Your bumper Heyday Friday newsletter

Not one, or two, but THREE recommendations (for a film, a book and a podcast) in this week's newsletter, along with a handy household washing tip and a clutch of very funny greetings cards.

Hello and Happy Valentine’s Day (if you’re reading this on Feb 14th)

Hands up those of you who spotted the deliberate (ahem….) mistake at the end of last week’s newsletter - when I told you I was going to be seeing the film A Right Pain over the weekend. Of course the film’s actually called A Real Pain (duh!) and having seen it I can - absolutely accurately - report that it’s an absolute gem. A moving, funny, painful, loving, soul-searching delight about family, friendship, history and growing older.

The film is underpinned by two fantastic central performances - by writer and director Jesse Eisenberg and his co-star, Kieran Culkin (who has deservedly already won a best supporting actor Golden Globe and is up for an Oscar in the same category) as two cousins from New York, one uptight and anxious, the other free-spirited and chaotic, who go to Poland to visit the childhood home of their grandmother, a Holocaust survivor who has recently died.

So many films now seem to need to be absurdly epic in length (The Brutalist currently leads the pack with two halves of 1 hour and 40 minutes each with a 15 minute interval between them), scale and/or spectacle. A Real Pain, with it’s positively flighty running time of just an hour and a half, bucks all those apparent box office imperatives and is all the better and more enjoyable for it.

Its character-driven intimacy means that whilst it’s lovely to enjoy on the big screen, it’ll be just as satisfying a watch when it arrives on whatever streaming service has snapped it up, so whilst I would encourage you to see it at the cinema because we need to keep those precious entertainment facilities alive, it won’t lose any of its appeal for being seen on TV.

In the meantime, you can see the trailer HERE

This is something of a bumper newsletter albeit not in length (I’m sure you’ll be glad to know) or spectacle (though I’ll do my best to make it entertaining). Rather it’s brim full of reviews and recommendations, because this week’s blog is all about a beautifully written, powerfully poignant and thought-provoking book (I haven’t done a book review on the website for ages) about a subject that can be both uncomfortable and unpalatable.

Find out what that is and why I think Dear Life is such an important and memorable read by CLICKING HERE

---

Lots of you said how much you liked the Good to Know video I shared with you in the first newsletter of this year showing how to wrap awkward shaped presents, so I thought you might find this follow-up (or sequel if we’re keeping up the film/publication theme) equally enjoyable, if slightly less easy to follow. Especially the woman in the third clip - which, astonishingly is not speeded up!

---

SMART SAVE TIP OF THE WEEK

I’ve talked many times about the power and versatility of these two ingredients when it comes to cleaning, but I wonder if you know how effective they can be when they’re used to wash one of the hardest working items in your home - your towels?

If you sprinkle towels with about half a cup of baking soda before putting them into the drum of your washing machine it acts as a natural detergent booster and can help to remove odours, brighten whites, and soften the towels in the drier.

Putting a quarter of a cup of vinegar into the softener compartment of the machine, so it’s added in the last rinse, loosens any residual soap left on the towels and helps to rinse it away. It also leaves white towels looking even brighter. Don’t worry, it doesn’t leave any residue smell, in fact quite the opposite, your towels will smell fresher and feel softer when they come out of the drier.

---

THIS WEEK I’VE BEEN…..LISTENING TO

There’s a medical mystery at the heart of this podcast recommendation.

In 2011 a high school girl in Le Roy, a small town in Western New York state, suddenly starts to display strange motor and verbal ticks. Her face twitches, her arms flail, she has verbal outbursts. Then another girl begins to display similar behaviours. In a short time, more than a dozen girls at the school are having the same the same, distressing, unexplained symptoms all of which come on suddenly and all of which cannot be diagnosed despite a battery of tests.

More than a decade later, presenter Dan Taberski, re-visits the story - which hit national news headlines at the time - exploring the theories that swirled around what was happening to the girls (all the victims were young girls - well, nearly all), and how it was thought could be caused by everything from crop dusters, to chemical spills or the waste from the town’s jello factory.

Over the course of seven, roughly fourty minute, episodes Dan talks to medical and neurological experts, government officials, environmentalists and the sufferers, their friends and families. He floats and bats around all manner of possible verdicts, with a welcome sprinkling of cynicism, though never outright disbelief, where some are concerned. Along the way he moseys down various diversions, sharing stories that may initially seem disconnected, but which he uses to shine a light on one aspect or another of the main tale.

When I say at the end Hysterical doesn’t reach a firm conclusion, that’s not a criticism. It - and Dan - is clear from the start that what happened in Le Roy can’t be neatly explained or dismissed. It’s surprisingly satisfying to be left to draw your own conclusion about a story which encompasses medical and mental health, cultural attitudes and how we view and interpret language.

You can listen to HYSTERICAL wherever you get your podcasts including on Spotify

---

Written by Mary Oliver in House of Light, these

WORDS OF WISDOM

have a very particular significance to the theme of Dear Life, as you’ll discover when you READ THE BLOG about it.

---

WHAT’S MADE ME HAPPY THIS WEEK

If you love nothing more on Valentine’s Day than showing your feelings for your beloved with a romantic card, you might want to skip this next section. If, on the other hand, you’re more like me - and, fortunately, my lovely fella - and struggle to take the prescribed romanticism of the day with anything other than a hefty helping of cynicism, then you might find this little clutch of Valentine’s Day cards as funny as I did. Amongst them is the one that I will be giving aforementioned fella. I wonder if you can guess which one.

---

That’s it for this week. I hope your Valentine’s Day is (or was, depending when you’re reading this) as romantic or otherwise as you hope/d for. Obviously I can’t help but ask if you’ll send me a little heart by clicking on the Like button. Thank you!

See you next time (when I’ll reveal which of the cards it was).