Ian Prior

Editor, writer, content strategist, digital consultant
eHarmony Dating Advice Site •

Gaslighting: what it means, how to recognise it and how to stop it

Do conversations with your partner make you question your own sanity or perception of reality? Do you often find yourself apologising or making excuses for them? You may be experiencing gaslighting David and Jane have been partners for three years and live together. Both have good jobs and recently they set up a joint bank account to cover shared expenses. Jane has noticed regular substantial and unexplained withdrawals from the account, the timing of which often coincide with David being away
eHarmony Dating Advice Site •

So what are the right questions to ask on a first date? - eharmony

The quickest way to end a first date? How about asking your potential partner about Brexit. It might seem like a sure-fire passion-killer, but in a new study commissioned by eharmony, behavioural psychologists have named it one of the top five questions to ask on a first date. Dr Eric Robinson and Dr Michelle Tornquist at the University of Liverpool designed five questions to help determine romantic compatibility between couples, along with obvious red flags. The academics shared their advice
eHarmony Dating Advice Site •

10 steps to mend a broken heart - eharmony dating advice

I beg of you don’t say goodbye Can’t we give our love another try? Come on, baby, let’s start anew ‘Cause breaking up is hard to do… Neil Sedaka may have been guilty of understatement. Breaking up is not just hard to do; it can be a life trauma on a par with the death of a loved one or overcoming an addiction. While there are few easy solutions, eharmony is here to help with our 10 steps towards mending a broken heart We’re all familiar with the first stage of an unwanted break-up, co
eHarmony Dating Advice Site •

Free dates: 20 ideas you might actually consider - eharmony

Broke again? Or just sick of shelling out eye-watering sums at distincly average restaurants in pursuit of love. Successful dating needs imagination and what better way to demonstrate it than coming up with dates that cost nothing? To get you started here’s eharmony’s best ideas for free dating 1. Head for the hills. Or woods So ‘going for a walk’ may be basic for a hot date. But conversation often flows a lot more freely when side-by-side rather than staring at each other across a dinner tabl
The Guardian •

Veteran showjumper Nick Skelton secures Olympic gold on Big Star

You wait 20 years for an Olympic medal then two come along in succession, as nobody but nobody with the exception of Nick Skelton has ever said. The oldest Olympic gold medallist is a Swede called Oscar Swahn, who won in the now bafflingly defunct Running Deer team shooting contest in Stockholm’s 1912 Games at the age of 64. Skelton is six years short of that (there’s always 2024) but in a breathtaking triumph in the Deodoro arena he has become Britain’s eldest since 1908. At the risk of enteri
The Guardian •

Bryony Page wins silver and first British medal in Olympic trampolining

Bryony Page was ecstatic after surprising the crowd, the bookmakers and, perhaps, even herself with a silver in trampolining on her Olympic debut. If any Briton was due to succeed in this event, it was the much-fancied 2012 veteran Kat Driscoll but Page produced the performance, if not of a lifetime that surely has many big days to come, then certainly of her career thus far. It left her stunned but far from speechless. She would have been satisfied with a place in the final. “Just getting int
The Guardian •

Chris Mears and Jack Laugher win gold in synchronised springboard diving

Move aside, Tom Daley. If the seeming one-man show of British diving had thought himself most likely to break the nation’s duck and win a first Olympic gold in the discipline, he had not counted on Chris Mears and Jack Laugher. The water remained green, an even deeper, more mysterious shade today perhaps but the medal was unambiguous. As the most British of drizzle fell softly on Rio, the 3m synchronised gold went to the pair who saved their bravest effort for the biggest of stages. Mears and L
The Guardian •

Richard Kruse’s pursuit of unlikely fencing medal for GB foiled at the last

Odds would have been long indeed for Britain’s first medal in these Games to come from a discipline which had not managed such since 1964 but the fencer Richard Kruse came agonisingly close before falling in the foil bronze match. Kruse, a 33-year-old Londoner and world No6, competing in his fourth consecutive Games, lost out 13-15 to the Russian Timur Safin, having reached the semi-finals and confounded those who assumed his best hopes were long behind him after a disappointing home Olympics i
The Guardian •

Olympic organisers invoke MacGyver to describe spirit of opening ceremony

Olympic organisers invoked the spirit of cult 1980s television show MacGyver to describe their attempts to make Rio’s bargain-bucket opening ceremony live up to the memory of its predecessors. “Athens was classic, Beijing was grandiose, London was smart - ours is going to be cool,” said Andrucha Waddington, the Brazilian film director who is part of the team behind Friday’s ceremony in Rio’s Maracana stadium. The ceremony is a joint creative effort, headed by Italian executive producer Marco B
The Guardian •

