There’s only one huge communal table, so bring your dinner party chat A-game

One of life’s simple pleasures is coming across unexpected names for new restaurants, so I was enthralled when the Troublesome Lodger opened recently in Marlow, Buckinghamshire. This single room with a minuscule kitchen attached is upstairs at the Oarsman pub in the centre of Tom Kerridge’s fiefdom, so there’s bound to be some decent hungry passing trade, and most chefs who take over a space in a pub, hotel or fancy department store become troublesome lodgers within about three weeks. More fool you if you let a cook into your property to create their “culinary vision”: within hours, your lifts will be full of lobsters and a consommé spillage will have blown your electrics.

It is rather raffish of chef Simon Bonwick, then, to be quite so upfront, yet the Oarsman has given him this austere, very snug and dimly lit private dining room with one vast, leather-topped, antique conference table of the kind you’d imagine the bankers in It’s A Wonderful Life crouching over. Apparently, the room had been unused and full of dusty boxes and bags of sand until the new lodger took it on and turned it into what is essentially a reflection of his inner mind. Bonwick loves to paint, you see – his penchant being semi-surreal, multi-coloured dreamscapes – and every wall is now covered floor-to-ceiling with exhibits of his work, along with a pencil drawing of Tupac Shakur by one of his nine children; one of the space’s deep windowsills is filled with Bonwick family photos.

The whole horror show seems so predictable now, doesn’t it? Just like it did the last time ...

My husband knows masses more about US politics than me, so do imagine how much he enjoyed me spending the best part of the past two years telling him “Trump’s going to win” simply because I felt it in my vibes. However, earlier this year, he started to agree with me, which I had to concede meant a lot because he was basing it on actual information, and had the first clue what he was talking about. Scrolling back through my text messages to him, I am reading things such as: “Sorry, Harris is ‘selling joy’???? Please tell me the election anywhere in history that was won on joy because I would LOVE to hear about it.” (Sidenote: I can see from reviewing the data that I’ve really over-leaned into the sassy question mark this year.)

Anyway, there’s plenty more in this vein. “I don’t believe all this polling, I just think it’s all some massive cope?” Yet when I was asked on the afternoon of election day who I predicted would win it, I promptly said “Kamala Harris?” Later that night, on the phone, my husband wondered mildly why I had abandoned the conviction of long months of kitchen rants and annoyingly punctuated text messages. “I don’t know,” I replied. “I guess I just … forgot?”

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

• Fenerbahce coach has unfinished business in England
• Howe ‘pleased with how it’s going’ after three years

José Mourinho is targeting the Newcastle job if Eddie Howe leaves St James’ Park. The Fenerbahce head coach has unfinished business in the Premier League and has identified Newcastle as his best chance of another job in England, having managed Chelsea twice, Manchester United and Tottenham.

Mourinho made clear his unhappiness in Turkey with an extraordinary rant after Fenerbahce’s 3-2 win over Trabzonspor last Sunday. The Portuguese joined the club only last summer after being sacked by Roma in January but is eyeing other potential opportunities.

Lyceum theatre, Sheffield
Beautifully staged and danced with bonneted and bewhiskered brio, Dickens’s classic dose of festive escapism is the gift that keeps on giving

Directed by Christopher Gable and choreographed by Massimo Moricone, Northern Ballet ’s A Christmas Carol was a hit when it premiered in 1992, but has been presented only sporadically since then. Now it’s back, 11 years after its last outing, though this time without a live orchestra (the company’s Sinfonia has been cut ). Does it still work, four decades on?

Well yes – but allow me a quick Scrooge moment, if you will. A Christmas Carol is a snow-globe, Victoriana vision of a world reassuringly sealed from our present and our future; that is why it works, and perhaps why we need it now.

Billie Eilish also expressed dismay at the re-election of Trump, calling him ‘someone who hates women so, so deeply’

Madonna has expressed outrage at the re-election of Donald Trump, describing him as “a convicted felon, rapist, bigot”.

Writing on Instagram, she said: “Trying to get my head around why a convicted felon, rapist, bigot was chosen to lead our country because he’s good for the economy?” She also posted a picture of a cake with the words “Fuck Trump” etched in frosting along with the caption: “Stuffed my face with this cake last night!”

Also this week, Bezos, Musk and Zuckerberg change their mailing address to Donald Trump’s Rectum

Looking back to Monday, the world seemed a quaint place – but by the end of the week it had become a lot darker. On Tuesday night, Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States, having served as the 45th – Grover Cleveland set the precedent for serving two non-consecutive terms in the White House – and in the first 48 hours there were new norms and proprieties to straighten out. For example: was it productive, in the aftermath of the election, to call the 72 million Americans who voted for Trump a bunch of idiots?

Presence at Cenotaph and Festival of Remembrance mark her first consecutive days of engagements since start of year

The Princess of Wales will attend two remembrance events this weekend, Buckingham Palace has said, as she gradually returns to public duties after her treatment for cancer.

Catherine will join the Remembrance Sunday service at the Cenotaph and the Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall alongside King Charles and the Prince of Wales to honour the nation’s war dead.

Delhi high court told government notification prohibiting import of 1988 novel ‘untraceable’

Writing to the then Indian prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, in October 1988, Salman Rushdie lamented that Indian democracy had become “a laughing stock” after the government placed a ban on importing his contentious novel The Satanic Verses.

Now 36 years later, the author may have the last laugh as the ban looks set to be lifted after the Indian government failed to locate the original order.

Malvern Theatres, Great Malvern
The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment combine virtuosity with a practised nonchalance to soothe our age’s anxieties

On a day that seemed to herald a new age of anxiety, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment offered consolation in the form of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. Before embarking on their series entitled Bach, the Universe and Everything, they are taking the Brandenburgs on tour and while the Malvern didn’t quite get the full complement of six – No 1 was missing – this was still a huge lift to the spirits, Bach’s essential rhythmic vitality somehow representing resilience.

The Malvern theatres, once a ballroom, is not the obvious place for baroque repertoire, but with a wooden panelled screen in front of the black curtains allowing the acoustic to work well enough, the various combinations of soloists – each concerto different in instrumentation with the harpsichord at the core – and the OAE’s directness of communication, with each other and with the audience, created a warm rapport.