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Emma Beddington

Emma Beddington

The Guardian

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Why do we go to coffee shops? It’s not just for the hot drinks

Why do we go to coffee shops? It’s not just for the hot drinks
yesterday 10

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

Married people living apart is a great idea – but I absolutely couldn’t do it

Married people living apart is a great idea – but I absolutely couldn’t do it
27.01.2025 9

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

How do we end the WFH culture wars? I have the answer

How do we end the WFH culture wars? I have the answer
26.01.2025 10

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

Somehow, it is still January. Here are my nine wellness-free survival tips

Somehow, it is still January. Here are my nine wellness-free survival tips
20.01.2025 40

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

How’s my home life? Well, I’ve moved into the shed to spend more time with the chickens

How’s my home life? Well, I’ve moved into the shed to spend more time with the chickens
13.01.2025 20

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

The internet wants me to spend £500 on a jumper. How can I say no?

The internet wants me to spend £500 on a jumper. How can I say no?
12.01.2025 20

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

‘New year, new you’? How are we supposed to find the time?

I’m not anti-resolution. I actually stuck to one last year: not a single microwave rice sachet has passed my lips since 1 January 2024 and yes, I...

06.01.2025 10

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

Why tell someone ‘I love you’ when you could overfeed, ridicule or ignore them?

It took a while, over the holidays, to work out how to stop my exhausted, frail mother-in-law jumping up constantly to fetch more food without ever...

05.01.2025 10

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

Why worry about your body falling apart at 44 or 60 when you could fret about your brain at 58 or 70?

I don’t believe ageing is linear: I reckon we have long plateaux, then everything falls apart all at once. I realised this at the close of my...

22.12.2024 4

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

Lisa Kudrow is right: friendship ‘takes work’. But you wouldn’t know it from TV

Lisa Kudrow says being and staying friends with her Friends co-stars was tough at times. “That six-way relationship took some work – and we did...

20.12.2024 4

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

Is there anything more condescending than being called ‘buddy’?

It’s “word of the year” time, so I was hoping to offer you mine, but I appear to have only learned one new expression in 2024: zwizz de cachalot,...

09.12.2024 10

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

Once I would have squirmed if a barista knew my order. But I’m learning to love being a regular

We went to the same cafe almost every day during our month-long trip to Venice. It was the same one as on my last trip, its windows stuffed full of...

08.12.2024 4

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

Winter is coming – and so is my 50th birthday. It’s time to eat all the pastries and grab all the joy

Support for seasonal self-love comes from an unexpected quarter: the French daily Libération has issued a plea for us to embrace our “winter...

18.11.2024 20

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

If reason can’t save the world, no wonder magic and superstition are on the rise

How good must it feel to gather up physical manifestations of your anxieties, shove them in a giant papier-mache demon and set fire to them?...

17.11.2024 10

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

I’ve gained a whole new insight into my personality – from a cat psychiatrist

The only time I have ever mentioned my bird-lover’s slight – slight! – ambivalence towards cats in a public forum, it brought me the angriest...

11.11.2024 20

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

Tom Hanks reckons 35 is the worst age. This is why he’s wrong

If you’re 34, watch out: Tom Hanks says 35 is the worst age. Why ask Hanks – delightful as he seems – as opposed to, say, the highly qualified...

10.11.2024 5

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

Is the British obsession with class starting to wane?

Rejoice: British class distinctions are finally crumbling. Yes, the gap between rich and poor is as big as ever and I am, inexplicably, unhappily,...

04.11.2024 4

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

Welcome to the new era of midlife lust! I need a lie down …

Are middle-aged women absolute horndogs and does that make for good box office? That’s what Grazia wondered recently, asking if the film industry...

03.11.2024 3

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

If my Netflix recommendations are anything to go by, I am tragically basic

A single female friend is feeling uncomfortably targeted by Netflix. The content categories the streamer is now offering on her homepage include...

28.10.2024 4

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

Want to understand British irony, humour and politics? Visit the NHS suggestions website

Do you ever wonder if the British might be a fundamentally unserious people? I do, though I should stress that I include myself; a thoroughly...

27.10.2024 10

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

Bad buffet behaviour is out of control. So should we be fined for our food waste?

Should you be penalised for having eyes bigger than your belly? A Cornish pub is trying it out: Mark Graham, the landlord of the Star Inn, now...

21.10.2024 8

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

Welcome to the ‘winter arc’ – the very worst season in the self-improvement calendar

Ah, autumn. Season of mists, mellow fruitfulness, chunky knits, pumpkin spice lattes and cosiness, right? Wrong. In the words of an intense young...

20.10.2024 9

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

What’s in my handbag? 76.75 loose and potentially dangerous items

The kingdom was shaken by another shattering royal revelation last week when Lord West revealed that when he was briefly given custody of the queen...

