Friday
Nova Scotia gunman used fake police cruiser to flag down victims
‘Authorities soon realized the suspected gunman owned several decommissioned police cruisers, but officers initially mistakenly believed all were accounted for. Two were found on fire at his house, and officers in Halifax located the third at another one of [Gabriel] Wortman’s properties.’
I’ve never seen ... Forrest Gump
‘The whole thing, from first frame to the last, was really rough. And even a bit offensive. I get annoyed when people criticise movies from the 1940s for being politically incorrect, but for something as recent as 1994 Forrest Gump is one sexist film.’
Experience: I live in a zoo
‘Every morning I wake up at seven when our gibbon, Jimmy, starts singing loudly. I take a coffee into the garden and chat to the harrier hawks and the ibis in the aviary. We’ve hand-reared baby animals in our lodge. We took turns to feed our sloth, Edward, through the night when his mother couldn’t. Beanie, a newborn giant anteater, lived with us, too.’
Rachel Riley wins first round of court case against Corbyn aide
‘Riley has described [Laura] Murray’s tweet as an “appalling distortion of the truth” and is now suing for damages. She says Murray’s tweet contained “defamatory statements of fact” about her. In her defence, Murray argued that the tweet was not defamatory and was a statement of her opinion.’
I’m finally watching Game of Thrones and it’s made me a total pearl-clutcher
‘The problem with watching a show so late is that you can’t discuss it with other people. I’m not going to phone my friends and say, “Do you remember in Game Of Thrones about seven years ago when they had that Red Wedding? That was mad, wasn’t it?”’
Saturday
The bittersweet story of Marina Abramović’s epic walk on the Great Wall of China
‘After slipping on rocks as slippery as polished ice, Abramović and her guide found themselves hanging over an abyss. She found homes and stables built into the winding wall, and other parts that had been dismantled by locals who, under Mao’s encouragement to “kill the dragon”, had removed the clay and stones to build with. Once, Abramović claimed to have walked through a kilometre of human bones.’
How we stay together: ‘Looking after each other, everything else would fall into place’
‘He says he just knew: “It just felt so comfortable that I knew this would be the person I’d spend the rest of my life with. Margaret agrees: “[It was like] putting the key in the lock and it fits and you turn the key and your life was on the other side of the door.”’
Blind date: ‘I put on perfume for a video call’
‘What did you talk about? Cricket, bad chat-up lines, the fact that my friend encouraged me to do this because I’m apparently single and desperate, the accents we do when we get drunk and lie about our identities (me: scouse, him: South African). Everything but coronavirus.’
Will justice finally be done for Emmett Till? Family hope a 65-year wait may soon be over
‘In August, it will be 65 years since the battered and bloated body of the 14-year-old Till was fished from the muddy waters of the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi. His kidnapping, torture and murder on 28 August 1955 for having whistled at a white woman was a defining moment of postwar American history, sparking the civil rights movement.’
Love and obsession: how one of the finest UK ceramics collections ended up in a London council flat
‘Until recently, one of the best British postwar ceramics collections was to be found on a council estate in east London. “It was a bit like walking into a reliquary,” says the ceramicist Annie Turner. “You’d go into a pretty brutal-looking 1970s building and up a dull concrete stairwell and think, ‘Am I in the right place?’. Then you opened this door, and it was like entering another world.”’
Sunday
World Cup questions: Were England robbed by Argentina at Mexico 86?
‘Only Peter Reid is really running around. He dispossesses Maradona, loses his boot and keeps on running. For 15 minutes he’s the best player on the pitch. His opposite number is Sergio Batista, who despite being only 23 has perfected the classic bearded serial killer midfielder look. The crowd noise is an ambient hum through this, with sudden vague hisses of excitement.’
Chain reaction: the ups and downs of Britain’s high street stalwarts
‘Behold the British restaurant chain. Now that we all speak fluent independent bistro, taqueria and live fire grill, we are, of course, meant to look disdainfully upon them and all their works. Which, in true Carrie Bradshaw style, raises the simplest of questions: are the chains a valuable part of the British restaurant landscape?’
Biden searches for his own ‘Biden’ – a running mate with chemistry
‘Though Biden has been coy about his preferences, he has been consistent in his requirement that his running mate be someone he “completely trusts” to carry out his agenda yet is unafraid to challenge him on major decisions. Biden told a Pittsburgh radio station that he would select Michelle Obama as his running mate “in a heartbeat” but suspected that she has no “desire to live near the White House again”.’
‘They were literally about to turn me off and on again’: Robert Webb on his brush with mortality
‘My mood during the weeks before the operation was the kind of hysterical calm you’d expect from someone who’s just made an appointment to get hit by a lorry. I wandered quietly around the house downloading audiobooks and trying not to have a heart attack.’
Scrum time for Beaumont and Pichot: the dinosaur v the dynamo
‘Beaumont has had a trying couple of weeks, what with his campaign being backed by a convicted killer who has been condemned by Amnesty International. The Fiji rugby union chairman has been denied a visa for the US but astonishingly he emerged as a key supporter of Beaumont’s bid. It is just one of this campaign’s great ironies that a key part of Sir Bill’s manifesto is a fit and proper persons test for elected officials.’
