Your cheering Heyday Friday newsletter

There's an unexpected and colourful encounter, a cheeky Friday Funny, a delightfully amusing TV recommendation and a surprising home hack in this week's newsletter

Oct 13, 2023

Hello there

It’s been longer than I can remember since I’ve done a blog like the one this week. It’s introducing you to a wonderful Heydayer I met - or, to be more precise re-met - in this gloriously colourful little shop in the delightful sea-side town of North Berwick on the east coast of Scotland.

Her name is Sandra, and as I was wandering round her gorgeous shop, which also sells a fabulous selection of equally colourful wool and knitting equipment (which is in the back section of the shop and which I only realised after I got home, I hadn’t taken a pic of….sigh…) I was regaling my friends with tales of my hopelessly inept knitting attempts during my time as editor of Woman’s Weekly. Sandra came over, asked whether I was Diane Kenwood, and then reminded me that I had come into the shop on one of my past visits to the town and written about it in my Editor’s letter in the magazine!

Of course we ended up having a thoroughly good catch-up chat, during which I discovered Sandra, who has been a passionate knitter and crocheter (is there such a word, I wonder?) her whole life, has just started a clever new enterprise to introduce people to the joys of knitting and other crafts, which has mean her having to learn a whole new set of skills herself.

Find out what that is by CLICKING HERE and why it has persuaded me to consider picking up my long abandoned needles and give knitting another go. Who knows if I’ll be any more successful than I was in the past, but I’ll certainly have Sandra’s words of advice in my head as I try. (You can read those in the blog too).

By way of a

FRIDAY FUNNY

for this week, and in the hope that you find this as hilarious as we did at the time, I thought I’d share these pics from a book we were sent whilst I was at Woman’s Weekly which called Knit Your Own Karma Sutra (I kid you not!)

Should you be interested, the book is apparently still available to buy. I’ll just leave that information there……

Lovely Jenny is another skillful Heydayer who discovered she was unwittingly carrying on a family tradition when she spotted the tools for the historical craft she now does, in a shop window and felt compelled to buy them. I wonder if you can tell what that is from this pic

Of course you can find out and read Jenny’s surprising story by CLICKING HERE

THIS WEEK I’VE BEEN…..WATCHING

In a week when there’s been so much to despair about in the news, this gentle and delightfully whimsical Australian comedy series has been the perfect escape.

If you’re a Home and Away fan (I’ve never seen it) you’ll recognise Patrick Brammall, who wrote the series - this one, not Home and Away - with his co-star and real life wife, Harriet Dyer. I can only remark on how much he resembles a younger Pierce Brosnan.

Patrick plays micro-brewery owner Gordon who, distracted by medical student Ashley’s unexpected response to him stopping to allow her across the road (no spoilers here), accidentally runs over a dog.

Having rushed the dog to the vet practice of Gordon’s ex-girlfriend Yvette (cue some cracking lines from Ashley about a vet called Yvette - say it out loud) the two find themselves responsible for a cute if somewhat needy disabled dog who they name Colin From Accounts, a moniker that is as quirky as much of the entertaining interaction between the two leads as they figure out how to manage their unexpected joint responsibility and the way it throws their lives together.

Toss in a handful of equally engaging supporting cast characters, including Ashley’s rampantly self-centered mother and her hard-partying best friend, and Gordon’s protective and frequently exasperated co-workers, and you have the ingredients for a series that is as funny as it is charming.

You can watch COLIN FROM ACCOUNTS on BBCiPlayer

And see the trailer HERE

In all honesty, this

SMART SAVE TIP OF THE WEEK

sounded so weird, I wasn’t sure it would work. But whaddyouknow, it does!

You know how either your broom doesn’t properly sweep up all those annoying bits of fluff and hair? Or, if it does, you end up having to pick them out of the bristles? Well, if you stick a wide strip of tape along, and slightly overhanging the bristles, like this

as you pull the broom along the floor the sticky tape magically traps all that debris. And you just peel it off and throw it in the bin when you’re done.

Just two provisos if you give this a go - obviously you can only use the broom in one direction. And you might need a second strip to make sure the first one stays properly attached. Like this