HUMANS OF TANZANIA – CHARLEY SWYNNERTON

I arrived at Charley’s place in Arusha, Tanzania, with an open mind and a two-week booking. What I found was a 55-acre Fever Tree forest, and within it a beautifully styled one-bedroom mud brick cottage. I could tell that a stylist had put this place together, although it would be a few days before Charley herself appeared at my back door. By then, I was already fan-girling her hard, whoever she was.

HUMANS OF TANZANIA – THAMRAT

When I arrived in Paje (pronounced paah-jeh) on the east coast of Zanzibar, I went directly to the beach to have my freckles blown off by a powerful onshore wind, straight off the Indian Ocean. The trade winds which made this place famous blow North East for the whole summer.

The 7 signs of ageing

This headline doesn’t sound like me at all. She’s been hacked! The ‘seven signs of ageing’ have been a marketing ploy my whole life. Normal skin characteristics like ‘visible pores’ have become features that big brands like Olay and Nivea have turned into a problem.

Protest fashion: how the humble T shirt became an agent of change

Women have been using fashion to protest oppression since the suffragettes owned the colour purple, but it was the good ol’ fashioned T-shirt and screenprinting technology that delivered a relatively cheap billboard for rage, writes Lucy Bloom.

Not quite a punch in the face, but close

I was 49.5 years old when I was first introduced to the social phenomenon referred to as ‘lateral violence’. I was at the beginning of a three-month online bullying campaign against me executed by women, all between the ages of 17 and 28. They were young enough to be my kiddies, some of them out to destroy me like their next Saphora voucher depended on it.

42 things I know, now that I’m 42

I never read introductions to list blogs, so let’s just dive in. These are in the order they fell out of my head. Lucy’s top life learnings from 42 years on Earth. Ready, spaghetti, go.