There is something rather strange about watching a sport you have fallen in love with become a phenomenon. When I first started playing padel seriously, it still felt like a secret that Britain had only just discovered. You could walk into a club and there was a genuine sense that everyone there was part of something new; people were figuring out the game together, discovering the peculiarities of the walls, the strange little tactical battles that emerge between four players

The first thing you notice is not the colour of Rare Beauty’s blush, nor the softness of its finish. It is the object’s behaviour in your hand. The cap offers less resistance than expected. The bottle does not immediately slide away. The shape gives the fingers somewhere to settle. A product that, in another context, might be described as elegant or minimal instead seems to be asking a more practical question: How many different ways might a person need to hold this? That que

There is something wonderfully irrational about a marathon. No human being needs to run 26.2 miles anymore. We have cars, trains, bicycles, buses and, in London at least, an Underground system capable of transporting you from one side of the city to the other while barely requiring you to stand up. And yet, every year, tens of thousands of people gather in Greenwich and willingly attempt to travel 26.2 miles using nothing but their legs. Soon, I hope to be one of them. The Pr

The best racquet sports coaches I have ever met all seem to agree on one thing: don't specialise too early. Learn movement before tactics. Timing before power. Feel before force. There is a reason the world's best padel players almost all have a serious tennis background, and why former ATP and WTA professionals can walk onto a padel court and, within months, dismantle players who have spent years immersed in the sport. It isn't because tennis is "better." It is because tenni

There are certain truths in grooming and skincare that take years to discover, not because they are hidden, but because they are drowned out by trends. For the longest time, I thought cleansing was merely the functional part of skincare. The necessary prelude before the “important” steps — serums, moisturisers, retinoids, masks and treatments. I invested in expensive creams while giving very little thought to what I was washing my face with. Like many men, I gravitated toward

There are certain products we invite into our lives so routinely that they become almost invisible. We reach for them each morning without thought, guided by habit rather than curiosity. Toothpaste. Shampoo. Coffee. Deodorant. For most of my adult life, deodorant occupied that category. It sat quietly in the bathroom cabinet, performing its duty with such apparent simplicity that I never once stopped to ask what it was actually doing. It was only recently, while standing in f

There is something deeply addictive about being a beginner again. Not the polished confidence that comes from years of repetition, nor the comfort of muscle memory built over thousands of hours on court, but the awkward, exhilarating uncertainty of learning something entirely new. The missed timings. The accidental winners. The moments where instinct betrays you because your body is still trying to understand the language of a different sport. That feeling is precisely why I’

There is a particular kind of seduction in the idea of longevity. Not the superficial version—the cold plunge, the supplement stack, the morning routine engineered within an inch of its life—but the deeper, more elusive promise: that somewhere in the world, a culture has quietly solved the riddle of living well. Of ageing not as decline, but as refinement. For years, I chased that idea with almost anthropological curiosity. Japan offered discipline. Precision. Ritual. The cho

There is a particular honesty that only arrives with time. Not the first month, not even the third—but somewhere deep into sustained use, when novelty has worn off and only results remain. That is where I now find myself, reflecting not only on nearly a year with the Nira ecosystem, but on the arrival of the Nira Pro 3—a device that, on paper, represents the most refined version of everything that came before it. And yet, what makes this moment interesting is not simply wheth