I can’t remember where I heard of the Serial reading app, but I downloaded it a while back and left it sitting on my phone for a while before I had time to play around with it. After finally investigating what it has to offer, I can’t now decide how I feel about it. As with all the best apps, Serial Reader offers up a simple solution to a problem you didn’t know you had. Classic works, from esteemed authors such as Charles Dickens, H.G. Wells or Philip K. Dick, are broken down into manageable bite-size chunks and delivered to your device in “issues” – twenty minute blocks to help you work through the task of reading.

Like many people, I love Nadiya of Bake Off and now her own TV show fame. I’ve been watching her British Food Adventure with a sort of vague interest - experimenting in the kitchen is not high on my agenda at the moment. But, then I saw the third episode and realised I should pay more attention to this lady - she talks sense. Me too, Nadiya, me too.

I was planning on publishing another update to my Adventures in Netflix series, but was waiting until I’d watched one more series of something. Unfortunately, any Netflix watching I had planned has been delayed as I’ve become totally obsessed with Red Rock – an Irish police drama that airs on the BBC during the daytime, the iPlayer whenever you want, and I believe on Amazon Video as well. It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Dublin in our household, so the concept of a soap based in the Dublin area was quickly my favourite thing. At first, I was just enamoured by the scenery and the accents, but I soon became caught up in the story as well. A few inter-twining plots make up this soap, with your traditional Romeo and Juliet love story, alongside a particularly creepy grooming storyline as well as cops going bad, family loyalties and plenty more.

When it was first announced that Miranda Hart would be taking the role of Miss Hannigan in the West End production of Annie, I knew I’d have to go and see it. Annie isn’t one of my favourite musicals – children and animals and all that jazz – but the chance to see Miranda in her first stage musical role was too good to pass up. Thus, I rocked up to the Picadilly Theatre one Saturday to see how it all went down.

As if I wasn’t obsessed with Haim enough at the moment, they’ve only gone and covered Shania Twain for a radio segment in Australia. Turns out they’re pretty fond of the country/pop sensation, and they do a fab job of covering That Don’t Impress Me Much. Okay, so you’ve got a car! As an aside, I can’t figure if the segment title ‘Like a Version’ is genius or not. It’s a good pun, but does it work in this context? Undecided.

This podcast first came to my attention as one of the episodes featured the rather marvellous Simona de Silvestro - race car driver and generally all round good egg. Once I listened to that episode, I very quickly downloaded all the preceding shows and subscribed so I wouldn’t miss any future publications either. In Her Court comes out of Australia and features sports journalist Sam Squiers interviewing a variety of sporting names regarding all things “women in sport”. Topics have included overcoming difficult events, changing sports mid-career, getting a leg up, fighting for equality with men, and sporting injuries. The focus of the most recent episode, which actually ended the first season of the show, was about whether women are more susceptible to injuries than their male counterparts, and delving deeper into that taboo topic of menstruation.

For the past two weeks, the 2017 Wimbledon Championships have been underway, and they’ve provided lots of ups and downs, highlights and disappointments, the usual Grand Slam tournament soap opera. This year was different for me, though, because I was there on day one. I was one of those attendees in the grounds of the All-England Club. I never really thought I’d get to Wimbledon in person. It was a vague desire, but the complexity of getting tickets alongside the fact that coverage at home only ever gets more comprehensive and engaging meant I thought I’d be an armchair fan for the foreseeable future.

I’ve been catching up with BBC Two’s The World’s Most Extraordinary Homes – a programme hosted by Caroline Quentin and Piers Taylor that is kind of like Grand Designs, but the houses are already built and no one gets pregnant before the end of each episode. My dad first highlighted the show to me, because there was an entire programme dedicated to underground houses. The dynamic duo visit four locations in each episode, sometimes staying overnight to get a really good feel of the dramatic, the exotic, the downright crazy of each domicile. Piers gives the insight of the architect, whilst Caroline gives a wonderfully optimistic more down-to-earth opinion.

