Mirror's first wine correspondent, once saying of an offering from the Co-op that 'this wine is best drunk on its own, like your correspondent'. After eventually selling Ringpress, Nick set up home in Cannes, in the south of France, with his first wife, the novelist Deanna Maclaren, whom he had married in 1987. There he discovered a passion for long-distance walking in the mountains above the Côte d'Azur and Liguria. He was also a volunteer driver, enabling people with disabilities to experience the joys of the great outdoors. In 2014 he returned to London and set aside retirement to become managing director of the ailing Peter Owen Publishing, one of the oldest independent producers of fiction. While unable to restore the business to past glories, he kept it afloat until its sale in 2022, when he entered into his second retirement, in Saxmundham, Suffolk. Though living with serious depression for much of his life, Nick had a remarkable ability to embrace new opportunities and interests. He had a passion for golf, wine and enjoying himself. After a divorce from Deanna in 2017, the following year Nick married Antonia Owen, whose father had set up Peter Owen Publishing. She survives him.
