alive

On the lamp-lit steps of a sombre gothic church, a young woman stands before a microphone. Beside her, a man plucks a slow melody from his guitar. Arrayed on chairs and cobblestones in front of them, a large crowd sits in an expectant silence. From a nearby balcony, laundry sways in the sultry Calabrian breeze.

The guitar quickens, and the woman issues a string of tremulous notes with all the solemnity of a muezzin. She clutches a hand drum, beating out a rhythm that draws the crowd to its feet. As people surge forward, stamping and whirling around the square, the singing intensifies and the drum’s relentless thud deepens. The festival of Sustarìa has begun.

“Sustarìa is a word in the dialect of Lago,” says Cristina Muto, who co-founded the festival in summer 2020. “It is a creative restlessness, which doesn’t let you sit still.” We’re speaking at a drinks party the evening before the annual event, on a terrace overlooking Lago’s clay-tiled roofs, when her brother Daniele appears with a jug of local wine in hand. “Welcome to Lagos Angeles, Calabrifornia,” he winks, pouring me a cup.

Lago is a hilltop village in the province of Cosenza, overlooking the Mediterranean. It’s surrounded by sprawling olive groves and small plots where families cultivate figs, chestnuts and local grains. Cristina and Daniele were born and raised in this grey-stoned hamlet, a medieval outpost of the Kingdom of the Lombards. Although their pride in Lago is palpable, few of the Laghitani I meet live here all year round. Like many young people from southern Italy, they have left in search of opportunities that are scarce in Calabria.

It’s against this backdrop that Cristina co-founded Sustarìa. “The trend is longstanding and severe,” she tells me, “but people still live here, and there are communities that thrive despite the problems. If more people stay or return, things will get better.” By spotlighting the allure of the region’s heritage, she hopes to play a part in this.

With agriculture historically shaping Calabria’s economy and its inhabitants’ daily lives, many traditions have agrarian roots. The dance that erupted on the festival’s first night was the tarantella. It features distinctive footwork, with dancers kicking their heels rapidly. “It’s a dance of the field workers,” Cristina says. “Some say it began as a way to sweat out venom from spider bites during harvests; others say tired workers in need of a creative outlet danced slowly and just with their feet, and over time the pace and range of movement increased.”

The vocals on display that night told of another aspect of the region’s history: its frequent colonisation. Calabria was variously conquered by Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Normans, Arabs, Lombards and Bourbons. The folk songs we heard were replete with Greek scales and Arabic cadences, a melting pot of Mediterranean timbres.

After the concert, the crowd migrated to a field by a small waterfall on the outskirts of Lago for dinner featuring regional dishes: rosamarina (the pescatarian version of nduja, known as “Calabrian caviar” made from tiny fish); fried courgette flowers; cipolla rossa di Tropea (red onions from the popular beachtown of Tropea); and pecorino crotonese, a sheep’s cheese from the Crotone province.

Over dinner I spoke with two other festival organisers, Claudia and her husband Alberto. Claudia, a Lago native, returned permanently, after a career in aerospace engineering, to run the B&B Agriturismo Cupiglione with Alberto. Nestled in woodland a few kilometres from Lago, Cupiglione was founded 25 years ago by Claudia’s parents as a restaurant with guest rooms. After closing during the pandemic, it was renovated and reopened in 2023 as a B&B with seven rooms for up to 18 guests (doubles from €40). The change in direction paid off, and Cupiglione has since welcomed hundreds of visitors to the area, evenly split between Italian and international travellers.

During my stay, I’m lodging in a house on the edge of Lago, thanks to the Sustarìa team. Hospitality runs deep during the festival; organisers open up their homes and those of their relatives to anyone who enquires through social media. Other options abound during the festival and year-round, including B&Bs such as Cupiglione and A Casa di Ely (doubles from €60), a short walk from where I stayed.

The following afternoon, I return to the field before aperitivi, where I meet up with Cristina, who explains the growth of her initiative: “Initially, it was just locals who came to Sustarìa, but then people from other parts of Italy and even other countries started coming. Every year it grows.” This year, there are nearly 600 people in attendance.

Eric, a Londoner studying in Zurich, is one such international guest. Eric also attended Felici & Conflenti, a festival in late July hosted by friends of the Sustarìa team, which focuses on preserving and reviving the region’s ancient music. It has held 11 editions over as many years, each one featuring a winter and summer instalment, to which more people flock each year. It takes place in Conflenti, a small inland village nestled at the foot of the Reventino mountain, at the confluence of two small rivers (hence its name).

“Thanks to their work and research, instruments that were becoming extinct, like the zampogna [Italian bagpipe], are finding new life,” Cristina says.

The three of us sit chatting over plates of crisp taralli (wheat crackers) as twilight fades, and a reedy piping starts up from across the field. I stroll over, and catch sight of someone playing the zampogna, which looks like a set of bagpipes improvised from foraged materials, and is truly ancient – it counts the Roman emperor Nero among its historical admirers.

The next morning, we head to the hilltop town of Fiumefreddo Bruzio, a short drive from Lago and officially recognised as one of “Italy’s most beautiful villages”. Clinging to the western slopes of the Apennines, this medieval village offers panoramic views of the swelling coastline, which traces the Tyrrhenian Sea. Its narrow, meandering streets are lined with squat houses made of the local grey stone, quarried from the surrounding mountains. We wander around Il castello della Valle, a sprawling 13th-century Norman castle partly destroyed by Napoleonic troops, but retaining a splendid portale Rinascimentale – or Renaissance gate – still in excellent condition.

At Palazzo Rossi, on the edge of town, we take a seat at a cafe and sip local craft beer as we admire the view of the active volcano Mount Stromboli, across the water.

“You should see it in the winter,” Cristina says. “The air is cooler, so it becomes even clearer. Everything here is completely different in the winter, but most people don’t see it as visitors come mainly in the summer,” she adds with a note of regret.

The sun starts to sink into the horizon. In the square, a band starts setting up for an evening gig. A waiter brings over a plate of bread and olives to our table, on the house. “Things are quieter but not empty. There are almost as many events as in summer. And you get to see how the locals live during the rest of the year.” Cristina tears off a piece of bread. “And, of course, the hospitality never changes – people are always welcomed with open arms.”

Sustarìa will return to Lago for its sixth instalment on 1-3 August 2026. There is a winter edition of Felici & Conflenti in Calabria on 27-29 December 2025; its next summer instalment is in July 2026

Last year the prolific and gifted Zadie Smith stumbled into controversy with the publication of “Shibboleth” in the New Yorker. She purportedly approached the white-hot Gaza demonstrations with the nuance and complexity they deserved and yet derided pro-Palestinian students at Columbia University as “cynical and unworthy,” stirring up a hornets’ nest among her young fans, who expressed their anger on various internet platforms. The controversy gained traction because of Smith’s record of championing the marginalized, citing theorists like Frantz Fanon while targeting empires and the omnipresent patriarchy. That she singled out one group of activists, many Jewish, at the very moment Arab toddlers were being blown apart by U.S.-funded bombs raised doubts about her touted values. Her conclusion was startling, her tone defiant: “Put me wherever you want: misguided socialist, toothless humanist, naïve novelist, useful idiot, apologist, denier, ally, contrarian, collaborator, traitor, inexcusable coward.” The lady doth protest too much?

“Shibboleth” appears in “Dead and Alive,” Smith’s collection of previously published essays, in which she assumes most if not all those roles she attributes to herself. Fanon is here as well, amid an array of artists and authors such as Joan Didion, Toni Morrison, and Philip Roth. Smith is arguing for the necessity of vigorous criticism and often makes her case. The book’s finest pieces wrangle, in elegant prose, with humanity’s contradictions; the weaker ones indulge in name-dropping, footnotes and op-ed invective.

Zadie Smith

(Ben Bailey-Smith)

“The Muse at Her Easel,” in the opening section, probes the relationship between English painter Lucian Freud and his model, Celia Paul, also a painter, via a review of her memoir. (Paul is the mother of one of 12 children he fathered outside of marriage.) Smith’s sly trick here is a bit of Freud-play: Lucian seen through the prism of his grandfather Sigmund, the family romance on steroids. Celia revolves around the artist here much as she did when he was alive, vulnerable and reflective, a moon to his sun. It’s both a restrained and overwrought essay, a cryptic tale of sexual politics, like her fellow Brit Rachel Cusk’s novel, “Second Place,” but one that urges us to think hard about abuses in the service of “museography.”

Smith brings an empathic eye to other artists, from the allegorical Toyin Ojih Odutola to the subversive Kara Walker. And she shines a bright light on numerous writers who have inspired her, particularly in remembrances of Didion (whose influence we sense throughout “Dead and Alive”) and the great Hilary Mantel. Her pieces on two books, “Black England” and “Black Manhattan,” excavate hidden histories of Black resistance and the painful compromises brokered to move forward. Her tone in “Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction” is elegiac, as though smartphones have killed off the craft; yet it’s also a manifesto of sorts, and a declaration of her own aesthetics. “Belief in a novel is, for me, a by-product of a certain kind of sentence,” Smith observes. “Familiarity, kinship, and compassion will play their part, but if the sentences don’t speak to me, nothing else will.” Amen, sister.

