Your double helpings Heyday Friday newsletter
Extras of some of your favourite features and a tempting look ahead in this week's newsletter
Hello!
I’m currently in the thick of preparations for two events, one slightly more imminent than the other.
The first, as mentioned in last week’s newsletter, is the Jewish New Year which, at the time of writing (Wednesday afternoon), starts this evening and involves, as so many Jewish festivals do, traditional foods (we eat apples dipped in honey in the hope of a a sweet and fruitful year ahead - something that’s especially poignant and heartfelt this year) and lovely communal/family meals - tonight to see the New Year in, and usually tomorrow after synagogue.
I’m hosting this evening’s dinner and have already spent a fair few hours in the kitchen getting ahead with preparations (I’m trying a new slow-cooked lamb recipe which, if it tastes as good as it smells, I’ll definitely share with you). I’m feeling relatively calm about the amount still to do - calm enough to be taking a break to start writing this - but check in with me again nearer the time everyone’s due to arrive and it could well be a different scenario!
The other event is my annual highlight-day-of-the-year, the Women of the Year Lunch which is taking place on Monday. It’s the 70th time we will gather together over 400 extraordinary women to recognise and celebrate their collective achievements (making us the oldest event of our kind in the UK), and we’ve been working assiduously behind the scenes pretty much ever since last year’s lunch to make sure it’s extra-special. Needless to say, those preparations have reached fever-pitch in the last couple of weeks and all of us involved are very much looking forward to experiencing the fruits of our labours in the company of the 2024 cohort of Women of the Year.
Whilst both these events fill my heart with joy in their own ways, they have also, unfortunately, filled my days as well and as a result there isn’t a blog (again, I know) this week. By way of compensation there are extra helpings of a couple of regular slots, and the promise (threat?) that I’ll tell you all about the lunch in next week’s blog.
THIS WEEK I’VE BEEN…..WATCHING
In a sentence I never imagined writing, a rabbi is one of the two mis-matched protagonists in this delightful new Netflix rom-com series starring Adam Brody as the very modern day man of God, and Kristin Bell as the avowedly agnostic host of a sex podcast. When the two meet, they’re predictably attracted to each other and so begins a will-they-won’t-they romance that nobody, particularly his entertainingly interfering family, wants, except them. Or do they?
Whether they can make a relationship work faced with the seeming disparities in their lives and experiences, provides rich comic material and a fair share of predictable culture clash encounters (Kristin as Joanna brings a pork platter when invited to dinner at her new boyfriend’s family for the first time) but also moments of unexpected pathos and reflection (like when Adam’s character, Noah, movingly explains why he chose to become a rabbi).
Fresh, funny, romantic, sweet - in an absolutely un-saccharine way - Nobody Wants This fizzes with the believable chemistry between its two leads, and a script rooted in realism thanks in no small part to the show’s creator, Erin Foster, who converted to Judaism when she married her husband, so has first-hand experience of a culture-clash love story and all the challenges that presents.
You can see NOBODY WANTS THIS on Netflix
And watch the trailer HERE
I’VE ALSO BEEN….WATCHING
Imagine being told you have incurable breast cancer at the age of just 23. What would want to do with whatever life you had left to live. The answer to that, if you are Kris Hallenga, is not just to cram every possible moment with all the joy and fun you can in the company of the people you love most, but to dedicate yourself to ensuring that every young person is educated about the improved survival rates of cancer if it’s detected early, and to encourage them to be proactive about their own health.
To describe Kris as a force of nature would be to seriously under-represent just what this unforgettable young woman was like and just how much she achieved, with the unfailing support of her beloved twin sister, Maren, and her devoted friends, in the 15 years between her diagnosis and her eventual death earlier this year.
With her passionately-held life purpose in mind, Kris made a 2013 film for the BBC about living with breast cancer, ‘Kris: Dying to Live’, and over the following decade she invited the cameras back again, many times. This new film is the result, and it captures her at times of heart-lifting joy as she launches and promotes her breast cancer awareness campaign and charity - called with typical Kris humour, CoppaFeel! - and heart-breaking despair as the disease slowly and relentlessly invades her body.
Whilst there are inevitably moments of deep sadness, this is a film infused with Kris’s infectious appetite for life and joy, and the contributors, who include Fearne Cotton and Dawn French, both powerless to resist Kris’s won’t-take-no-for-an-answer approaches and then to become dedicated supporters of her and her work, all pay tribute to a young woman who was the epitome of embracing every moment to the full.
“She was oozing with life and ideas and she was desperate to make big shit happen,” Maren tells the camera. “Wanting to get every ounce out of this life was a way of controlling this disease.” Kris absolutely made big shit happen and Living Every Second is a fitting tribute to everything she did and was.
Watch LIVING EVERY SECOND on BBC iPlayer
WORDS OF WISDOM
which perfectly sum up Kris’s attitude, personality and legacy
SMART SAVE TIP OF THE WEEK
Hands up anyone whose fridge is cluttered with jars of sauces and pastes which you love but frustratingly don’t use often enough to stop them going off before you finished them? I’ve recently started doing this and am finding it a brilliant way of not ending up wasting these delicious recipe ingredients.
Just smoosh spoonfuls of the sauce onto cut up sheets of baking paper stacked together, then freeze and use however much you need. They’ll keep for up to six months. How clever is that?
The idea comes from an excellent Instagram account called majormumhacks, which is packed with equally useful, clever tips, especially, but not exclusively, as it’s name suggests, for parents.
FRIDAY FUNNY
This week saw the death of the peerless Dame Maggie Smith. It’s easy to forget just what an astonishing career she had before she came to the attention of a new generation, and a wildly wider audience, of fans through her performances in the Harry Potter films and Downton Abbey. In the latter, her unrivalled timing and delivery made Violet Crawley the undisputed star of every scene she appeared in.
And she was equally scene stealing (in spite of stiff opposition from the rest of the brilliantly top notch cast) in the marvellously funny film, The Best Best Marigold Hotel (if you haven’t seen it, stop whatever you’re doing and watch it immediately)
Farewell Dame Maggie. And thank you for all the magnificent memories.
That’s it for this week. I’m off to check on the lamb and eat an unnecessary amount of honey cake.
I hope you have a delicious week whatever you’re doing. If you would be so kind as to click on the like heart, that would get my New Year off to a very sweet start. Thank you.
See you next time
Shana Tova, to Diane and all your friends and family.
Happy New Year. That lamb sounds like something I would enjoy! Please share the recipe.