Six great reads: dating in later life; a lost Amazon van, ‘gong bath’ freezers, and Toni Morrison

1. ‘Men in their 60s used Polaroids from the 1970s as their profile pictures’

Actor Pauline Tomlin at home in Leeds. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian

“It’s a very barren landscape for me,” says Pauline Tomlin, 61. “A lot of men my age are not great at keeping themselves fit and healthy. I don’t know what happens – they seem to be all right in their 40s and 50s, and then they get to their 60s and you’re like: what the hell?”

Donna Ferguson spoke to single women in their 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s who opened up about dating in later life, sharing stories about the perils of online dating and what it’s like starting new relationships after your partner dies.

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2. Is this the world’s most eye-popping restaurant? The architectural marvel in a Leipzig industrial estate

The Niemeyer Sphere, Leipzig. Photograph: Margret Hoppe

Oscar Niemeyer changed the face of modern architecture – but who knew his final design was a diner in a space-age bubble on an industrial estate in Leipzig? Marion Lougheed visited the last wonder of the great Brazilian architect, who dreamt it up at the age of 103. And it’s a fine place for a sunset kombucha and gin.

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3. Abandon shipment: how an Amazon van got marooned on the UK’s ‘most dangerous path’

An Amazon delivery van stranded in the Thames estuary at Foulness, Essex. Photograph: Jacqueline Lawrie/LNP

In the darkness of Valentine’s Day, a delivery driver was led by his GPS to the Essex mudflats at the mouth of the Thames estuary, where it meets the North Sea. Tim Burrows took up the tale of how the photo of the van became something of a sensation: “People thought they were looking at an AI image … ”

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4. ‘Like an electrical gong bath!’ The Sheffield supermarket going viral for the symphonic sound of its freezers

The freezer section at the Co-op on Eccleshall Road, Sheffield. Photograph: Alim Kheraj

In Sheffield, Alim Kheraj investigated the mystery of three freezers at a supermarket that have had fans of ambient music revelling in their unique hum, describing it as “like an electrical gong bath”. 

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5. ‘I felt betrayed, naked’: did a prize-winning novelist steal a woman’s life story?

Kamel Daoud, left, and Saada Arbane. Composite: Guardian Design/AP/Reuters/AFP/Getty Images/ Hans Lucas

For the Long Read, Madeleine Schwartz told the astonishing story of the award-winning novelist being sued by the woman who claims he stole her story to write about the atrocities of the Algerian civil war.

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6. ‘She dared to be difficult’: How Toni Morrison shaped the way we think

Toni Morrison in New York, 1985. Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive

“There are many ways to be difficult in this world. You can be demanding, inconvenient, stubborn, complicated, troublesome, baffling, illegible. Black womanhood is one place where all these forms of difficulty overlap. I feel like I have always known this; I have been called difficult more times in my life than I can count. But I only began to understand – to discover the meanings and uses of – my own difficulty because of Toni Morrison.”

Namwali Serpell wrote about how Toni Morrison has shaped the way we think about everything from literature to politics, criticism to ethics.

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