Five quirky stories you missed this week as woman receives reply to message after 30 years
The Daily Record reported how Alaina Beresford, from Portknockie in Scotland, was shocked to receive a postcard from someone who had found the bottle washed up on a beach in Norway.
Elsewhere, a seagull in Cornwall was caught on camera stealing a maintenance worker's mug, and a lollipop man in Yorkshire has been ordered not to give high fives to children he helps cross the road.
You can read the full version of each of our selected articles through the links under each story – or read more top headlines from around the UK's regions on the Yahoo UK local news page.
A woman who sent a message in a bottle as a girl has received a reply from 2,000 miles away - over 30 years after chucking it into the sea.
Alaina Beresford was just 12 years old when she wrote a message and popped it into an empty bottle of iconic North East drink Moray Cup. And now, 31 years later, Alaina received the surprise of her life when that message got a response.
Read the full story from the Daily Record
A popular Stokesley pub has been named among finalist for the Best Pub for Dogs Award.
The owner of The Mill, Alex Cook, says it was his own personal experience that led the way in creating a truly dog-friendly pub environment. The 43-year-old and his team are in the running for another award at The Great British Pub Awards, which takes place in September.
In recent years, the pub has committed to catering for dog owners making it an experience for pups stopping by at the end of their walks.
Read the full story from Teesside Live
A beloved lollipop man has been told he can no longer give 'high fives' to children as they cross the road.
Neil Cotton, 57, who assists primary and secondary pupils in Howden, near Hull, East Yorkshire, claims he's been instructed to stop the friendly gesture as it "upsets some drivers having to wait another ten seconds".
Read the full story from Yorkshire Live
A Herefordshire shop dealing in medals and military antiques is displaying another fascinating piece of history.
War & Son Medal and Military Antiques based in Leominster have a piece of Adolf Hitler's marble map table from the Chancellery in Berlin at the end of the Second World War, thanks to the family of a British war veteran.
Read the full story from the Hereford Times
A maintenance man who had been bird-proofing a Cornish harbour town found himself the victim of a very unusual 'mugging', when a seagull got its own back - by flying off with his coffee mug.
The caffeine-craving winged menace was pictured in full flight, with his victim's mug still hanging out of its beak.
Read the full story from Cornwall Live
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Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
Tom Hiddleston's new film The Life of Chuck taught him to cherish 'the people who matter'
The actor and his co-star Chiwetel Ejiofor tell Yahoo UK about the Stephen King adaptation and the lessons they took from the 'life-affirming' film. The Life of Chuck will inspire you in ways few other Stephen King adaptations have in the past, just like it did for Tom Hiddleston and Chiwetel Ejiofor, they tell Yahoo UK. Directed by Mike Flanagan, the movie centres on an ordinary man named Charles Krantz (Hiddleston) and three chapters in his life. Told out of order, the genre-bending narrative explores what it means to live and also what it means to die, but not in the way you might expect from a story by King. For some, The Life of Chuck will be the first time they encounter King's work, teaching them the meaning of life and the importance of holding those close to you. It was these life lessons that Hiddleston and Ejiofor took from it themselves, as the former shares: "I found it very moving when I read it and I think Mike has made a really beautiful film, and it speaks to me in the sense that it's about the courage and the connection we need to the people we love. "When it feels as though the world is falling apart hold on to the people you love, to the people who matter, cherish your time together and share the joy, and the film seems to be acknowledging that life can be very hard at times and that we all encounter loss and grief, and struggle, and pain, and those things are real and inevitable and part of the experience of being alive. But alongside that, there are profound experiences of joy that actually become the stitching that makes life worth living. "And when you roll up those moments, it becomes the sort of fabric that you can wear when times get hard. Joy is a transformative energy, actually, it's not a passive experience. It's something you're communicating and you're giving to other people, and it can catch, and it kind of keeps us together. So it's a very life-affirming film in that way." The Life of Chuck as an entry into Stephen King Stephen King is the master of horror, and many other genres besides, but while the author has had a near 50-year career, there are those who will discover him for the first time through The Life of Chuck. It's something the cast take great pride in. "I was just thinking how fascinating an entry point this film would be for somebody, for a young person who's not really been exposed to Stephen King," Ejiofor, who plays teacher Marty, reflects. "It has so many different aspects of the King universe. I think the structure is such an interesting mystery, and it's so it's entertaining, but it's philosophical, and just very rich in terms of how it deals with life in all of its forms — in the joys of life and the tragedies of life. "So it's challenging