Marking a momentous time with this week's Heyday Friday newsletter

Significant events, important friendships, impactful individuals and an invaluable food-related tip in this week's newsletter. Don't miss it!

Hello!

Before I dive into this week’s newsletter I just wanted to welcome all the new readers who’ve recently become subscribers. It’s fab to have you as part of this lovely Heydays gang.

I hope you’ll enjoy all the suggestions, ideas, conversations and fun we have here each week. Please do chat to me, and the rest of us in the comments, I love hearing your views, thoughts and stories. And please do click on the ‘Like’ heart at the end if you enjoy reading this (which I obviously very much hope all of you will). It’ll help other people to find it and join our merry gang as well.

As it happens, gangs - of friends - is the theme of this week’s blog. Specifically friends who are older and younger than you, and what it is about those inter-age friendships that adds a special layer of richness and joy to them.

Find out about my very special 98-year-old friend and how we first met over two decades ago, the younger generation friend who I shared a particular creative experience with, and the different ways my different age friends have impacted and supported me over the years, by CLICKING HERE. And many thanks to the Heydayers who contributed their inter-age friendship stories included in the blog.

In the meantime, here I am on the recent Portugal trip which inspired the blog, with my younger travelling companion on the right, and our considerably younger friend and host in the middle.

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I’m writing this on election day here in the UK. By the time you read it, we will have a new government, and there will be a lot of bleary-eyed people who’ve managed to stay awake into the small hours of the morning, or even right through the night (respect), watching or listening to the results coming in (I will attempt to be amongst them but my staying-awake-late powers are severely limited so I’m not holding out much hope of making it past the first result announcements).

You can be sure there will also be a lot of carb-based food being consumed through the night, so as my contribution to the post election watching marathon here’s this week’s highly sophisticated (ahem)

SMART SAVE TIP OF THE WEEK

The best way to reheat pizza is to put it in a heated frying pan with an ice cube or a few spoons of cold water. It keeps the pizza moist whilst making the base crispy.

You’re welcome.

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FRIDAY FUNNY

No explanation needed for this one.

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THIS WEEK I’VE BEEN……WATCHING

This is also the week that the annual tennis extravaganza that is Wimbledon has started (Glastonbury has just finished and Taylor Swift is currently here on tour too. There’s a lot going on right now in the UK) so it seemed the ideal time to watch this Amazon Prime documentary on the last twelve days in the career of arguably the greatest tennis player there’s ever been.

I was lucky enough to see Federer play at Wimbledon in a match that was the same masterclass display of astonishing athleticism combined with mesmerising quality and elegance that he brought to all the more than 1,500 matches he played over the course of his 24 years as a professional. It was an unforgettable privilege to witness.

In Federer: Twelve Final Days, we get a sense of the unexpectedly humorous and self-deprecating man behind the tennis titan; to fully appreciate how much the sport has meant to him - and demanded from him - throughout his life, and the impact of him deciding the time had come for him to retire from it in 2022, not just for him personally, but for tennis, his fellow players and his tight-knit, fiercely supportive family.

Interviews with his wife and parents and fellow top tier players, past and present, are intercut with footage of him playing and practicing - from boyhood to his final match at the Laver Cup at London’s O2 - and show all too clearly the depth of respect, admiration and regard in which he is held. Not least by his closest friend and rival, Rafa Nadal. You have a harder heart than me if you’re not crying as much as both men at the sight of them saying their final on-court farewells to each other after the end of their competition doubles match.

There may be another era in mens tennis as great as the one Federer presided over like a class-act colossus, but it’s hard to imagine.

You can watch FEDERER: TWELVE FINAL DAYS on Amazon Prime

And see the trailer HERE

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I write in THIS WEEK’S BLOG about challenging expectations of what younger people bring to inter-age friendships, life wisdom being one of those things. Thirty four-year-old Taylor Swift has built her phenomenal career on sharing the life experiences she’s had and what she’s learnt from them through both her songs and the interviews she gives. Certainly many of her

WORDS OF WISDOM

can apply to anyone of any age.

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WHAT’S MADE ME HAPPY THIS WEEK

Continuing both the inter-age and tennis themes (oh but I do love it when content comes together so apparently seamlessly), whether you’re a lover of tennis or not, I guarantee you’ll want to watch/listen to this particular Wimbledon interviewer.

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That’s it for this week. I’m shutting this screen and switching on my TV to watch election and Wimbledon coverage (almost certainly more of the latter than the former) and hoping for the best result from both, whatever/whoever that is.

See you next time.

Diane x