The QT

Monday 21 October 2024
21/10/2024

The Storytellers

Reimagining a life after unimaginable loss

On January 18, 2017, Jill Halfpenny unknowingly kissed her partner, Matt, goodbye for the last time. In an utterly relatable scene from households everywhere, she was peeing on an ovulation stick while Matt was getting ready to leave for an early morning gym class. Less than an hour later, Jill was awoken by someone banging …

Cafeโ€™s a place to blend and mend

In the library of the Friends Meeting House in Middlesbrough, the whirr of sewing machines and conversation provide an ambient backdrop to a sunny Saturday morning. The sewing bees stitching and mending are just a handful of volunteers who have given their time to run the townโ€™s very first Repair Cafe. It is the latest …

Poetic power of Morden Tower

On June 16, 1964, Connie and Tom Pickard organised the first poetry reading at Morden Tower on Newcastleโ€™s mediaeval town West Walls. Over the next few years, against the odds, it became an international centre for poetry and one of the most iconic venues for poetry performances in Britain.  It played host to Allen Ginsberg, …

A story to stick withโ€ฆ

Recently while watching Mammals, the latest of David Attenboroughโ€™s remarkable films about the animal kingdom, I was entranced as a gorilla used the branch of a tree to help him walk along a path through dense jungle. Then he went and spoiled the touching image by braying a rival over the head with it. This …

The triumph of their lives

No matter how Englandโ€™s male footballers fare as the Euros get underway in Germany this week, it surely canโ€™t compare with the special achievements of an amateur womenโ€™s team from the grass roots of County Durham. What the Chester-le-Street Amazons have done goes way beyond football. Theirs is a victory for the human spirit. Not …

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