Known for “boshing” – a term the England forwards like to use for swatting aside defenders – Muir smiled when discussing the skill.

However, to “bosh” is what she reckons the correct terminology is.

“It is running into someone and boshing them, or tackling them and boshing them,” Muir says.

Quietly spoken and humble off the field, the former Wasps front row is a powerful athlete on it, who enjoys physical confrontation.

Given she is “too aggressive” for a return to cricket, what she does hope to do one day is have a pottery room at the back of her house, complete with a wheel and kiln – a type of oven used for hardening and drying pottery.

Leading from the front is also done on the team bus, with ‘Maud’s Tours’ now part of the team’s itinerary.

“It started last Six Nations in York. I am at the front of the bus as my little mate Lucy Packer gets travel sick,” she explained.

“I am always at the front and the mic is always there. I started with the tour of York and it has stuck since. I do forget every week that I am doing it.

“It is last minute, trying to get as many facts as I can. True or false. They could be false as Meg Jones likes to send me some stuff.”

The next destination is Parma – yet to be researched by Muir – where Italy host the world champions on Saturday.

England sit top of the Six Nations table with three bonus-point wins over Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

The 84-7 victory over Scotland was an ideal way to celebrate Muir’s 50th cap, where her father wore a kilt and an England top – another picture for her scrapbook.

“It was such a special occasion. Being at Murrayfield in Scotland made it so special for my family, especially my dad,” Muir said.

“I have photograph evidence. He is in my scrapbook.

“He had the best of both worlds. He is 77% Scottish.”

Before Saturday’s game, which will likely set up a fifth straight Grand Slam decider against France, Muir is planning to head to a local pottery centre to make a bowl for ramen.

Bowling Italian defenders out of her way will likely follow.

The Hendon Grange Hotel in Grangetown, Sunderland, has been operated successfully by the current owners for 31 years, who now wish to sell due to retirement.

It is noted to have provided a fantastic service to the local community and residents of the surrounding area, with many people visiting the pub to watch the football on match days.

(Image: Sidney Phillips Northern)

A property listing notes that the pub has been run as a “lifestyle business,” but has significant potential for further development, where a new owner could expand its opening hours and add a food offering and/or letting rooms, subject to necessary planning permissions.

The Hendon Grange Hotel is currently closed and has no trading information available.

The building spans three floors and features a main bar area with bench seating, a pool table, darts, and a wood-panelled bar – there is also a smaller seating area with additional darts facilities.

(Image: Sidney Phillips Northern)

On the first floor, a function room with its own bar can hold about 120 people and is equipped with a stage, which has been used for weddings and other events in the past.

The basement contains a chilled beer cellar and dry storage.

Private accommodation is included at the rear of the building, spread across three floors.

It offers four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a large living room, kitchen, and a private courtyard.

External features include an old stable block and storage area with conversion potential.

The property also includes a full premises licence and is connected to all mains services.

Its current rateable value is listed as £2,200 as of April 2026.

An electronic advertisement on the gable end of the property currently generates an additional £4,000 per year.

Prospective buyers are advised to conduct their own assessments regarding future trading potential and profitability.

“What is evident is that the apparent collapse of the Placenames Project was a slow-motion administrative failure, compounded by poor planning, departmental buck-passing and a worrying absence of long-term strategic thinking.”

Once again, this week a controversy erupted at Stormont, with Sinn Féin and the DUP retreating to opposite trenches, and accusations flying across the Assembly chamber and social media. But somewhere beneath the noise lies a far more mundane but arguably more troubling reality, which appears to be precisely what has happened with the collapse of funding for the Northern Ireland Placenames Project.

Over the past week, Sinn Féin accused Communities Minister Gordon Lyons and his department of allowing the project to die through neglect. The DUP, meanwhile, has sought to push responsibility back towards Sinn Féin ministers who oversaw the original transfer of the project from the Department of Finance to the Department for Communities in 2022.

Both sides can point to evidence which partially supports their case. But the documents and correspondence now in the public domain suggest this was not a story of one dramatic ministerial decision or ideological attack. Instead, what is evident is that the apparent collapse of the Placenames Project was a slow-motion administrative failure, compounded by poor planning, departmental buck-passing and a worrying absence of long-term strategic thinking.

READ MORE: Department for Communities officials warned £6m would be ‘wasted’ if additional funding wasn’t allocated for Placenames ProjectREAD MORE: ‘I never heard misogynistic language in PSNI’, says UUP leader Jon Burrows

Since 1987, the project has researched and catalogued the history and Irish-language versions of place names across Northern Ireland. Councils and public bodies relied upon it as the authoritative source for bilingual signage and translation services, and officials themselves acknowledged it was the sole authoritative database for Irish versions of street names in Northern Ireland.

