Costa Coffee is possibly the most ubiquitous business on the British high street.
Everywhere you turn, someone’s drinking out of those maroon cups.
Go inside one and most folk seem to be chugging down tepid cups of flat white or mocha.
So popular is its ‘flat’ collection, in fact, that Costa has decided to add another caffeinated stablemate.
Enter: the Flat Black.
What’s what you say? A Flat Black? What magic has been added to say, an Americano, to make it ‘flat’?
Well, nothing.
The world seems to be becoming an increasingly precarious place.
You’ve got maniacs on both sides of the world threatening to press their nuclear buttons. Plastic chocking our seas. People being poisoned in the middle of Zizzis.
Eventually, we’ll all be cowering in our underground bunkers awaiting a new dawn.
And when that happens, Costco has you covered.
Because the bulk buy giant is selling a year’s worth of grub to last a year in the event of an apocalypse – and it’s a bargain.
Never one to miss an opportunity to make some cash, Costco now stocks the Nutristore One-year Premium Food Kit, which comes with a massive 36,000 servings… Read the full story
I went to boarding school for sixth form and the experience completely changed my life.
I went from a grammar school where people looked at you funny if you only got a B on a test to an alternative universe where your social standing was determined by the type of tie around your neck.
Boarding school taught me to be independent; I was introduced to people who I never thought in a million years I would meet, including actual princesses of other countries.
But, most of all, it taught me about pride, ambition, discipline and camaraderie that has stayed with me until this very day.
Here… Read the full story
Middle Earth lovers have been known to do eccentric things like eating all the hobbit food, or redecorating their homes to resemble the Baggins’.
One Lord of the Rings fan has decided to turn into his love of J.R.R Tolkien’s books into a business venture – by setting up his own company building hobbit houses.
Matt Wright, from Mansfield, began digging in his garden and decided to start his own business after receiving lots of encouraging words from his family and friends.
Well, who doesn’t want a mate who owns a hobbit house?
You can buy the bassinet and learn Lamaze, but you can never truly prepare for having a baby.
There are no shortage of women willing to share their horror stories: ‘You will never sleep again’; ‘They cut me from front to back’; and just as many blog posts on everything from decorating the nursery to nursing your child.
In between, there is a middle ground full of Stuff… Read the full story
There’s only been one true eyebrow icon.
Years before Cara Delevingne started cashing in on our love of bushy brows, Frida Kahlo was sporting some serious facial furniture.
Her brows have since become a costume in themselves. Thick, unplucked, glorious.
They’re synonymous with the artist’s image.
And thanks to the upcoming Kahlo exhibition happening at the V&A, we finally know what product she used to enhance her monobrow.
Never cut your own bangs. That’s one of life’s absolute rules.
So if you wanted to try the latest rainbow hair trend on Instagram, you might want to enlist some professional help.
There are so many kooky hair styles these days, from unicorn, to mermaid, and even pizza hair – but the latest is even more colourful.
American colour specialist Caitlin Ford has been experimenting with hair dye, creating a look with rainbow stripes painted on her fringe.
Although the Missouri stylist first did it with the help of a friend, she now tops up the colour by herself, with hardly a glance at the mirror.
And here we are, unable… Read the full story
Few films are quite as iconic as 10 Things I Hate About you.
Who hasn’t started can-canning on a set of steps, a la Patrick (Heath Ledger, RIP)? Who didn’t rock the whole long-sleeve crop top like Julia Stiles?
While those good old ’90s days might be well behind us, you can still live out those innocent childhood dreams.
Because the house from the film is now up for sale, going at a cool $1.6 million (£1.2 million).
The five-bedroom… Read the full story
Our plastic consumption is out of control.
In 1950, we were consuming around five million tonnes of plastic. In 2014, that figure had shot up to 311 million. And the 2015 Plastic Europe Report predicts that that figure is set to double in the next 20 years.
And although more and more of us are avoiding disposable plastic cups, straws and bags, we still consume unnecessary plastic packaging on a daily basis.
It’s hard to go plastic-free, partially because you can’t see the direct impact your plastic habit has on the world at large.
Which is why diver Rich Horner has shared a video of a recent trip under the sea.
I was having dinner with three of my closest friends and their husbands when someone, presumably accidentally, mentioned that oft-quoted statistic that ‘one in three couples get divorced’.
