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Photo by Umair Dingmar on Unsplash (licensed under the Unsplash licence) In the summer of 2025, the two-part documentary ‘The Hunt for Shannon Matthews’ (Ben Sheldon, 2025) was released – all about the staged kidnapping that put my hometown of Dewsbury, West Yorkshire on the map. I watched it, of course. My whole family did. I even made my boyfriend – privately educated and capable of pronouncing his t’s – watch it too. A sort of “look at this crazy place I call home” exercis

Photo by Julia Barrantes via Pexels (licensed under the Pexels Licence) Erika Kohut, the piano teacher, stands in her ultralong skirt and perfectly modest blouse, clutching the chest from which blood now oozes – a self-inflicted stab wound. She does not cry. She exits the concert hall in which she is set to perform and disappears into the streets of Vienna. The credits roll. Congratulations, viewer, you may now mark ‘The Piano Teacher’ (Michael Haneke, 2001) as watched on Let

The music swells and I am elated that such raw sincerity has slipped into my life, leaving me blinded by the humanity we all share. I am feeling capable of being open and raw to the world around me. Then the video restarts.