When MasterChef Australia winner Julie Goodwin met Mick, she thought he was ‘too cool’ for her. Then one moonlit night, she realised he was a keeper

In the weeks between school ending and university beginning in Sydney, I ran into my friend Chris who was flat-out with a new youth group he had started under the banner of St Vincent de Paul. I asked if I could come along and rocked up to my first meeting in January 1989.

The other people in the room were all guys who had gone to St Leo’s Catholic College, including Micky G, the tallest boy I had ever met, standing at six foot seven inches – 2 metres. There was colourful language and boisterous laughter. These guys were rough as guts, but here they were organising blanket and food drives for local people who were struggling. They were distributing sandwiches in Sydney city in the dead of night. They had hearts of pure gold, and they became my people.

Why tie the knot with someone you have lived with for years – and what happens next? Three women share their stories

On the surface, marriage might not appear relevant to many Australians today. Indeed, most women and half of men say that’s so . De facto couples enjoy the same legal rights as their wedded counterparts, one in seven Australians are in a de facto relationship, and a new survey showed a 15% drop in marriage rates among young Australians between 2001 and 2021 . Yet sometimes even long-term de facto couples are choosing to marry, even after decades (and multiple children) together.

Why? And more pertinently: after such a long time, does it change anything?

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A home in an old office block clocks on a new look

How do Europeans live in such grey, beige places? I’m happy waking up in a pink room. Vibrant colours make you joyful; you will never be sad with pink and red,” laughs artist and gallery owner Carlos Rittner from his apartment in Mexico City.

From the exterior, the 1940s converted office block, which is a stone’s throw from the Zócalo plaza, the world’s largest city square, is modest, but step through the banana-yellow front door and you are instantly transported into an art installation.

Scientific studies cannot agree on the relative importance of genes and environment on how we turn out as adults

The eternal mystery of how much we are shaped by our parents – or how much we shape our children – was stirred again last week with the publication of a study that suggests that we are less like our parents than we had previously thought.

Led by René Mõttus of Edinburgh University’s department of psychology, the study looked at more than 1,000 pairs of relatives to establish how likely children are to inherit what psychologists call the “big five” or “Ocean” personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.

The singer, 58, on staying sane, why he isn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty and how the internet gave his most famous song a new lease of life

Being 10 years younger than my older siblings meant I was bombarded with music from a young age. My older sister, Jane, and brother, John, played records relentlessly. My sister was obsessed with Motown, but also prog rock. The first band I ever saw live was Supertramp.

My dad ran a little garden centre and it made me realise that if you run your own business, you can run your own life. I inherited his work ethic. We all worked at his garden centre after school and at weekends. I was never frightened of getting my hands dirty, often literally.

My parents divorced when I was five and it had a huge impact on me. We lived at my dad’s house for a bit, because my mum had a breakdown. She had five children in total. The middle one, David, died of meningitis. I think she’d had enough and went to live at my grandma’s. The whole experience left me scarred. It made me realise anything can happen at any time and you can’t even rely on the biggest thing you want to count on: your parents being there for you.

The internet gave Never Gonna Give You Up a second life. There’s a generation of people whose kids are saying to them, “Oh, I love this tune,” and the parents are going, “How do you even know who this bloke is?”

Singing on stage with Foo Fighters was surreal. The first time it happened was at a festival in Japan. Dave Grohl had seen I was on the bill on another stage and, when they were playing, suddenly invited me on to sing Never Gonna Give You Up. I was a bit jet lagged and I’d had a few beers. Then I’m singing my song in front of tens of thousands of people.

I’m pretty boring away from the spotlight, but that’s why my life works. When I’m in the spotlight, I’m full of adrenaline and emotion. When I’m off stage, my favourite thing to do is to go for a walk.

My ambition for the future is to remain sane. Seriously. My plan to achieve this is by doing less.

One of the pitfalls of a pop career is that you do something exciting and then think, “We have to do it again – but with more lights.” Some artists can do that. Others need to take stock. I think one of the keys to sanity is having a sense of perspective. It can’t all be Glastonbury.

I can guarantee that Never Gonna Give You Up will not be played at my funeral. I certainly won’t be playing it and I don’t think anyone else will be playing it either. I don’t even know if I want to be remembered. I think the music almost lives in its own world. I’d prefer to be remembered for being a decent person.

With penetrative sex no longer an option, Sebastian and Teresa have found different ways to satisfy one other
How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

I was really worried about how it would affect Teresa. There’s this whole stigma that a ‘real’ man has a working penis

The lead singer on hitting it big, how things fell apart, and the joy of the 1980s revival

Born in Liverpool in 1957, Carol Decker is the lead singer of T’Pau. She was fronting Shropshire band the Lazers when she met BT engineer and musician Ronnie Rogers, with whom she would go on to form T’Pau. Together they became one of the biggest-selling groups of the 1980s, with tracks such as China in Your Hand and Heart and Soul . The group split in 1992 but have since had a renaissance as part of 80s nostalgia tours. They perform at Let’s Rock Scotland and Let’s Rock Leeds festivals this summer.

T’Pau were on tour in Switzerland when the NME decided to cover us. Their vision for the shoot was: the band are at the height of their success with the world at their feet, but Carol is a pizza girl at heart.

The law is badly lagging behind when it comes to rights for LGBTQ+ families. We need urgent root-and-branch reform

The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act is 10 years old . In the UK, any couple can marry . Likewise, thanks to this courageous pair , any couple can now get a civil partnership. On marriage, the law has kept pace with the diversifying society it exists to regulate and protect.

If you reflect on what was updated – the religious institution of marriage – and how long it had been the way it was, it hits you afresh how monumental this step forward was. Yet here we are. The equality of love has become a cliche. Young children have only known a world where every auntie and uncle they’ll ever have could get married. It is meticulous and slow but ultimately, whether through parliament or the courts, the law moves forward.

Freddy McConnell is a freelance journalist

The photographer documents daily life at Sunda Kelapa harbour in North Jakarta, Indonesia, including the schoolchildren who turn it into their playground

After school, many of the children local to the Sunda Kelapa harbour, in North Jakarta, Indonesia, go down to the water to swim and play. Jelly Febrian enjoys shooting the daily activities there whenever the weather is good. Always prepared for the right moment, he carries his phone with him to capture crews loading their boats, people fishing, and boys and girls jumping from the boats, as pictured.

“In the maritime villages near here there aren’t many fields, so the children mostly play around the pier. Every boat that docks here has a different owner and purpose, they load and unload basic necessities, and every week they sail to other Indonesian islands, such as Papua, Sumatra and Sulawesi.