14.10.2024 6

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

Good news, everyone! We appear to have reached peak longevity

The news hasn’t been good for people planning to live for ever. First came Dr Saul Newman’s investigative work into supercententarians – those aged...

13.10.2024 10

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

I was way out of my depth at the yoga workshop – but at least I wasn’t bleeding like my neighbour

Why on earth did I read about a five-week yoga forearm-stand workshop and think: “That sounds like a fun challenge – I should sign up”? I’m...

07.10.2024 2

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

I thought I was fine with being bald. But the chance of a cure has stirred up all sorts of feelings

My hair looks incredible at the moment. I know because people keep telling me – in bakeries, cafes and when I was getting my tattooed eyebrows...

06.10.2024 10

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

I took a common sense test – and my result appalled me

Common sense is not that common: a recent study from the University of Pennsylvania concludes the concept is “somewhat illusory”. Researchers...

30.09.2024 1

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

The Substance is gory – but the real body horror is that 70% of women dislike the size of their breasts

I was thinking about breasts as I watched The Substance. Coralie Fargeat’s body-horror fable features Demi Moore as a newly 50, supposedly fading...

29.09.2024 20

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

I thought I was laidback about my sons leaving home. My WhatsApps tell a different story

‘Texting your teenage son is like texting a guy who has no interest in you” goes a meme that has re-emerged recently, piercing in its accuracy....

23.09.2024 10

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

I decided to spend a day as a dog. It was completely idyllic, at first ...

You know how sometimes you think you’ve had a brilliant idea, then it bites you in the bum like an athletic but mean jack russell? Suggesting I...

22.09.2024 2

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

I worship Nigella Lawson. But I disagree with her – very strongly – about eating in bed

Possibly the least surprising revelation from the Times’s recent Nigella Lawson interview: she loves eating in bed. It’s so on-brand, it reminded...

16.09.2024 2

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

Parents are anxious, lonely, overwhelmingly stressed – and their crisis affects everyone

It is the kind of statistic that makes you do a double-take, because it can’t be right. It is, though: 41% of US parents are so stressed that they...

15.09.2024 10

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

All these health scares are making me ill. I need someone to tell me croissants are good for you

The recent headline that a “Daily croissant can take a toll on your heart in under a month” was like a dagger to mine, just as my beloved local...

09.09.2024 30

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

Just six years until my middle-aged ‘career decline’? But I’ve just got started!

At 49, I’ve just learned I’m in my “late career” era, according to a recent marketing graphic from the job search giant Indeed. That’s what work is...

08.09.2024 3

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

The kids are eating us out of house and home – and I couldn’t be happier

“How many of these cookies can I eat?” my older son texts (he is downstairs; I am up). “They’re really good.” My fingertips tingle with...

02.09.2024 3

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

Why bother going on holiday when you can watch other people’s on social media?

I haven’t been on holiday this summer, but don’t start tuning the tiny violins. I derive an unusual satisfaction from working when others aren’t (...

01.09.2024 3

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

No brothers or sisters? That doesn’t mean you’ll grow up spoiled and lonely

Are only children selfish, spoiled and lonely? Duh, no, a piece in the New Scientist recently concluded, unpicking all these stereotypes. There are...

26.08.2024 10

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

I thought I was done with parenthood. But the tortoises had other plans

An unexpected thing has happened: I, we, have had a baby. A surprise change-of-life baby! That wasn’t part of our empty nest plan, but sometimes...

25.08.2024 20

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

An American came to stay – and completely changed my attitude to water

My son brought his girlfriend home last month and we really wanted to make things nice for her. We started with a shame-fuelled whirlwind clean,...

19.08.2024 40

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

Birth changes women’s bodies for ever – and we need to get real about it

‘My biggest issue is that I don’t feel like I’m in my body,” Naomi Osaka wrote this week on Instagram. A year after her daughter was born, the...

18.08.2024 10

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

Melon madness has me in its grip. I blame the French

Scrolling through “what I eat in a week” diaries instead of working, I found one from the New York fashion designer Somsack Sikhounmuong, and was...

05.08.2024 10

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

Reuse that teabag! Ignore that special offer! It’s time to join the underconsumer revolution

‘I never want to own anything again,” messaged my son, packing up after a year abroad. He was experiencing the self-loathing rite of passage that...

04.08.2024 20

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

Summer trends, summer reads, summer colours … This insufferable season needs to wind its neck in

I read yet another roundup of summer trends last week with narrowed eyes and my traditional wasp-chewing expression of disapproval. We are...

29.07.2024 6

The Guardian

Emma Beddington

We were promised a 15-hour working week. What’s the hold-up?

In ancient Greece, Aristotle was big on “noble leisure”, but modern Greece might need a refresher, having just introduced a six-day, 48-hour...

28.07.2024 10

The Guardian

Emma Beddington