Her forays into social commentary are more problematic. She’s strong on the weird population kink known as Gen X, squeezed between the larger boomers and millennials, and the switchback road we traveled to marriage and parenthood: “We all still dressed like teenagers, though, and in the minds of the popular culture were ‘slackers,’ suffering from some form of delayed development, possibly the sad consequences of missing such key adulting experiences as a good war or a stock market crash,” Smith asserts. “We felt history belonged to other people: that we lived in the time of no time.” She’s persuasive when she remains within her comfort zone, opining on race, gender and, occasionally, class. Not so much when she ventures into technology. In “Some Notes on Mediated Time,” she broods at length on the destabilizing effects of the internet, social media and the algorithm silos that shape our present. It’s tough to parse irony from self-congratulation. “I have to say how immensely grateful I am that the work I have been so fortunate to do these last twenty years — writing books — has also gifted me the opportunity, the privilege, of devoting the time of my one human life to an algorithm. To keep almost all of it, selfishly, outrageously, for myself, my friends, my colleagues, my family,” Smith writes. “There are memes I will never know. Whole Twitter meltdowns I never witnessed. Hashtags I will forever remain ignorant about.” Which raises the question: Why lament a social paradigm shift if you haven’t bothered with it in the first place? Something isn’t right. Elsewhere in the essay she claims that social media is “excellent for building brands and businesses and attracting customers.” Could the same be said of a disingenuous essayist?

She comes across as preaching to her peers rather than seeking converts, a whiff of Oxbridge elitism. Hence references to Derrida, Dickinson, Knausgaard, Borges, shout-outs to Booker laureates “Salman” (Rushdie) and “Ian” (McEwan). This level of self-regard in a writer and thinker as justifiably exalted as Smith may explain why our nation is turning on reading: aristocracies breed resentment among the proles. Then Smith steps into the muck of global conflicts. The moral bothsidesism found in “Shibboleth” splits the baby; she does herself no favors with Solomonic pronouncements and Pontius Pilate-like self-exoneration. (Elsewhere she indicts Trump and Netanyahu while neglecting the money and media that empower them.)

“Dead and Alive” does what it was designed to do: It gathers the author’s criticism, literary obituaries, a university address and an interview with a Spanish journal between two covers. The execution falters. Smith’s provocations are often stunning; her prose is thrillingly strident; but her fiction better captures the messiness of public and private selves at war with each other.

Cain is a book critic and the author of a memoir, “This Boy’s Faith: Notes From a Southern Baptist Upbringing.” He lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

GHOSTLY figures dressed all in white walked quietly past me on a dark street – hundreds of them, each with a single flame illuminating a skull-painted face.

It felt spooky, even sombre, but then came the crackle of a sound system, the pop of a tequila bottle opening — and raucous laughter.

Say hola to Mexican tradition Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos), known to Brits through the blistering opening scene of the James Bond movie Spectre, kids’ film Coco or the “sugar skull” make-up craze that became a Halloween trend.

Capital Mexico City draws thousands of tourists annually with its skeleton-themed parades around November 2, but the underrated city of Merida also comes alive for the celebrations.

Set in the western Yucatan peninsula — a region more known for beach resorts such as Cancun and Playa del Carmen, plus the Mayan ruins at Tulum — indigenous heritage is strong in this city, and it shows.

Day of the Dead here is called Hanal Pixan (han-al pish-an), meaning “food for the souls” in Mayan, and sees families and friends gather to celebrate departed loved ones, honouring them with a home-made altar often covered in pictures and their favourite foods.

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I visited Merida as its fiesta kicked off on October 31 with the Parade of the Souls.

This candlelit procession from the cemetery into town made for an eerie sight, but that soon changed when they cleared the way for a huge street party along Calle 64.

The long avenue was decorated with giant skeleton structures and millions of orange marigolds, while the pavements were lined with family shrines, each blasting reggaeton or ranchera music from speakers.

Shamanic rituals

It’s a great place to tuck into authentic Mexican street food because, as well as leaving the deceased’s favourite meal as an offering, families make it in bulk to sell to passers-by.

Try Yucatan’s specialties, cochinita pibil (slow-roasted pork), pan de muerto (a sweet bread made for the event) or a marquesita (if you’ve ever wondered whether Nutella and cheese taste good together).

Even beyond the festivities, this city is a foodie’s dream.

Keep things cheap by eating tacos al pastor on virtually every street corner for as little as MX$10 each (40p, take pesos to pay), or lunch at the sensational and great value Taqueria de la Union.

And no trip to Mexico is complete without a plate of chilaquiles (fried tortilla chips) for breakfast or brunch. Merida’s best are at Marmalade 47.

November 2 was the day of the main parade, and people began to line the streets early to get a good spot.

I was glad we did, too, or we would have missed the ever-changing flow of mariachi bands, traditional dancers and even pets in costume.

The Catrinas — people dressed as elegant, sombrero-wearing skeletal women — were the most eye-catching part of the evening, with unique outfits and elaborate face paint.

Unlike so many Halloween extravaganzas, this event was free of gore and heart- stopping scares, making it very kid-friendly.

It wasn’t all about the parades. Smaller-scale events took place across the city for almost a week surrounding Day of the Dead, from concerts in plazas to shamans performing Mayan rituals on street corners.

Plus, the end of the fiesta didn’t mean the end of the fun; we tracked down a speakeasy called Malahat tucked away behind a plaza, where what looked like a fridge door led to a mezcal cocktail heaven.

Colourful Merida is easily walkable and its array of crumbling colonial buildings are painted pink, yellow or blue.

Footsore? Why not wind through its kaleidoscopic streets in a horse and carriage?

The city is also a great base for discovering the Yucatan, where hundreds of cenotes (natural sinkholes) make magical swimming spots and, for a beach fix, the white sands of Puerto Progreso are 40 minutes away.

An hour more takes you to Chichen Itza, site of some of the planet’s most breath-taking Mayan ruins.

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Its New Seven Wonders of the World fame usually eclipses Merida in these parts, and the busloads of visitors are mostly heading back to resorts in Cancun and the Riviera Maya.

But if you linger in Merida, you’ll find a soulful city with its own pulse — and this beats strongest around November 2.

I moved to Kent during the pandemic and am yet to leave. From its bustling high street to its sandy beaches, there’s something for everyone in this charming seaside town

Five years ago, I relocated to Deal in Kent during lockdown, intending to flee the deserted streets and sky-high rent of London, with plans to return once normality resumed. Needless to say, that didn’t transpire, and here I am, half a decade later.

Despite my occasional grumbles about the town, I’m not too proud to confess that I’ve become smitten with the place. There’s nothing quite like strolling down a bustling high street brimming with independent shops, cafes, restaurants and pubs on a Saturday morning.

One of my favourite activities is indulging in a slice of cake on a Saturday afternoon after hours spent hunting for Christmas and birthday gifts for my loved ones. While the summer months are undoubtedly warmer and the town buzzes with more activity, Deal truly shines in the autumn.

Christmas lights begin to twinkle, illuminating the charming high street on damp, grey afternoons; shop windows burst into life with festive displays, and the aroma of freshly baked pastries and hearty pub meals permeates the air.

The experience is also more tranquil overall. I often find myself steering clear of Deal High Street and the seafront during the summer, when they’re teeming with tourists queuing for ice cream, precariously balancing pints of beer in plastic cups, or fishing off Deal Pier.

While it can be off-putting, I’m pleased it’s bustling. Without these summer visitors, many local businesses would struggle throughout the rest of the year, reports the Express.

The charm of Deal lies in its fantastic independent shops and cafes. While you’ll find a few essential chains like Superdrug, Boots, Costa and Starbucks at one end of the high street, the majority of the town’s shops are independent businesses.

One of my favourite spots is Barkened, a small independent shop at the North end of the high street. It’s brimming with carefully selected items that make perfect gifts for dog-lovers and homeware enthusiasts.

For those in search of unique gifts and eclectic clothing, Urban Chic is your destination. The shop is full of colourful womenswear, sunglasses, gifts, cards, bags and homeware. It’s my go-to place for Christmas gifts as I’m always sure to find something unique that can’t be found elsewhere.

Tucked away down St George’s Passage just off the high street, The Little Purple Wardrobe is a true hidden treasure filled with pre-loved designer and high street women’s clothes, shoes, hats and accessories.

It’s always my first stop when I’m hunting for an outfit for a special occasion or simply in need of some quality clothing.

Just off the high street on the corner of Stanhope Road, visitors will discover a truly unique shop: Pop! Vintage and Retro.

Overflowing with vintage and retro items, vinyl records, enamel signs, collectables, furniture and more, it’s the ideal stop if you’re searching for a gift for that eccentric uncle or the friend who has everything.

Every Saturday morning, from 9am to 2pm, the Union Road car park at the north end of the high street transforms into a bustling weekly market. During these hours, the high street’s northern end is pedestrianised, creating a vibrant atmosphere as locals and visitors alike peruse the wide array of goods on offer. The market boasts an impressive variety of stalls, selling everything from fresh flowers and vintage clothing to books, furniture, arts and crafts, and mouth-watering cakes.

Even if you’re not in the mood for shopping, it’s a delightful way to spend a Saturday morning, perhaps with a coffee in hand from Real Deal Roasters. I often find myself picking up freshly cut flowers and eggs, which are both cheaper and superior to their supermarket counterparts.

Lately, I’ve set myself the challenge of sampling all of Deal’s eateries—a daunting task given their sheer number.

A few weeks back, on a whim, I popped into Little Harriettes of Deal Tea Rooms for some warm scones and a pot of tea. The experience was utterly charming, and the entire lunch—which included homemade soup with bread, two pots of tea, and two large warm scones with jam and clotted cream—cost less than £20.

The staff were incredibly attentive and friendly, instantly making me feel comfortable. The decor was exactly what you’d expect from a traditional Victorian tea room: a small chandelier, an old-fashioned till, vintage furniture, a cake counter, and tea served in floral bone china.

If you’re not a fan of tea and cakes, there’s a wide range of savoury options on the menu, including vegetable tarts, sandwiches and soup.

Just last week, I popped into Miretti, situated at the North end of the high street. I confess, I’ve been strolling past this cafe for years, always promising myself that I’d stop by one day.

On a crisp autumn afternoon, I finally kept that promise and dropped in for a slice of cake and a decaf coffee.

