We don’t know how these Victorian slang terms ever fell out of fashion, but we propose bringing them back, as soon as possible.

The week kicks off with the last quarter moon in Aries pushing us to take a stand on July 9. Mercury in Cancer and Neptune retrograde in Pisces link up the same day, offering us a temporary escape from reality. Action planet Mars brings us back to Earth when it glides into Virgo on July 10. Unfortunately, Mercury and Pluto retrograde in Capricorn are holding onto old grudges and resurfacing them on the 10th. Passions hit an extreme due to Mercury’s ingress into Leo on July 11. This date also urges us to make the choice to tackle these issues head-on in an effort to embrace the good, the bad, and the ugly ramifications of our actions due to Mercury and Mars’ interaction with the Nodes of Destiny. July 14 brings clarity about the week’s drama from Mercury’s momentary coupling with Uranus in Taurus.

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Having an overweight pet could cost owners £1,500 in vets’ bills per visit, claims data has revealed. Common health problems caused by excessive weight include cruciate ligament injuries, urinary tract disease, diabetes and arthritis. Addressing cruciate ligament injuries can mean swallowing a whopping bill of £1,578.28, and urinary tract disease costs for cats are skyrocketing to a jaw-dropping £752.06. Data from pet insurer ManyPets shows, on average, pet owners are forking out £682.65 for a trip to the vets for diabetes, while arthritis costs are coming to £476.61. However, 51 per cent of cat and dog owners are already concerned about their pets’ weight, a separate poll of 2,000 pet owners found. And nearly one in five (18 per cent) with a cat or dog could encounter these bills soon as they believe their pet already is carrying more weight than it should. With almost a fifth (19 per cent) admitting they are already shelling out more to tackle their pets’ fluctuating size. The research was commissioned as part of the ManyPets ‘Why Weight?’ report and launch of its Obesity Learning Hub. Steven Mendel, chief executive and co-founder of the pet insurer, said: “We understand it can be difficult to resist rewarding pets with extra treats, and heart-breaking to say no to them when they’re asking for more food. “But, with obesity associated health problems becoming more and more prevalent, we urge pet parents to think twice to save their pets. “We’re proud to have launched our Obesity Learning Hub to offer tips and veterinary approved advice for pet parents everywhere.” The research went on to find, with the rising cost of living still looming large for many pet owners, 22 per cent have been forced to make cutbacks to their pet’s lifestyle. Almost half (49 per cent) of these are now opting for lower quality brands of food, and 37 per cent have reduced their spend on healthcare. But 88 per cent believe they would be able to recognise the signs a pet is potentially getting to an unhealthy weight, yet only 31 per cent regularly keep an eye on their pet’s weight. Moreover,39 per cent will only visit the vets in an emergency – all of which point to an increase in weight going unchecked. In a bid to help keep weight down, 76 per cent do try to keep their four-legged friends as active as possible, while 75 per cent limit the number of treats or table scraps they give out. The study, carried out via OnePoll, found of those with an overweight pet, 22 per cent feel as if their cat or dog is ‘always hungry’. While a puzzled 19 per cent scratch their heads over their pet’s weight as they don’t think they eat an excessive amount. Steven Mendel added: “While many pet owners believe it should be straightforward to spot if their cat or dog is putting on weight – it’s often easier said than done. “In most cases, gaining weight is very gradual, meaning it can be trickier to identify - especially if pets are not attending the vet regularly. “We’re hopeful that with the right course of action and identifying the signs early, longer term pet health problems can be avoided in the future.” Read More Cat owner reunited with pet Tux after emotional Lyft ride saga Dogs’ facial markings could play a role in how close they are with owners Moment cat stuck inside boat’s hull after fire is rescued by firefighters Cat owner reunited with pet Tux after leaving her in a Lyft What you need to know about depression during menopause – as Carol Vorderman opens up Linda Evangelista describes relationship with Gerald Marie as a ‘MeToo marriage’

