We’ve all been there: you’re doing a food shop on your phone or pinging an email to a colleague, and your child asks you something.

You’re so engrossed that you don’t really hear them. Then you look up and see your kid just standing there, looking at you and your phone. You have no idea what they’ve said.

If you haven’t phubbed – that’s a portmanteau of “phone” and “snubbed” – your kids, you’re probably in the minority.

One survey found 62% of people reported looking at their phone while having a face-to-face conversation with someone else. Partners, friends and siblings were most likely to be phubbed, followed by children.

Psychotherapist Anna Mathur tells HuffPost UK that the act of phubbing is “extremely common” – we’re living in an age where our phones are designed to demand our attention, she says, “and most parents are also trying to stay on top of work, admin and the relentless scroll of modern life”.

“Phubbing is rarely a sign that a parent doesn’t care. It’s a sign that we are all navigating a technology landscape that our brains and bodies weren’t designed for,” adds the author of How To Stop Snapping At The People You Love (As Well As the Ones You Don’t).

“If we’re really honest with ourselves, for a lot of us it’s a genuine battle, a conflict between our values and our behaviour. We value presence… we want to be there for our kids (and for each other), and yet we reach for the phone anyway. That dissonance is real.”

While phubbing the kids once or twice probably isn’t going to have much of an impact overall, making a habit of deliberating ignoring them in favour of your phone can certainly be harmful over time.

One study into parental phubbing found it had a “significant” effect on social withdrawal in young children. Some researchers suggest it could also contribute to kids feeling unloved, which can impact wellbeing.

“Children learn about their own worth through the attention of their caregivers. When a phone consistently wins the competition for our gaze, children can begin to absorb the message that they are less important, less interesting, less worthy of attention than whatever is on that screen,” says Mathur.

“Over time this can impact self-esteem, emotional regulation, and the way they relate to others.”

Children who grow up in homes where screens take priority over people are more likely to repeat those patterns themselves, adds the therapist.

The good news is that small, consistent, conscious changes can make a difference.

One of the biggest things that has helped Mathur is using an app blocker (called App Block) so she physically can’t access apps before and after her kids are home from school. (She has a window to check her phone once they’re in bed.)

“It sounds strict but it has been genuinely life-changing – I’d pay the subscription fee over and over! It takes the decision out of my hands,” she says.

“Our impulse control around phones is often low (even more so I find as an often hormonal, often overwhelmed, neurodivergent woman!), and that’s not a personal failing, it’s by design.”

Putting up physical barriers then can really help.

If she is using her phone – for example, to do a food shop – she’ll also name what she’s doing when her kids are around.

″‘I’m just adding something to the shopping’ creates accountability, because once I’ve said it out loud, I’m more likely to put it down once I’ve done that one thing rather than find myself on social media/email,” she explains.

“And if I do need to do something for work when apps are blocked, I go to my laptop, which makes it a much more intentional (and speedy) act.”

One other top tip is to reclaim certain spaces in your home as phone-free to put some distance between you and the addictive device demanding your time.

“Leaving it in another room, keeping it out of the bedroom, putting it on the kitchen counter rather than in your pocket – it sounds small but it creates that important physical and psychological distance,” she says.

“If you want to use it, you have to proactively go and get it, which gives you time to realise what you’re doing, and to question the motivation/need.”

The therapist urges parents to make one commitment that when your child enters the room or speaks, you look up at them, make eye contact, and acknowledge them.

“It takes three seconds and it tells them everything about where they sit in your world,” she says.

How To Stop Snapping At The People You Love (As Well As the Ones You Don’t): A compassionate guide to rage, regulation and repair by Anna Mathur is available for pre-order now (publishing 2 July from Penguin Life).

We’re still a long way off Peaky Blinders’ return to our screen, but the BBC has thrown fans a morsel to tide them over for the time being.