This cosy cafe is run by a welcoming couple and offers a small selection of homemade cakes, chocolates and Italian biscuits, alongside illy coffee and hot chocolate. Although the selection is limited, the coffee and food items I sampled were divine. I indulged in a small dark chocolate praline truffle that was rich, nutty and luxurious, and a set vanilla custard cake that was creamy and just the right amount of sweet.

Sat at a table on the pavement, it was delightful to sip my coffee and nibble on my cake while watching the world pass by.

Miretti has now earned a solid spot on my list of must-visit locations on Deal High Street.

With its abundance of trendy eateries and foodie destinations, it’s tough to single out the best pubs and restaurants in Deal.

Last year, esteemed food critic Grace Dent hailed the Japanese-inspired eatery Blue Pelican, nestled on Beach Street, as one of her top restaurants of the year. In contrast, a few years back, Jay Rayner lauded The Rose on Deal High Street for its “impressive cooking”. I’ve yet to sample the fare at either establishment, but the feedback I’ve received from both tourists and locals has been nothing short of stellar.

For a scrumptious dinner with a beachfront view, my personal favourite is 81 Beach Street, a cosy bistro known for its superb steak and seafood dishes that won’t break the bank.

I’d also suggest giving The Boathouse Bar & Restaurant a try, which is part of The Royal Hotel situated on the seafront. During the balmy months, you can snag a table outside and watch the waves crash against the shingles on the beach below.

Come autumn, you’ll likely prefer to dine indoors to escape the chilly winds, but you’ll still be treated to a splendid view of the sea.

For breakfast, I always point people towards Goose on the Green and The Corner Cafe in Walmer, and The Lane in South Court, just off Deal High Street. Each of these spots offers a slightly different menu, but they all share a common thread—friendly, attentive staff and high-quality ingredients at fair prices.

After a leisurely Sunday stroll along the pier and back, I’d strongly recommend heading over to The Ship Inn on Middle Street.

This traditional pub, complete with rickety wooden chairs, candles on tables and friendly staff who’ll happily stop for a chat, is a real gem. During the winter months, a roaring fire fills the establishment with a warm glow and a pleasant smoky scent that always reminds me of autumn. It’s also one of the few places where you can still get a pint for less than £4.

Living in Deal is fantastic. There’s always something happening, and there’s never a shortage of great food spots.

I may be 76, but slowing down, or retirement, couldn’t be further from my mind. True, I don’t have a hefty pension or a partner to while away the rest of my days with, but my love of travelling is as passionate as it has always been.

I love scaring myself stupid trying new experiences, and if a friend or daughter is unavailable I’ll go alone. Solo travel is far better than sitting at home looking back instead of forward.

So, when I was offered the chance to try a naturist holiday in southern Crete in July, rather than, “OMG, naked in front of strangers!”, my first thought was, “No hold luggage!” The idea of baring all at a resort full of people I didn’t know seemed exciting rather than terrifying.

I hitched a lift to Vritomartis naturist resort from my accommodation in the village nearby. It was only when I bumped into a smiling, naked, rather portly male guest in flip-flops and a baseball hat outside reception that I realised exactly what I had signed up for. I was the only woman on her own among 180 couples. It felt surprisingly liberating, and I left feeling proud of every part of my ageing body for the first time in years.

Travel has always been in my blood. As a child, growing up in Basingstoke, Hampshire, with a garden overlooking the A30, I was enchanted by the huge, thundering Scania lorries with beds curtained off in the back, and dreamed of life as a long-distance driver. An escape to Cornwall on a boyfriend’s Vespa at 17 lit a flame inside me that burns to this day. After my husband died 25 years ago, and a relationship breakup years later, I still kept my passion for travel – and I refuse to let it diminish as I get older.

At a friend’s invitation, when I was 62 I went on my first trip to India, zooming around Delhi in a tuk-tuk. Then it was on to Nepal to stay in a monastery in Kathmandu and Pokhara to watch the sun rise over Annapurna.

In 2020, at 70, tired of London after 10 years – and with no partner, pet or grandchild at that time, and in the midst of Covid – I needed a new challenge. So I sold my flat and moved to Seville. For three years I lived alone in a rented, furnished flat, learning to live like a local and navigate a city I had fallen in love with.

During that time I devoured Spain: I went on a yoga holiday in Galicia, a detox vegan retreat in Formentera, discovered Málaga was more arts and museums than gold chains and bare chests, and wept at the beauty of the paintings of Sorolla at his house in Madrid. I took regular day trips by train to Cádiz to laze on a lounger at a beach bar, eat fried fish for lunch and drink small beers at €1.50 a pop.

Now I’m back in the UK, in Brighton, but I worry more about standing still, of missed opportunities and of not evolving – and the travel bug remains strong.

One thing I have noticed, looking back through my diaries and notebooks, is how packing lists have changed as I’ve got older. Holidays with my husband and three kids by car to the West Country in our seven-seater Volvo listed travel cot, beach toys, beach tent and indispensable kitchen paraphernalia. For fashion sales trips to Paris I drew stick figures on Post-it notes of successful outfits (successful in those days meaning pulling-power). Trekking in the Jebel Sahro in Morocco was head torch, Shewee – and did I really only use Factor 15? These days it’s five different heart drugs, Pepto-Bismol, big earrings, Bluetooth headphones, hearing aid batteries and compression socks.

I never take my age into consideration when planning a trip. In fact, if anything the awareness of my mortality has only served to heighten my desire to get out and push myself further out of my comfort zone (though with a history of a heart attack and breast cancer, travel insurance at my age is costly).

It’s only in the way that others respond that I realise they see an old lady. When a guy of 50-plus offers to help me put my case into the overhead locker, “because my own mum used to struggle”. When I stand on the aircraft steps waiting for the bus to take me to the terminal and the cabin staff ask if I requested assistance. I fancied a horse riding holiday with my 40-year-old son, but the company I approached reminded me that, yes, I could have a very nasty fall indeed “at my age”. So many friends say I’m so brave to continue to travel, to try new experiences, but meeting new people in new places is what keeps me alive, what keeps my brain engaged far better than crosswords or Wordle.

I’ve had wonderful solo holidays recently, too, doing stuff I’ve never done before. In December, I went on my first cruise. The packing list for this luxury extravaganza in the Caribbean was also a first, including advice on dressing for supper: “ladies should wear cocktail or dinner attire”. Neither of which I owned, both of which I borrowed. Being one of the few solo female travellers on board, I got the usual comments when sitting down to eat: “Just for one?”, “Are you waiting for someone?”, “Will someone be joining you?”. And, yes, I would have perhaps relaxed more and had more fun if I’d been with my daughter or a friend. Perhaps I would have stayed up later and gone to the bars or clubs and even danced and I would have had more than one glass of whatever, because I don’t think a tipsy woman on her own is a good look at any age.

One thing I never feel as an older female traveller, though, is invisible or anonymous. A friend said recently that it’s a relief not to be approached by guys, not to be chatted-up any more. Admittedly, I no longer get on a plane or train hoping I will be seated next to a future partner – I just hope they don’t snore or smell weird – but the idea of a romantic encounter is not completely edited out of my future plans either.

My travel considerations as an older woman have many similarities with women of any age. Many women I know feel more awkward eating alone in a restaurant or bar in the evening than at lunchtime. I find a notebook and pen help me settle far easier than constantly scrolling on a phone.

Having lived in big cities means I am rarely frightened walking around after dark and it has taught me survival rules, such as putting my phone away in the street. Google apps make travel much easier as well these days. Translate is a godsend when you’re at Crete airport at midnight and trying to explain to the taxi driver that you want to go right across the island, please. And Google Maps was a tremendous help when I was navigating a transfer in mainland Greece from Volos bus station in Pelion to Thessaloniki airport – and feeling very much like a solo Race Across the World contestant.

So, the clock is ticking and the grey autumn skies have arrived in Brighton – where shall I go next? This winter maybe I should spend a month at that Bone and Body Clinic in Goa that a friend suggested may sort out the osteoarthritis in my knees and hips? Or what about Taiwan? Never been to south-east Asia, heard it’s delicious. But one thing you will never get me doing is wild swimming in cold water: I’ll leave that to folk far braver than me.

Elaine Kingett is a writer and journalist who runs writing retreats in Spain

If there’s a scene that best encapsulates the tragically abbreviated career of John Candy, it’s not necessarily from his time on the sketch-comedy series “SCTV” or from movies like “Stripes” or “Uncle Buck.” It’s a moment in the 1987 comedy-drama “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” when his reluctant roommate Neal Page (played by Steve Martin) has spent several minutes berating him for his relentless storytelling.

With a lump in his throat, Candy’s wounded character Del Griffith replies that he’s proud of who he is. “I like me,” he says. “My wife likes me. My customers like me. Because I’m the real article — what you see is what you get.”

That moment proves pivotal to two new projects that retrace Candy’s life and work some 31 years after the actor died from a heart attack at the age of 43. The actor would have turned 75 this month.

A biography, “John Candy: A Life in Comedy,” written by Paul Myers (released by House of Anansi Press on Tuesday), and a documentary, “John Candy: I Like Me,” directed by Colin Hanks (released Friday on Prime Video), both rely on Candy’s friends, family members and colleagues to help tell the story of his ascent, his success and the void left by his death.

In their own ways, both the book and the film show how Candy — while not without his demons — was beloved by audiences for his fundamental and authentic likability, and why he is still mourned today for the potential he never got to completely fulfill.

A family photo of John Candy and his son, Chris, seen in “John Candy: I Like Me.” (Prime Video)

John Candy, left, and Steve Martin in “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” (Paramount Pictures)

Explaining why it was still important to memorialize Candy all these years later, Ryan Reynolds, the “Deadpool” star and a producer of the documentary, said, “When it’s something people desperately miss, but they don’t know they miss it, it’s a beautiful and rare thing. John Candy is a person that they missed desperately.”

