Our 33-year-long marriage ended over Zoom.

Not in a courtroom. Not with slammed doors, raised voices or a dramatic final goodbye. Because we were still living in the aftermath of Covid-19, our divorce hearing happened quietly through a computer screen … as casually as any routine virtual meeting.

I wrestled with what to wear that day. Should it be businesslike or casual? In the end, I was glad I chose something simple, because the moment itself was far less formal than I expected. It was just me and my soon-to-be ex-husband, the judge and our legal representation. The whole thing took no more than 10 minutes.

At one point, the judge even paused and asked if we were absolutely sure this was what we wanted. I think our kindness toward one another – and the fact that we both had smiles on our faces and even chuckled several times – caught him off guard.

In his defense, he was probably accustomed to presiding over divorce cases filled with tension, bitterness or silence so sharp it can cut through air. But my former husband and I simply smiled and answered the same way: “Yes.” And just like that, our three-plus decades of being married was done.

I expected to feel grief afterwards, but I was surprised by the absence of regret. Nobody really talks about peaceful divorce, especially in the church, and especially when you’ve spent more than 25 years in ministry and are the people others assumed would make it all the way to the finish line together.

The hardest part wasn’t ending the marriage. It was disappointing people who needed our marriage to represent something. How many people stay in situations, not because they’re right for them, but because other people are invested in their story? And how many of us have silenced our own truth to preserve a story that no longer belonged to us?

For weeks before sharing the news publicly – well, not that publicly… only our kids, my sisters, a few others, a quick mention in a blog post, and a reference to it in my last two books (heck, it’s been almost four years now, and some people still don’t know) – I went back and forth on whether I wanted to tell anyone at all.

It wasn’t because I was ashamed of our decision, but because I knew how quickly people assign failure to divorce, especially in Christian circles. I dreaded the whispers, the pearl-clutching, the subtle disappointment hidden behind concerned expressions. I could already hear the questions forming in people’s minds: What happened? Who changed? Whose fault was it? Who gave up?

The truth was far less dramatic than people probably wanted it to be. There was no scandal. No sudden breaking point. No explosive betrayal. No hatred growing quietly behind closed doors.

There were simply two people who had spent 33 years building a beautiful life together and eventually realising we wanted different things for our next chapters. That realisation came with both grief and relief. That’s the part people struggle to understand: Both emotions can exist at the same time.

Sometimes love changes form, sometimes letting go is the most loving thing two people can do for each other, and sometimes peace is holier than performance.

Our decision to divorce wasn’t the result of one defining moment. There wasn’t a single conversation or turning point that suddenly changed everything. It was more like a truth we had been circling for a long time – a truth we both felt but weren’t always ready to acknowledge, let alone fully face.

I think more marriages experience this than people realise. Sometimes one person feels it first. Sometimes both do. The hard part is being honest enough to admit it. When two people are willing to do that, there comes a point where pretending becomes more exhausting than accepting what they already know.

For us, that moment wasn’t about a lack of love. It was coming to grips with the fact that neither of us wanted to spend the rest of our lives asking the other person to become someone they weren’t.

We had built a beautiful life together, but we had also grown into different people with different desires for the years ahead. Once we accepted that, the decision itself became clear as a bell, even if it wasn’t easy.

That isn’t to say our marriage was perfect. Far from it. We had our struggles, our disappointments, and our share of painful seasons. But those things weren’t the reason we divorced. The simple truth was that we had grown in different directions and were finally able to come to terms with it.

Some mornings after that Zoom meeting, I’d wake up and, for a split second, I’d forget that I was divorced. Then reality would quietly settle in. I’d realise every decision belonged solely to me now: what to do, where to go, what’s for dinner, how to move through the day. After spending the majority of my adult life considering another person in every choice, that kind of freedom felt unfamiliar.

There were moments when fear gripped me unexpectedly. Moments nostalgia washed over me without warning. Moments I whispered to myself, Oh God, what have we done? But even in those moments, I knew this was the right decision. That certainty surprised me and comforted me all at the same time.

I think part of the emotional warfare surrounding divorce has less to do with the relationship itself and more to do with the weight of disappointing the people you love. I come from a family where long marriages are the norm. My parents were married for nearly 45 years before my mother passed away. My siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins and family friends have all been married for years.

