Latest news with #EdgeHill
BBC News
4 days ago
- General
- BBC News
Liverpool's Williamson Tunnels to stay open after £23k raised
An under-threat heritage centre dedicated to preserving a mysterious labyrinth of tunnels in Liverpool has raised cash to help secure its future after its rent was unexpectedly hiked city's Williamson Tunnels were built in the early 19th century for eccentric businessman Joseph Williamson and rediscovered by volunteers in the 1990s before opening to the public in last week, the Joseph Williamson Society, which manages access to the tunnels, revealed its annual ground rent was set to rise from a nominal fee to a commercial rate of £20,000 which was completely "beyond the means" of the David Bridson said the society now had "breathing space" after a fund-raising campaign gathered £23,000 - more than enough to pay for a further 12 months. The charity now wants to raise £275,000 to buy the freehold outright and secure its future. "We are over the first financial hurdle," Mr Bridson said."We've got some security for 12 months which hopefully gives us the time to raise the money to purchase the freehold."In the long term, the only way to ensure that the centre continues is to purchase the freehold on the site so we need to keep up the fundraising effort and try to reach the £275,000 asking price." The history of the tunnels is surrounded in mystery. Joseph Williamson was a rich tobacco merchant who lived in Liverpool in the early 19th he retired at 49 he spent a huge part of his fortune building tunnels in the Edge Hill district of are many theories surrounding why the tunnels were built, from simply a way of giving unemployed people a day's wages to creating arches over existing quarry pits to enable land above to be built suggestions include that they were originally created by the Knights Templar, due to their chapel-like structures, or they were a huge shelter to escape an oncoming disaster. Nobody knows for Williamson died in 1840, work on the tunnels stopped and they fell into disrepair. And, after being used as rubbish dumps, the local authority filled them in during the the 1990s, a group of volunteers set about excavating the tunnels and the Joseph Williamson Society was created. Listen to the best of BBC Radio Merseyside on Sounds and follow BBC Merseyside on Facebook, X, and Instagram. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.
News.com.au
11-05-2025
- Business
- News.com.au
Heart is where the affordable home is
When this Queensland couple decided it was time to buy their first home, they couldn't go past Cairns for lifestyle, community and affordability. Stocktake co-ordinator Sid Abdullah and educator Zara Abu Bakar bought a townhouse in the Cairns suburb of Edge Hill this month after falling in love with the Far North Queensland region. Mr Abdullah said he and his wife had lived in Perth and Arnhem Land previously, but after being in Cairns for more than a year, they knew they'd found home. 'The time was right for us to find somewhere to settle down,' he said. 'Cairns is affordable compared to other places. 'To find a place like ours in the (capital cities) is quite difficult.' PRD data showed Cairns had a median house price of $650,000, while the average cost of a house in Brisbane had soared to $910,000. Mr Abdullah said with property prices being more reasonable in Cairns than in Australia's capital cities, the buying process was easy. 'We had saved up enough of a deposit, so I approached a broker and then the bank,' he said. 'I got good advice from them and they were very helpful. 'We had no issues getting a home loan approved.' But the couple didn't just decide on Cairns for its property prices. 'We like the scenery and the weather is good, especially from June to September' Mr Abdullah said. 'You can drive to Palm Cove or go up to the Tablelands and Mareeba – it's all very beautiful.' Mr Abdullah said they settled on the suburb of Edge Hill for its community feel and central location. 'It's an older suburb that is beautiful and safe, and the community is quite open,' he said. 'They have a lot of ongoing activities and the Esplanade is within walking distance. 'We don't have to drive into the city because the supermarket is just around the corner and if we want to go to the cafe we can walk there.' Ray White Cairns principal Ray Murphy, who sold the couple their home, said there had been an increase in out-of-towners and new residents buying in Cairns to get more bang for their buck. 'We can see this in the response we've had to our auction event on May 19,' he said. 'There has been magnitude of interest. 'We had 50 properties ranging from commercial through to high end and first homebuyer stock going under the hammer, but 10 have already sold prior to auction. 'It's a sign of the times, the Cairns market is very affordable but it is strong and there is a lot of buyer demand.'