in that way, emotionally challenging, and I think for somebody coming into this, you'd really understand why Stephen King is such a phenomenon in his own way. So it would be an amazing place to start." "I think it's a really good entry point for people if they don't know Stephen King," Hiddleston concurs. "The narrative structure is really ingenious, and I think the work of someone who is immensely skilled and practised at his art, but it's also got a point of view that I think is uniquely his as well. "He is not afraid to explore some of the aspects of life that are disquieting and unsettling, but as he's exploring that, he lands resolutely on the side of life, on love, on warmth, on joy, on reasons for living. I think all of his work has a strain of that, even the horror." The actors have their own entry points into the King universe, for Hiddleston, it was The Shawshank Redemption, while for Ejiofor, it was The Shining and Stand By Me, all of which have their own unique lessons to take away from it. Hiddleston says: "The Life of Chuck shares with The Shawshank Redemption this consideration, perhaps, the opposite of life inspires a life energy. Get busy living or get busy dying. And there's really no choice, Stephen King in that presentation is saying there is no choice — life is the thing." Getting a Gene Kelly moment One thing that The Life of Chuck gave the Marvel star was the opportunity to dance, something he has come to feel he only has a finite amount of time left to do in his career. "As I read the sequence in the story, and I don't wanna sound overly sentimental about it, but I thought 'I don't know how much longer I'll be able to do this'," he explains. "I'm 44 now, and maybe in ten, 20 years' time I just won't have the same energy or the same mobility. This was a really unique opportunity to try something in this dance sequence that maybe I would never get another chance to try, and it was my tribute, in a way, to all the dancers I've always loved." As Chuck, Hiddleston performs an array of dance styles that bring to mind the classic movie musicals of the Golden Age of Hollywood, from Jazz to Salsa, Cha Cha to Charleston. Sharing insight into performers he aspired to be like, he says: "I remember really specifically discovering some of the great old musicals of the Golden Age of Hollywood, like Swing Time with Fred and Ginger, and then You'll Never get Rich with Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth, and Cover Girl, which I spoke about with Mike Flanagan, which is Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth. "And then, of course, Singin' in the Rain, which is an eternal piece of footage, I think. You could show that to a three-year-old or a 93-year-old and they would smile and understand it." It took the actor over a month to nail down the choreography he had to bring out for the all-important dance sequence in the film. He worked with choreographers Mandy Moore and Stephanie Powell, with the actor sharing: "Stephanie worked with me in London and helped me prepare in these extraordinary styles. Jazz, Swing, Salsa, Samba, Cha Cha, Charleston, bossa nova, polka. "And then they both did a very smart thing. Just before we did it, they said, 'Remember that this dance is yours, and even though it belongs to Chuck, it belongs to you too. So if ever there's something you feel like doing, just do it. Feel it, be free.' And there's a bit of that in there too." Life lessons from The Life of Chuck The movie helped Ejiofor, too, especially because his character's story centres on him finding a connection with people he hasn't seen in years at the end of the world. It is a profound message to leave audiences with, he says: "I think that narratively there was something really exciting for me about the way the story was structured and the idea that life is a kind of mystery and you don't know entirely who is in your subconscious thoughts. "There are obviously the people who are very close to us and family and close friends, and all of those people who we kind of consciously think of in our lives — we think of those people and the people who have had a major influence. But there'd be all sorts of [other] people as well, some of them we don't think are very often, and maybe we don't think of at all, now that maybe we haven't thought of for years, but who were instrumental in the way that we are. "They might have been so influential in us, and they're still there in our memory, and maybe at some point they'll pop back into our thoughts, you know? It made me think about that, it made me made me want to do a deep dive into my own universe." Hiddleston felt similarly moved as he reflected on Ejiofor's remarks, adding to his costar: "You often talk about the bit that you're performing in the film as likening it to the pandemic, and that experience that we all had of uncertainty and being destabilised by it. "And I found that I thought of people in that time that I hadn't thought of in years. I was like, 'Why am I thinking of this old friend from university?' There were people like that who would just throw themselves forward to the front of my consciousness; it was really interesting that that's what happened." When the credits roll and Chuck's story is told, perhaps it will leave audiences with the same feeling of reflection as it did for Hiddleston and Ejiofor. It certainly did for me, in fact, I thought about the movie and its message about living life to the fullest all the way home and long into the night — that's the power of Stephen King. The Life of Chuck premieres in UK cinemas on Wednesday, 20 August.
