There's a lot going on in your Heyday Friday newsletter

A special Heyday inclusive blog, an annual summer extravaganza, a tear-jerking tribute, a remarkable musical montage and a must-have BBQ recipe. Enjoy!

Hello!

Thanks ever so to those of you who replied to my shout out in last week’s newsletter asking you what you would include on your everyday bucket list.

To discover what exactly an everyday bucket list is (if you happen to have missed it last week), see what your fellow Heydayers nominated as their choices, and find out the things that made it onto my list CLICK HERE. I’ll just say that mine, which includes something to do with a family heirloom, has got a lot longer after reading yours!

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WHAT’S MADE ME HAPPY THIS WEEK

is something that I would include on my everyday bucket wish list if it wasn’t something I’m already lucky enough to be able to do on a regular basis, living, as I do, in London. And that’s visiting exhibitions, museums and galleries that interest me. This week I took myself off for my annual visit to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (I wrote about last year’s art extravaganza HERE) and it was every bit as dazzling, delightful, bonkers, beautiful and occasionally mystifying as always.

This year the overarching theme was Dialogue, and in a change with tradition the architecture pieces, instead of being consigned to a single room (which is always one of my favourites), were scattered throughout the galleries, which made it even more of a satisfyingly multi-disciplinary experience.

As always there were so many fabulous, inventive, fascinating pieces (and plenty I….er, appreciated rather less) but can we just take a moment to wonder at this enormous wall hanging - which is entirely made of matchboxes!

The Summer Exhibition is on at the Royal Academy until August 17th. If you can go, do. All the information you need, including how to book tickets is HERE

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WORDS OF WISDOM

It was National Thank a Teacher day on June 18th, and as I missed mentioning it last week, I wanted to give it, and all the wonderful, insanely hard working teachers, a retrospective bow of appreciation by sharing this beautiful, and be warned, tear-jearking, video from a Letters Live evening. (If you don’t know what Letters Live is, find out HERE and get a ticket when you can. I’ve been to several and they’re absolutely fantastic)

I’ve written HERE about three very special teachers to who I owe a particular debt of gratitude, so I can very well appreciate the emotion shown by former footballer and now pundit, Ian Wright who read this letter written by Albert Camus after he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, to the teacher who changed his life. Ian apparently had a similarly life-affecting teacher - his PE teacher, a former RAF fighter pilot - to whom he owed his footballing career and success.

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It’s pretty much impossible to spend time outside at the moment without the lip-smacking scent of BBQs drifting through the air. So it seemed like the ideal moment to share this sort-of recipe with you which will transform pretty much anything you put on the barbecue, from meat, to fish to vegetables. I say sort-of, because it’s for a rub mix that you can coat any of the aforementioned foodstuffs with before you cook them over the coals, so I’m not sure if that counts as a fully fledged recipe or not. You decide. Either way it’s properly scrumptious and brilliantly versatile.

ULTIMATE BBQ RUB

• 200g (1 cup) dark muscovado sugar

• 130g (1 cup) malden salt

• 100g (1 cup) ground espresso

• 30g (1/4 cup) ground peppercorns

• 40g (1/4 cup) garlic powder

• 2 tbsp ground cinnamon

• 2 tbsp ground cumin

• 1 tbsp cayenne pepper

• 1 tbsp smoked paprika

• 1 tbsp aleppo pepper

Combine all the ingredients in a jar or resealable container and shake well to combine. This will keep stored in a cool dark place for two months (or longer depending on the freshness of the coffee). This was my latest batch with the ingredients layered in the jar, then after shaking

And this was what some chicken thighs looked like after I’d rubbed it over them, left them in the fridge for a couple of hours, then cooked them on the barbecue. They were sooooo good!

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THIS WEEK I’VE BEEN…..WATCHING

A lot of tributes to Brian Wilson, the tormented musical genius behind The Beach Boys, who died last week aged 82. This astonishingly star-studded, and exquisitely devised rendition of God Only Knows, made God only knows how many years ago, has to be my favourite of them all.

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Staying on a musical theme (I could have said note, but that would have been too cheesy, even for me) with this

FRIDAY FUNNY

It’s a piece from the Summer Exhibition, which I thought was hilariously brilliant. Hope you agree. (Excuse the reflections in the glass. It was really high up, so that was the only angle I could photograph it from)

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That’s the lot for this week. Phew!

Thank you SO much for reading this when there are so many other brilliant newsletters to choose from (never mind all the rest of the material and content that we’re bombarded with daily). I never take your support and interest for granted. It’s because of you I’m able to keep on doing something I love.

If there’s anything you’d like me to include in these missives, or anything you particularly enjoy and would like more of, please do let me know. And, of course, I always welcome any recommendations, suggestions or stories you have, so please do share them in the comments.

Have a wonderful week and see you next time.