Times
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Young motherhood reimagined by an exciting new literary voice
Everyone loves a young writer. They punch their way into the literary world, demanding respect for the chutzpah of penning 90,000 words in their twenties. We loved Martin Amis for writing The Rachel Papers at 23. We had hysterics when Zadie Smith published White Teeth at 21. And much of Sally Rooney's stardom can probably be put down to the fact that she was a sprightly 27 when Conversations with Friends appeared on our shelves. Now we have Saba Sams. She was just 26 when she won the BBC national short story award and the Edge Hill short story prize for Send Nudes, the titular story in her published collection. The next year Sams made it on to Granta's list of the best young
The Guardian
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Writer Saba Sams: ‘I wanted it to be sexy and really messy'
Saba Sams was in bed breastfeeding her two-month-old baby Sonny when she received an email saying that the publisher Bloomsbury wanted to offer her a book deal on the basis of some of her short stories. She was just 22 at the time. 'I didn't even think it was a book,' she says when we meet. 'I was just learning how to write.' Send Nudes, her first collection, about being a young woman in a messed-up world, was published in 2022. She won the BBC national short story award and the Edge Hill short story prize. The following year, she made the once-in-a-decade Granta Best of Young British Novelists list. 'Then I was like: 'Oh, this is actually happening. This feels like a big deal,'' she says. It is one of the first warm spring days and we are sitting outside a cafe in Broadway Market in east London. Sams, now 28, has another new baby (three months old). He is being looked after by her grandmother, along with her toddler, at her flat in nearby Bethnal Green, while her eldest, who is just about to turn six, is at school. She also – somehow – has her first novel, Gunk, out next month. Squinting against the sunshine, she seems remarkably unfazed by it all. And, as a writer of youthful malaise, very cheerful. Although she does admit that it is a 'relief' to have the tricky follow-up to a hit debut in the bag. 'You write the first book and you're like: 'Well, that will probably never happen again,'' she says. 'I feel like a real writer now.' Sams writes in the disarming voice of a bored teenager with a gift for one-liners and sudden moments of poetry, and it is not hard to see why her work has caused such a stir. The 10 short stories in Send Nudes show characters on the heady precipice between girlhood and becoming young women. 'It was the summer between year nine and 10, when all the boys smelt of Lynx Africa and Subway,' one narrator tells us. Pool-side rivalries flare on a first blended-family holiday; a young woman bakes sourdough in the days after an abortion; a girl attempts to recreate a Tenerife beach in a London high-rise flat to console her mother during the pandemic – these stories are sad, true and very now. The girls' world is one of Tinder and Snapchat, but also age-old problems of unwanted pregnancies and abuse. They navigate toxic relationships with their friends, boyfriends, parents and their own bodies in stories that are sticky with booze, sex and blood. Gunk returns to the same territory. The title is the name of the grotty student club in the novel, which is set in Sams's home city of Brighton, and also refers to the slime on a baby's head after it's born. It opens with a baby just '24 hours and 17 minutes' old and loops back to end with what Sams calls her 'big fat birth scene'. In between, the novel charts the friendship between Jules, the divorced manager of Gunk, and nim, a shaven-headed 18-year-old who comes to work in the club. In a twist on the standard love triangle, Jules's ex-husband Leon is the father of nim's baby, and the novel rests on the ambiguous relationship between the two women. In Sams's fictional worlds, the edges between female friendship and desire are as smudged as lipstick after a long night partying. Jules and nim are everything to each other, she explains. 'They're a boss and an employee, a kind of mother and daughter interchangeably, they've slept with the same man and they are parents of the same child.' Like the unequal best friends in her short story Snakebite, their relationship is charged with attraction. 'I wanted it to be sexy,' she says. 'I wanted to keep it really messy and to see if there weren't so many rules around love, maybe we could love each other better.' Sams is interested in the tangled and untidy: 'I couldn't write something neat because it wouldn't feel true to me.' Her own life became messy when she got pregnant just after graduating from the University of Manchester with a degree in English and creative writing. 