Since his death, Candy’s immediate survivors — his widow, Rosemary; daughter, Jennifer Candy-Sullivan; and son, Chris Candy — have weighed the pluses and minuses of sharing his life with audiences and the impact it might have on them (the three are co-executive producers on the film). “It’s a balancing act,” said Chris Candy. “You want to live your life and you also want to honor theirs.”

In recent years, Candy’s children said they were encouraged by documentaries like Morgan Neville’s “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” about the children’s TV broadcaster Fred Rogers, as well as Hanks’ film “All Things Must Pass,” about the Tower Records retail chain.

Hanks, whose father, Tom, acted with Candy in films like “Splash” and “Volunteers,” said he struggled at first to find a compelling way to tell the story of Candy, who had a seemingly charmed and uncontroversial acting career, first in his native Toronto and then in Hollywood.

But Hanks said he was drawn into Candy’s story by a particular detail: the fact that Candy’s own father, Sidney, had died from heart disease at the age of 35, right before John turned 5. “It doesn’t take much to think about how traumatic that could be for anyone at any age,” Hanks said.

Chris Candy, from left, Jennifer Candy-Sullivan and Colin Hanks, who directed the Prime Video documentary “John Candy: I Like Me.”

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Myers, a musician and journalist who has written books about the band Barenaked Ladies and comedy troupe the Kids in the Hall, said he was drawn to Candy as a fellow Canadian and an embodiment of the national comedic spirit.

“If you’re Canadian like I am, you never stop thinking about John Candy,” Myers said. Growing up in the Toronto area, Myers said he and his siblings — including his brother Mike, the future “Shrek” and “Austin Powers” star — were avid fans of sketch comedy shows like “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” and “Saturday Night Live.”

But “SCTV,” which launched stars like Candy, Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy, meant even more to them. “We watched it from Day 1 and we cheered a little bit harder for them because it was like they were shooting the show blocks away from our house,” Myers said.

Reynolds, who was born and raised in Vancouver, said that Candy’s essential Canadian spirit was crucial to his success as a comic actor.

“In comedy, Canadians typically don’t punch down,” Reynolds said. “It’s more of a self-effacing humor. Their favorite target is themselves. And John did that. On screen, I felt his willingness and joy in self-effacing humor that never really veered into self-loathing humor.”

Ryan Reynolds at the Los Angeles screening of “I Like Me” earlier this month. The actor was a producer on the film.

(Todd Williamson / January Images)

Candy parlayed his repertoire of “SCTV” characters — satirical media personalities like Johnny LaRue and real-life celebrities like Orson Welles — into supporting parts in hit films like “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” “The Blues Brothers,” “Brewster’s Millions” and “Spaceballs.”

His penchants for drinking and smoking were well-known and hardly out of the ordinary for that era; they rarely impeded Candy’s work and, in at least one notable instance, seem to have enhanced it: Both the documentary and the biography recount how Candy indulged in a late-night bender with Jack Nicholson before rising the next morning to shoot a scene in “Splash” where his character fumbles, flails and smokes his way through a round of racquetball.

“That’s his work ethic, right there,” said Candy-Sullivan. “He showed up and he did the scene.”

Candy graduated to lead roles in comedies like “Summer Rental,” “The Great Outdoors” and “Who’s Harry Crumb?,” and he found a kindred spirit in the writer and director John Hughes, who helped provide Candy with some of his most enduring roles in movies like “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” “Uncle Buck” and “Home Alone.”

But offscreen, Candy was contending with anxiety and he was sensitive to people’s judgments about his size — remarks which often came directly from TV interviewers who thought nothing of asking him point-blank whether Candy was planning to lose weight.

When he and his sister watched archival footage of these interviews in the documentary, Chris Candy said, “It was, for both of us, uncomfortable. I wasn’t familiar with what he was putting up with and how he would mentally jujitsu in and out of those conversations. He got more and more curt about it as time goes on, and you can see it in the interviews.”

But these psychic wounds didn’t make Candy a cruel or nasty person; he simply absorbed the hurt and redoubled his efforts to be a genial performer.

“If you’re looking for darkness in the story of John Candy, a lot of it’s just internalized pain,” Myers said. “His own coping mechanism was radical niceness to everybody — making human connections so that he would have community and feel like he’s making things better.”

In the early 1990s, Candy seemed to be working nonstop. He appeared in five different feature films in 1991 alone, a year that included duds like “Nothing But Trouble” as well as a small but potentially transformative role in Oliver Stone’s drama “JFK,” where he played the flamboyant attorney Dean Andrews Jr. He was preparing his own directorial debut, a TV film called “Hostage For a Day” in which he starred with George Wendt. Candy also became a co-owner and one-man pep squad for the Toronto Argonauts, the Canadian Football League team.

Eventually, the many demands and stresses in his life came to a head. Amid a grueling shoot for the western comedy “Wagons East” in Durango, Mexico, Candy died on March 4, 1994. He had a private funeral in the Los Angeles area, followed by a public memorial in Toronto that prompted a national outpouring of grief in Canada.

“He represented the best of us,” Myers said. “He was a humanity-centric person. He brought vulnerability and humility to his characters, which is not something you usually see in broad comedy.”

Candy’s films continue to play on television and streaming — both “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” and “Home Alone” have become year-end holiday staples. But for the people involved in chronicling Candy’s life, there is a creeping sense that the actor’s legacy will not tend to itself, and that the generations who did not grow up with Candy might need reminders of what made him worth remembering.

Hanks recalled a story from the making of “I Like Me” where he and some colleagues were dining at a restaurant where the hostess asked them what they were working on.

“We said we’re making a documentary,” Hanks said. “ ‘Oh, really?’ she goes. ‘Who’s it about?’ It’s about John Candy. She goes, ‘Oh, who’s that?’ No idea who it was. I said, well, have you seen ‘Home Alone’? Remember the polka guy that picks up the mom and takes her in the van? ‘Oh, I loved him. He’s great.’”

Part of his interest in making a film about Candy, Hanks said, is “wanting to showcase the man that people love and remind them why they loved them.”

But there is also the simple pleasure in introducing Candy’s work to people who haven’t seen it before. “If you’re lucky,” Hanks said, “you get to hopefully have them go, ‘God, I want to see those movies. I want to go watch ‘SCTV.’”

The 69-year-old truck driver who got into a physical altercation with former USC quarterback Mark Sanchez over the weekend is out of the hospital and continuing his recovery at home, according to his attorneys.

Indiana resident Perry Tole suffered a laceration on his left cheek during an incident that occurred late Friday night and into early Saturday in an alley outside a downtown Indianapolis hotel.

“He’s been released from the hospital, recovering and hopeful that he’ll have regained function to — you know, his ability to speak,” Eric J. May, one of the attorneys representing Tole in a civil lawsuit against Sanchez, told TMZ on Monday.

“Right now he’s having a real difficult time communicating because of the large gash on his face. It affected his jaw, tongue and mouth.”

May added that Tole “can speak right now, but it’s just so slurred and so labored for him, just because of all the trauma to his mouth and cheek.”

Attorney Edward R. Reichert told TMZ that Tole won’t be able to attend his son’s wedding this weekend as a result of what he went through. May said he expects “further medical treatment and an ongoing treatment for him well into the future” and added that “psychological injuries” also are a concern.

“I think it’s too early to tell what his long term prognosis is going to be, but we’re hopeful,” May said. “He’s out right now, he’s back with his wife, and I think they’re just glad to be alive.”

Sanchez was pepper-sprayed in the face and stabbed multiple times by Tole during the scuffle, according to a probable-cause affidavit filed Saturday by the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.

As of Monday morning, Sanchez remained in the hospital and was listed in stable condition. His brother released a statement later in the day on behalf of the Sanchez family.

“This has been a deeply distressing time for everyone involved,” Nick Sanchez said. “Mark and our family are incredibly grateful for the concern, love, and support we’ve received over the past few days. Mark remains under medical care for the serious injuries he sustained and is focused on his recovery as the legal process continues.”

Sanchez is being charged with a level five felony of battery involving serious bodily injury and three misdemeanors — battery resulting in injury, unauthorized entry of a motor vehicle and public intoxication.

Marion County, Ind., prosecutor Ryan Mears said Monday that more charges are possible as the investigation continues.

Sanchez was in Indianapolis to call Sunday’s Raiders-Colts game for Fox Sports. Fellow Fox analyst Brady Quinn filled in for Sanchez on the broadcast.

According to the affidavit, which was based on hotel surveillance footage and a statement Tole gave to the police, Sanchez apparently objected to Toles backing his box truck onto the hotel’s loading dock while performing his job with a company that recycles and disposes of commercial cooking oil.

Sanchez smelled of alcohol at the time of the confrontation, the affidavit said.

Tole’s civil lawsuit, filed Monday in Marion County Superior Court, alleges that he suffered “severe permanent disfigurement, loss of function, other physical injuries, emotional distress, and other damages” as a result of Sanchez’s actions.

Sanchez’s employer, Fox Corp., is named as a co-defendent in the suit, in which Tole seeks compensatory and punitive damages to be determined at trial.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A peaceful market town in the Cotswolds has been revealed as one of the best places to visit for autumn in the UK thanks to its independent shops, cosy pubs and beautiful walks

There’s nothing quite like a walking weekend away if you’re looking to make the most of the UK’s crisp autumnal days, complete with hearty pub roasts and gorgeous scenery.

Well, it turns out there’s one charming UK market town that you’re going to want to bookmark for your next staycation, thanks to its plethora of independent shops, galleries, cosy pubs and location right by some of the Cotswolds’ most breathtaking walking trails.