Then there was ministry. For decades, my former husband and I led a congregation, counselled couples, officiated weddings, encouraged families and prayed with people through difficult seasons in their marriages. The ironic part is that I even wrote a book on relationships and communication. Looking back, I can see how even that was preparing me for this chapter of my life, not in vain, but as a part of an unfolding I had no idea about at the time.

I worried people would see our divorce and immediately reduce our entire story to one word: failure. But I no longer see it that way. And if I’m honest, I don’t think I ever truly did. It was one of life’s greatest lessons. It was a marriage that brought three incredible children into the world, filled our home with love and laughter, carried us through multiple states, seasons of ministry, hardships, prosperity, grief and celebration, and eventually a wonderful son-in-law and two beautiful grandchildren. That is the furthest thing from failure to me. It was my life, and I’ll always be grateful for it.

Our family dynamics may have changed, but we’re still family. My ex-husband’s family is mine, and my family is his. And when I say we’re still family, I don’t mean that as a statement to make our ending seem perfect. I mean it quite literally. We talk on the phone often. My sisters and brothers-in-law still consider him their brother. He remains uncle to my nieces and nephews. Our shared friends are still our friends. If time permits, he shows up for family events every now and then. And, to many people’s surprise, he’s even still my pastor.

I know that may sound unusual, even hard to understand, because it doesn’t fit the way most people are taught to think about divorce. However, for us, our divorce ended our marriage, not a lifetime of shared history, mutual respect and genuine care. Those things didn’t disappear when the paperwork was signed. If anything, they became easier to appreciate once we stopped trying to force our relationship into something that no longer worked.

We still want the best for one another. Our children love us both deeply, and we’ve been intentional about protecting that throughout this process. Life may continue evolving for both of us, but I don’t believe that has to erase the love and respect we share. In some ways, we may be better friends now, free from the weight of the identity we had built together.

In letting go of old ways of being, we both received the space to finally grow into who we were always meant to be, without trying to hold together a version of ourselves that no longer fit. Most of all, we ended a marriage without ending our love for each other as human beings. Instead of mourning what we’ve lost, we’re celebrating what remains.

Some people may find this strange, because we live in a culture that often treats divorce like emotional warfare where someone must become the villain and someone has to bear the blame so the story makes sense. But life is rarely that simple.

Peaceful endings often make some people uncomfortable. They challenge the narratives we’ve grown accustomed to. People understand betrayal. They understand toxicity and drama. They understand painful, messy endings. Mutual love and mutual release sometimes confuse people, because we’ve been taught to see letting someone go as a sign of loss or defeat.

Of course, I still grieved. You don’t close a 33-year chapter of your life without feeling the weight of it. And there are definitely moments when I miss what once was. But I don’t miss pretending. I don’t miss ignoring what we both knew deep down inside of us.

Ultimately, I’m grateful neither of us forced the other to continue living a life that no longer brought joy, peace or fulfillment simply because other people expected us to.

I’ve learned that divorce does not automatically make someone bitter, broken or spiritually deficient. It does not erase the good that existed before the ending. And, despite what many Christians have been taught, sometimes grace looks less like enduring unhappiness with no end in sight and more like setting each other free with compassion.

My former husband and I are still friends. We still support one another. We still love our family fiercely. After 33 years together, I genuinely want him to have a beautiful life as he moves forward. And I know he wants the same for me.

Michell F. Pulliam is a storyteller, author and midlife advocate who writes on identity, faith, relationships and personal transformation. Over 25 years, she and her former husband pioneered ministries across four states, building faith-driven communities. She is the author of four books, including “Rooted,” a memoir inspired by the discovery of a rare maternal haplogroup tracing back 44,000 years, exploring ancestry, identity and the women whose stories came before her. She is passionate about helping women reclaim their voice, rewrite their story and remember who they are.

Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.

Ever heard of the names “kiko” and “bouba”?

These are made-up nouns that scientists invented to test how we link images to language. When people are shown a blobby shape and a spiky shape, then asked which one suits “kiko” and which is a better match for “bouba”, they overwhelmingly dub the round one “bouba”.

Its sharper sibling is often seen as more of a “kiko”, meanwhile. This result is consistent across languages and cultures.

And it seems a similar phenomenon called the “mil/mal effect” might even change how we choose our food.

This means that people usually associate sounds like “ee” and “t” with smaller sizes, while words with broader “b” and “oh” noises are perceived as relating to bigger objects.