'I was a woman of a certain class and education; I was expected to dream of something other than wasting my life on a baby,' she wrote in an essay in Granta magazine shortly after Send Nudes was published. She realised she desperately wanted to keep the baby. Her boyfriend Jacob wasn't initially keen (he's now a very happy father of three boys). 'It didn't occur to me that I would feel completely alone afterwards,' she says today. She felt alienated from her friends and the older mums she met in west London, where she was living at the time. Writing the stories was a form of escape, but also 'a kind of grieving process for girlhood,' she says. 'I really felt like I had left young womanhood behind.' Gunk was written when Sonny was a toddler and she was pregnant with her second baby. She knew she had to write about young motherhood, and that inevitably meant writing about alternative families. In a time of a cost of living crisis and crazy childcare fees, she feels 'like everyone's rethinking how the family looks. Everyone is like: 'Where's the village? We need the village.' It's just not working.' It is not just domestic set-ups that have changed. 'You no longer need a man and woman to have a baby,' she says. In Gunk she wanted to think about all the different ways to be a mother, 'how we mother each other, and how we all still need mothering'. Growing up in Brighton, her world 'was run by mothers'. Her childhood was one of parties and music festivals, which left the bookish young Saba (her name comes from her Syrian heritage) longing for more rules. Her parents divorced when she was 11; she has a younger sister and a much younger half-brother. Her mother, a breastfeeding consultant, has recently gone back to university to train to be a midwife. Send Nudes is dedicated to her maternal grandmother. Having so few men in her life as a child, she was thrown to find herself the mother of three boys, 'but they are all so different from each other that it becomes impossible to know what 'a boy' even is,' she says. 'The world has changed, gender really does feel looser.' Send Nudes was written as a reaction against the 'simplified feminism' of those bubble-gum-pink go-girl affirmations all over Instagram when Sams was at university. She would look at the slogans and ask: 'OK, but what about this situation? What about this one?' Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion Dodgy boyfriends, mean girls, lousy parents and body shame – Sams's stories do not make being a young woman today seem much fun. But then the reports of rising depression, anxiety and eating disorders among generation Z, particularly women, show that it really isn't. Add in financial insecurity and the existential threat of the climate catastrophe, and it's no wonder novels by a generation of female writers have come to be dubbed – rather patronisingly – 'sad-girl lit'. Feminist critic Jessa Crispin complained that Send Nudes conformed to this vogue for listless young female characters 'as helpless against the tides of fate as a jellyfish washed up on the beach'. This passivity could be seen as part of a generational helplessness in the face of world events. In fact, many of the stories are also celebrations of female resilience or agency, such as the title one in which the unnamed narrator finds liberation in sending a nude selfie to a stranger. 'Obviously, it's complex and it's shit sometimes,' Sams says of the reality she was trying to capture. 'But ultimately I wanted the stories to be about power and the slipperiness of control.' Far from being merely victims, many of her girls are drunk on their own youth and beauty. 'I think that there is loads of power in being a young woman,' Sams reflects. 'But your power is also your powerlessness. It's constantly eluding you.' Looking gorgeous might feel great, but 'it's just the patriarchy' and can always be weaponised against you. Like writers such as Ottessa Moshfegh (Sams is a big fan), she refuses to be coy about sex and body parts. 'I'm really interested in bodies, particularly women's bodies, periods and all of that,' she says. 'To me that feels overdue.' You can't write about women's bodies without also writing about shame. 'I was a chubby kid, and I felt bad about my body from around the age of six,' she says. 'I don't think it felt, like, rare.' She was determined to write a truthful delivery room scene, breaking waters and all. 'I was filling chapters,' she laughs. 'I was forcing my reader to witness this massive birth scene, because you give birth and no one cares. You're like: 'Listen to this – it's insane!'' And, rather than being an act of feminist subversion, she simply enjoys writing about sex. 'There's only so long you can write before you're like: 'Let's do a sex scene.' It's fun.' She gave a copy of Send Nudes to her grandparents with strict instructions not to read it. 