Stow-on-the-Wold has become somewhat of a social media superstar, with tourists flocking there in the summer to explore the winding cobbled streets, stone cottages, pubs and shops. However, its popularity can mean that during the peak holiday months it gets quite crowded; but come autumn, those visitor numbers have dwindled and it transforms back into an idyllic countryside location.

Throw in the fact that the trees offer an explosion of colours as the leaves change, and it’s not difficult to see why it’s a popular setting for hikers and ramblers who want to enjoy a scenic walk. The area has a range of different trails whether you want a short scenic stroll or fancy a bit more of a challenging hike. Whatever you choose, there are plenty of cafés, tearooms and pubs where you can replenish your energy afterwards!

Meanwhile in town itself you’ll find plenty of independent bookshops, antique dealers, boutiques and art galleries that make up the high street, and remain popular with visitors who want to pick up a souvenir or two. As for where to stay, there are various hotels and B&Bs that have all of that quintessential British charm, but you can also find a wide array of holiday cottages with the likes of Sykes Holiday Cottages, Bolthole Retreats and Booking.com, to name a few.

It’s therefore no surprise that travel experts at Ski Vertigo have named it one of the best destinations for autumn, saying that it ‘comes alive’ during the season. They explained: “There’s something special about visiting Stow in autumn. The air is crisp, the hills glow with amber light, and the town feels timeless. It’s a place where you can stop for tea, watch the leaves fall, and forget about the rush of everyday life.”

Book fans will want to check out St Edward’s Church with its door flanked by ancient yew trees; it’s one of the town’s locations that’s said to have inspired J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, as its door looks very similar to the “Doors of Durin” from The Fellowship of the Ring. Meanwhile other must-visit highlights include the picturesque Market Square, the Cotswold Cricket Museum and Chastleton House.

It’s also a short drive from plenty of other gorgeous villages worth a day trip too; Bourton-on-the-Water, Upper Slaughter, and Lower Slaughter tend to be hits thanks to their stone cottages and picture-perfect landscapes.

Do you have a story to tell us? Email us at [email protected].

The world is a confusing and scary place right now. Many of us are anxious wanderers in the wilderness, looking for answers. Is it any wonder that the wellness industry is booming? Into this strange new world comes Jade Chang’s funny and poignant novel “What a Time to Be Alive,” whose protagonist Lola is broke and aimless — until a leaked video transforms her into an instant self-help guru.

Chang, whose first novel, “The Wangs vs. The World,” was a sharp satire on class and ambition, has now turned her gaze to the promise and peril of self-actualization through social media. I sat down with Chang to discuss spiritualism for profit, tech bros and trucker hats.

(Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.)

✍️ Author Chat

Book jacket of “What a Time to Be Alive” by Jade Chang

(Los Angeles Times illustration; book jacket from Ecco)

This book almost didn’t make it, as you physically lost it.

I started it years ago. I was writing in longhand in a notebook, entire chapters of the book. I lost the notebook and I was devastated. Then I moved on and wrote “The Wangs vs. The World.” It took a long time to get back into writing this new book. By the time I circled back to it, the world had changed so much. I think I have become more generous about things, and the story benefited from it.

Lola, your protagonist, unwittingly becomes an online self-help guru on the basis of a leaked video that is posted on social media. She becomes a sort of accidental wellness expert.

As someone who didn’t grow up with religion, I have always been really fascinated by belief. Why do we want to believe, and how are we compelled to certain beliefs? And it was just kind of fascinating and amazing that people could find so much life in religious stories. As I was developing the story of this novel, I realized that everyone in the digital world takes a page from this book as well, using stories to convert listeners into believers. I think Lola starts out sort of thinking she is in above her head, but by the end, her sincerity shines through. She wants to believe what she is telling others to believe.

Do you think the internet breeds cynicism and has turned us all into an angry mob?

I don’t. The digital world doesn’t make us any different from who we are, but it can throw a lens on certain aspects of our behavior. I think the internet allows us to be our best and worst selves. Think about all those strangers who might contribute to a GoFundMe campaign because someone has had a serious injury and needs to pay their medical bills, which can yield tens of thousands of dollars in some cases. That’s the mob functioning at its best.

But isn’t it a little too easy to pull a con job online?

Yes, it’s easy to be inauthentic online, but it’s important to remember that online performance is a tiny percentage of someone’s life. That’s why I was so interested in writing about the rise of this self-help guru, because usually when these stories are told you only see it from the acolyte’s point of view or the skeptic’s point of view. But we all have to make money, and we all are pulling a little something over on someone at some point — it’s part of surviving in the world.

Lola cauterizes the pain in her personal life by offering panaceas to pain for strangers online, but she affects a false persona to do so.

It’s easy to assume that anything we do, whether it’s on social media or elsewhere online, is performative or fraudulent in some way. RuPaul has a great quote where he says gender is drag. Everything is drag, a performance. Every choice we make is often not reflective of our essential self. You can’t codify identity in clothes or that trucker hat you’re wearing; anything you’re going to choose is going to be influenced by the times in which you live and who you surround yourself with. I can only speak from experience, but I think it’s almost impossible to suppress your true self.

You mentioned how self-help gurus and tech bros have a similar public worldview.

As research for the book, I attended one of Oprah’s Super Soul Sundays at Royce Hall. Every single person that spoke had the same arc: “I was down in the dumps, and then I looked up from that hole and I saw a glimmer in the form of CrossFit,” or drumming, or whatever it was that pulled them up from the brink. Then I went to a TED talk, and these tech gurus are saying the exact same thing. It’s the narrative of our time. I saw that crossover, and I knew I had something to say. I was interested in this internal push and pull of, how much do you give in to this tactic, and how much do you not.

📰 The Week(s) in Books

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Hamilton Cain has mixed feelings about Patricia Lockwood’s autofictional account of the COVID-19 lockdown, “Will There Ever Be Another You,” praising Lockwood’s “rich and kinetic” prose but bemoaning her “self-indulgent and repetitious” narrative.

Steve Henson has a chat with tennis legend Björn Borg about his new memoir, “Heartbeats,” which delves into his heavy cocaine and alcohol use that began shortly after he walked away from the sport at age 26.

Karen Palmer’s harrowing memoir, “She’s Under Here,” “details forgery, a child’s kidnapping, a mental breakdown, struggles to stay afloat — and joy,” writes Bethanne Patrick.

And David A. Keeps reports on the fiscal inequities of the booming audiobook industry: “Many actors are vying for audiobook roles at a time when the talent pool is expanding and casting is becoming a growing topic of debate.”

📖 Bookstore Faves

The Book Jewel, located in the city of Westchester, is just minutes from LAX.

(The Book Jewel)

The Book Jewel is a welcome addition to the neighborhood of Westchester, an expansive bookstore with an excellent selection of fiction and nonfiction titles for locals, or those who might stop by there before catching their flight at nearby LAX. We talked with general manager Joseph Paulsen about the store.

Your store is serving a community that hasn’t had a general interest bookstore in quite some time.

The Book Jewel opened smack-dab in the middle of the global COVID-19 pandemic in August of 2020. Our Westchester community has supported us from Day 1, and we recently celebrated our fifth anniversary. We are the only bookstore in Westchester, and we are locally owned and independent. I live here in Westchester and have raised both of my sons here.

What’s selling right now?

Right now we’re selling tons of children’s literature and graphic novels (“InvestiGators,” Dav Pilkey, etc.). Of course, the ABA Independent Bestsellers. Lots of romantasy.

You are pretty close to LAX. Do you sell a lot of books to travelers?

The travelers give themselves away with their roller bags, and we catch ’em heading out of Los Angeles on the reg! They like long books for long flights. Lots of souvenirs too! We have some unique, local non-book items as well and offer a better vibe than the international terminal.

The Book Jewel is located at 6259 W. 87th St, Los Angeles, CA.

Eight-run cricket win keeps Bangladesh in the running for the next phase, while Afghanistan must beat Sri Lanka to make it.

Bangladesh have kept themselves in contention for the next round of cricket’s Asia Cup 2025 by defeating Afghanistan by eight runs in their Group B encounter in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates.

Afghanistan came close to securing their place in the Super Four stage and knocking out Bangladesh, but fell short in their chase of 155 on Tuesday.

The Bangladeshi pacers kept Afghanistan’s batters in check with regular wickets as Mustafizur Rahman (3-28 in four overs), Nasum Ahmed (2-11 in four overs) and Taskin Ahmed (2-34 in four overs) applied the brakes on Afghanistan’s innings.

Apart from Rahmanullah Gurbaz 35 (31) and Azmatullah Omarzai 30 (16), none of the Afghan batters could move into the 30s.

Captain Rashid Khan’s flurry at the end of the innings – 20 (11) – did look threatening for Bangladesh at one point, but once he was dismissed, Afghanistan’s chances were all but gone.

Despite a couple of late sixes from spinner Noor Ahmad, Afghanistan fell short and were dismissed for 145 in their 20 overs.

Earlier, Tanzid Hasan top-scored for Bangladesh with a half-century (52 off 31) to help set up a challenging target of 154-5 in 20 overs.

Rashid and Noor took two wickets apiece for Afghanistan.

Bangladesh have now played all three of their group games and will await the result of Afghanistan’s all-important match against Sri Lanka on Thursday.

Sri Lanka are at top spot with four points, and Bangladesh move to second place with four points.

The Tigers will hope that Sri Lanka beat Afghanistan to open their path to the Super Fours.

Should Afghanistan win, the net run rate could come into play as a deciding factor.

Kavan Markwood wakes up in pain every day and has no feeling in two of his fingers.

Still, the 20-year-old McKeesport, Pa., resident knows it could be much worse.

“I don’t know how I’m alive,” Markwood told “Inside Edition” this week, more than four months after he fell 21 feet from the stands to the field at PNC Park in Pittsburgh during a game between the Pirates and Chicago Cubs.