Oh, how we laughed, because we didn’t think it was legitimate, and because divorce seemed a risible improbability in our close-knit, happily married group.
Also, we’d been drinking… Read the full story
Have you ever been caught short when you came on your period at work?
Ever felt a pang of worry because you couldn’t afford to buy a box of tampons, and had to leave them in longer than you were supposed to, to make them last?
One woman thinks she has the answer to this – companies should provide workers with free towels and tampons.
Freda is a period subscription service that sells 100% organic sanitary products, allows customers to sync deliveries to their cycles, and gives away a portion of its sales to charities that provide sanitary products to women in need.
It just launched the Freda Period… Read the full story
A breast cancer survivor has quit her high powered job to start a fetish business, selling pictures and videos of her six-inch finger and toe-nails.
Arinda Storm Lonely, 56, began her business after having a double mastectomy 12 years ago, and started detailing her cancer journey on her MySpace account.
It was there that she started sharing snaps of her talons – her pride and joy – as she recovered.
Arinda, from Ohio, says that she was shocked to receive requests from strangers asking to watch her do things with her nails.
‘I had no idea this world of nail… Read the full story
‘How can you be Muslim when x, y, z…?’ Blah blah blah. *Yawn*
The number of times I’ve had discussions (arguments) with people trying to convince me God is problematic is ridiculous.
Whatever your opinion, my religion has been good for my mental health.
I’m not sure what it is about religion, especially among the non-believers, that aggravates people so much when you tell them you believe in one God, a heaven and hell, and consequences of your actions.
It’s like people don’t want to be told they’re going to burn in hell if they don’t abide by God’s rules?
You may have heard the statistic that one in four people in the UK will experience a mental health problem each year.
The good news is that stigma is slowly being tackled and last year the government announced that they would be injecting £1.3billion into mental health services across the country.
Yoga appears to be everywhere these days.
Go to your local health centre and you’ll probably find at least three variations going on – often in the least peaceful of environments.
Yet, despite how ubiquitous the practice has become in this country, proper yogis still seem to be of a type.
Leggy, white, tanned, fresh back from Bali, yah?, yoga enthusiasts don’t seem to be a very diverse group. And that can be off-putting.
‘There is an issue with diversity within yoga, and the reason for this is there is one particular image that is perpetuated by the… Read the full story
How great are chip shop chips?
While I personally prefer kebab shop chips to their chunky brethren at the chippy, they’re all wonderful once they’ve been fried to perfection and doused in salt and vinegar.
Do you know what I hate about them though? That they all go soggy when they get cold, and that they don’t reheat well.
Time and time again, I’ve not been able to manage all my chips, and not being a fan of food waste, I’ll save them and try and resurrect them the next day.
But alas – whether I microwave or oven heat them, they’re still soft, just… Read the full story
Fat is stored in lots of different areas of the body – but visceral fat is definitely not the kind you want to build up.
This specific sort of fat has been linked with numerous health risks, including Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, arthritis, dementia and the likelihood of having a stroke.
So what is visceral fat, where is it found in the body, how do you measure it and what can you do about it?
Michelin starred food isn’t something you’d usually expect to find at a London market, let’s be real.
While the quality of street food is excellent in London, no-one is expecting it to be top notch, fancy quality – until now.
The world’s first Michelin starred street food hawker is coming to London for three days only, and you can get his signature dish of soya sauce chicken and rice for just £6.
Chef Chan Hon Meng is from Singapore and will be flying over to serve up delicious food at Kerb Kings Cross, between 14 – 16 March.
You’ll have… Read the full story
If you and your partner have decided to try for a baby, you may have a LOT of questions.
Top of the list may be whether there is a sex position which is better than the others to help you conceive.
There are plenty of Old Wive’s Tales, myths and opinions out there about what’s best but we decided to speak to an expert for a definitive answer.
And one man who should know is Dr… Read the full story
When I was growing up making friends seemed easy, and I’ve always had mates throughout school, university and work.
But two years ago I made the decision to move far away from all of my friends.
Not ‘other side of the world’ far away, but far away to the point that nights out are now a bi-annual occurrence, which involve months of forward planning, expensive train tickets and hotel stopovers.
I’m a proud introvert and I can happily spend days home alone with my laptop and a good book, with no… Read the full story
