Your here's looking at you Heyday Friday newsletter

See your eyesight, your used tea bags, and a sporting story in a whole new light with this week's newsletter

Jul 21, 2023

There’s definitely a danger I’ll plunge headlong into full-on pun territory telling you about this week’s blog. So don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Because it concerns maintaining the good health of a crucial part of your body. One without which your view of the world (pun one) and your ability to see eye-to-eye (there’s number two) would be severely compromised and you could end up making a spectacle of yourself (that’s the third. I would say I’ll stop now, but it’s unlikely).

Of course you’ll have guessed by now that the subject of this blog is eyes, and specifically the best ways to keep your precious eyes and eyesight as healthy as possible. It also reveals whether glasses like this

are a good or bad thing (just to be clear, I don’t mean aesthetically. I happen to think they’re rather fabulous.)

To cast your eyes (see? I told you I wouldn’t stop) over the invaluable information in the blog CLICK HERE

I can’t find out who said these very apposite

WORDS OF WISDOM

but I love the idea that it could have been a Morgan Freeman character.

THIS WEEK I’VE BEEN WATCHING…..

I know nothing about basketball, and care even less about sports shoes. But I do know that Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time, and one of the richest, and that there’s a Nike shoe that bears his name (Air Jordan, in case you didn’t. Know, that is).

What I didn’t know, and learnt from this unexpectedly and enjoyably entertaining film, directed by Ben Affleck and starring Matt Damon, with an eye-catching turn in a smaller role from Affleck, was how, in 1984, Jordan came to be signed by the struggling Nike basketball division, how the shoes the company designed for him revolutionised sporting footwear and how the deal that his tenacious, fiercely protective mother negotiated changed the way sports stars were recompensed forever.

Matt Damon plays marketing executive Sonny Vaccaro, whose job is to find up-and-coming college players to act as representatives for Nike's flopping basketball division and who sees the chance to save the department’s imminent demise by signing promising rookie player Michael Jordan. Convincing the head of the department played by Jason Bateman, and Nike CEO, Ben Affleck, to risk all their signing budget on just one player and tasking head shoe designer to create “the greatest basketball shoe ever made” form one strand of the film’s narrative.

The other focuses on Sonny’s attempts to persuade 18 year old Michael’s parents, most particularly his steadfastly determined mother Deloris, beautifully played by the peerless Viola Davis, to sign him to Nike rather than rivals Adidas or Converse.

Although you know the outcome from the start, the script which bounces deftly between light comedy and drama, the uniformly excellent performances and Affleck’s assured direction make Air a lively and satisfying watch whether you’re a sports - or shoe - fan or not.

You can see Air on AMAZON PRIME

And watch the trailer HERE

Someone who very definitely doesn’t stand for any bullshit and who, when faced with a challenge only looks for the most direct way she can get round it, is my friend and fabulously feisty Heydayer Gill