My dad is cross-dressing and Mum is bitter. What can I do to help?
Ask Annalisa BarbieriFamilyI’ve pleaded with them to take some action, and said I’m their daughter, not their counsellor. But the state of their relationship has become horrific. Annalisa Barbieri advises a readerI am in my 30s, an only child, married with one child and another on the way. I see my parents once or twice a year (I live abroad).
Over the past few years, my father has been dressing transexually.
NSW police shoot man dead outside medical centre | New South Wales
New South WalesNSW police shoot man dead outside medical centre An armed man, 34, took hostages before being confronted by officers at the Nowra clinic, on the state’s south coast
Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast A 34-year-old man has been shot dead after multiple police opened fire outside a medical clinic on the New South Wales south coast after he allegedly confronted officers while holding a gun.
The pleasure revolution: the sex women really want
The ObserverSexFor far too long, women have been playing catch-up when it comes to sex. From female desire to sex tech, Sharon Walker talks to five women at the forefront of radical change
When Stephanie Theobald recently gave a talk called “Sex and Judgment” at Oxford University, her new memoir, Sex Drive, sold out. In the book, Theobald explores female sexual pleasure as one of a growing band of sex-positive feminists challenging cultural expectations.
Ainadamar review a defiant and impassioned defence of freedom
Welsh National OperaReviewWales Millennium Centre, Cardiff
Welsh National Opera mount Osvaldo Golijov’s work about the assassinated Spanish playwright Federico García Lorca – a fiercely evocative piece with the feel of a passion play
Poet and playwright Federico García Lorca was shot dead just one month into the Spanish civil war in 1936. His martyrdom is central to Osvaldo Golijov’s single-act opera Ainadamar, named for the place just outside Granada – also known as the Fountain of Tears – where Lorca and later thousands of others were murdered.
Colorado high school shooter kept 'diary of a madman' about bullying | Gun crime
Gun crime This article is more than 9 years oldColorado high school shooter kept 'diary of a madman' about bullyingThis article is more than 9 years oldKarl Perison, who killed a classmate and himself in December attack, wrote that he had become ‘a psychopath’ in book
The student who killed a classmate before taking his own life at a suburban Denver high school last year wrote in his diary that he was “a psychopath with a superiority complex”, and he hoped that the attack would start a conversation about school bullying.
Fame finally finds teenage township singing sensation | South Africa
South Africa This article is more than 11 years oldFame finally finds teenage township singing sensationThis article is more than 11 years oldMusic industry search for child star of YouTube viral music video ends at South African teenager Vicus Visser's doorA 10-year-old boy sits in his living room in a poverty-stricken South African township, singing his heart out and strumming a guitar that threatens to dwarf him.
This two-minute video lay dormant for years, but when it finally went viral it revealed such a precocious talent that record industry executives launched an international hunt for the mystery boy with the angelic voice.
Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo review a Zimbabwean Animal Farm
Book of the dayFictionReviewSet in the aftermath of Mugabe’s fall, Bulawayo’s long-awaited second novel is a spellbinding allegory
Nine years ago, NoViolet Bulawayo published her debut novel We Need New Names. This coming-of-age tale, which grew from her Caine prize-winning short story Hitting Budapest, features 10-year-old Darling and friends struggling to survive in a Zimbabwean shantytown. They do so with extraordinary resilience and humour; a thread that runs powerfully through her second novel, Glory.
In the realm of the avout
PhilosophyReviewNeal Stephenson's speculations on language and philosophy impress Christopher BrookmyreIt feels appropriate that cosmology should form the underlying basis of Neal Stephenson's vertiginous new novel. Both hold, for me, a boundlessly engaging fascination that comes at the price of being made to feel infinitesimally small: not merely as a human being, but as a writer, too. The scale of his works since Cryptonomicon in 1999 has been such as to require a greater commitment than some marriages.
Socca, London: Much is very good, but the missteps baffle restaurant review
Jay Rayner on restaurantsFoodReviewChef Claude Bosi’s masterful touch can be felt at Socca in Mayfair, but sadly not in everything
Socca, 41a South Audley Street, London W1K 2PS (020 3376 0000). Small plates £9-£35, pasta dishes £18-£48, mains £25-£66, desserts £12, wines from £47
Fancy Mayfair restaurants are full of older people wearing young people’s shirts. Every night these tables are a study in the abject fear of mortality. Bring on the Botox and the fillers and the inappropriate piped music they’re pretending to like.
Stanley cups took the world by storm. Then the backlash began
Life and styleLong marketed to men, the reusable water bottles underwent a TikTok-fueled transformation. Can it last?
On New Year’s Eve, Meagan Howard waited outside a Target in Louisiana to buy this season’s most coveted accessory: a shiny pink travel tumbler called the Starbucks x Stanley Quencher. When the doors opened, Howard took off like a race horse leaving the starting gate, running as fast as her Uggs could carry her.