Yet, despite that acknowledged importance, a remarkable paper trail shows departments drifting towards a cliff edge while seemingly hoping that someone else would intervene before the funding finally ran out.

The Department of Finance are of the view that when the project was transferred to Communities in 2022, Finance agreed to continue funding it for three years as part of a transition arrangement. Officials repeatedly stressed in emails that the expectation was for Communities to absorb future funding requirements into their own budget planning exercises.

The Department for Communities, however, appears not to have done so.

Instead, officials spent months warning internally that the project was politically sensitive, that its collapse would waste public money already invested, and that the database itself risked being lost if funding ceased. At various points, they requested emergency funding from the Department of Finance while reviews and business cases were still being developed.

The correspondence paints a picture not of a department confidently managing a transition, but of one scrambling belatedly for stopgap solutions after the clock had almost expired.

None of this absolves Sinn Féin ministers entirely, either. The ministerial meeting note from January 2022 revealed that then Communities Minister, Deirdre Hargey, explicitly stated that no budget was available within her department to fund the project at that time and that any transfer would require accompanying resources.

That should have been the moment when the project’s long-term sustainability was nailed down in black and white. Instead, what emerged was a three-year holding arrangement, which appears to have postponed rather than resolved the fundamental issue.

It is no secret that Stormont has become increasingly vulnerable to this kind of governance failure. Departments operate within rigid silos, responsibilities are shuffled around without clear accountability, and politically sensitive projects can survive for years on temporary arrangements rather than a secure strategic footing. When financial pressure tightens, those unresolved problems eventually surface.

The danger is that this may not be an isolated case. If a project with acknowledged political sensitivity, cross-departmental relevance and repeated official warnings could drift towards collapse because future funding was never properly embedded into departmental planning, it inevitably raises wider questions.

How many other programmes currently exist on similar transitional arrangements? How many other projects are quietly dependent on temporary funding assumptions or unresolved departmental responsibilities?

Northern Ireland’s institutions already struggle with public confidence. Voters frequently hear ministers announcing strategies, commitments and long-term ambitions. But the machinery underneath often appears remarkably fragile, dependent upon short-term fixes and bureaucratic improvisation rather than coherent planning.

That fragility becomes particularly dangerous when political crises already consume enormous amounts of ministerial attention and civil service capacity.

What makes the Placenames Project saga especially frustrating is that nobody involved appears unaware of the risks. Officials explicitly warned about the consequences. They warned about the political implications. They warned about the loss of information. They warned about wasted public investment. Yet the system still drifted towards failure.

The row that unfolded inevitably descended into another orange-and-green blame game because that is the gravitational pull of our politics. But the more important story is the one sitting underneath the theatrics.

This was a test of whether Stormont’s institutions are capable of basic long-term governance. On the evidence now available, the answer is not especially reassuring.

For all the latest news, visit the Belfast Live homepage here and sign up to our daily newsletter here.

Ormskirk Medieval Festival is taking place at Coronation Park today and tomorrow running from 11am to 4pm each day.

The free event promises a vivid journey into West Lancashire’s past, set more than 1,000 years ago.

A spokesman for Visit Lancashire said:”Ormskirk Medieval Festival returns and Coronation Park will transform into a historical hamlet.”

“Watch the live battle re-enactments and learn some medieval domestic skills, including open-fire cooking and textile crafts.”

“Experience the sights, smells, sounds and tastes of West Lancashire 900 years ago, as living history reenactors Historia Normannis take you on a journey back through time.”

Organised by West Lancashire Parks and Countryside Service in partnership with Historia Normannis, the festival will include live-action battle re-enactments, craft demonstrations, and trade stalls.

Visitors can explore the sounds, sights, and tastes of medieval life.

Historia Normannis, (Image: Henry Liswoski)

Modern family entertainment and food and drink stalls will also be on offer throughout the weekend.

Historia Normannis is a Bolton- based 12th-century living history group transports audiences straight back into the heart of the medieval world.

More than 100 passengers and 13 crew members on board the Caribbean Princess, operated by Princess Cruises, have fallen ill in a norovirus outbreak

More than 100 individuals aboard a cruise liner have fallen ill during a norovirus outbreak.

A total of 102 passengers and 13 crew members on the Caribbean Princess are displaying symptoms of the vomiting bug, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed. Those affected have been kept separate from other travellers.