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A recent book called The Queer Parent, written by Lotte Jeffs and Stu Oakley, calmly opens with the line: “Ninety per cent of queer parenting is simply… parenting”. It’s a fair point. Whether you’re male, female or non-binary, single or partnered, and regardless of your sexuality, all of us who parent aim to meet the exact same needs for our children, day in, day out. The title caught my attention because I think there’s something very timely and profound about the act of being a gay or queer parent today. It’s doing the work that many (dare I say most) people want to see in society – namely raising a new generation of non-toxic humans, making the world a happier place to be different – but in the slow grind of parenthood, not just in the quick flash of activism. I really believe gay and queer parents are changing the world, in a very deep yet unsexy way. Mum and mummy being at the school gate, dad and daddy collecting a child from nursery, or as we’ll get into, dad giving birth to a baby son or daughter. They’re changing the world by being active, visible and engaged parents. But there’s a slightly awkward, under-discussed aspect to this that has truly got under my skin in the eight years since I’ve been a parent. I’m pansexual, so I fancy men as well as women, non-binary people and pans. But oddly I’ve always been frightened to talk about parenthood with most of my avowedly gay male friends – because I’m never quite sure if anyone’s going to derogatorily refer to me as a “breeder” or not. It’s hard to know how well-known the term “breeder” is. I personally used to hear it a lot more back in the mid-Noughties when I was in my early twenties. It’s essentially a slightly bitchy term that’s interchangeably derogatory to people with kids and/or straight people as a whole. As a word, it’s a pretty effective zinger. Straight people have tended to use sexual imagery to define and denigrate gay people. It seems fair that gay people would do the same to heterosexuals. “Breeder” reduces the pleasures of sex to a slightly dehumanised process. In fact, unconnected to sexuality, Gulliver’s Travels author Jonathan Swift used the term to reduce people to a brutal, almost farmyard functionality in a satirical essay from 1729. It’s important to establish that I’m not here to spank gay men on the bum. Neither am I here to accuse them of “heterophobia” either – which I’ve put in quote marks because I’m dubious that it can even exist as a concept. If I was an exclusively gay guy, I might robustly define my sexuality against heteronormativity in ways which could be punchy and sharp. I might also – by virtue of a lifetime of homophobia and trauma that may have started in the home as a child – have latently negative views about the whole concept of family. But I am who I am now, and despite understanding all this, I’m still getting weary of it as a trope, and also as a reason not to talk about the many genuine ecstasies of parenthood. I like being a dad and I like dating guys. These things shouldn’t be so controversial – yet weirdly, I find it’s gay men who have more slack-jawed incomprehension of these two facts than any other group in society. My own personal beef is very trifling in the scheme of things, however. The much bigger picture is that – newsflash – gay, queer and trans people have kids. Loads of them. While data is limited, there was a 40 per cent rise in same-sex parents from 2015 to 2019. Anecdotally, it seems to be a much greater phenomenon than is reported. The same goes for the rarely examined hardships LGBT+ people typically go through to even have kids: namely the incredible anguish of IVF and the epic emotional journey of surrogacy. You’d expect increased visibility of gay and queer parents would have phased out the use of the word “breeder” as a pejorative, but weirdly it lives on – especially on TikTok where, perhaps like an unkillable echo of my own twenties, it’s mostly young people using the word as a way of defining their queerness and riling up straights. What makes my heart sink, beyond knowing that a younger generation is using the same dumb-ass words people said 20 years ago, is that this is a really, really bad time to start being unsupportive of gay parents. While queer visibility may feel greater than ever, the world is going backwards in many respects. Even just in the realm of children’s culture, things as harmless as a drag artist reading stories can draw an angry mob of culture warriors – as happened at Tate Britain in London in February. Look at Florida – once the home of fictional queer icons The Golden Girls, now home to Republican governor and presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis – and you’ll see books with titles as benign as This Book Is Gay banned as a result of his vociferously “anti-woke” legislation. We all know that creating this type of hostile environment will surely result in more bullying, more hatred, more lives blighted. While queer visibility may feel greater than ever, the world is going backwards in many respects It’s pathetic, cruel yet grimly successful at the same time. With every small news story or stunt, a palpable hostility festers. Thus anything that drives a wedge between gay/queer people and parenthood is a bad look right now – especially with elections looming in the US and Britain that I fear will see the issue of gender identity playing a huge, calculatedly divisive role. What better way to rebuff this negativity than by strongly standing up for gay and queer parents. Specifically, we could start standing up for men having babies. Trans men like the British journalist Freddy McConnell who a few years back gave birth to a child who seems to be doing great (and likes a good splash in the sea), or Iowa-born Tanius Posey, who thankfully was able to breastfeed his child despite simultaneously getting online abuse for it. Logan Brown, also from the UK, is a trans man who has been documenting his pregnancy over the past few months with genuine clarity and candour. He gave birth to his daughter Nova just over a week ago. Celebrated gay NYC artist Keith Haring frequently placed a baby into his work, a shining symbol of hope and playful optimism for the future. Maybe in the same spirit as Haring, we could all do with a new beginning in our attitudes to gay and queer parenting, inspired by a rather miraculous baby such as Nova. 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Anthony Michael Hall's wife Lucia Oskerova gave birth to their first child, who they named Michael Anthony Hall II, on June 1

