Why is guilt so difficult to shake? I feel regretful to this day about a poor decision I made as a boy

How long must guilt last? When I was a boy, aged about 10, I had a football that I kicked around for years, with my mates, with my brother or all on my own, dribbling aimlessly about or booting it against a wall. This ball conferred upon me some status, for it was what we used to call a caser, which is not a word I’ve used for a good 40 years. A caser meant it was a proper football, with a rubber bladder on the inside and leather on the outside. This was as opposed to a very cheap plastic sphere that blew around in the wind, or one made of thicker plastic and fashioned to look like a caser. The latter was more respectable than the former, but it wasn’t, you know, a caser.

I had this ball for a long time, progressing from being able to do only five keepy-ups, to as many as perhaps 10. Yes, I was that gifted. This was the 70s, at the dawn of which decade Adidas had come up with its Telstar ball for the 1970 World Cup. It was made of 32 leather panels, consisting of 12 black pentagons and 20 white hexagons. My caser was modelled on that caser. It was probably a present from my grandad, but I don’t remember what it looked like when it was new, only how it looked when it was old, when the panels were neither black nor white, just brown, having had all the colour kicked out of them.

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Would a £35,000 holiday help you live longer or just leave you bankrupt? A surprising number of people are paying to find out

Name: Longevity vacations.

Age: New, but I’ll be older, hopefully.

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The cycle of busy periods, burnout and recovery has started to feel grimly predictable. Are we doomed to repeat it forever – or can we develop immunity?

I burned out for the first time at the age of 18. I was studying part-time, working part-time and writing on the side, amounting to more than a full-time workload. I was also partying most nights, wanting to make the most of the last of my student days – and needing to blow off steam.

I thought I was handling the tightrope act pretty well, and in terms of output, I was. But one day, when I turned up to my office job, something about my frazzled response to my boss’s friendly inquiry about my day prompted her to pry further.

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Seven years after a terrible fall, I teamed up with two other disabled sportsmen to scale Iceland’s highest peak. With each drive of my poles into the snow, I came closer to the man I’d once been

The view from the top was breathtaking. It was 2023 and I had just climbed the Hvannadals Peak in Iceland, almost seven years after becoming paralysed from the chest down after a climbing fall. Raging winds had been replaced by crystal clear blue skies. My two teammates and I were on our way to becoming the first all-disabled team to cross Europe’s largest ice cap, the mighty Vatnajökull glacier, unsupported and unassisted.

A year before, when Niall McCann first suggested making the 100-mile trip, I was excited by the prospect of returning to this lost world of crevasses, mountains and ice, but apprehensive and anxious about whether I’d struggle. A small part of me thought about how much easier it would be if I could still walk. Back then, I often put a positive spin on my situation, but I still would have given anything for my legs to work and to be able to walk again.

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This week, Damon Albarn took umbrage at a Coachella crowd who failed to sing along. But he is far from the worst offender

When Coachella 2024 comes to be remembered by future generations, the abiding image will be that of Damon Albarn attempting to engage the crowd in a game of call and response, and then failing, and then having a bit of a go at them.

In fairness to Albarn, it was a weird booking. Blur have always fared poorly in the US. Is this the band’s fault for writing all those songs about how much they dislike America? We may never know. Either way, by berating the crowd for their ambivalence – yelling “You’ll never see us again so you may as well fucking sing it” – Blur have joined the ranks of acts who have turned against their audiences.

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We’ve been together for five years, but I’m losing interest. And he won’t talk about it

My partner of five years has problems with premature ejaculation. He gets overexcited easily and can sometimes ejaculat e before any penetration. I used to have a high sex drive and love having sex, but now I dread the disappointment. He is always willing to try to satisfy me , but I find it so disappointing and I lose interest. It’s affecting how I feel about him. He gets very insecure when we talk about it, so I can’t discuss how I feel without him thinking he’s a failure.

This condition can be treated successfully by a qualified sex therapist. Your partner simply needs to realise that he could have far more pleasure by seeking help for what is a very common issue. Try a matter-of-fact approach and educate him; despite what he probably thinks, he can learn to control his moment of ejaculation and learn to last longer – for his sake as well as yours. Sex therapists’ treatment for early ejaculation usually involves exercises that, while they can be done alone, are often best carried out with a partner, so express your willingness to support him in that way. If he agrees, it will be rewarding for both of you.

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Elizabeth Quinn raids her cutlery drawer for the indispensable – but underrated – utensils that make cooking a breeze

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Most of us have our go-to kitchen gadgets: the occasionally battered tools with the familiar feel that give us the confidence we might otherwise lack. My choux pastry never quite reached the same glossy consistency without the ancient enamel saucepan and “special” wooden spoon combination I had used over 20 years of making croquembouches.

The kitchen utensils we automatically reach for are as idiosyncratic as our thumbprints. A friend once gave me a replacement for my beloved old choux pastry spoon: an “indispensable” alternative stirring implement known as a spurtle. I kept my old spoon and used the spurtle to prop open the door.

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While filming the epic movie, 80 people – including James Cameron and Bill Paxton – were hospitalised after their food was spiked with PCP. Who was behind the psychedelic clam chowder?

Name: The Titanic drug poisoning.

Age: 28.

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I’ve never found it easier to make friends, get ready for a big night or take a good selfie. Thank you, male pattern baldness!

This may come as a shock to you, especially if you’ve spent the past few years using my byline photo as a reference, but I am bald now. Completely, permanently, irreversibly bald. So bald that my children have taken to calling me Egg. So bald that the first thing strangers notice about me is my scalp, rather than my excessively sour personality. So bald that, if I stand under just the right sort of overhead light with just the right level of perspiration, I in effect transform into a sort of sentient disco ball.

I am telling you this upfront because baldness has endowed me with a renewed sense of defensive self-deprecation. If you meet me and I don’t attempt to get ahead of the curve by drawing attention to my lack of hair with a bad joke, know that something has gone terribly wrong. I am so determined to inform everyone that I am bald, despite the wealth of visual evidence already at hand, that I have just written a book about going bald. It is called Bald. It has an egg on the front.

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