Video footage from the April 30 game shows Markwood falling headfirst over the railing above the Clemente Wall in right field. He appears to flip head over heals multiple times before landing on the warning track.

Play was stopped for several minutes as the training staffs for both teams tended to Markwood. He eventually was carted off and taken to Allegheny General Hospital in critical condition. According to “Inside Edition,” Markwood broke his back, neck, every rib and punctured a lung.

“I’m doing better than what I was, that’s for sure,” said Markwood, who was shown during the interview walking around outside PNC Park wearing a cast on his left forearm.

Markwood told “Inside Edition” that he had jumped out of his seat to cheer and came down awkwardly on the railing and careened off of it. Although Pittsburgh Public Safety has labeled the incident an accident, 21-year-old McKeesport resident Ethan Kirkwood has been arrested for allegedly providing alcohol to Markwood at the game.

Kirkwood faces two misdemeanor counts of furnishing alcohol to a minor and is scheduled for a preliminary hearing Sept. 29. A police report viewed by WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh indicates that Markwood’s girlfriend told police that he hadn’t had anything to drink before arriving to the stadium and had two beers while there.

“I feel terrible because it wasn’t his fault,” Markwood said of Kirkwood, who can be seen on the footage from the accident climbing over the railing from a section closer to field level and jumping onto the ground to help his friend.

Markwood added that alcohol had nothing to do with what happened. It was, he said, “a tragic accident.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Sparks defeated the Dallas Wings 91-77 on Sunday at Crypto.com Arena to keep their faint playoff hopes alive heading into the final week of the regular season.

Julie Allemand finished with 21 points, a career-high five steals and four assists, and Rae Burrell had 13 points as the Sparks went on a 16-0 run in the fourth quarter.

The Sparks (20-22) must win their final two games against Phoenix and Las Vegas and have Seattle lose to Golden State on Tuesday to make the postseason.

The Sparks led for nearly the entire game, capitalizing on 10 three-pointers, 12 steals and six players scoring in double digits.

Dallas, however, went on a 19-2 run at the beginning of the third quarter and managed to briefly lead twice.

Amy Okonkwo hit a three-pointer with 8.9 seconds left in the third quarter to give the Wings (9-34) a one-point lead. But the Sparks didn’t waste time responding, with Allemand hitting a three-pointer before the buzzer that put the Sparks ahead for good.

The Sparks then pulled away in the fourth quarter, with Burrell scoring 11 points.

Momentum shifted in the third quarter as the Wings went on a 19-2 run in the beginning of the quarter.

Dallas managed to take a one-point lead late in the third quarter before Allemand hit a three-pointer before the buzzer that put the Sparks ahead for good. Burrell scored 11 points in the fourth quarter to help the Sparks pull away.

Azurá Stevens had 13 points and 11 rebounds, and Dearica Hamby finished with 15 points and 13 rebounds. Kelsey Plum had 12 points and Rickea Jackson contributed 11 points.

Dallas rookie Paige Bueckers finished with 18 points, seven assists and six rebounds for Dallas. Myisha Hines-Allen had 15 points, 13 rebounds and seven assists. Maddy Siegrist added 13 points and four rebounds for the Wings.

EastEnders viewers think they know who Zoe Slater was talking about when she told mum Kat Moon ‘he’s alive’, after a flashback twist in the latest episode on the BBC soap

Viewers of EastEnders think they know who Zoe Slater is running from, and who she realised “is alive”.

The character made the comment in a recent episode after being shot by mistake. Zoe assumed someone was after her and that they had fired the gun, before flashbacks revealed some of her huge secrets.

Zoe told her mum Kat that someone was “still alive”, clearly shocked as if she’d thought they were dead. Then on Thursday we saw a deadly twist air involving Zoe and Max Branning, as their connection was finally explained.

We learned Zoe was trying to track down the son she’d abandoned at a hospital shortly after giving birth in 2006, with it revealed his twin sister had died. Zoe didn’t think she could look after him and asked for him to be adopted, before she fled.

READ MORE: EastEnders fans ‘know’ who father of Zoe’s babies is – and it’s not MaxREAD MORE: Zoe Slater’s twin shock as EastEnders reveals character’s tragic past in flashback episode

Years later and prior to her Walford return, Zoe met Max in Ibiza and the pair got close. She told Max about hiring a Private Investigator, explaining her debts.

She managed to track down an old neighbour of the family who adopted her son, and was told that if she gave him £5,000 she’d get some answers. Max wasn’t sure and thought something wasn’t right, but Zoe said he was the real deal and the neighbour would talk for the right price.

After an incident left him possibly dead though, Max and Zoe fled and parted ways. Now, fans think it’s this neighbour or even the Private Investigator that she was talking about when she said “he’s alive”.

So did she mean the man, the neighbour, that she thought she’d murdered by accident? Some fans questioned if it was the neighbour or the PI, or even a past character who is believed to have died.

One viewer said on social media: “Is this the guy who Zoe was refering to last night when she said ‘He’s still alive’ or could this have been referring to Max?” meaning the man who attacked Zoe. Believing it was the PI Zoe had attacked, when it was the neighbour, a fan added: “So is the enemy possibly the PI as we don’t know he is dead.”

As for the past character, a theory read: “‘He’s still alive’ is Vincent. Vincent is Ravi’s supplier. Zoe worked for him and owes him a lot of money. Vincent drives Howie out. This storyline ties the Slaters, the Foxes, and the Panesars.”

It comes as fans questioned if Zoe was tied into Ravi Gulati and Nicola Mitchell’s drug storyline, also featuring other characters. It was the constant references to Ibiza and her recent dash Barcelona that left fans wondering if she was linked to some other characters.

So is Zoe involved with their dodgy dealings? Fans certainly think so, taking to social media to share their theories. One fan said: “I think Zoe is the one that is behind the drugs thing with Ravi to get money to look for her son?”

Another fan theorised: “I’m convinced he’s part of Ravi’s drug storyline,” while a third fan recalled Nicola mentioning Ibiza recently. On Thursday we found out how Zoe met Max, and who she may have been running from.

EastEnders airs Mondays to Thursdays at 7:30pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer. * Follow Mirror Celebs and TV on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads .

Zoe Slater was heard commenting that someone was ‘alive’ as if they were meant to be dead in a scene on EastEnders on Wednesday night, as she was left fighting for her life

Fans believe a dead EastEnders character may be about to come back to life in a twist linked to Zoe Slater.

Zoe, played by Michelle Ryan, panicked that someone was out to get her as she was shot in explosive scenes on Wednesday night. She had no idea she had accidentally been shot after Jack Branning and Ravi Gulati fought over a gun.

Fearing she was in danger, she admitted to her mum Kat Moon that someone was after her and seemed shocked when she said the words “he’s still alive”. She didn’t specify who she was referring to before she lost consciousness.

Now fans think it’s someone from the show’s past and that they could be about to make a shocking return. One theory was that she was talking about Paul Trueman, who was killed off on the BBC soap in 2004.

READ MORE: Max Branning makes dramatic EastEnders return in shock Zoe Slater twistREAD MORE: EastEnders fans ‘rumble’ Max’s link to Zoe – and he’s not the father of her baby

Another theory was it was about Dennis Rickman, who died in 2005. Some fans wondered if it was a living character, but Zoe wrongly assumed they were dead – with Ross Marshall named, as well as Max Branning.

Fans also questioned if Zoe’s biological father Harry Slater, who raped Zoe’s mother Kat Moon when she was 13 years old, was the one who was “still alive”. Fans took to X with their theories.

One fan said: “Who’s still alive? What if Dennis Rickman or Paul Trueman is alive and Zoe knows them?” Another fan said: “Who was Zoe looking at in the pub? She clearly saw someone. And she told Kat ‘he’s still alive’.

“Was it Joel? Was it Ross? Was it Oscar, then did she click Max was alive because he looks so much like Oscar??” Another fan posted: “Zoe said ‘He’s still alive,” when talking to Kat in the ambulance. It’s either her twin brother, or (((drum roll))) Harry Slater didn’t die in 2018!”

More will be revealed in upcoming episodes. It come as fans learned Zoe had given birth to twins in 2006, while until that flashback episode no one knew about it.

It seemed that sadly one of the twins died after childbirth, while Zoe left the little boy and fled the hospital, wanting him to be adopted. Now, fans think the father of the babies could be Den Watts.

Zoe slept with Den amid a storyline with her partner Dennis, Den’s son, and it was thought she had an abortion. Now fans think she was still pregnant and that the twins are Den’s children.

Taking to X one fan said: “If anything it’s Den’s baby.” Another said: “Wait is Dirty den the dad.” A third fan posted: “Zoe Slater is the mother of twins by Den Watts, and one of them is dead.” Another added: “No way she had Den’s baby???? No way right????” A further post read: “Is that Den’s baby?.”

EastEnders airs Mondays to Thursdays at 7:30pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer. * Follow Mirror Celebs and TV on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads .

Trent Rockets kept their slim qualification hopes alive with a six-wicket win over Oval Invincibles in The Hundred women’s competition.

Rockets made hard work of chasing just 110 at The Kia Oval after a flurry of middle-order wickets, but Heather Graham held her nerve with an unbeaten 19 from 11 balls and they reached their target with 16 balls to spare.

The visitors had a flying start from Bryony Smith and Grace Scrivens, who added 51 in 35 balls together, but the Invincibles fought back to remove Smith for 24 and claimed the huge wickets of Nat Sciver-Brunt for two and Ash Gardner for 11.

Scrivens then fell for 34 but Graham and Jodi Grewcock, with 21 not out, settled the Rockets’ nerves and sealed their first win against the Invincibles.