For instance, people might be likelier to think a table called “mal” was larger than one arbitrarily named “mil”, without seeing either.

A paper that sought to find out how snack names changed our expectations of them used this theory.

The researchers asked people to describe what they thought about snacks with fictive names. Half of these (like Iskee, Keesee, Kitsip, and Spisiki) were expected to be seen as “smaller”, while the other half (Bromogaw, Gawdoe, and Gobo) were designed to sound “bigger”.

Scientists assigned these names to both healthier foods (like porridge and trail mix), and less-healthy items, like crisps. Participants were given different names for different products to review.

It seemed that regardless of snack type, people imagined snacks with “bigger” names – like Blorgo – as being heavier and more filling than those with “smaller” fake brands, like Iskee.

That didn’t seem to affect whether or not participants said they’d choose to buy the products in a supermarket, though. The biggest factor there was the would-be buyer’s goals: when asked which they’d pick for a friend who liked hearty fried food, people were likelier to choose a “big”-sounding snack name.

When asked to shop for a mate who prefers lighter meals, however, they tended to opt for something like a smaller-sounding Kipi.

In general, Teek was an especially popular choice, while it seems nobody wanted to consume poor Blorogo.

The research concluded: “Sound symbolism shapes our perception of the world. Sounds that are associated with information about size and weight can have an impact on food expectations – even through minimal exposure such as reading a food product’s brand name.

“The present research underlines the importance of considering language surrounding food products for expectation and purchase intentions.”

Ryan Murphy’s Monster anthology series has always taken artistic liberties when it comes to its central figures, but the Netflix show went even further with this than usual with The Lizzie Borden Story.

The fourth season is based on the infamous yet little-recorded tale of a 32-year-old woman in Massachusetts who, in 1982, was tried and acquitted for the gruesome axe murders of her father and stepmother.

Due to the era of the murders, and Lizzie’s conflicting statements, little is known about what really happened in the case that’s still being debated more than a century later.

What history didn’t record, creators Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan took creative licence to fill in, connecting women through history by their rage at society.

Here’s a quick guide to what’s fact and fiction in Monster’s latest iteration…

In Monster, Ella Beatty’s Lizzie is seen experiencing immense period pain. There is no evidence that this was the case for Lizzie Borden in real life, although she did mention menstrual blood to the police following the killing.

When the authorities found bloody clothes in a bucket in the basement, Lizzie told them it was period blood.

A family doctor confirmed this would have lined up with the timings of Lizzie’s cycle, so authorities didn’t investigate the blood further.

The show also portrayed Lizzie as suffering from a rare imperforate hymen, a detail which was completely invented for the Netflix series.

Bridget Sullivan was a real person who worked as the Borden family maid for two years before Andrew and Abby were killed.

Historian Cara Robertson told Business Insider that the idea of a sexual relationship between Bridget and Lizzie can be traced back to fictional takes of the true crime case.

Other notable media to include this detail include Evan Hunter’s 1984 novel, Lizzie, and the 2018 movie of the same name, starring Chloë Sevigny and Kristen Stewart.

Meanwhile, it seems that the real-life Bridget was a world away from the version of the character created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan.

Her grandniece, Dianna Porter, told The Herald News in 2012 that family members recall the former maid as being strict, mean and having “no sense of humour” – a far cry from the dyed-hair-sporting, sex-toy-enthusiast Bridget we see on the show.

Rebecca Hall’s character repeatedly refers to Bridget as “Maggie” in Monster, because it was the name of an old maid, and she didn’t wish to learn another.

In real life, it actually was Lizzie who didn’t have much concern for learning Bridget’s name.

“Lizzie never bothered to call her by her real name,” historian Cara told the BBC.

Lizzie Borden family as portrayed in Monster is deeply disturbed.

The show depicts a long-held theory that Lizzie was sexually abused by her father, which is part of why she killed him.

Although this is a popular theory, there is no actual evidence establishing that she was abused by her father in this way.

There is, however, evidence that Lizzie and her older sister, Emma, were both frustrated with their father’s frugality, and that neither were greatly fond of their stepmother.

Monster argues that the real villains of the series are actually Andrew and Abby Borden, who are portrayed as an unhappily married couple who regularly cheat on each other.

During the middle of the season, Monster’s Abby has an affair with the brother of Andrew’s first wife, Sarah, while Andrew impregnates the family’s maid.

