Life
BBC
My trip to Venezuela with David Attenborough
I was lucky enough to accompany David Attenborough, who turned 100 yesterday, on a trip to the Venezuelan rainforest more than 25 years ago, says Allison Pearson in The Daily Telegraph. My biggest takeaway was that “he doesn’t just put it on for the camera”. Filming a sequence high above the tree canopy in sauna-like heat, the then septuagenarian was repeatedly hoisted up and down in a giant bucket, growing redder each time and increasingly covered in angry insect bites. The production assistant valiantly tried to tidy his ruffled hair and his sweat-soaked shirt, but vanity bores him. And somehow, through it all, his good humour never wavered. “This repellent works very well,” he deadpanned at one point. “The mosquitoes can’t get enough of the stuff.”
The only time I saw him pay attention to his appearance was when our small plane made an emergency landing on the Colombian border and was immediately surrounded by young men toting automatic weapons. He whipped out a comb to score a “prep-school parting”, put on a jacket and descended on to the tarmac with “ambassadorial bearing”. The soldiers, charmed by his courtesy, backed off. At night, in our mud hut, he would pop on what he called his “poplin jim-jams” – “Like getting into clean sheets every night,” he said – before lying down on a camp bed “about as comfy as a coffin”. When, on our last day, I complained about the rainforest, Sir David “gently” took me to task. “But Allison,” he said, “look at this.” Crouching by the path, he picked a plant with a lovely sage leaf and a coronet of buds. “This is selaginella, a survivor of the Jurassic era. Just think: this was eaten by dinosaurs.” So I did as the great man instructed, and looked at the plant closely. “And he was right. It was incredible.”
Property
THE ISLAND HOUSE This former convent sits above Totland Bay on the western tip of the Isle of Wight, with sea views over the Solent, says The Sunday Times. Extending to nearly 7,000 sq ft, the eight-bedroom house has been significantly upgraded in recent years, with a rear extension adding a kitchen and dining area with bi-fold doors opening on to a terrace with a heated swimming pool. Period features include an elegant staircase, ornate ceilings and decorative fireplaces, while more modern additions include a cinema room, gym and home office. £1.775m. Click on the image to see the listing.
Heroes and villains
Instagram/@giorgiameloni
Hero
Giorgia Meloni, who posted an AI-generated image of herself in lingerie to highlight the dangers of deepfakes. The Italian PM joked that whoever created it had “improved me quite a bit”, before noting that while she could defend herself against made-up images, “many others cannot”. Self-deprecating, witty and cool, says Janice Turner in The Times. “Brava.”
Villain
A bank clerk in Chicago who angrily hung up on the Pope when he was trying to update his address. Pope Leo XIV called using his real name Robert Prevost, only to be told he would need to come to a branch in person. After a short back and forth, the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics asked: “Would it matter to you if I told you I am Pope Leo?” At which point the clerk hung up. Happily, His Holiness asked a priest in Chicago to contact the president of the bank, who agreed to make an exception.
Hero
American football player Younghoe Koo, whose attempted field goal in a game last December was so bad it saved a fan’s life. Mark Toothaker laughed so hard at the New York Giants kicker’s duffed effort that he had a seizure, which led to him being diagnosed with, and successfully treated for, a brain tumour. “To be in your own bed at home, not behind the wheel of a car or travelling,” says his wife Malory. “It was the best-case scenario.”
Villains
Airport boozers, according to Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary, who has called for a ban on people drinking before early flights. The Irishman says his airline has to divert an average of nearly one flight a day because of disruptions from boozed-up travellers, up from one a week 10 years ago. “I fail to understand why anybody in airport bars is serving people at five or six o’clock in the morning,” he said. “Who needs to be drinking beer at that time?”
Global update
Getty
The Kremlin’s top-secret school for spies
Bauman Technical University, which sits on the banks of the Yauza River two and a half miles east of Moscow’s Red Square, is home to some of Russia’s finest scientific minds. It’s also training up the country’s next generation of spies, says Der Spiegel. In the secret and innocuously named “Department 4”, aspiring spooks are taught how to become intelligence agents, hackers and saboteurs. Leaked lecture notes show detailed breakdowns of information-gathering equipment: a smoke detector that is actually a camera; a device that sits undetected between a keyboard and a computer logging every keystroke; a monitor cable that secretly captures screenshots. Students are taught about which drones are used by, among others, America, Norway, Germany and Ukraine. For the information warfare seminar, they have to develop a social media campaign involving “manipulation, pressure and hidden propaganda”.
Among the core courses is a 144-hour module, split over two semesters, teaching the “full toolkit of modern hackers”: password attacks, disguising malicious programmes as legitimate software, everything. To pass, students must carry out “practical penetration tests”; in the “computer viruses” module, they have to successfully develop a virus themselves. The GRU, Russia’s military intelligence directorate, controls the recruitment and grading process, sending in its own officers to conduct exams, approve candidates and oversee placements. One top 2024 grad was assigned to “Fancy Bear”, the hacking group accused of interfering in the 2016 US election; another graduated into the hacker unit known as Sandworm, accused by Western governments of unleashing some of the most destructive cyber-attacks of the past decade. It’s a real-life “school for spies”.
The Knowledge Crossword
Staying young
Lette: no “man drought” for her. Dave Benett/Getty
Life over 60: champagne and “horizontal tango”
When I divorced my husband of 28 years, says Kathy Lette in The Guardian, I was repeatedly warned of the forthcoming “man drought”. I could join a dating website, friends said, but any available fella would only be interested in a woman 20 years younger. I could exercise manically, inject collagen, abstain from cake and crisps and I’d still be as invisible as Monaco is in world politics. I could go out looking for a solvent, sexy, capable man who likes three types of lettuce in his salads, I was told, but a few fruitless months later, I’d inevitably settle for any lad who still had his own teeth. It was clear: “The only time I’d be naked in front of a stranger ever again would be at the morgue.”
How wrong they all were. Now 67, I’ve being living with a “Celtic maestro” seven years my junior for eight happy and harmonious years. My female friends in their 60s are the same, most of them “swinging off a chandelier with a toyboy between their teeth”. From my very scientific research – “cocktails with girlfriends” – I’ve gleaned that this is because we finally feel like we’ve come into our true selves. Without kids at home we’re no longer tethered to the hearth by the heart and apron strings, and the “f*** it” gene is in full swing, freeing us from giving a jot about what anyone else thinks. My vibrant, adventurous mates are embracing their “second act” with pluck, panache and aplomb, be it climbing Everest, canoeing the Amazon, backpacking through Europe, tap dancing on table tops or taking a hot new lover. The 60th birthday, it turns out, is not the start of some tragic trope, but nature’s way of telling a woman to “drink more champers and do more horizontal tango”.
Weather
Quoted
“For the unlearned, old age is winter; for the learned, it is the season of the harvest.”
Old Hasidic saying
That’s it. You’re done.
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