Top 10sFictionIf Valentine’s Day is an unwelcome reminder of what has become of your love life, you can find solace at the bookshop. Here are 10 literary highlights for the lovelorn Some relationships ebb away, petering to their end. There is loneliness and ambivalence after this kind of breakup, no doubt. But there is another altogether more visceral kind – the brutal, sudden and sometimes unexpected end to love, which is experienced like a death.
Music blogMusicAvril Lavigne showed up meet-and-greets for the sham they areEveryone laughed at the awkward photos of the Canadian singer and her fans – but the bigger sin is that so many acts chisel money out of their loyal followers for the briefest access Share your photographs of meetings with music stars It seems peculiar that the greatest online wailing and gnashing of teeth over Avril Lavigne's meet-and-greet with her Brazilian fans – who'd paid a reported £215 for the privilege – seemed to concern the fact that the resulting photos were the model of discomfort.
UK newsBigot on a bridge wins poll for funniest religious jokeThere was the one about Jesus asking to be put up for the night, and puns about paedophile priests, but a tale of two men on a bridge that mocks sectarianism has been found the funniest religious joke by readers of a Christian website. Demonstrating a fondness for black humour about their faith or lack of it, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, atheists and agnostics sent 951 religious jokes to the website Ship of Fools (Shipoffools.
Dorin Atias fled the Supernova music festival and sought refuge at the Re’im kibbutz.View image in fullscreenDorin Atias fled the Supernova music festival and sought refuge at the Re’im kibbutz.Israel-Gaza war This article is more than 3 months oldFriends of woman killed in Israeli kibbutz pledge to rebuild communityThis article is more than 3 months old‘Peace and love are more powerful than terror,’ say friends of 23-year-old Dorin Atias The friends of a 23-year-old killed in a kibbutz after seeking refuge from the massacre at a music festival last Saturday plan to rebuild the community as a sign that “peace and love are more powerful than terror”.
Lockdown cultureTheatreReviewOld Fire Station, Oxford Compassion and community lie at the heart of this hilarious one-woman show about curtain-twitching neighbours Mike Bartlett wrote Mrs Delgado during lockdown, after a period of struggling to put pen to paper, and it has the gleeful glow of someone returning to what they love. The story and characters tumble out fully formed. The jokes feel effortless, the passion instinctive. It’s a heartfelt rallying cry for the importance of community, performed in one of the micro-communities that Bartlett most cherishes: the theatre.