All of this was invented just for the show, with the Borden’s family physician, Dr. Seabury W. Bowen, testifiying that there was no sinister aspect to their marriage – and even if the relationship it was a transactional one, it wasn’t unfriendly.

“Mrs. Borden was a lovely woman, and I remained there because she wanted me to,” Sullivan said, per the 2015 book The Fall River Tragedy: A History Of The Borden Murder.

In the Netflix show, before Andrew and Abby are axed to death, Lizzie first tries to poison them, serving her father and stepmother bad oysters, resulting in a gruesome projectile-vomitting sequence. This doesn’t kill the couple, instead just leaving them incapacitated for an evening.

The whole family, in reality – including both Lizzie and Bridget – were struck down with a stomach illness just days before the murders took place. Records suggest swordfish and mutton broth caused their illness.

A pharmacist did also claim that Lizzie tried to buy poison in the days leading up to the murders, but was not sold it.

Before Lizzie kills her parents, she and Bridget do a “trial run” on a family friend, Betha Manchester.

In the show, Bertha is seen physically abusing Bridget while she’s doing some work for her, resulting in Lizzie killing Bertha with an axe.

Bertha was a real life person who was murdered, but her death took place 10 months after the Bordens were killed.

Jose Correa de Mello, who worked for Bertha’s father, was charged with the crime.

The Bordens’ maid Bridget plays a big role in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story – but her place in history is a bit more complicated.

In Netflix’s version of events, Lizzie and Bridget are depicted killing Abby and Andrew with hatchets before covering for each other to the police.

However, the real Bridget claimed in her testimony that she was washing windows outside when Abby was killed in an upstairs guest room. She insisted that she didn’t hear any screams, but did hear Lizzie laughing upstairs.

There has never been any evidence that she was involved in Abby and Andrew Morden’s murder.

Monster includes a scene where Lizzie burns her dress shortly after killing her father and stepmother.

This did happen, according to family friend Alice Russell during the trial.

At the time, police couldn’t find a murder weapon or any blood-stained clothing, which is what stopped authorities from immediately arresting Lizzie.

In her testimony, Alice claimed she saw Lizzie standing near a stove holding her dress, telling her sister: “I am going to burn this old thing up. It is covered with paint.”

Her sister Emma later testified that it was an old dress, and Lizzie had brushed against wet paint the last time she wore it.

In Monster, Lizzie loves theatre, and forms a bond with the actor Nance O’Neil, who gives Lizzie advice on how to convince the jury she is innocent during her murder trial.

Nancy is a real person, and did have a bond with Lizzie, but this only came to be much later in her story.

The pair, in real life, met in 1904, 11 years after Lizzie was acquitted. Whether or not they were lovers is another mystery that the show embellishes.

Monster portrays Lizzie’s relationship with older sister Emma as being cold and strained. Lizzie’s sister physically attacks her in the series, after blaming her for their father’s death – something there is no historical proof of.

In fact, Emma was apparently supportive of Lizzie, and stood by her side throughout the trial, according to Sarah Miller’s 2016 book The Borden Murders: Lizzie Borden And The Trial of the Century.

After the trial, Lizzie and Emma left their home in Fall River and moved to Maplecroft to “live quietly” together on an estate.

However, their relationship did sour after the trial. After 12 years living together, the pair fell out after Lizzie started throwing parties with the actor Nance O’Neil.

“The happenings at the French Street house that caused me to leave,” Emma told the Boston Sunday Herald in 1913, adding: “I did not go until conditions became absolutely unbearable.”

Monster connects Lizzie Borden to Aileen Wuornos, a real-life serial killer who murdered a string of men in Florida between 1989 and 1990.

The show portrays Aileen Wuornos as being obsessed with Lizzie’s story, though this detail is a complete fabrication by the writers of the show.

The show’s co-creator Ian Brennan has opened up to The Hollywood Reporter about incorporating the serial killer into the Borden story.

“It very quickly became that the story we were telling was about female rage,” he explained. “Then we were able to develop this triptych of Elizabeth Bathory, Aileen Wuornos and Lizzie Borden, which kept the show from seeming like a stuffy, diorama piece by going through these time periods of women who were each aware of the next,” Ian explained.

He added: “To have those three stories talk to one another made it feel much more contemporary and of the moment.”

