It wasn’t all bad

This year’s Good Food Guide features a motorway service station for the first time. Gloucester Services, on the M5, isn’t home to any franchises; instead, it has its own restaurant, where all the dishes are home-cooked, and a farm shop selling meat and fish. Some 80% of the food is locally sourced, and a third of the staff are locals who had previously been unemployed. Open since 2014, it is owned by the family firm behind the acclaimed Tebay Services on the M6.

A pair of twins who were conjoined at birth, and deemed unlikely to survive, are now about to start school. Rosie and Ruby Formosa, four, were joined at the abdomen and shared part of an intestine; at their birth, in 2012, doctors put their chances of surviving at just 20%. But an emergency operation to separate them was successful, and the twins, from Bexleyheath in London, are now healthy and looking forward to their first day of primary school. “There were times when I never even thought I would see this day,” said their mother, Angela. “It’s a really happy time.”

A fisherman in the Philippines found the world’s largest known pearl – and kept it under his bed for a decade. The unidentified man reportedly discovered the pearl, which weighs 34kg and measures 67cm long, when his boat’s anchor got caught on a giant clam. He swam down to dislodge it, and took the pearl home as a lucky charm – unaware of its value. If the pearl is confirmed as genuine, it is likely to be worth more than £75m. Having been given to the local mayor by the fisherman’s aunt, it is currently on display in the Puerto Princesa City Hall.