This cool summer dish can be easily enhanced with a range of store-cupboard staples

What’s your favourite hot weather food? Mine’s gazpacho. I’m joking – gazpacho’s lovely, but cold noodles are my top pick because, in the summer, they meet me exactly where I am in both the cooking and the eating. They don’t need much by way of cooking, and they can be dressed and paired with many a store-cupboard ingredient – in today’s case, tahini, miso and sesame oil. Best of all, cooling the noodles shocks the starches, which makes them firmer and gorgeously “QQ”, a Taiwanese term used to describe food that’s delightfully bouncy and springy. Which personally, is how I’d like to feel all summer long.

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Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the last seven days

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Twenty years ago I briefly became the victim of a viral pile-on – all because of a silly YouTube video. But I’m glad I had the chance to embarrass myself and move on. Are today’s teens so fortunate?

As a teenager, I went kind of viral – and the most amazing thing about that is it had absolutely zero effect on my life. It was the summer holidays in 2006, and my friends Jessie, Emma and I decided to film ourselves singing along to our favourite song. We were overheated and hyperactive, jumping up and down and headbanging, stretching our arms to the heavens as we confessed to our mamas that we’d “just killed a maaaaaan” before asking Scaramouche if he’d do the fandango.

Later, I added a couple of captions to the video implying we were drunk, even though I was 14 and the closest I’d been to buzzed was the pure placebo of clutching a glass bottle of J2O. Then – for reasons that are now lost to me – I uploaded the video to YouTube a month later, on 19 September 2006, under the title “Bohemian Crap-sody”.

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Pitlochry Festival theatre
Writer Douglas Maxwell’s playful conceit sparks a funny and superbly acted exploration of messy relationships

There is a clever conceit underlying Douglas Maxwell’s sparky romantic comedy. It imagines the possibility of a sexually charged relationship being sustained without physical contact. Played out on stage, this improbable idea hits home on two levels.

Meeting at a 21st birthday party in 1995, two students – one law, one media studies – agree to maintain the erotic anticipation of their first encounter by never touching each other. If they ever do, the relationship will be over.

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Serena Williams, Lewis Hamilton and Cristiano Ronaldo are among the stars benefiting from advances in sports science, equipment and facilities

When 40-year-old Luka Modrić lined up for Croatia against England on Wednesday evening, he embodied a growing trend in elite sport. A generation ago, a footballer competing at the highest level at 40 would have been a rarity, but the 2026 World Cup features a record eight players aged at least 40 – more than all previous tournaments combined.

It’s not just football. Lewis Hamilton is still competing in Formula One aged 41, while earlier this week Wimbledon granted Serena Williams, 44, and Venus Williams, 46, a wildcard into the women’s doubles draw.

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‘Suspicious package’ prompted partial evacuation of terminal building but flights were resuming after explosives disposal experts gave all-clear

Edinburgh airport reopened on Saturday morning after parts of the terminal building were evacuated on Friday night because of a security alert.

An explosive ordnance disposal team was sent to the airport to investigate what Police Scotland described as a “potentially suspicious package” discovered at about 6.50pm on Friday.

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Een fles cola maanden bewaren voor een verjaardag of in juli al kerstcadeaus kopen, omdat december anders niet te betalen is. Voor Robin (35) en Sabrina (36) uit Nieuwerkerk aan den IJssel is armoede vooral een eindeloze rekensom. De Rotterdamse Speelgoedbank geeft het koppel elke maand een beetje lucht – en hun dochters een paradijs om in zich in te wanen.

Een fles cola maanden bewaren voor een verjaardag of in juli al kerstcadeaus kopen, omdat december anders niet te betalen is. Voor Robin (35) en Sabrina (36) uit Nieuwerkerk aan den IJssel is armoede vooral een eindeloze rekensom. De Rotterdamse Speelgoedbank geeft het koppel elke maand een beetje lucht – en hun dochters een paradijs om in zich in te wanen.