© Photo Erika Santelices/REUTERS
© Natalie Naccache pour « Le Monde »
© RYAN MURPHY / Getty Images via AFP
© « Le Monde »
After I was paralysed in a climbing accident, I discovered how inconsiderate, illogical and incompetent many wheelchair providers can be
I was lying on my back in an east London hospital, sometime in August 2023. I don’t know what day it was, exactly; by that point I’d mostly given up caring. My phone rang. I managed to answer, even though I had largely lost the use of my hands. (Luckily, a member of staff had left it lying on my chest.) Also, I wasn’t feeling great. In the early stages of coming to terms with the fact I was paralysed, I had just been informed that the doctors wanted to drill a hole directly into my guts, inserting a plastic tube to drain away my urine, effectively making my penis redundant. It was proving quite a lot to take in.
Nonetheless, I answered.
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© Photograph: Antonio Zazueta Olmos/The Guardian
© Photograph: Antonio Zazueta Olmos/The Guardian
© Photograph: Antonio Zazueta Olmos/The Guardian
Conch-shell trumpets discovered in Neolithic settlements and mines in Catalonia make tone similar to french horn, says lead researcher
As a child, Miquel López García was fascinated by the conch shell, kept in the bathroom, that his father’s family in the southern Spanish region of Almería had blown to warn their fellow villagers of rising rivers and approaching flood waters.
The hours he spent getting that “characteristically potent sound out of it” paid off last year when the archaeologist, musicologist and professional trumpet player pressed his lips to eight conch-shell trumpets. Their tones, he says, could carry insights into the lives of the people who lived in north-east Spain 6,000 years ago.
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© Photograph: University of Barcelona
© Photograph: University of Barcelona
© Photograph: University of Barcelona
After being incarcerated for murdering her partner, Ruth Kamande studied the legal system to understand her own case. Now she is fighting to reform Kenya’s laws
It is a cool, overcast morning in Nairobi, and Ruth Kamande is in front of a computer, deep in concentration. Next to her is a thick red hardback book entitled Laws of Kenya. Kamande, 30, a diminutive figure in a stripy black and white tunic dress, graduated with a University of London LLB law degree in 2024, and works with incarcerated women. Her office, a small light and airy room that she shares with about 10 others, is in Lang’ata maximum security women’s prison where she is serving a life sentence for murder.
“I used to admire lawyers very much,” she says. “It impressed me when I saw them in movies fighting big cases, but also for people in society who are marginalised. I didn’t know that one day, in very difficult and unusual circumstances, I would become one.”
Kamande, a prisoner at Lang’ata maximum-security women’s prison in Kenya, has successfully helped other incarcerated women win cases
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© Photograph: Spicy Indian/Babita Patel
© Photograph: Spicy Indian/Babita Patel
© Photograph: Spicy Indian/Babita Patel
Are you feeling festive? If not, here are some great and unexpected shortcuts, from fish pie to ‘intermittent wrapping’ to watching a seasonal film every day of December
If I haven’t wrapped up warm and wobbled around in circles, it isn’t Christmas. I can measure out my life in London’s ice rinks. Broadgate Circus in the early 00s, because it was cheapest and I was skint. Several seasons of Skate at Somerset House with my ex, because it was our “romantic” Christmas tradition (actually, he hated skating). This year, I’ll be mixing old and new: Hampton Court Palace, where people have been skating since the 1800s, and the inaugural Skate Leicester Square. As long as there’s a mug of something mulled afterwards, I’m happy. Rachel Dixon, travel writer
Years ago, a regrettable ex-boyfriend bought me a merman Christmas tree ornament so bizarre that it short-circuited my brain, unleashing something primal within me. Ever since, I have scoured department stores, gift shops and the darkest reaches of the internet for more mermaid baubles, like some kind of gay Gollum. I now have more than a hundred, including a flautist mermaid, several Santa Claus mermen and (my favourite) a merperson who is somehow also a pig and a ballerina. Unboxing my treasures at the start of December is both the first gladdening sign that Christmas is upon us and – arguably – a cry for help. Joe Stone, lifestyle editor, Guardian Saturday magazine
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© Composite: Guardian Design; Getty Images
© Composite: Guardian Design; Getty Images
© Composite: Guardian Design; Getty Images
© Mike Segar / REUTERS
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