In the final episode of Monster, Lizzie becomes upset when she sees children dressing up as her.

Wanting to make the murders and her acquittal a political statement, she and Bridget decide to join the women’s suffrage movement.

The real Lizzie was never known to have been a suffragette, though. After her trial, she lived a private and isolated life, until her death in 1927.

After the trial in Monster, Bridget is seen buying land in Montana and marrying an older man, before finally ending the marriage and moving in with Lizzie.

In actuality, Bridget testified in Lizzie’s trial in 1983 and then disappeared.

Documents list her as moving to Montana and marrying a man, but the pair stayed wed until her death in 1948. It is likely she never saw Lizzie again after the trial.

The big question of Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is whether Lizzie actually killed Abby and Andrew.

Although Netflix depicts Lizzie as the killer, the case is still unsolved.

Lizzy was the primary suspect, stood trial for murder and was acquitted by a jury. The prosecution had no eyewitness to either murder, no confession and serious issues with the physical evidence.

One thing the show did get right was Lizzie’s police inquest testimony. She did claim she was preparing for a fishing trip, and was in the barn when her father was killed.

More than 130 years later, nobody can say with certainty who killed Andrew and Abby Borden, as much as Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan want us to think that she did it…

All four seasons of Monster are now streaming on Netflix.

If you’re hoping to live a longer, better life, eating well, exercising, and avoiding habits like smoking are great places to start.

But according to a paper published in SLEEP Advances, the amount of shut-eye we get at night may be more strongly linked to our projected longevity than even diet and exercise.

This isn’t to say that neither of those metrics matter: they definitely do. Scientists think that improved diets could add 10 years to the lives of people in the UK, while a review of studies found that being physically active could increase our lifespan by about two to four years as a “conservative” guess.

As sleep physiologist Andrew McHill, who was involved in the new research, said: “I didn’t expect [sleep] to be so strongly correlated to life expectancy”.

The researchers looked at a huge US database of health survey data taken between 2019 and 2025, alongside state-level life expectancies.

They compared those figures by area while also looking for participants’ self-reported sleep duration.

Insufficient sleep (characterised as less than seven hours of sleep a night) was “significantly negatively correlated with life expectancy in most states from 2019 to 2025”, the paper reads.

This finding stood even when researchers looked at other variables such as diet, exercise rates, employment status, and education levels.

Only smoking seemed to be more of a significant risk factor when it came to longevity.

McHill told Oregon health & Science University: “We’ve always thought sleep is important, but this research really drives that point home: people really should strive to get seven to nine hours of sleep if at all possible.”

This absolutely doesn’t mean that a healthy diet and exercise, which decades of research have proven are key for great health, are optional if you want to live longer.

The study didn’t definitively prove that insufficient sleep led to the early deaths with which it was associated.

But McHill noted that getting enough sleep can help to improve our heart health and boost our immunity, and suggested we shouldn’t simply dismiss it as a “nice-to-have” extra.

“This research shows that we need to prioritize sleep at least as much as we do to what we eat or how we exercise,” he said. “Sometimes, we think of sleep as something we can set aside and maybe put off until later or on the weekend.”

But “getting a good night’s sleep will improve how you feel but also how long you live,” he ended.

Previously, a 2025 paper suggested that those who felt they had to choose between sleep and a workout saw better health benefits from their snoozy side win.

What a difference a year makes.

Labour members will start gathering in Liverpool this weekend for their annual conference with a noticeable spring in their step.

The party now has a confirmed, if slight, lead in the opinion polls as Andy Burnham continues to enjoy a honeymoon period after replacing Keir Starmer as Labour leader and prime minister in July.

His optimistic talk of putting “hope in every heart” appears to have resonated with a beleaguered electorate weighed down by more than a decade of austerity, stagnant economic growth, rising prices and political turmoil.

The so-called “Burnham Bounce” has also coincided with a downturn in the fortunes of Reform UK, whose own poll numbers have fallen since May, when the party enjoyed election success in England, Scotland and Wales.

Investigations into the financial affairs of Nigel Farage and his party have cut through with a public who, just a few months ago, seemed to be preparing to elect a Reform government.

It is all a far cry from 12 months ago, when the Labour conference was a downbeat affair as Starmer’s government lurched from scandal to disaster.

Deputy PM Angela Rayner had been forced to quit just weeks before over her tax affairs, forcing Starmer into a clumsily-handled and deeply unpopular reshuffle.

