Typecast

Strictly 2026, Week 1.  Last week I wondered whether Emma Willis would be the glue holding the new Strictly presenting team together . One live show later and I might have called that slightly too soon. Emma seemed nervous, Josh was doing an awful lot and, at times, it felt as though he was overshadowing her. I’m still not sure how the three-presenter arrangement is going to work once they settle into it, but I’m prepared to give them time. It was their first proper live show and, if nothing else, nobody fell down the stairs or swore before the watershed. Johannes seemed more comfortable up in the Clauditorium (which will forever be called the Clauditorium even though Ms Winkleman has rudely abandoned us) however there was a strange production issue when the couples were coming up the stairs. Jojo was talking to camera, but the camera remained on the dancers, so we could neither see nor properly hear him. If he’s delivering a line or some support, we need to see and hear that. Who...

This was Michael’s birthday card this year. It might not seem like a particularly traditional card for your son’s 33rd birthday, but as soon as I saw it I knew I had to buy it. There wasn't even really a decision to make. That was Michael's card. When he was about two years old, Michael went to a special nursery centred around speech therapy because he struggled with forming words. He could communicate what he wanted or needed perfectly well, but the sounds in the words didn’t always come out in the right order. If he said “table”, for example, it came out as “batle”. I can still hear him saying it now. But there was one thing that apparently didn't present the same problem. Wonderwall. Michael could sing Wonderwall word perfect in the car whenever we played (What's the Story) Morning Glory? And we played that CD a lot. There are some completely insignificant bits of your children's childhood that somehow lodge themselves in your brain forever. You forget entire min...

Strictly 2026, Week Zero.  Strictly is back, although this year it feels a little bit like somebody has moved all the furniture around while we weren’t looking. There are new presenters, new professional dancers, a largely unfamiliar celebrity line-up and, for us, no weekly WTF Strictly podcast . Vi and I have other commitments this year and we always said we would keep recording for as long as it was enjoyable and manageable.  I still need somewhere to put all my Strictly opinions though, so here we are. Welcome to Week Zero, aka Launch Night. The biggest change is obviously the new presenting team. Emma Willis was always one of my favourites for the job, along with Zoe Ball. I still wish Zoe had got it, but Emma immediately looked as though she belonged there. She was comfortable in the studio, good in the rehearsal room and generally gave the impression that, whatever happened around her, she had it covered. Johannes already knows the programme and everybody involved in it,...

Earlier this year, I planted some sunflower seeds and then promptly forgot about them. By the time I remembered, they had grown to around two feet tall and were all crammed together in one pot. I decided the sensible thing to do would be to separate them into individual pots, at which point every single one immediately wilted and looked as though I had killed it. This probably tells you everything you need to know about my gardening technique. Somehow, though, most of them survived. Not because I followed a carefully researched growing plan or knew what I was doing, but seemingly through a combination of water, sunshine and their own determination to live. They grew, they flowered and, for a while, they made the yarden look properly summery.  Then we introduced an Akita puppy into the mix. Kaizer didn’t destroy all of them, but he did chew through several stems as part of his ongoing investigation into whether absolutely everything in the garden is edible. I’m not sure his pruning...

I BLOODY DID IT - 38 minutes and 37 seconds. I've been working towards getting a "3" in front of my parkrun result for a while. I'd given myself until the end of this year to run a sub-40 minute 5K but, apparently, I didn't need quite that long. Yesterday, at Blackpool parkrun, I crossed the finish line in 38:37 - except I didn't actually know I'd done it. My friend Rowena (and her sidekick, Hatter) was running with me and, despite knowing exactly what my goal was, she had deliberately not told me what pace we were running. This was probably helped by the fact that her watch works in miles and mine works in kilometres so any mid-run discussion about pace would require mathematical ability that I definitely don't possess whilst trying to breathe. She knew though.  And, more importantly, she knew it was achievable. I knew Blackpool was probably my best opportunity to have a proper crack at sub-40. It's a very flat course apart from the incline by the...

Because whenever anyone talks to me these days it’s “how’s the doggy?” and not “how are you?” Kaizer is now 9 weeks old and we’ve decided we do actually quite like him. For anyone who hasn’t been following along elsewhere, Kaizer is our Akita puppy and he’s been with us for a few weeks now. It turns out that introducing a puppy into your life is an excellent way of ensuring that nobody is remotely interested in anything else you have to say ever again. He has what we affectionately call his Mad Hour at least three times a day. This is slightly misleading because (a) it doesn’t necessarily last an hour and (b) there can be several of them, so really it’s less of a Mad Hour and more of a flexible working arrangement. Crate training is going well. He actively likes going in there for some downtime, which is fortunate because sometimes we also actively like him going in there for some downtime. He has an entire basket full of his own toys and has finally accepted that the box containing al...

My recent crochet WIP has been this Whirl Mandela cardigan /shawl. I'd bought what I thought was enough yarn but it became blatantly obvious when I was three-quarters of the way through that I'd completely misjudged the amount I'd need. I jumped back on the website but as the yarn had been in their outlet, they were sold out. I thought I'd throw myself on their mercy with a cheeky email asking if they had any languishing in a dark and dusty corner of their website, but didn't hold much hope and Plan B was to finish it off with a contrasting colour. To my joy, Matt at The Wool Factory offered to search their Sheffield store, sourced 5 balls (more than enough), sent me an invoice and posted them off to me. That's the level of customer service that keeps you returning to feed your needs! I've made this as a shrug type evening cozy for the summer and it was an easy pattern to follow so I could lose myself in it during the evenings. It was also the smallest hoo...