
Royal superfan minister showcasing 40-year collection of memorabilia to raise cash for charity trip
Rev Canon Derek Kerr, rector of St Vindic's Parish Church in Tynan, has items dating back to Queen Victoria's time.

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The Guardian
12 hours ago
- The Guardian
The kindness of strangers: I used to hate being judged, but then a woman on a train praised my parenting
I had my eldest child when I was 19, and being a young mum can be tricky – I was used to feeling judged by other people in public. One evening, I was on a crowded train home in Melbourne at peak hour, which is also witching hour for toddlers. My two-year-old son just started losing it, so I was distracting him with silly noises and games. It was largely working and he was mostly laughing and squealing with delight. I registered that it was annoying some passengers, but the alternative would have been much louder and annoying for us all. Making matters worse, no one offered me a seat, so we were standing up and bumping into other people, who were getting pissed off. I was close to tears when an older lady moved forward and stood next to me. She was there for a while and could see I was getting very stressed out. Right at the point where I felt like the train would keep going forever, she put her hand on my arm and said: 'You're doing a great job.' It was so nice to hear. Those words of encouragement made a stressful situation a lot more bearable and have always stuck with me. I've no doubt she was a mother herself. I'm a midwife now and often when I see mums on the edge of the abyss, I think of that woman and try to share her kindness. I tell them: 'Your baby's loved and fed – you're doing good.' Mums don't hear that enough – in the public eye, mothers are under a lot of scrutiny, far more than fathers. I know first-hand how much a word of encouragement can turn the day around, and make things feel a little bit easier. From making your day to changing your life, we want to hear about chance encounters that have stuck with you. Your contact details are helpful so we can contact you for more information. They will only be seen by the Guardian. Your contact details are helpful so we can contact you for more information. They will only be seen by the Guardian. If you're having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here


Spectator
a day ago
- Spectator
Why I'm still wearing black
When my father passed away suddenly in April, I committed to wearing only black until after the funeral. I'm still struggling to properly articulate my feelings, but wearing black seems like a mark – albeit a feeble one – of respect to the memory of the best man I will ever know, and a small hold-out against fully returning to real life. I'm obviously not the first to wear black in mourning; the colour has held a near-mystical appeal for millennia. The Romans used to don a toga pulla when grieving. In the early medieval period, black symbolised malevolence, but by the 12th century the colour was associated with dignity, austerity and moral authority. It was adopted by many religious orders, including the Benedictines and the Dominicans. Black as mourning-wear was popularised in the 19th century under Queen Victoria. Women and children were expected to forego all colourful clothes for a year following the death of the family's patriarch. The rise in elaborate and ostentatious mourning outfits turned grieving into a business: the jet trade in England, particularly in Whitby, flourished because of the demand for mourning jewellery. After her husband Prince Albert died, Queen Victoria famously wore black for the final four decades of her life, including at her daughters' weddings. The Victorians had other, more eccentric grieving habits. Covering mirrors was one practice, as was 'telling the bees'. Beekeepers would whisper the news of a death in the family to their insects and would cover the hives in black fabric. A Victorian rector wrote in 1886 that the news should be delivered to the bees at midnight; others said it must be sung to in rhyme. I understand why such mourning rituals have gone out of fashion, and I can see that wearing black feels anachronistic in 2025, if not a bit pretentious. Most people probably haven't even noticed my new obsession, and my family and friends have been a little baffled as to why I have felt so compelled to do it. My father would probably think it all quite ridiculous. Wearing black to every occasion has been impractical and often quite silly. Rather than being dignified, my attempt at this high-minded solemnity has meant sweltering in the same black suit through successive heatwaves, interviews and parties. Still, I can't help but think that it's a shame – for both the living and the dead – that we've lost some of these traditions. They offer comfort and a degree of protection when even small things can feel daunting. I've certainly struggled to do anything without thinking of my dad. A couple of days before he died, he asked to see a priest and receive the Last Rites. I was suddenly reminded of his Catholic upbringing, and that he had lived decades of his life before I came along. I have realised I never really knew much about him beyond the fact that he was my dad. Contemplating the decades of life ahead now he's gone seems just as hard to get my head around. Weeks pass in a rush of hen dos, friends' newborn babies and work deadlines, and April has somehow turned into July. I am grateful for the distractions of day-to-day life. At the same time, I sometimes find myself in panicked disbelief that a full calendar month could pass without him. The funeral has come and gone and I'm still wearing black. While I doubt I will stick to this forever like Queen Victoria, I'm not sure when I'll return to my normal wardrobe. I miss him terribly. Wearing black has turned into a welcome constant – a line of defence. I've realised that a speedy return to 'normal' life has come with some other strange concessions. There are lots of things besides wearing other colours that I'm not sure when I'll start doing: listening to music again, checking the weather forecast, reading whole books, talking about him in the past tense. But for the time being I will stay in this slightly muted, quietly beautiful world of mourning. I want to keep remembering him.