Usually when I watch sports, I am looking for a good game/match/race, and may have a favourite in the mix but as long as it’s a good battle or an impressive display, then I’m happy. Over the last six months or so, I’ve been investing myself into the WTA tournaments so that now I have a handful of favourites, for a variety of different reasons. Somehow, I’ve escaped without any of them meeting each other when it really matters, but now, on the second Tuesday of Wimbledon, the inevitable has happened.

I was perusing the Goodreads site for a while early today when I noticed their stats page. I haven’t really delved into this side of things much, other than looking at the count of books I’ve read each year. What was I hyped up on in 2014 for goodness’ sake? Today I spotted this graph of books by publication date by read date. Forgive me for this self indulgence, but what an interesting way to view reading habits!

Oh hi, yea, I’m a bass player now. It’s not like I need another hobby at the moment, but this is the end result of a Friday night when you watch Glastonbury on iPlayer catchup with a glass of wine, and there just happens to be a seriously gorgeous bass guitar lying around the house. Of course after just a couple of days of this, I can’t feel my fingers anymore but hey, bass players are cooool.

Oh my stars. Unlike Baywatch, where I had all the expectations in the world and was a bit disappointed by the trailer, for Jumanji, I had nothing. When I rewatched the original for Film Watch, it wasn’t as good as I remembered, so why would this be any better? Well, the first trailer was released today and already, I am loving the look of this remake.

This week, I just finished watching season four of Agents of Shield, and my word, it was an incredible ride. (Vague spoilers below, nothing major.) I’ve loved watching the trials and tribulations of these Shield agents since the show first began, but it has gradually been improving in quality to the point that this series was an absolute triumph. My affection for the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been wearing thin recently, the novelty of so many inter-connected movies has long since worn off and now all that is left is a strong feeling of being overwhelmed and consistently unable to keep up. At least with a TV show, it is for the most part self-contained. The odd reference to the bigger universe is a bonus and easily ignored, although it’s fair to say the events of each season are affected by what happens in that big bad world.

I knew it had been a while since I last went on an Alphabet Adventure visit, but looking back now, I’m horrified to find it’s been over three years. Ridiculous. So, I stopped putting it off, and dashed to the Lake District to have a gander at that body of water known as Windermere. It’s famous, apparently, for being the longest lake in the UK, and it’s very pretty, but I have to admit, I was expecting a little more.

This year, in anticipation of their new album, I’ve become a fully paid up Haim fan. Somewhere along the line, these girls wormed their way into my heart. Whether it was listening to their album, or their radio show (currently on hiatus), or just following them on Twitter… I’m in love. Quirky and unique, with their own style and a comfort in their own skins, these ladies are also supremely talented. They released the video for their new track ‘Want You Back’ and it’s one of those one-take wonders that is worth watching for many reasons, but above them all, for the three part air drum roll. I wish I had sisters to do this with.

I really like the simplicity of the idea behind Three Good Things, an app that does one thing well. You are tasked with logging three good things for each day, with the aim of stringing together streaks of days and generally making your world a little bit of a happier place. The things don’t have to be life-changing, and they don’t have to be complex. You’re only given 100 characters to log each thing anyway, so the simpler the better. Examples featured in the marketing material for the app include having a delicious takeaway meal, or your favourite artist releasing a new song.

About eighteen months ago, I talked briefly of my obsession with Asphalt 8 on the Apple TV, a game that combined third party controllers with Apple TV accessibility to make a brilliant and captivating racing game. For a few months, this game was everything – I wanted to get all the stars for all the events in all the seasons, I wanted to upgrade all the cars and collect as many as possible, and essentially do all the things. My obsession lessened as other entertainments distracted me, but it was always there in the back of my mind – Asphalt 8 is brilliant, don’t forget to go back and play!

