Meeting ‘my people’ – video gamers with very long memories – took me back to an era of machine play that lacked megabytes but had far more tangible presence

I want to tell you about the game that has made me the happiest this month. It’s a game I didn’t complete. It’s a game I didn’t even start. I just held it. And smiled. I have played the game before, but not for many years. Forty of them to be precise.

The game is Daley Thompson’s Super Test for the ZX Spectrum.

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Rise of 3% in April, the fastest annual pace in 11 months, leaves typical property worth £278,880, says Nationwide

• Business live – latest updates

House price growth in the UK has surprised estate agents and economists by jumping in April at the fastest annual pace in 11 months, according to Nationwide.

The UK’s biggest building society said its mortgage data showed that house prices unexpectedly rose by 3% in April on a year earlier, from 2.2% in March, leaving the typical UK property worth £278,880.

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Electoral Commission reviewing whether Reform UK leader should have declared billionaire’s gift before entering parliament

• Analysis: Farage’s bid to get ahead of story only raises more questions

• Farage referred to standards watchdog over undisclosed £5m gift

The UK elections watchdog is considering whether to investigate an undisclosed £5m donation received by Nigel Farage before he announced his candidacy at the last general election.

The move comes after the Guardian revealed this week that the Reform UK leader was given the money by the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne.

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A fraught drama about a gang of teenagers on a party island. Plus, turn it up to 11 – the legendary rockers are back!

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(Nyege Nyege Tapes)
Reinvigorating the South African mapanta subgenre, producer Serokolo 7 blends folk vocal melodies with seething 180bpm rhythms, creating a barrage of sound

South Africa pulses with electronic music. From the slow-bubbling feel of amapiano to the frenetic pace of Durban’s gqom, Soweto’s marimba-heavy shangaan electro and the sample-heavy 90s house of kwaito, each region seemingly lays claim to its own sound. The latest subgenre to reach international ears is mapanta. Originating in villages of the Marota people in Limpopo, this intensely fast and highly compressed music was originally an adrenaline shot for the early hours of 1980s wedding parties. It faded at the turn of the century, but mapanta has recently been updated by 27-year-old self-taught producer and sound system operator Serokolo 7.

On his debut album, Serokolo presents a masterclass in mapanta’s rural celebratory sound. Splicing together samples of animal howls with hammering marimba rhythm, scatter-gun electronic percussion and snatches of vocals, the initial impression is of relentless cacophony. Opener Naba Ba Papedi sets the tone, its folk vocal melodies blended with a cranked-up drum’n’bass beat that fizzes without reaching a cathartic crescendo or drop. That sense of seething tension continues on the breakbeat cymbal splashes and chopped vocals of Zoro and the glittering video-game melodics of Dinaka.

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Drivers seem undeterred by high fuel prices and gloomy weather forecasts, while engineering works spell delays for railway passengers

Drivers have been told to expect the UK’s busiest May bank holiday traffic in years, despite high fuel prices and the looming end of the sunny spell threatening to dampen the long weekend.

More than 19m leisure trips by car were expected over the long weekend from Friday to Monday, according to research by the RAC motoring organisation – the most since 2016. Engineering works are also likely to disrupt rail journeys this weekend.

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The King charmed Americans – including the president – while artfully asserting his views on climate and executive power

In the end, it was a royal triumph, as King Charles and Queen Camilla managed to avoid all the mines in their path (the strait of Hormuz is not the only place where they exist), and deftly repair the “special relationship”. For another few weeks, anyway.

There were plenty of reasons to be anxious, on both sides of the Atlantic, before the king’s visit to Washington and New York. It is no secret that Donald Trump’s war of choice against Iran has alienated Great Britain, and all of the Nato allies, who were not consulted in advance of the decision and have since been browbeaten for what Trump perceives as insufficient fealty .

Ted Widmer is a former presidential speechwriter, and the author of a forthcoming book in June, The Living Declaration: A Biography of America’s Founding Text (Library of America)

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⚽ Buildup to the weekend’s action across the leagues
⚽ Ten things to look out for | Fixtures | Standings | Mail Tom

Morning everyone and welcome . We’re at that stage of the season where clubs are either on the beach or deep in a world of stress/pain/excitement, each casting envious glances at the other. A hugely consequential weekend looms, starting tonight with Leeds having another opportunity to distance themselves from the relegation rabble when they host managerless and relegated Burnley. By around 3pm tomorrow we’ll know the identity of one more of the clubs replacing the Clarets, with Ipswich, Millwall and Middlesbrough duking it out for second place in the Championship, while ups, downs and playoff places in the rest of the EFL will be sorted by teatime, when everyone can chill out watching Arsenal’s bid to keep their creaking title bid on the road when they face Fulham.

There was plenty to chew on last night too . Nottingham Forest just about edged their all-English Europa League semi-final first leg against Aston Villa, but not without the inevitable VAR blow-up, Unai Emery fuming at the failure to punish Elliott Anderson for a dangerous tackle on Ollie Watkins. In the Conference League, Oliver Glasner’s chances of bowing out at Crystal Palace with a second trophy in two years were substantially enhanced in a 3-1 semi-final first leg win against Shakhtar Donetsk. The Europa League place denied them last year is now in sight.

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(Lost Highway)
After two underwhelming pop-leaning records, the country star gets back to basics on this sparsely produced gem filled with wit and hard-won lessons

Kacey Musgraves’ seventh album feels like a sigh of relief. Since 2018’s prismatic country-pop marvel Golden Hour , the Texan has struggled to maintain a foothold in pop: 2021’s Star-Crossed wed overly high-concept breakup songs to indistinct music; 2024’s Deeper Well was a weak latte of coffee-shop folksiness and impersonal therapy speak. Middle of Nowhere sacks off all the pageantry. Subtly arranged, tinged with western swing and traditional Mexican music, the low-key sound gets back to Musgraves’ rural roots and makes a smart backdrop to these beautifully weary songs about reckoning with delusion: on the title track, Musgraves sounds gorgeously like Aimee Mann, master of the subject.

But her hooks still hit. The warm, sparky I Believe in Ghosts feels made for tired stoics to kick it together on a dusty dancefloor; femcel anthem Dry Spell pairs an unwavering rhythmic canter with a thousand-yard stare as Musgraves rues “I’m so lonely with a capital H” – she means horny, a line that doesn’t work until you figure: maybe it’s been so long she can’t even remember the word. And the spartan arrangements let more of Musgraves’ conversational wit and side-eye shine through. The hopeful romance of Back on the Wagon, where a woman swears her busted man has changed, and the sweet pedal steel breeze of Loneliest Girl, where another insists she’s happy alone, are two sides of the same tenderly flipped coin : how many ways do we have to kid ourselves to get by? Horses and Divorces is country’s Girl, So Confusing: a reconciliatory – but raucous – duet with old foe Miranda Lambert that resounds with the lightness of letting go.

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