Last year, creator Steven Knight announced that two more seasons of Peaky Blinders were in the works, focussing on the next generation of the central crew, with Jamie Bell and Stranger Things’ Charlie Heaton later revealed to be joining the cast.

Jamie will play Tommy Shelby’s son Duke, last portrayed by Barry Keoghan in the spin-off movie The Immortal Man, while Charlie is set to portray his half-brother Charles.

On Friday afternoon, Peaky Blinders fans were given a first look at this new character, described in a press release as someone who is “now embracing normality” after fighting “a violent war, much of it behind enemy lines”.

“He hasn’t seen his half-brother Duke – played by Jamie Bell – in years,” the BBC teased.

“Charles severed all ties to the Peaky Blinders gang, and the hedonistic Shelby lifestyle. But can you ever escape your own blood?”

An official synopsis for the BBC and Netflix co-production teased in October 2025: “Britain, 1953. After being heavily bombed in WWII, Birmingham is building a better future out of concrete and steel.

“In a new era of Steven Knight’s Peaky Blinders, the race to own Birmingham’s massive reconstruction project becomes a brutal contest of mythical dimensions.

“This is a city of unprecedented opportunity and danger: with the Shelby family right at its blood-soaked heart.”

As well as series leads Jamie and Charlie, the new iteration of Peaky Blinders will feature appearances from James Bond star Lashana Lynch and Downton Abbey’s Jessica Brown Findlay.

Steven Knight previously claimed: “I’m thrilled to be announcing this new chapter in the Peaky Blinders story.

“Once again it will be rooted in Birmingham and will tell the story of a city rising from the ashes of the Birmingham blitz. The new generation of Shelbys have taken the wheel and it will be a hell of a ride.”

Production on the new season is currently underway in Birmingham.

There are some things I thought I could take for granted. I always assumed paprika came from some spicy variety of pepper, but while traditional ones can contain varying degrees of heat, many large manufacturers use a type of sweet bell pepper instead.

I’d believed “wi-fi” stood for something, like “wifeless fidelity,” too. Nope: its name “doesn’t stand for anything. It is not an acronym. There is no meaning”.

But even I, a person who could fairly be described as “professionally bemused,” was uniquely surprised to learn that Stuart Little is not actually a mouse.

And looking at the responses to an X post from film critic and editor of Slash Film, Chris Evangelista, it seems I’m not alone.

The film Stuart Little is based on the book Stuart Little by EB White (also the author of Charlotte’s Web).

And I sincerely regret to inform you that the first chapter of that cursed tome novel, “In The Drain,” begins in this haunting manner:

“When Mrs Frederick C. Little’s second son arrived, everybody noticed that he was not much bigger than a mouse. The truth of the matter was, the baby looked very much like a mouse in every way. He was only about two inches high; and he had a mouse’s sharp nose, a mouse’s tail, a mouse’s whiskers, and the pleasant, shy manner of a mouse. Before he was many days old he was not only looking like a mouse but acting like one, too – wearing a grey hat and carrying a small cane. Mr and Mrs Little named him Stuart, and Mr Little made him a tiny bed out of four clothespins and a cigarette box.

So, while publisher Harper Collins markets the children’s book as a “classic novel about a small mouse… born to a family of humans,” the perhaps less invested Britannica is more alive to its body horror realities.

It is, they point out, about a “two-inch-tall boy who resembles a mouse”.

Which begs the question, A24 Stuart Little remake when?

In response to the recent X post, one netizen called the news “disturbing”.

Another pointed to the historical myth of sooterkins. These were believed to be the rat-like afterbirth of some Dutch women (great! Normal!).

But it is not the first time innocent internet users have become aware of the fact.

A post shared to Reddit’s r/todayilearned pointed out the “mouse”’s true species in 2018.

“He also tries to get frisky/date a girl who is tiny like him and looks like a human,” wrote u/Atoning_Unifex.

Yup, that’d be Harriet Ames, who does not look like a mouse. Stuart got the hots for her after hearing that she was a little “shorter” than him, and after a shopkeeper “gave [him] a most favourable report of [her] character and appearance”.

