It wasn’t all bad

A cloakroom attendant at a London concert hall had to stand in for a soprano at the last minute – and won rave reviews. Milly Forrest, 23, who is about to start a master’s in singing, works part-time at the Wigmore Hall, manning the cloakroom and checking tickets. Last month, the venue asked her to stand in when singer Ruby Hughes fell ill. Despite having just 36 hours to practise her solo by Purcell, Forrest wowed the audience: The Guardian described her as “breathtaking”.

Conservationists have launched a campaign to save London’s “stretcher fences”, made from stretchers used to carry civilians during the Blitz. More than 600,000 metal stretchers were made to transport people injured in bombing raids; after the War, they were recycled as fences on south London estates. But many have now fallen into disrepair, and the Stretcher Railing Society is trying to raise both awareness and money to help preserve them. “It’s quite hard to think of physical reminders of the Second World War,” said conservation manager Rosie Shaw. “It’s extraordinary that they are still there.”

A man has donated a kidney to a teacher he hadn’t seen in five years. Ali Golian, 30, was inspired to become a radiologist after working with Sonia Leonardo, 42, at King’s College Hospital in London. They had fallen out of touch, but Golian made contact with her when he read in a Facebook post that she had been sick. She told him that her kidneys were failing and that she was on a waiting list for a live donor – so he immediately offered her one of his own. Following the transplant earlier this year, Leonardo has made a full recovery.