“Now it’s time to cross over to our F1 Juniors,” said Sky’s lead presenter Simon Lazenby, in a feel which became familiar throughout the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend. Often the broadcaster striving for new avenues, never afraid of the status quo, Sky Sports took their television trials to a different avenue this weekend with the first-ever Formula 1 broadcast for children. An admirable experiment, it gave three teenagers a few days to savour as they started their summer holidays in Budapest alongside broadcasters Radzi Chinyanganya and Harry Benjamin. For Braydon, Scarlett and Zak – the latter a go-karter at junior level, the former duo presenters on Sky’s BAFTA-winning kids show FYI – it presented opportunities of a lifetime with interviews, quizzes and predictions with the best drivers and pundits in the paddock. And it provided some indisputably heartwarming moments. Like the segment where Zak met Lewis Hamilton and spoke to his hero about how inspiring the Mercedes star has been to black kids around the world, before then sitting in his Mercedes car. Or Scarlett and Braydon quizzing the “terrible trio” of George Russell, Lando Norris and Alex Albon about what ice cream they’d describe themselves as. “Vanilla”, Norris quipped, pointing at Russell. There’s something about the involvement of adolescents in a press environment which can bring some much-needed lightheartedness to what can sometimes be a sterile process for all involved. For example, who can forget the young boy, in awe of his sporting icon, who asked Roger Federer at the US Open in 2017: “Switzerland is really cool, right? There isn’t too much livestock. So why do they call you the GOAT [greatest of all time]?” Yet, away from one-on-ones with drivers, the core aspect to the alternative broadcast was the informal race coverage, live on free-to-air Sky Showcase, which presented an F1 race in an entirely different format. There were bright, 3D-augmented graphics throughout, with a colour-coordinated leaderboard which, frankly, seemed clearer than the usual feed at times. Explainers popped up at various points, defining key F1-focused terms for younger viewers. The use of avatars for each driver was a cute touch, though obviously best kept for this experiment. Overall, it provided something completely unique and distinctive for a 70-lap race which provided a common routine in the obligatory Max Verstappen victory. Sure, nobody was asking for an F1-kids broadcast. And inevitably, naysayers online will have been quick to roll their eyes at the initiative. It was notable that both Sky F1 and Benjamin turned off replies to their tweets involving F1 Juniors over the weekend. Less an indication of the general reaction to the initiative and more a sign of the times – and the highly-charged, often-abusive nature of social media. But that is not the point. F1 has for a while been a step ahead of other sports in the intuitiveness and creativity of its product, to the stage now where it is in the midst of a period of unprecedented worldwide popularity. The most obvious is the fly-on-the-wall nature of Drive to Survive on Netflix, a format only now being followed by the professional tennis and golf tours in search of extra eyeballs. It is a fine balancing act, though. During practice and the qualifying show, there were regular interspersions on the main feed to the Juniors, a process which may well have irritated petrolheads and fans of a sterner generation. While Sky like to push boundaries, their executives will be all too aware of trying to avoid alienating their core viewership. The one-off nature of F1 Juniors, at least this season, means this is unlikely to materialise. And there were moments of awkwardness. Like cutting to Christian Horner on the pit wall, seemingly in a baffled daze, who bluntly said: “Can we come back and do this in another 10 laps or so?” Like a selfie in the commentary booth with Danica Patrick, who had earlier stated the nature of sport “is masculine and aggressive” as she spoke about the lack of female racing drivers. There were obviously a few mistakes here and there – and it wasn’t completely crisp and clear-cut. But then it wasn’t meant to be. And, frankly, nor is David Croft and Martin Brundle’s expert commentary always error-free. In a sport as technical and fast-paced as F1, perfection is near-on impossible. Of course, unless you’re Verstappen at the moment. But the underlying takeaway is this: as a child, all you want to be is treated as a grown-up. The best way of learning about the intricacies of a sport like Formula 1 is to immerse yourself in the usual feed on a regular basis, creating a curiosity gap to discover more. As a one-off, F1 Juniors was worthwhile and undoubtedly a commendable initiative. For intrigued parents, showing their children an F1 race for the first time, who knows how many may have flicked on the coverage? Who knows how many might now flick on an F1 race in the future on a Sunday afternoon? Something different is not to be something dismissed. Article originally published on 24 July 2023 Read More Lewis Hamilton makes damning statement about his level after Hungarian GP Daniel Ricciardo is back - and this time he wants to go out on top F1 Singapore Grand Prix LIVE: Qualifying updates and times at Marina Bay FIA take action against Helmut Marko after comments about Sergio Perez Zhou Guanyu interview: ‘There is a lot of pressure – only winners stay in F1’

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