'Obviously they would never have listened,' she jokes. 'But I don't know if they're as scary as just, like, the whole world.' Jacob is a horticulturist at Kew Gardens – 'He's a plant guy, it's cute' – and they have a small but lovely garden in east London. Now her middle son is at nursery, Sams likes to write in the cafe of a local independent cinema, where they don't hassle you to buy much and she can eavesdrop on conversations about films. Generally, she's not bothered by the buggy in the hall. Quite the opposite: 'For me, having kids and writing complement each other,' she explains. 'You experience time differently because toddlers are so slow and so interested in every tiny thing. Writing is the same: it takes ages and there's so much paying attention to things that are brushed over when you're just walking around.' Writing is the best way 'to be in love with being alive', she says, and there's nothing sad about that. Her phone buzzes. Time's up. It's her grandmother. She needs to go home and feed her new baby. Gunk by Saba Sams will be published by Bloomsbury on 8 May. To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Tom Holland's new alcohol-free beer Bero is back in stock – here's where to buy
It's 2025, and Tom Holland has the Midas touch. So when he released his own alcohol-free beer – the golden-canned Bero – in January, it was no surprise that high demand saw UK reserves run dry almost immediately. Now stocks have been replenished, and Spiderman's brand is ready to go again, with the cool canned drink available to buy online and at Soho House venues. The beer was created off the back of Holland's own journey to sobriety, with the actor having first ditched drinking three years ago. The launch comes at a time in which many of us are cutting back on booze or giving up on drinking entirely in order to prioritise healthier habits, improved mental health and longevity. These days, it's considered cool to be sober and with so many alcohol-free drink options available and celebrities openly discussing their journeys to sobriety, it's much easier to swap beer for something better for you, swerving a hangover in the process. The idea for Bero began in 2022, when Holland decided to do Dry January, but found that all he could think about was having a drink. 'I was definitely addicted to alcohol. [I'm] not shying away from that at all,' he previously admitted on the Jay Shetty Podcast. The actor decided to extend the Dry January challenge until his birthday on 1 June, and after six months discovered he was 'the happiest I'd ever been in my life'. Bero was created to provide those in a similar position – looking to cut out, or cut down on alcohol – with an appealing alternative they could be 'excited to enjoy'. Because let's be honest, drinking a pint of diet coke isn't quite the same as a cold beer. 'A lot of low and non-alcoholic beers just don't quite hit the mark, and that's where Bero comes in,' Holland says. 'We want people to feel good about drinking in moderation without missing out on anything fun. We focused on using top-notch ingredients and our brew master and his team have worked so hard at crafting beer that I am so proud of and love.' Bero has launched in three flavours and is each is 'a direct reflection of its founder's lived experience and outlook on life', according to the team of beer experts that created them. This is because, along with tasting like the real beers that Holland has always enjoyed drinking, each is named after a significant part of the actor's life. The Kingston Golden Pils takes its moniker from Holland's hometown of Kingston Upon Thames. The brewers say it promises, 'a fresh take on the bright and timeless, crisp European Pils'. The Edge Hill Hazy IPA makes reference to the school that introduced Holland to ballet – Edge Hill. The creators say, 'this juicy New-England style brew is tropical, refreshing, and hop-forward'. And finally the Noon Wheat is named after Tom's schnauzer Noon. The brewing team describe this wheat beer as being, 'cloudy and classic with a perfect citrus finish' 'Bero has been tailored to the discerning drinkers of the world – people who are focused on the things that enrich their lives,' says Bero chief executive John Herman. 'The UK is fast becoming one of the biggest advocates for low and non-alcoholic beer, with consumers increasingly aware that it offers a way of enjoying everything you love about your favourite beverage but without the next day regret. Bero has been a huge passion project for both Tom and I, so we can't wait to hear people's response.' Bero can be bought online in packs of six, 12, 18 or 24 direct from But be advised these beers are likely to sell out quickly again, so get yours while you can. Read more: Why going sober was one of the best things I've ever done
