Innholdsfortegnelse for 1/29/2024 i The Big Issue

I’m very taken by the story of Merlin – the dog, rather than the shape-shifting magician pal of Arthur. Though there is something magical about the dog. Merlin, a springer spaniel, went missing on New Year’s Day. He suffered a fit in his owner’s front garden in the village of Seaton in Cumbria and bolted. The frantic owner, Daniel Horsley, took to social media to ask for help to find him. He got quite a lot of help. Within hours over 100 people were involved in the search, bringing drones and heat-seeking cameras. But even with more technology than normally deployed in a chase scene in Slow Horses, Merlin wasn’t found, through the day, or into the night. And then was. Or rather he wandered in, hours later, like a…

Welcome to Big Issue Recipe Collection At Big Issue we like to find opportunities to make things better. When our longstanding vendors Paul Logan and Kelvin Gregory met Big Issue Ambassador Sophie Winkleman last month, they got to discussing recipes and how good it would be if Big Issue carried a few. In the past, we have had recipes from our vendors and at Christmas we look to wallet-beating alternatives to the seasonal splurge. This time, it’s a little different. Going with a good idea from that cold day in London, we want to build a useful recipe collection, of delicious meals at pocket-friendly prices. And we want everybody involved: our vendors, our readers, our supporters; just about anybody. Recipes can be for easy snacks or big dinners, vegetarian, vegan…

The year I turned 16 was an amazing year. I’ve never told anybody this in my life, but I remember standing in my mum’s bathroom when I was 16 thinking, “This year is amazing and it feels like it is lasting forever.” I left school, started work – it was a very special time for me. I was brought up on a council estate and I loved it. This is not a sob story because it was bloody brilliant. We had the best time ever on my estate. We used to get into a bit of trouble but mainly all we did was ride our BMXs, chase girls and play football. And then, because I was a bit of a nerd, back in my little bedroom in my little council…

REVIEW A satirical take on American Fiction Jeffrey Wright collects franchises like football stickers. He played principled Gotham cop Jim Gordon in 2022’s gothic blockbuster The Batman. He was Bond’s reliable CIA buddy Felix Leiter throughout the Daniel Craig 007 era. He’s also the mellifluous voice of all-seeing multiverse godhead the Watcher in the Marvel TV series What If …? From the original Hunger Gamesfilm series to video game smash The Last of Us Part II, Wright signs on for huge media projects in supporting roles and does such a quietly terrific job it leaves you wanting more. At times, his burdened brainiac Bernard seemed to be single-handedly keeping HBO’s ponderous robo-dystopia Westworld afloat. So it feels good that in the contemporary satire American Fiction, which has been nominated for…

CLASSICAL Armed and ready for peace A high-pitched cello solo floats over the orchestra, its melody undecorated in anguish. Then, a tenor introduces the Benedictus, supported by huge chorus and underlined by crashing timpani. Whereas the majority of new classical music has to fight for a second hearing, Karl Jenkins’ The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace is said to be performed, somewhere in the world, on average twice a week. There have been more than 3,000 performances since the work was premiered in 2000 (with Julian Lloyd Webber as cellist), dedicated to victims of the Kosovo crisis. Like Britten’s War Requiem (1962), which blends secular texts – such as poetry by Wilfred Owen – with the Latin mass, The Armed Man uses the Islamic call to prayer, as well…

VINCENT LEWIS, 60 Where would I be if I wasn’t selling The Big Issue? Dead maybe. If I had gone that way I would almost certainly have been drinking heavily. I might have been in prison by now. I don’t know where I would be, in all honesty. The Big Issue has changed my life. You get good and bad days, but it is definitely my backbone. I am more confident than I have ever been through selling The Big Issue. It has been amazing. I sell the magazine every day and night, from my tent opposite the Lloyds Bank in Cwmbran. The Big Issue is my life. I don’t do a lot else to be honest. I do like rugby and football and play a game of pool now…

HOUSING CRISIS How many times is too many times for a one-year-old baby to be hospitalised due to a damp and mould-ridden home? It’s been more than three years since the death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak from a respiratory condition caused by damp and mould in the flat where he lived – and yet the state of the housing crisis continues to throw up shocking stories of children living in horror homes. Dareen Nuru turned one this month but has already been hospitalised six times due to the mould-infested and overcrowded one-bedroom home she shares with six other members of her family in the London borough of Lambeth. Medical professionals linked breathing difficulties that have hospitalised Dareen to the conditions in her family home and have warned of a “disaster…

OPINION My mother, always my greatest critic, believed when I was 15 that by the age of 18 I would be hung. Not by some ruffians but by the state, by the men in dark, dark blue uniforms who would crowd round me before my swinging, and make sure that I was made bereft of breath. Fortunately her prophesy was found to be wide of the mark, and here I am at the foothills of my 78th birthday proving that she was wrong, her reasoning based exclusively on the fact that most of those who got hung for murder started off as petty thieves and insignificant wrongdoers. And I was certainly of this calibre. Attaining this late-70s age, which so far has not reduced me to pain or immobility, is…