The cruise liner, run by Princess Cruises, departed from Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on April 28 and is expected to dock again on Monday. The ship is presently sailing off the northern coastline of the Dominican Republic and is set to call at Nassau, the Bahamian capital, on Sunday, according to CruiseMapper.

This outbreak of the extremely infectious yet seldom fatal norovirus follows a hantavirus outbreak on a different cruise vessel – a virus that spreads less easily but can be lethal.

“Princess Cruises can confirm that a limited number of individuals reported mild gastrointestinal illness during the April 28 Caribbean Princess voyage from Port Everglades,” Princess Cruises said in a statement on Friday, reports the Mirror.

“We quickly disinfected every area of the ship and added extra sanitizing throughout the voyage.”

Before its next departure, the Caribbean Princess will undergo thorough cleaning and disinfection, Princess Cruises has stated. The company has not disclosed what might have triggered the outbreak.

According to the CDC, there are 3,116 passengers and 1,131 crew members currently aboard the vessel. Norovirus, commonly known as the winter vomiting bug, triggers vomiting and diarrhoea, according to the NHS. It transmits via close contact with those infected, contaminated surfaces, tainted food or water, and meals handled by virus carriers. Though deeply unpleasant, sufferers typically recover within approximately two days.

This latest outbreak emerges while over 140 passengers and crew remain aboard a cruise ship affected by hantavirus, currently sailing towards the Canary Islands.

The MV Hondius, run by Oceanwide Expeditions, is anticipated to dock at the Spanish island of Tenerife early Sunday morning. At least three passengers have lost their lives, with several others contracting the infection.

Hantavirus typically spreads by breathing in particles tainted with rodent droppings and doesn’t easily pass between humans. The World Health Organization has confirmed the threat to the general public remains minimal.

For all the latest news, visit the Belfast Live homepage here and sign up to our daily newsletter.

Sir Keir Starmer has brought former prime minister Gordon Brown back into government following a disastrous local election defeat.

The prime minister said on Saturday Mr Brown will serve as a special envoy on global finance, while ex-deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman has been appointed an adviser on women and girls.

Sir Keir is under mounting pressure after a string of Labour MPs called for his resignation, blaming him losing hundreds of councillors in England and a major humiliation in Wales.

Labour haemorrhaged support in former strongholds while Reform UK made huge gains and Plaid Cymru became the largest party in the Senedd election.

Critics turning on Sir Keir include Louise Haigh, his former transport secretary. Andrea Egan, the general secretary of Unison, Britain’s largest union and one of Labour’s biggest financial backers, warned that the party faced “oblivion” unless Sir Keir stepped down, while Sharon Graham, the boss of Unite the Union, said he faced a choice to “change or die”.

But deputy leader Lucy Powell stuck by the prime minister, saying Labour must “listen” and “change” approach but that her party “does not do hostile takeovers”.

Sir Keir Starmer said on Friday he is “hurt” but is “not going to walk away”.

The popular market will fill the ground floor of Market Place Bolton Shopping Centre, with more than 20 independent stalls to browse.

Shoppers can expect a wide range of handmade, artisan and locally sourced products. Food lovers will find fresh pretzels, strudel and German baked treats, alongside brownies, cupcakes, cookies and cinnamon buns. There will also be plant pots and lucky dips for those looking for something a little different.

The market is also set to showcase handmade jewellery and accessories, fashion pieces, handbags and artisan designs, as well as crystals, gifts and one‑of‑a‑kind finds. Beauty fans can explore skincare, Korean beauty and holistic products, while families can browse children’s books and educational gifts.

Organisers say the event is designed to offer a relaxed place to wander, treat yourself and support independent traders and makers from across the region.

The Bolton Artisan Street Fayre runs throughout the day and is free to attend, making it an easy stop for shoppers already in town — or a destination visit for anyone looking to discover something new.

Whether you’re after a tasty treat, a thoughtful gift or simply a browse, the market promises something for everyone.

Thee 2023 dark comedy thriller features A-listers including Billie Eilish and Damson Idris

Advertisement

A ‘disturbing’ crime drama that fans binge-watched in one sitting is currently available to stream on Prime Video. Swarm was originally released in 2023 and swiftly garnered an impressive 83% rating from Rotten Tomatoes critics.

Given its distinctive storyline, it comes as little surprise that the dark comedy proved a massive hit with reviewers. Spanning seven episodes, it follows the story of Dre, a young woman utterly obsessed with pop star Ni’Jah, whose fanbase is known as The Swarm.

Dre’s devotion propels her down a murderous journey across the America. A synopsis teases: “The show is a deep dive into Dre’s life, her desire, her fandom, and how elusive Ni’Jah influences her life, which takes her down a dark road.”