That was swiftly followed by the sacking of Lord Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to Washington over his friendship with the convicted paedophile, Jeffrey Epstein.

Ironically, the high point of last year’s conference for Starmer was his success in seeing off Burnham’s own failed attempt to seize the initiative.

The then mayor of Greater Manchester was relentlessly attacked by Starmer loyalists for saying in a pre-conference interview that the UK must “get beyond this thing of being in hock to the bond markets”.

Although a chastened Burnham ended up leaving the conference early, just six months later he became MP for Makerfield and the PM-in-waiting.

Now, much of the talk going into this year’s event is not whether Burnham will become prime minister, but whether he would attempt to secure his own five-year mandate from the public by calling an early general election.

The PM sought to kill off the speculation by telling ITV Calendar on Friday that the next election will not be until 2029, the latest it can possibly be.

Nevertheless, that is unlikely to stop some from urging Burnham to go the country either next year or in 2028, should Labour’s poll lead grow.

According to the Telegraph, several of the PM’s No.10 advisers believe he should go to the country in the spring, but that was disputed by others in his inner circle.

“Utter bollocks,” said one senior Downing Street source when asked by HuffPost UK if an early election is on the cards.

“The PM is a man focused and determined to change the country. The only people raising the prospect of an early election are those conducting as a subtle-as-an-elephant Tory whispering campaign.”

Another No.10 source said reports of an early election were “worse than bollocks, it’s embarrassing clickbait”.

Those pushing an early election point to two mega-polls published in recent days which show Labour emerging from an early election as easily the largest party, ahead of the Tories and Reform.

However, in both scenarios, the party would lose its majority, leaving Burnham reliant on the support of the Lib Dems and other left-of-centre parties to get his programme through parliament.

Chris Hopkins, political research director at pollsters Savanta, told HuffPost UK: “Labour going for an early election based on these latest polls means two things: Labour loses hundreds of seats compared to 2024, and it’s an admission from Andy Burnham that he doesn’t think he can further improve Labour’s fortunes.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Labour MPs – many of whom have only been in the Commons for a little over two years – are less-than enthusiastic about the prospect of an snap election that would see at least 100 of them lose their seats.

One Cabinet minister said: “If I was Andy, I would be very reluctant to call an election because right now he’s got 400 Labour MPs.

“No matter that happens, if you wake up every morning and you’ve got 400 MPs and a big guaranteed majority, you’re in a good place.

“If you look at the sweep of Labour history being in this position doesn’t happen very often, so I’d be very careful about gambling with that.”

A Labour backbencher was equally clear in his opposition to an election now.

“I don’t want to hear him announce a general election,” the MP said. “I don’t think the country’s ready for it and voters certainly wouldn’t thank us for it.”

Another minister said: “The polls are simply too volatile right now to justify an early election.”

A Labour source added: “I can see why an early election would be tempting when you’re caught up in party conference.

“But the public don’t want one, and voters wouldn’t thank Andy for calling one.”

Burnham is still writing his conference speech, which he will deliver to the party faithful on Tuesday afternoon.

He has been writing it himself “in snatched moments on trains, planes and in his car,” according to one No.10 aide.

The conference slogan is ‘Hope Again’, and the PM plans to deliver a message of optimism to the country, explaining how he plans to get a solve long-standing problems like youth unemployment and the housing crisis.

“People know what the problems are facing the country, but they want to know what the government is going to do about it,” said one Downing Street insider.

“They want to be given hope about the way forward and this is the PM’s opportunity to set that out.”

But a senior Labour figure warned that the real challenges for Burnham will come when the political caravan has packed up for conference season and gone back to Westminster.

“There’s no doubt Andy will have a great conference,” he said. “It’s in Liverpool, it’s his first one as leader and he’ll make a good speech.

“But the real business will happen when he gets back to Westminster the week after. That’s when things will get real for him.

“There’s the Budget next month, defence spending, the growing threat from Russia, and his 10-year plan.

“His diagnosis of the country’s problems has been good, but voters will judge him on how he plans to fix them.

“The danger of conference is that the party gets too high on its own supply. They shouldn’t mistake the conference hall for the country, because there’s a world of a difference between the two.”

Listen to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.

Lower back pain affects about 80% of us at one point or another, according to the NHS.