Yahoo
15 hours ago
- Yahoo
New BBC thriller The Guest celebrates women 'being messy, angry and ugly'
Eve Myles and Gabrielle Creevy tell Yahoo UK about the BBC thriller's realistic depiction of women, and why a lot of women portrayed in TV are unrecognisable. Women, more often than not, aren't given the space to be messy onscreen, that's why BBC series The Guest deserves to be a cause for celebration, co-stars Eve Myles and Gabrielle Creevy tell Yahoo UK. Myles admits she hardly recognises the women portrayed in TV and film because they aren't representative of real life, but The Guest hopes to change that. The four-part series follows cleaner Ria (Creevy) who is taken under the wing by her wealthy employer Fran (Myles), who is captivating and unapologetic in equal measure. Fran is a woman who does what she wants and encourages others, like Ria, to do the same instead of limiting themselves to what society expects of them. As an intense friendship grows between them things take a dark turn, Ria becomes embroiled in a psychological game where nothing is as it seems and she must question everything and everyone, including her new employer. "It's great to see women, and play women, and celebrate their flaws and to celebrate what is deemed to be unfeminine, whatever the hell that means," Myles admits. "It's about voice, it's about presence, it's about being seen and being heard. It's about opinions, it's about friendship and love. "And, playing these types of women, it's about how the most unlikely of relationships can spark up because they need each other. They need something from each other, and yet in needing something from each other, what do they take from each other and never get back? "[We're] playing women that we recognise certain elements of and truly understand, because there are a lot of women on television who are played and I don't recognise them, I don't understand them, I don't see them. So, trying to find a real place for these women in our society is key to our show." "I think we can be afraid of that sometimes," Creevy adds of the show's exploration of women who push against societal expectations by being messy. "And I think what's really refreshing about their relationship is that they allow each other to be that. "I think being messy, being angry, being... ugly is a weird word, but I feel like being ugly is really exciting to play because you just sometimes feel afraid of it. But it's who we are, really. We are human beings, and we are allowed to feel like that, and I think that this relationship is that. "I think that's what Fran does for Ria, because she just doesn't feel like she's being seen, so Fran allows her to let go, essentially. And I think that's why she keeps coming back to her because she allows her to see all parts of herself." It was the strength of the characters and the writing on the page that the actors fell in love with, with the pair sharing how easy it was for them to join a project like The Guest. Creevey admits that when she received the script, she "couldn't stop turning the pages" because of how absorbed she became by the story's twists and surprises. She adds, "I just love a thriller like I love a Netflix thriller, so that's it for me." Myles first experienced The Guest under unique circumstances: "about 40 minutes before" she was set to take her daughters to see Taylor Swift in concert in Cardiff. "I had glitter all on one eye and the Taylor Swift shirt's on with all out hair like Taylor Swift, and my kids are all excited and Taylor Swift was playing in the kitchen and everything," she says, but the prospect of reading the first script by Matthew Barry was so enticing she couldn't help but keep thinking about it all the way through the show. "I'm like, this is an incredibly special scene, there's a very strong chemistry, I need to read the script, but we need to see Taylor Swift. I went to Taylor Swift and all I thought about — and Taylor Swift don't get me wrong, was incredible, — but all I could think of, my entire brain was going 'The Guest, The Guest, The Guest'. I've got to get back and read this. "So we go home and put my children in bed and read it, and I knew I was doing it before we'd had any conversations. It was intoxicating and intriguing and different and challenging. And I needed to do it." With such a strong connection to Taylor Swift in Myles' mind, Yahoo can't help but ask what song she'd choose from the pop star to describe The Guest. Her answer, perhaps unsurprisingly given the nature of the psychological thriller genre, was Look What You Made Me Do. With a show of this nature, it was important that the actors supported each other through it, but luckily, the stars became fast friends on set. It was an example of an instant connection that helped enhance the performance and take it further than they thought. Creevy explains: "We just kind of clicked, and that lent itself really into the show. We had conversations, but it's tricky because they're very complicated women, and it's a complicated relationship, but they were never really conversations that were like scene by scene; we didn't really talk in detail about it, we kind of just went with it. "Even before I met Eve, I knew I was going to trust her, like I've seen her work and I'm a fan, and I know I can trust her. Every take was really exciting, and that's what you want, really, when you're working with someone. Especially with a thriller, you want to be on your toes, and that's what it kind of felt like." Myles adds that they had a fine balancing act of embodying their characters while also not giving too much away to the audience too early: "With a thriller, you can only, and you should only, play what's on the page. "Because if you transcend the last scene in the last episode, you've spoiled it for everybody, and there's nothing going on, there's nothing dangerous, and there's nothing delicious and saucy to play in that moment. But if you play what's on the page, it maintains that element of surprise. Whether it's right or whether it's wrong, we're all hiding something in this show, and it's a thriller, so the subtext is all over it, but you have to bury all of that to surprise the audience." And there are certainly a lot of surprises in store for viewers, which we would be remiss to reveal too soon. But Myles and Creevy are adept at teasing without giving too much away, as the latter admits she "didn't expect" what takes place in the show. "I just don't think you can say that it's going to be one thing because it actually turns out to be another," she explains. Myles concurs, as she adds: "I think they can absolutely expect the unexpected, but really enjoy the journey on the way and be surprised and shocked. And I would hope that the viewers who watch this have a different, or some, understanding of both of these women that wasn't there at the beginning but do definitely have at the end." The Guest premieres on BBC One this Autumn.