Hollywood A-listers played pivotal roles in bringing the series to life. Singer Billie Eilish makes a brief cameo as Eva, an all-women cult leader who draws Dre into her group, reports OK!. Fellow pop star Chloe Bailey also appears in the show as Dre’s friend, Marissa.

British actor Damson Idris also features, as well as Michael Jackson’s daughter, Paris. The star-studded cast is headed by Dominque Fishback, whom viewers may recognise from the Oscar-winning drama Judas and the Black Messiah.

Following its release, viewers headed to Rotten Tomatoes in their droves to share their verdicts. “This series was awesome! I loved the story, it’s undoubtedly one of the best Serial Killer series I’ve ever seen, with a very different style. Everyone was great, the protagonist is very good and I also thought Billie Eilish’s cameo was cool, she did a great job,” said one viewer.

Get Prime Video free for 30 days

This article contains affiliate links, we will receive a commission on any sales we generate from it. Learn more

£8.99

£0

Amazon

Advertisement

Get Prime Video here

TV lovers can get 30 days’ free access to tantalising TV like The Boys, Reacher and Clarkson’s Farm by signing up to Amazon Prime. Just remember to cancel at the end and you won’t be charged.

Another praised: “I ended up watching this all in one night, super intriguing and strange but in a good way. I took away a star only because the ending was another one of those ‘interpret it as you wish’ type of endings which always frustrate me.”

A third remarked: “Billie Eilish, Chloe Bailey and Damson Idris also stun in their supporting and guest roles. Aesthetically brilliant and visually stunning, Swarm weaves through its horror and gory elements deftly. Swarm hits all the right notes, with great cinematography, direction and score, and the risks it takes all pay off.”

While a fourth enthusiastic viewer added: “Heart-breaking, funny, disturbing and poignant. Totally Unique and at the same time watchable, is a rare find.”

Swarm is streaming now on Prime Video.

Donald Trump has congratulated John Swinney on winning power once again following a crushing SNP defeat of Labour in Scotland.

In what could be seen as a thinly veiled attack on Sir Keir Starmer, the US president praised the SNP leader as a “good man” who “deserves this big electoral victory”.

John Swinney’s party took 58 seats, falling short of the 65 needed to win an overall majority, but are by far the largest party in Scottish parliament after Labour and Reform UK both emerged with just 17 seats.

Hours after the result was announced, Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform: “Congratulations to John Swinney on winning his Re-Election for First Minister of Scotland. He is a good man, who worked very hard, along with the King and Queen of the United Kingdom, with respect to Tariff relief for Great Scottish Whiskey – and deserves this Big Electoral Victory!”

The post backs up Mr Swinney’s claim that he worked to deliver the removal of US tariffs on Scottish whiskey, which was announced shortly after the King’s state visit.

The SNP leader was forced to release a thank you text he received from Mr Trump after he was initially mocked on social media for the claim.

The US president’s social media post could perhaps be seen as a swipe at the prime minister, who has suffered from worsening relations with Mr Trump in recent months.

The pair continue to be at odds with each other over the president’s approach to war in the Middle East, with Mr Trump calling Sir Keir “no Winston Churchill” earlier this year.

Sir Keir has faced calls to resign after the disastrous set of elections in Scotland, Wales and local councils across England.

But the prime minister has insisted he “will not walk away” and has vowed to fight on as Labour leader, despite being blamed for losing hundreds of councillors in England and a major humiliation in Wales.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar admitted his party was “hurting” after the result in Scotland.

Asked if he blamed Sir Keir Starmer for the results on Friday, Mr Sarwar said: “Throughout this election campaign, I have tried to make this election about Scotland, I’m not going to change that today.

“Is there a national wave, though, that we tried to overcome and failed to do so? Yes.”

Labour haemorrhaged support in former strongholds while Reform UK made stunning gains and Plaid Cymru became the largest party in a Senedd election that left outgoing First Minister Eluned Morgan without a seat.

The results have reignited rumblings of a leadership contest, with some backbench MPs openly calling on Sir Keir to set out a timetable for his departure and others urging an immediate change in direction.

Richard Burgon, leader of the Socialist Campaign Group of left-wing Labour MPs, demanded Sir Keir set out a timetable for his departure.

“It is clear that Keir has fought his last election as Labour leader and, deep down, he will know it,” he said.

But Sir Keir has defiantly vowed to stand firm as prime minister, with some ministers also insisting there will be no attempt to push him out.

Speaking as the results came in on Friday, Sir Keir vowed: “I’m not going to walk away and plunge the country into chaos.”