Thankfully, fewer than 1% of those cases require urgent medical attention. But the pain can still affect your quality of life, and might mean you’re less tempted to exercise.

That can be a shame, as the NHS explained, “keeping as active as possible can help you to recover and do the things that are important to you”.

Avoiding movement for more than a day or two in mild back pain cases might actually worsen your condition, the health service added.

According to a 2019 analysis published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, four activities in particular seemed the most effective at treating “non-specific chronic low back pain (NSCLBP)”.

NSCLBP means doctors can’t find one specific cause for back pain. This applies to the “vast majority of chronic low back pain cases,” the study’s lead author, associate professor Daniel Belavy, said.

This paper analysed 89 studies involving back pain and exercise.

Researchers found that staying active seemed to be more effective than rest for NSCLBP.

Belavy said: “There is a common misconception that if someone is in pain, they should be resting, but our research shows that when the pain has been there for a long time, exercise is an important part of treatment.”

They found four training styles were the “most effective” at treating NSCLBP. These were:

This seemed to be the joint “best” exercise for dealing with the condition.

Speaking to Healthline, Dr Courtney Gilbert, a physical medicine and rehabilitation expert, said: “Pilates teaches you how to articulate your spine and engage your deep core. Research has shown that Pilates can decrease low back pain compared to no exercise and non-specific exercise.”

This can include exercising with a pilates machine (Joseph Pilates, who invented the exercise, called this a Universal Reformer machine: now they’re used in Reformer classes), or doing pilates on a mat.

“There was evidence that Pilates and stabilisation or motor control exercise training were the best of these exercises for reducing pain,” Belavy said.

Stabilisation exercises can include strengthening your core and might involve crunches, bridges, and planks.

Motor control exercise training, meanwhile, typically aims to retrain the muscles near your spine to become more co-ordinated and stronger.

This can include balance training and other moves like hip bridges, sitting knee extensions, and even squats.

You might know this as strength training. It means using weights and resistance training at increasingly high loads to build your muscles up.

We’ve written before at HuffPost UK about how “tight” hips that you might think need stretching can actually be weak hips that would benefit from strengthening. A similar principle can apply here.

Some strengthening exercises include weighted squats, push-ups, deadlifts, bench presses, and more.

Basically, activities like walking and running.

You might want to build up your pace and distance if you haven’t exercised in a while – “our study provides evidence that active therapies where the patient is guided, actively encouraged to move and exercise in a progressive fashion are the most effective,” Belavy shared.

Interestingly, this paper found that “stretching and McKenzie exercises, which is a treatment approach that uses a classification system to prescribe exercise”, were found to be the “least effective” kinds of exercises.

The NHS advises you should always stop exercising if it makes your back pain worse. Speak to your GP if you’re worried about your back pain and/or aren’t sure about beginning new activity.

I don’t know whether I notice it more in the sunshine or if flies really do come out en masse in spring, but I feel like I’ve noticed a lot more of the unwelcome visitors on my houseplants recently.

And while I’ve found vinegar and washing-up liquid traps are a really effective way to manage a fruit fly bonanza, I can’t help but wish there was an easier, less deadly way to de-fly my ferns.

Luckily, plant educator Peyton, known online as Plant Caregiver, is one of a few voices to suggest a chemical-free method: in a TikTok video, the creator said, “a lot of your plant problems could be fixed by having a fan”.

Speaking to Homes & Gardens, Julia Omelchenko, an expert in plants for the Plantum app, explained that proper ventilation and air flow keep soil drier, preventing a buildup of, e.g., fungus gnats.

That can involve opening a window. But it can also include running a “fan on low speeds where your plants are situated,” so long as you “avoid cold drafts and don’t point the fan at the plants,” she added.

Aside from preventing wet soil, which fungus gnats love, using a fan also helps to create an environment in which fruit flies struggle to fly (they have quite weak wings).

An Ideal Homes writer put it to the test and was impressed with the result. And, more recently, a Guardian writer and houseplant expert tried it on a mildewy plant; she wrote, “It’s one of those hacks that sounds unnecessary until you try it”.

As we’ve mentioned before, soil that stays wet for too long can attract fungus gnats. Try watering your soil less often if that’s the case.

Adding a gravel mulch, using sticky traps, and even using predatory nematodes can all help, too, per BBC Gardener’s World.

You can also change the potting soil to that which has been specially formulated for houseplants.