They did not work out. But notably, Stuart Little began a letter to her by saying, “I am a young person of modest proportions” (italics mine).

All in all, I’m with u/MattheJ1: “If I were Mr Little, I’d be asking some questions”.

Labour lost almost four times as many voters to the Green Party than to Reform UK during the local elections, according to a respected pollster.

Voters brutally punished Keir Starmer’s party when voting for more than 5,000 council seats in England on May 7.

Reform picked up more than 1,450 council seats in the major elections, particularly in former Labour strongholds.

Starmer’s party lost more than 1,460 seats across the country, a catastrophic defeat which triggered calls for the prime minister to step down so Labour can fight Reform under a new leader.

However, YouGov has found 22% of Labour’s 2024 voters switched to the Green Party in the local elections.

In comparison only 6% of 2024 Labour voters supported Reform UK.

Overall, 46% of that voting cohort were loyal to the party, compared to 55% of the 2024 Tory voters who continued backing the Conservatives.

Four in 10 Labour and Lib Dem voters also said wanting to stop another party from winning was one of the top reasons they voted the way they did.

A Green Party spokesperson said: “Labour’s attempt to out-Reform Reform has been a spectacular failure, only playing into Nigel Farage’s hands.

“The public are crying out for the real change the Greens have been campaigning for: rent controls, proper wealth taxes, lower bills, public ownership of water, and an end to support for genocide and illegal wars. People in Gorton and Denton saw that the Greens are a viable alternative and can win.

“It’s no surprise that many voters alienated by Labour are now backing us.”

A Labour spokesperson declined to comment.

After the election results, Starmer said: “I could stand here and say Runcorn was close, we successfully defended three mayoralties, and the opposition parties tend to do well in these sorts of elections.

“But I’m not going to do that. What I am going to do is to respond by saying: I get it.”

He said NHS waiting lists are down, while wages are rising faster than prices and that interest rates are falling.

The prime minister said this suggests that the “tough decisions” Labour has made are starting to pay off.

“But the message I take out of these elections is that we need to go further and we need to go faster on the change people want to see. And that’s what I’m determined to do,” Starmer said.

Labour also lost control over the Welsh Senedd for the first time since devolution began almost 30 years ago on May 7, while the Greens won two seats – their first representation ever in the Welsh parliament.

Labour came a distant second to the SNP in the Holyrood elections, tying with Reform who made an electoral breakthrough north of the border.

The Scottish Greens also won a record 15 seats in Scotland.

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Festivals are all fun and games until you remember about a small thing called a shower.

I don’t know about you, but it’s always a day or two into a festival or camping before I start to become irrevocably aware of the layer of the layer of filth I must be covered in. After that, it’s game over.

While, yes, there’s often some kind of shower... situation going on at campsites, it’s not always one you want to find yourself in.

That is, if you even have time to shower between running around and drinking copious amounts of alcohol.

But if there is one hack you can’t live without at a festival, it’s always having a pack of wet wipes on hand.

Should you lose track of time and realise you’ve not washed in a considerable number of days, or that you’ve developed an irrational fear of the shared showers, wet wipes will always have your back.

These coconut-scented ones from Freshwipes come in a pack of 12, but if you’re going for a longer stint you can save by buying a multipacks of 5, 10, or 36.

They’re biodegradable, 10x wetter than regular baby wipes, and fold out to A4 size, so one wipe is enough to clean your whole body.

That means you can rest assured you’re not leaving too much harmful rubbish behind.

They’re even skin-safe certified, earning the seal of approval from Dr Hilary Jones MBE as dermatologically sound and antibacterial, thanks to the addition of chlorhexidine.

And, if coconut is not your thing, you can choose between its ocean fresh scent and unscented options.

But best of all, one pack costs just £6, so you can stay odour-free wherever you are this summer for the price of less than two coffees.