The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
Multicolour menace: these hardy daisies love Australian conditions – and are taking over roadsides
Scattered across Victoria's northwest Mallee region is a sea of yellow, orange and green. To the untrained eye, these plants could be mistaken for wildflowers. But ecologist Fiona Murdoch isn't fooled. 'My daughter is 19 now, but I remember dropping her at the kindergarten bus stop, and a little path of gazania was there, so I went to get rid of it,' she says. 'It spread all the way up the road and to her kinder, and I realised how invasive it was.' Since then, Murdoch, who founded Mallee Conservation and is the secretary of stewardship organisation Land Covenanters Victoria, has made a point of controlling the spread of gazania near her property. 'It's been 15 years of constant vigilance,' she says. Gazanias are brightly coloured daisies native to South Africa and have long been recognised as an environmental weed in Australia. But new research has found they are emerging as a highly invasive plant in grain production systems and grasslands, suffocating crops and costing farmers. Sign up to receive Guardian Australia's fortnightly Rural Network email newsletter Fast-growing, hardy and aggressive, Murdoch says the plants are similar to gorse and bridal veil creeper. She says they have 'enough resources to continue growing, flowering and to set seeds even if they have their roots in the air'. 'If you pull it out, it keeps going; it doesn't take up herbicide, so it's hard to kill by spraying, and it's allelopathic, so it stops other plants from germinating.' Gazanias are listed as an environmental weed in Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania, and the sale of them is banned in SA. But the daisy can still be bought online in that state, and nurseries outside SA continue to stock the plant. The Invasive Species Council is campaigning to have the plants removed from nursery shelves. But advocacy manager Imogen Ebsworth says it isn't just a 'rogue nursery problem'. It's a regulatory failure. 'The best solution is to follow South Australia's lead and ban the sale and trade of all gazanias,' Ebworth says. According to the Invasive Species Council, about 75% of Australia's invasive weeds started as garden plants. Ebsworth says until there were stronger national safeguards in place, the circulation of plants that were known weeds would continue. 'We are relying on everyday Australians to either have a botany degree or realise they need to research legally sold plants to find out if they are a weed,' she says 'That's a system designed to fail. 'That's why we need a national strategy – one that includes proper weed risk assessments and a clear, safe list of plants that shouldn't be on sale.' Bunnings, Australia's largest hardware and garden centre chain, told Guardian Australia that it did not sell plants declared as weeds, but added that the list of invasive plants was different in each state and territory. It said it would continue to closely monitor lists for any regulatory changes and update its plant offerings accordingly. Bunnings' director of merchandise, Cam Rist, says it sells a wide range of locally sourced plants across different stores and works hard to create an assortment that caters to customer preferences and demand. 'As always, we closely follow all relevant local biosecurity regulations and the advice of regulators about the plants we sell,' Rist says. Murdoch says garden lovers could consider buying alternatives to gazanias, such as native daisies, which attract and support local wildlife. She says the weed has now spread 'beyond the point of eradication', but that did not lessen the need to inform people about the risk of new plantings. 'It's about controlling high-priority areas,' Murdoch says. 'Adopt a bit of bush and say to yourself, no bit of gazania gets in here. You'll gain so many environmental credits.'