Paralympics 2012: Wheelchair tennis winner Esther Vergeer does it again

Superlatives must haunt the sleep of Esther Vergeer. Being Little Miss Perfect is one thing; hearing everyone explain how Perfect a Little Miss you are, week after week, surely has a numbing effect on the psyche. It is a mild surprise she is not an axe murderer in her spare time. But she's Dutch, and so, as the cliche goes, phlegmatic (apart from the footballers, divas to a man). "Dutch literalism," observed one onlooker, reading the victory banner Vergeer's family displayed after she wrapped u
The Guardian •

David Weir wins third Paralympics 2012 gold as T54 800m rivals buckle

David Weir is simply unstoppable. A performance of iron-clad confidence and control brought him an extraordinary third gold medal of the Games on Thursday night, cementing his position as the world's leading wheelchair athlete and leaving his rivals shattered. Weir shadowed the leader, China's Zhang Lixin, from the gun, tucking in second out of lane seven, and never lost that prime position until he ripped off the final bend to win the T54 800m in 1min 37.63sec as the stadium erupted in joy and
The Guardian •

Ellie Simmonds wins Paralympics SM6 200m medley with world record

Another night, another gold, another world record – and just her second of the day – for the phenomenon that is Ellie Simmonds. If her first win on Saturday night was a draining duel against the American Victoria Arlen then this, her fourth Paralympic gold, was a remorseless display of power and nerve. A savage acceleration in the final freestyle leg of the SM6 200m medley took her home almost nine seconds clear of Germany's Verena Schott, who in turn pipped Britain's Natalie Jones to silver.
The Guardian •

Blind loyalty at Liverpool and Chelsea will not help beat racism | Ian Prior

The pictures above were taken less than five months apart. The first shows Liverpool lining up before their pre-season friendly against Valerenga on 1 August, the players holding aloft signs reading "Show Racism the Red Card", a response to the shooting and bombing attack by the far-right gunman Anders Behring Breivik that killed 77 Norwegians, most of them teenagers, last July. The second is part of the club's officially sanctioned public response to the decision by the Football Association's
The Guardian •

Not having a degree has its perks | Ian Prior

This morning I put my hand up in response to a question and realised I was the only person in a crowded room who didn't have a degree. Can't say it was a huge surprise. Can't say I was too bothered. Somewhere in the Guardian, there might be one or two hacks who could say the same. They're probably a bit older than I am (34) and can recall a time when journalism, like a lot of what we now call professions, was a trade. Go to a tabloid newsroom and you'll find many more. If you're an A-level stu
The Guardian •

Do Keane's strengths contain the seeds of managerial failure?

Whatever the Tottenham board may think, four games into the season is absurdly early for terminal judgments on a manager's aptitude but thus far the challenge to Roy Keane's has been intriguing. There has been an assumption, near unanimous across football's commentariat, that not only will Sunderland stay up but do so comfortably and of last May's promoted sides they were perceived as most likely to "do a Reading". The evidence is not exactly baseless: Sunderland's turnaround in 2006-07 from th
The Guardian •

Goodnight galacticos

Which pratfall has been your favourite so far? Perhaps Vieira, lost and befuddled amid the treacle of a Swiss midfield. Or in front of him Zidane, a miserable shadow of what once was Europe's glory, flicks and feints all awry, timing dreadfully out of synch and his tired, despairing face so much older than 33 years. For the connoisseurs, Ronaldo. Lardy, lumbering, breathtakingly lazy, resembling nothing so much as a veteran gone to seed but brought back one more time to play a gaggle of celebri
The Guardian •

Newcastle United 2 - 1 West Bromwich Albion

The Trent House pub on Leazes Lane, hostelry for the type of fan who thinks it oh-so-post-ironic to wear a football shirt with "Sartre" emblazoned on the back, is seeking bar staff. "Slacker gimps need not apply," is the forthright message and up the street at St James' Sir Bobby Robson would endorse the sentiment. Newcastle, particularly in defence, could be accused with some justification of gimpishness (step forward Andy O'Brien) but, having discovered the added rigour of a Champions League
The Guardian •

Life is easy for Edwards the laughing loser

The usual reaction of an athlete to the red flag of disqualification ranges from snorts and dirty looks, for the jumpers, to tears of anguish, perhaps for a race walker chucked out in the last stretch of the 50k. Broad smiles are not part of the repertoire but, if anyone has mastered greeting both triumph and disaster with a grin, it is Jonathan Edwards. His final effort in Thursday night's triple-jump final would have won him the competition, were it not for a pesky toe poking over the launch
The Guardian •

Tottenham Hotspur 1 - 1 West Ham United

The prospect of seven England hopefuls on the field caused Sven Goran Eriksson to opt for an otherwise undistinguished fixture as his Saturday workload; in the event he saw but five and, in uncertain times for a man with 23 aeroplane seats to fill, perhaps only one player gave cause for a firm decision. Teddy Sheringham has had plenty better games for Spurs this season and plenty worse, but no matter: surrounded by comparative mediocrity his ability to illuminate drab afternoons with touch, mov