In contrast to the Rockets’ rapid start, Invincibles crawled to 13-1 from their powerplay, which included 16 dot balls, as captain Lauren Winfield-Hill fell for seven from 14.

Former Australia skipper Meg Lanning revived the innings as she kicked on to 45 from 35 balls, but Ash Gardner changed the course of the game as she dismissed Lanning and Marizanne Kapp in the space of three balls.

Paige Scholfield whacked the last ball for six to take Invincibles to 109-7 but her 16 not out was the second highest score of the innings as they failed to put partnerships together throughout.

Both Rockets and Invincibles, who are two-time winners, need to win all of their remaining games and still hope for other results to go their way.

After Israel’s attack on a tent housing journalists in Gaza City, Palestinians say press vests now feel like a target.

Palestinian journalists have long known Gaza to be the most dangerous place on earth for media workers, but Israel’s latest attack on a tent housing journalists in Gaza City has left many reeling from shock and fear.

Four Al Jazeera staff were among seven people killed in an Israeli drone strike outside al-Shifa Hospital on August 10. The Israeli military has admitted to deliberately targeting the tent after making unsubstantiated accusations that one of those killed, Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif, was a member of Hamas.

Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed at least 238 media workers since October 2023, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office. This toll is higher than that of World Wars I and II, the Vietnam War, the war in Afghanistan and the Yugoslavia wars combined.

Al Jazeera correspondent Hani Mahmoud said, “Press vests and helmets, once considered a shield, now feel like a target.”

“The fear is constant — and justified,” Mahmoud said. “Every assignment is accompanied by the same unspoken question: Will [I] make it back alive?”

The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists has been among several organisations denouncing Israel’s longstanding pattern of accusing journalists of being “terrorists” without credible proof.

“It is no coincidence that the smears against al-Sharif — who has reported night and day for Al Jazeera since the start of the war — surfaced every time he reported on a major development in the war, most recently the starvation brought about by Israel’s refusal to allow sufficient aid into the territory,” CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah said in the aftermath of Israel’s attack.

In light of Israel’s systematic targeting of journalists, media workers in Gaza are forced to make difficult choices.

“As a mother and a journalist, I go through this mental dissonance almost daily, whether to go to work or stay with my daughters and being afraid of the random shelling of the Israeli occupation army,” Palestinian journalist Sally Thabet told Al Jazeera.

Across the street from the ruins of the School of Media Studies at al-Quds Open University in Gaza City, where he used to teach, Hussein Saad has been recovering from an injury he sustained while running to safety.

“The deliberate targeting of Palestinian journalists has a strong effect on the disappearance of the Palestinian story and the disappearance of the media narrative,” he said. Saad argued the Strip was witnessing “the disappearance of the truth”.

While journalists report on mass killings, human suffering and starvation, they also cope with their own losses and deprivation. Photographer and correspondent Amer al-Sultan said hunger was a major challenge.

“I used to go to work, and when I didn’t find anything to eat, I would just drink water,” he said. “I did this for two days. I had to live for two or three days on water. This is one of the most difficult challenges we face amid this war against our people: starvation.”

Journalist and film director Hassan Abu Dan said reporters “live in conditions that are more difficult than the mind can imagine.”

“You live in a tent. You drink water that is not good for drinking. You eat unhealthy food … We are all, as journalists, confused. There is a part of our lives that has been ruined and gone far away,” he said.

Al Jazeera’s Mahmoud said that despite the psychological trauma and the personal risks, Palestinian journalists continue to do their jobs, “driven by a belief that documenting the truth is not just a profession, but a duty to their people and history”.

More than 100 artists, musicians, comedians, actors and performers from L.A.’s thriving, multifaceted underground art scene are featured in a new experimental video game named “Blippo+.” Created by Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans, with music by Bechtolt and Rob Kieswetter, the trio behind the L.A.-based post-pop band YACHT (Young Americans Challenging High Technology), the game is part video art installation, part interactive theater. It was created for the newfangled gaming console Playdate, which was released in 2022 and purposefully conjures old-school devices like the Nintendo Game Boy, with a black-and-white, 1-bit display.

“This is essentially our bootleg way of making television, by skipping all the gatekeepers and going straight to a distribution platform that is still open to artist’s weird experiments, a.k.a. video games,” said Evans, in an interview Thursday in advance of the game’s exhibition party at Bob Baker Marionette Theater in Highland Park.

“Hollywood [production] has left Los Angeles, so the people that are here have to scramble to figure out what to do,” added Bechtolt. “So we moved to where there’s lots of funding, and an openness for experimentation. And that’s the video game world, indie video games, specifically.”

Playdate’s low-res format was ideal for “Blippo+,” which rolls out in a looping, 11-week cycle, with new programming — original, avant-garde soaps, sitcoms, news, weather and talk shows— arriving every Thursday at 10 a.m. PDT. Bechtolt and Evans collaborated with director JJ Stratford, a longtime video artist and music video maker, who runs the all-analog Telefantasy Studios in Glendale, dedicated to, according to its website, “bringing the strange, surreal, and speculative to life.”

“She’s a scholar of video arts, and an artist herself,” explained Bechtolt of Stratford. “When all of the TV studios in Los Angeles converted to digital, they just threw out their analog equipment. So JJ has been collecting this stuff for years and years, and now she has a full-on 1982 television studio.”

The L.A.-based post-pop trio YACHT has created a new art project / video game called “Blippo+.”

(YACHT)

The programming on “Blippo+” was filmed over the course of a year using the kind of tube cameras common in television studios before the digital era, and employing the talents of the band’s aforementioned artist-collaborators including artists Martine Syms and Maya Man; musicians Staz Lindes (of the Paranoyds), Calvin Johnson (of K Records / Beat Happening) Phil Elverum (Mount Eerie); and comedians Whitmer Thomas, Clay Tatum, Mitra Jouhari, Donny Divanian, Kyle Mizono, Anna Seregina, Steve Hernandez, Tipper Newton and Brent Weinbach.

Post-production took another year, and the game was finally released on Playdate in May. Next month “Blippo+” will roll out on Steam and Nintendo Switch.

Playdate was created by the Portland-based software development and video game publishing company Panic Inc. YACHT originated in Portland and the people behind Panic were longtime fans. They approached the band almost a decade ago at a music festival in North Carolina.

“They gave us this open invitation to make something as YACHT if we ever had an idea for a video game,” said Bechtolt.

Evans added that Panic’s interest was likely fueled by the band’s reputation for creating experimental multimedia art projects that exist both on and offline, including co-founding the Triforium Project, which worked to restore and revitalize artist Joseph Young’s controversial Triforium sound-and-light sculpture in downtown Los Angeles, and resulted in a variety of live art and music performances at the site.

“Blippo+” is a natural extension of YACHT’s immersion in underground art and obsession with how analog and digital tools can collide to create new forms and functions for a post-postmodern world. It was also proudly made without the use of AI, Bechtolt and Evans noted.

I’m arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt, heading back underground where I belong. Here’s your weekly dose of arts news.

Best bets: On our radar this week

Gustavo Dudamel conducts the L.A. Phil in John Williams’ score for “Jurassic Park.”

(L.A. Philharmonic)

‘Jurassic Park’ in Concert
Gustavo Dudamel and L.A. Phil perform John Williams’ epic score live to picture as Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster starring Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum is projected on the big screen in HD.
8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com

The Old Globe presents “Deceived,” based on the play “Gas Light,” Saturday through Sept. 7.

(Ben Wiseman)

Deceived
Playwrights Johnna Wright and Patty Jamieson’s update Patrick Hamilton’s classic 1938 stage thriller “Gas Light” (also the basis of the 1944 film “Gaslight”) about a woman who begins to doubt her seemingly perfect new husband as she is increasingly bedeviled by strange occurrences.
Saturday through Sept. 7 Old Globe Theatre, 1363 Old Globe Way, San Diego. theoldglobe.org

The Hollywood Bowl at night.

(L.A. Philharmonic)

The Russians are coming …
And L.A. Phil has them for two separate programs this week at the Hollywood Bowl. Tuesday night, Elim Chan conducts the orchestra performing Tchaikovsky’s “Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35” (with violinist James Ehnes), Britten’s “Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, Op. 33A” and the 1919 version of Stravinsky’s “The Firebird.” Then on Thursday, Gemma New takes the baton for Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Capriccio espagnol, Op. 34,” Arutiunian’s Trumpet concerto (performed by Pacho Flores) and Tchaikovsky’s Fourth symphony.
8 p.m. Tuesday; 8 p.m. Thursday. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N Highland Ave. https://www.hollywoodbowl.com/

Brittany Howard and Alabama Shakes play the Hollywood Bowl on Wednesday.

(Amy Harris / Invision / AP)

Alabama Shakes
In their first L.A. show in eight years, the soulful rockers led by singer-guitarist Brittany Howard are joined by Oakland punk quartet Shannon and the Clams.
8 p.m. Wednesday. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com

The North American tour of “& Juliet” arrives at the Ahmanson on Aug. 13.

(Matthew Murphy)

& Juliet
What if Romeo’s tragic love didn’t end it all? Find out in this jukebox musical written by David West Read (TV’s “Schitt’s Creek”) and featuring the music of Swedish pop hitmaker Max Martin and others.
Wednesday–Sept. 7. Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. centertheatregroup.org

Legendary L.A. jazz composer/musician Bobby Bradford, pictured in 2019, brings his tribute to baseball great Jackie Robinson to the Hammer’s JazzPOP series on Thursday.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Bobby Bradford’s Stealin’ Home: A Tribute to Jackie Robinson
The West Coast jazz great leads an all-star septet performing his original composition, an homage to the Dodger legend who broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947. Part of the Hammer’s 2025 JazzPOP series.
8 p.m. Thursday. UCLA Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood. hammer.ucla.edu

Culture news

Vincent Van Gogh, “Tarascon Stagecoach,” 1888, oil on canvas

(Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation)

Los Angeles County Museum of Art announced that it has been gifted its first paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Édouard Manet, in addition to four works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Alfred Sisley, Wilhelm Lehmbruck and Maurice Brazil Prendergast. The pieces come from the Pearlman Foundation, which is dividing its collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and Modernist art among LACMA, New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum.