New York Post
a day ago
- New York Post
Prince Harry secretly pays tribute to late grandfather Prince Philip after King Charles exits VJ Day service
Prince Harry paid heartfelt tribute to VJ Day heroes, including his late grandfather, Prince Philip, in a very discrete way during Friday's poignant service, The Post can confirm. While the Duke of Sussex remained in Montecito, Calif., during the Aug. 15 Victory over Japan commemorations, Harry did enlist the help of his close friend to place a letter and a wreath on his behalf. Harry's pal, whose name has not been revealed, discretely placed the items at the Burma Star Memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, England. Advertisement 5 Prince Harry paid heartfelt tribute to VJ Day heroes in a very discrete way during Friday's poignant service, The Post can confirm. Getty Images However, the duke specifically asked that it be laid only after King Charles and Queen Camilla had exited the remembrance service, which marked 80 years since Japan's surrender at the end of the Second World War. Harry, who has 10 years of military experience under his belt, mentioned his late grandfather in the letter, which was addressed to the 'Forgotten Army.' Advertisement The 'Spare' author, 40, stated that their 'courage and endurance' were 'anything but forgettable,' per GB News. 'For me, this anniversary carries an added layer of meaning,' the duke wrote. 'My late grandfather, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, served in the Pacific campaign.' 5 The Duke of Sussex enlisted the help of his close friend in carrying out his tribute to his late grandfather, Prince Philip. Getty Images 'He spoke with quiet humility about those years, but I know how deeply he respected all who stood beside him in that theatre of war,' the Invictus Games founder went on. Advertisement 'Today, as I think of him, I think also of each of you, of the shared hardships, the bonds forged, and the legacy you leave.' The royal, who rose to the rank of Captain during his time in the military, said he's 'humbled' by the example of the VJ Day heroes, saying he is 'proud' and 'grateful' for their service and dedication. 5 Harry has 10 years of military experience under his belt and rose to the rank of Captain during his time in the military. AP 'Your story is part of our shared heritage, and it must never be forgotten. With the deepest respect, thank you,' added Harry, who had completed two tours of Afghanistan where he flew in combat missions. Advertisement The duke's grandfather, who died in 2021 at age 99, was famously onboard the destroyer HMS Whelp in Tokyo Bay when Japanese officials signed the surrender on the USS Missouri. Follow The Post's royal family live blog for the latest pics, news, exclusive details and more His son, King Charles, spoke publicly of his father's past during the 75th anniversary back in 2020 — though made no mention of the late duke in his address to the nation Friday. Instead, His Majesty paid tribute to his great-uncle, Earl Mountbatten, who, as Supreme Allied Commander of the South East Asia Command, played a key role in halting the Japanese advance toward India. 5 The Aug. 15 remembrance service marked 80 years since Japan's surrender at the end of the Second World War. via REUTERS Harry, for his part, continued in his letter, 'You faced an enemy determined to the last, fought in unforgiving terrain, and endured months, even years, far from home, in conditions most could scarcely imagine. 'Your service in the jungles and mountains of Burma and beyond was marked by grit, unity, and sacrifice.' Advertisement 'It is because of that sacrifice that generations since, myself included, have been able to live in freedom,' he went on. 'From the lessons of that bitter struggle came the understanding that even the fiercest of foes can, in time, become valued partners in peace.' The poignant letter was signed 'Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex' and featured the duke's cypher of a H underneath a crown. 5 King Charles and Queen Camilla at a service of remembrance at the National Memorial Arboretum to mark the 80th anniversary of VJ Day in Alrewas, Britain, August 15, 2025. via REUTERS Advertisement In 2020 — the year Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, quit royal life and moved to the US — the duke was left disappointed after his request to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph was denied. Months later, the late Queen Elizabeth II stripped Harry of his military patronages following his decision to step down as a senior member of the Firm.