Heide and Iain's newsletter - Book clubs, scrubs and sporting cats.

Published: Sat, 05/09/20

Heide and Iain’s Newsletter

Comedy fiction and general silliness

Iain: Hi , thanks for being a subscriber to our newsletter.

Heide: Iain, did you know we picked up nine new subscribers since our last newsletter?

Iain: That will be because of my couscous anecdote.

Heide: And one person unsubscribed.

Iain: That’s entirely non-couscous related. You can’t prove otherwise. Sadly, I don’t have any more couscous stories to share.

Heide: I’m shocked. What have you been up to instead?

Iain: Well, probably the same as everyone else. Trying to keep myself occupied while the country’s on coronavirus lockdown. You know, I started this lockdown thinking I’m going to do loads of things — get fit, learn a musical instrument, pick up some new skills — and now I’m just doing the little things to keep me and my family sane.

Heide: Like what?

Iain: We do a family quiz over Zoom every Sunday. That’s ten people — grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. We all do a round and whoever gets the least points gets to suggest a round for the following week.

Heide: Sounds good.

Iain: Except last week two people got equal bottom scores and my dad picked the topic of ‘sport’ and my daughter picked the topic of ‘cats’.

Heide: So you did a round of each.

Iain: No. We combined them! Behold pictures from my “Sporting Cats” round. You have to name the sportsperson and the cat.

Heide: Wow. That’s different.

Iain: Well, what have you been up to?

Heide: Big things and little things. Sewing scrubs for the NHS is quite a big thing in the sense that it’s taken a lot of my time, and it’s also massive in terms of the impact it’s had. It moved me to write a LinkedIn article, which has no jokes in it at all.

Iain: What, you were deliberately boring?

Heide: No, I was pretending to be business-like.

Iain: So, if that was a big thing, what sort of small things have you been doing?

Heide: I put henna on my hair and cut it

Iain: Henna. That’s a bit messy, isn’t it?

Heide: It’s like a cross between mud and wet tea leaves that will stain anything that it touches. All you have to do is balance it on your head for three hours without trashing your house.

Iain: I’ve seen your house. How are we defining “trashed”?

Heide: I also watched the Richard and Judy book thing on the telly

Iain: What did they say?

Heide: I dunno, book stuff. BUT Graham Norton was a guest and he told them that he’d been following Tom Ford’s advice on how to look good on a video call.

Iain: Oh, have you tried any of the things?

Heide: Yeah, it turns out I was doing it all wrong. The first couple of weeks of lockdown I tried having a massive spider hanging behind me and my creepy Baby always joins me on calls too. Nobody was all that impressed with my efforts. It turns out that you’re just supposed to tinker with lighting and stuff. Who knew?

Iain: Everyone. Everyone knows that you don’t use spiders to make yourself look good. Why do you have to make things difficult?

Heide: And of course one thing we’re both doing is participating in an on-line book club which anyone is welcome to join: https://www.facebook.com/groups/513203056057187/

Iain: I’m enjoying that. We had cozy comedy author Leslie Langtry as our guest author. She was a lot of fun. What do you think to this month’s book?

Heide: I’ve finished reading it and I would really recommend it.

Killing It by Asia Mackay.

It’s a really funny book about an elite spy who’s just back off maternity leave. She has to balance all of the usual espionage stuff, like running a carefully coordinated hit with the extra challenges that a newborn baby brings.

Iain: Do you read the book club books or listen to them?

Heide: I read them.

Iain: I’ve actually been listening to the audiobooks of our book club books. Some people say that listening to books isn't as intellectual an experience as reading them but scientists say that's rubbish.

Heide: Is this where we insert a heavy-handed mention of our new audiobook?

Iain: Well it is for charity so we’re probably okay to mention it. It’s the audiobook of our first Clovenhoof “Isolation Chronicles” in which our suburban devil has to cope with people panic-buying toilet roll.

https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Bog-Roll-Battles-Audiobook/B0883VT4LP

Heide: Gosh. That was a real thing. That really did happen. Seems so long ago now. And all our profits from that audiobook are going to the Trussell Trust.

Iain: The food bank charity, yep. And all the narrator’s profits too. Matthew Lloyd Davies has recorded six other books for us and we just love his dramatic style. You can check out his other audiobooks here:

https://www.audible.co.uk/search?searchNarrator=Matthew+Lloyd+Davies

Heide: Do you know what scientists also say about people who read books?

Iain: What?

Heide: Scientists says people who read funny books are smarter and more attractive than those who don’t. So basically, you can make all your friends super-hot and clever by persuading them to read our books.

Iain: Is that true?

Heide: It's some personal scientific research.

Iain: Have you been drinking?

Heide: It’s when the best science comes to me...

ALL THE LINKS:

Heide and Iain’s website: www.pigeonparkpress.com

The Comedy Kitchen: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2098850213744767/

Clovenhoof Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Clovenhoof-Books-285544508177333/

Oddjobs Discussion page: https://www.facebook.com/OddjobsBooks/

Our books on Amazon (UK): https://www.amazon.co.uk/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B008GK6RX0

Our books on Amazon (US): https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B008GK6RX0

E-mail us at: info@pigeonparkpress.com