Times Classical Music Critic Mark Swed writes an appreciation of experimental theater director and playwright Robert Wilson, who died at the end of July. Swed was in Austria when he heard the news, attending the Salzberg Festival, and watching, “the kind of uncompromisingly slow, shockingly beauteous and incomprehensibly time-and-space-bending weirdness Wilson took infinite pleasure in hosting when he made what he called operas.”

The Japanese Pavilion at the L.A. County Museum of Art in 2012.

(LACMA)

Times contributor Sam Lubell takes a deep dive into the work of Bruce Goff, who designed Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Japanese Pavilion, noting that while Goff remained largely under-the-radar throughout his life, he nonetheless inspired a host renegade of West Coast architects.

Gustavo Dudamel appeared onstage at the Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday, to the great joy of fans and the orchestra alike. This summer marks the 20th anniversary of the now legendary conductor’s U.S. debut, writes Swed in a review of Dudamel’s single homecoming week this Bowl season. “After 20 years, Dudamel clearly knows what works at the Bowl, but he also likes to push the envelope as with Tuesday’s savvy blend of Duke Ellington and jazzy Ravel,” Swed writes.

The SoCal scene

Philanthropist Glorya Kaufman at her Beverly Hills home in 2012.

(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

Glorya Kaufman, the philanthropist who transformed dance in Los Angeles through the establishment of an eponymous dance school at USC as well as a prominent dance series at the Music Center, among many other initiatives, has died. She was 95. Read her full obituary here.

The Tom and Ethel Bradley Residence in Leimert Park — along with the Stylesville Barbershop & Beauty Salon in Pacoima, St. Elmo Village and Jewel’s Catch One in Mid-City, the California Eagle newspaper in South L.A. and New Bethel Baptist Church in Venice—have been designated Historic-Cultural Monuments as part of a project meant to recognize Black heritage and led by the Getty in collaboration with the City of Los Angeles’ Office of Historic Resources.

When Pasadena Playhouse announces its new seasons each year, it typically delays naming one show until a later date. That time has now come, and Producing Artistic Director Danny Feldman sets Julia Masli’s “ha ha ha ha ha ha ha,” directed by Kim Noble, as the theater’s fifth Mainstage production, running from Oct.15 to Nov. 9. The playhouse also announced some juicy casting news: Tony Award winner Jefferson Mays will star as Salieri in Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus,” which is scheduled to open Feb. 15.

Paging parents of teenagers! There is an organization called TeenTix that has paired with a veritable cornucopia of L.A.-area arts institutions to offer a youth pass that charges local kids between the ages of 13 and 19 $5 to attend shows, concerts and exhibits. More than 35 groups participate in the program, including Geffen Playhouse, Center Theatre Group, the Soraya, Pasadena Playhouse, Boston Court, Pasadena Symphony, the Armory, A Noise Within, the Autry Museum of the West, Heidi Duckler Dance, Skirball Cultural Center, Sierra Madre Playhouse and Actors Gang. Reservations are required, and info and passes can be found here.

— Jessica Gelt

And last but not least

There is a free plant stand in Altadena — a symbol of new life in the wake of January’s devastating Eaton fire.

Sayfollah Musallet was a brother, a son and an ambitious young man who was just at the beginning of his life.

That is the message his family has repeated since July 11, when the 20-year-old United States citizen was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in the village of Sinjil in the occupied West Bank.

That message, they hope, will prevent the Florida-born Sayfollah from becoming “just another number” in the growing list of Palestinian Americans whose killings never find justice.

That’s why his cousin, Fatmah Muhammad, took a moment amid her grief on Wednesday to remember the things she loved about Sayfollah.

The two united over a passion for food, and Muhammad, a professional baker, remembers how carefully Sayfollah would serve the delicate knafeh pastry she sold through the ice cream shop he ran in Tampa.

“Just in the way he plated my dessert, he made it look so good,” Muhammad, 43, recalled. “I even told him he did a better job than me.”

“That really showed the type of person he was,” she added. “He wanted to do things with excellence.”

‘The love he gave all of us’

Born and raised in Port Charlotte, a coastal community in south central Florida, Sayfollah – nicknamed Saif – maintained a deep connection to his ancestral roots abroad.

He spent a large portion of his teenage years in the occupied West Bank, where his two brothers and sister also lived. There, his parents, who own a home near Sinjil, hoped he could better connect with his culture and language.

But after finishing high school, Sayfollah was eager to return to the US to try his hand at entrepreneurship. Last year, he, his father and his cousins opened the dessert shop in Tampa, Florida, playfully named Ice Screamin.

But the ice cream shop was just the beginning. Sayfollah’s ambition left a deep impression on Muhammad.

“He had his vision to expand the business, to multiply it by many,” she said, her voice at times shaking with grief. “This at 20, when most kids are playing video games.”

“And the crazy thing is, any goal that he set his mind to, he always did it,” she added. “He always exceeded everyone’s expectations, especially with the love he gave all of us.”

Sayfollah’s aunt, 58-year-old Samera Musallet, also remembers his dedication to his family. She described Sayfollah as a loving young man who never let his aunts pay for anything in his presence – and who always insisted on bringing dessert when he came for dinner.

At the same time, Samera said he was still youthful and fun-loving: He liked to watch comedy movies, shop for clothes and make late-night trips to the WaWa convenience store.

One of her fondest memories came when Sayfollah was only 14, and they went together to a baseball game featuring the Kansas City Royals.

“When we got there, he could smell the popcorn and all the hot dogs. He bought everything he could see and said, ‘We’re going to share!’” she told Al Jazeera.

“After he ate all that junk food, we turned around, and he was sleeping. I woke him up when the game was over, and he goes: ‘Who won?’”

‘I really want to get married’

Another one of his aunts, 52-year-old Katie Salameh, remembers that Sayfollah’s mind had turned to marriage in the final months of his young life

As the Florida spring gave way to summer, Sayfollah had announced plans to return to the West Bank to see his mother and siblings. But he confided to Salameh that he had another reason for returning.

“The last time I saw him was we had a family wedding, and that was the weekend of Memorial Day [in May],” Salameh told Al Jazeera.

“I asked him: ‘Are you so excited to see your siblings and your mom?’ He said, ‘Oh my god, I’m so excited.’ Then he goes, ‘I really want to get married. I’m going to look for a bride when I’m there.’”

To keep the ice cream shop running smoothly, Sayfollah had arranged a switch with his father: He would return to the West Bank while his father would travel to Tampa to mind the business.

But that decision would unwittingly put Sayfollah’s father more than 10,000 kilometres away from his son when violent Israeli settlers surrounded him, as witnesses and his family would later recount.

Israeli authorities said the attack in Sinjil began with rock-throwing and “violent clashes … between Palestinians and Israeli civilians”, a claim Sayfollah’s family and witnesses have rejected.

Instead, they said Sayfollah was trying to protect his family’s land when he was encircled by a “mob of settlers” who beat him.

Even when an ambulance was called, Sayfollah’s family said the settlers blocked the paramedics from reaching his broken body. Sayfollah’s younger brother would ultimately help carry his dying brother to emergency responders.

The settlers also fatally shot Mohammed al-Shalabi, a 23-year-old Palestinian man, who witnesses said was left bleeding for hours.

“His phone was on, and he wasn’t responding,” his mother, Joumana al-Shalabi, told reporters. “He was missing for six hours. They found him martyred under the tree. They beat him and shot him with bullets.”

Palestinians cannot legally possess firearms in the occupied West Bank, but Israeli settlers can. The Israeli government itself has encouraged the settlers to bear arms, including through the distribution of rifles to civilians.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has recorded the killings of at least 964 Palestinians at the hands of Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank since October 7, 2023.

And the violence appears to be on the rise. The OHCHR noted that there was a 13-percent increase in the number of killings during the first six months of 2025, compared with the same period last year.

‘Pain I can’t even describe’

An Al Jazeera analysis also found that Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least nine US citizens since 2022, including veteran reporter Shireen Abu Akleh.

None of those deaths have resulted in criminal charges, with Washington typically relying on Israel to conduct its own investigations.

So far, US President Donald Trump has not directly addressed Sayfollah’s killing. When asked in the Oval Office about the fatal beating, Trump deferred to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

“We protect all American citizens anywhere in the world, especially if they’re unjustly murdered or killed,” Rubio replied on Trump’s behalf. “We’re gathering more information.”

Rubio also pointed to a statement issued a day earlier from the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. The ambassador called on Israel to “aggressively investigate” the attack, saying “there must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act”.

It was a particularly jarring sentiment from Huckabee, who has been a vocal supporter of Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank and has even denied the very existence of a Palestinian people.

Nevertheless, no independent, US-led investigation has been announced.

According to Israeli media, three Israeli settlers, including a military reservist, were taken into custody following the deadly attack, but all were subsequently released.

It has only been four days since Sayfollah’s killing, and his family told Al Jazeera the initial shock has only now begun to dissipate.

But in its place has come a flood of grief and anger. Muhammad still struggles to accept that he “died because he was on his own land”. She sees Sayfollah’s death as part of a broader pattern of abuses, whether in the West Bank or in Gaza, where Israel has led a war since 2023.

“I see it on the news all the time with other people in the West Bank. I see it in Gaza – the indiscriminate killing of anybody in their way,” she said.

“But when it happens to you, it’s just so hard to even fathom,” she added. “It’s pain I can’t even describe.”