CULTUREART The Glasgow visual arts charity and gallery supporting people with learning disabilities and mental ill-health, Project Ability, returns to Platform in Easterhouse with a large-scale painting exhibition titled ReConnect. Taking full advantage of the large exhibition space, paintings created are much larger than anything the artists typically have the opportunity to make. Each artist displays their own style and painting technique and explores their own themes and subjects. Admission is free. The artwork pictured is Astral Trance by Tony Murray. Until 6 April; platform-online.co.uk The work on this page is created by people who are marginalised. Contact street.lights@bigissue.com to see your art here. To see more and buy prints: bigissueshop.com. At least half of the profit goes to the artist.…

CULTURE INTERVIEW Have you ever despaired at the dating apps on your phone, shuddered at the grim rendezvous they bring? For anyone who’s been victim of the casual nastiness or outright abuse that’s common on Tinder and Bumble, there’s a dark thrill to be found in the BBC’s new supernatural drama. Created by Gangs of Londonwriter Lauren Sequeira and starring Siena Kelly (who you’ll recognise from the excellent Channel 4 drama Adult Material), Domino Day follows the titular witch as she swipes – not to find a soulmate, but to hunt. The result is a gleefully gory feminist revenge fantasy. Right at the start, we see Domino go home with a sleazy date. He isn’t listening when she says no, comfortable that he can get what he wants. He…

MENTAL WELLBEING Recognising when it’s time to talk Harmeet* had hoped the anxiety and depression she experienced during university after the loss of her father would never come back. After a prolonged period of grieving, she was finally able to graduate, later getting married and becoming pregnant. But following a traumatic birth and subsequent postnatal depression, Harmeet found herself back in that dark place. Unsure of how to get through it, she prioritised getting outside and meeting with other new mums. One of the mums who was a doctor suggested Harmeet contact her GP about how she was feeling. Her GP listened, following up the appointment with a referral for counselling through NHS Talking Therapies, a service offered that can help people struggling with feelings of depression, excessive worry, social…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue Put it to the vote “The ONLY wasted vote is one that isn’t used”, says Howling Laud Hope [Issue 1598, 15 January]. I would like to point out that there are many potential votes which are not allowed. I have lived in the UK since 1997, worked for the NHS for over 20 years, paid national insurance and have the right to remain. I was born in the Netherlands and have a Dutch passport. I came to Britain when it was still in the EU. I have never felt the need to apply for British citizenship and am sure many fellow Europeans who have settled here feel the same. But that…

HOSPITALITY IN CRISISGRASSROOTS MUSIC VENUES Heavily tipped to be one of the bands of 2024, Leeds alt-rockers English Teacher have been feted across the music press and BBC 6 Music. They’ve signed to Island Records, performed on Later... With Jools Holland, been handpicked to support Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Paolo Nutini, and captivated crowds at Glastonbury, SXSW and Reading and Leeds. But none of this would have happened, they say, without independent grassroots music venues. “We literally wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing now without independent, small venues,” affirms guitarist Lewis Whiting. English Teacher are the artist ambassadors for this year’s Independent Venue Week (IVW), which sees more than 200 UK venues join together to hail the power of the grassroots to break new music from diverse artists, build community…

ESSAY Connections beyond the borders of park life In April 2020 at the beginning of the first lockdown I met two very unusual men, Nick and Pascal, who for five years had been living and sleeping rough without a tent under some hornbeam trees in a quiet corner of Regent’s Park. They had lived alongside each other without shelter in London’s streets and parks for over 16 years. Nick, in his sixties, and Pascal, in his forties, make an unusual pair – not least because they do not regard themselves as homeless and express positive views about being outside. They appreciate the beauty of a dawn sky and moonlit night. They endure rain, frost and snow with equanimity. They talk of how the world is their home rather than associating…

It’s only been 2024 for about five minutes and we’ve had a 16-year-old darts champion who doesn’t look a day over 46, Barry Keoghan doing unspeakable things to plugholes, and Diane from The Traitors, who is now a gay icon from the top of her voluminous gingery head right down to the bottom of her Karrimor gilet. I’m exhausted already. I think I was expecting what marketing types like to call a ‘soft launch’ this year. Maybe a few weeks of de-escalation from the high-pitched horrors of 2023? A few cups of herbal tea, perhaps, and some nice cosy episodes of Winterwatch? (Or maybe not. I just googled Winterwatch and was met with the screaming headline ‘OUTRAGE OVER DEAD DEER FOOTAGE.’ Viewers are up in arms, with one saying: “Trying…