Go Unlimited with Magzter GOLD
Get unlimited access to 10,000+ magazines, newspapers and Premium stories for just
Try GOLD - Free
Lion's mane jellyfish
The Observer
|September 21, 2025
Brandy! Brandy! Oil, opium, morphia! Anything to ease this infernal agony! Seems a bit over the top to me, but that's fiction for you (see The Adventure of the Lion's Mane by Conan Doyle).
I'm real enough, though. And pretty fearsome. If you're longer than a blue whale and can sting with every damn tentacle, you don't have a lot to worry about in this ocean.
Monday
I drift with the stream. Not any old stream, though: I travel the northern seas on the ocean currents, as if I'm doing the currents a favour. I'm not wholly passive: when it's worthwhile I can squeeze myself along with rhythmic pulses of my great bell — two metres across — that swells above an infinitude of tentacles.
Tuesday
This story is from the September 21, 2025 edition of The Observer.
Subscribe to Magzter GOLD to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 10,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
MORE STORIES FROM The Observer
The Observer
I wouldn't touch Starmer with a barge pole. He's completely untrustworthy
In the first of a new weekly series in which we ask a public figure to take us on a walk of significance, Rachel Sylvester, our political editor strolls through London's Stoke Newington with Zack Polanski. The leader of the Greens talks about tax hikes, leaving Nato and why former Labour politicians are welcome to join his party
8 mins
November 23, 2025
The Observer
Short-beaked echidna
Old does not mean primitive. Let's get that straight at once. Sure, we're mammals and sure, we lay eggs, which makes us unusual in the late Holocene but that doesn't mean we're backward.
2 mins
November 23, 2025
The Observer
Help with cost of living to make tax smorgasboard easier to swallow
These have been the leakiest, most fevered pre-budget weeks in modern British political history.
4 mins
November 23, 2025
The Observer
It's not easy being green: high energy costs threaten UK's net zero business endeavours
Missed decarbonisation targets, high prices and political uncertainty are seeing Labour's bid to make the nation a clean utility 'superpower' drift off into the ether.
8 mins
November 23, 2025
The Observer
The trail of bad decisions and delays that led to 23,000 avoidable deaths
As the second official report into Britain's Covid response is made public, a story emerges of a government failing to heed warnings and a first lockdown that was too little, too late.
4 mins
November 23, 2025
The Observer
Europeans rush to foil Ukraine deal favouring Kremlin
Kyiv's allies seek to thwart Trump negotiator's peace plan that gives in to Russian demands and turns the screw on embattled Zelensky
4 mins
November 23, 2025
The Observer
'We saw so many bodies that we lost count': uncovering the hidden horror of El Fasher
Using eyewitness reports, satellite images and social media videos, Isabel Coles and Fred Harter record the carnage when RSF fighters seized the famine-stricken capital of Sudan's North Darfur
10 mins
November 23, 2025
The Observer
It's not easy being green: high energy costs threaten UK's net zero business endeavours
Missed decarbonisation targets, high prices and political uncertainty are seeing Labour's bid to make the nation a clean utility 'superpower' drift off into the ether.
6 mins
November 23, 2025
The Observer
My lost afternoon with Elisabeth Lederer
I will come on to the eye-watering price shortly, but let's start with the art. Is the painting any good?
1 mins
November 23, 2025
The Observer
The Lords they are a-leaping as vandals in ermine do their damnedest to frustrate ministers
Andrew Rawnsley
4 mins
November 23, 2025
Listen
Translate
Change font size