I’m trying to up my theatre game this year, so was glad to get a chance to see The Play That Goes Wrong. I’d seen a snippet on some variety show on TV and became quickly entranced with the idea of seeing the full thing on stage. It’s such a brilliant show, starting simply but gradually building in terms of farce, disaster and hysteria. What’s clever about it though is that by the end, far from wondering what else can possibly go wrong for this poor haphazard bunch of people, you’re almost willing the next thing to happen to see just what lengths they will go to to try and keep going. I was even impressed with the pre-show action, featuring some silent comedy with a member of the audience. The cast are in character long before the play actually begins and it’s all the better for it.

We are rapidly heading towards the point of the year where Wimbledon takes over UK TV screens. Currently, the WTA and ATP tours are finishing up their stints on the orange clay, with the French Open still to come, but attention has already turned to the highlight of the grass court season (and arguably the entire tennis-related year). This year, there are no less than three women with everything to fight for heading into Wimbledon, and no Serena Williams to dominate, it couldn’t really be a more interesting battle all set to take place under the Centre Court roof.

The format of visiting a subject through a certain number of tangential objects has been done a few times, but I’ve found this recent iteration from the BBC fascinating. Tim Harford, one of the Beeb’s resident economists, covers fifty things that have, in some way, shaped the economy that we know and live with today. If you had to list some things, you’d probably say credit cards, interest rates, banks, etc, etc, but there’s a lot more to it than that.

For the longest time, I’ve been wanting to buy Buffy the Vampire Slayer on iTunes, but I’ve held off because it’s not in HD. Plenty of older content is being converted into HD, but I understood that Buffy was a particularly tricky one to convert, what with it being all special effects and kick-ass movement. I hadn’t realised that the conversion had already been attempted a couple of years ago, with incredibly awful results.

This looks AMAZING. One of the bonuses of this film is that there’s a documentary about this subject too, which is on my documentary to-watch list that never gets looked at. If they could just go ahead and dramatise all of them, I’d be able to cross a lot more off that list!

Working my way through Michael Palin’s first collection of diaries, and stumbled across this paragraph – a dream of utopia that is still relevant today, even though we’re further away than ever. I’m glad that there are cars and planes and television and washing machines, and I think we cannot suddenly pretend that they have not been invented – but I feel we must control their use, and that they should be used not to dictate but to stimulate.

The Eurovision Song Competition this weekend was a fun evening of drinking wine and watching a variety of singing acts doing their thing, but despite the enjoyment of the evening, it left me a little flat. I thought at first it was because a serious song had won the whole thing. Portugal’s guy was clearly very talented but it didn’t really feel in the spirit of Eurovision – this is a competition about sassy gorillas and yodelling rappers after all.

Every time I finish watching a Netflix original show, I keep thinking I should write about it and then I never do. So gathered here are some thoughts on the things I have watched over the last few months, probably in reverse order. 13 Reasons Why Lots of fuss about this one and I can see why. It is surprisingly graphic in content, and tells a depressing story from start to finish. It’s well made and gradually grabs your attention, but I’m not sure it’s the best TV I’ve ever witnessed. I’m not sure which side of the debate I fall on, but I guess I’m glad that it’s raised awareness of topics like teen suicide. That can only be a good thing. Not sure how a second series would work, aside from the loose threads, this feels like a self-contained story.

So, I bought a new car. I know what you’re thinking, “when I read on this blog that the new car buying process was starting, it sounded like we were going to enjoy tales from every step along the journey.” Well, yea, except that was five years ago. My old car kept on keeping on for longer than expected, and then of course, life got in the way, and I didn’t buy a new car. Then life got in the way again, forced my hand, and now I do have a new car.

I’m so gutted by the news that Peter Kay isn’t planning on any more Car Share. Plans change and things have a habit of being resurrected when you least expect it, but for the moment, Kay suggests the show is done. There’s not going to be a series three so it won’t ever happen. You’ve got to get out while the going’s good. No Christmas special, no… There’s only so much you can do in a car and the last thing you want to do is ruin it because I think it’s a lovely thing.

So, you know that feeling when you’ve loved the soundtrack to a movie for years and years, and then you start listening to more albums and catch up with one that you probably should have already known about, that quickly becomes one of your top ten, and then you realise that one of the artists actually sings on that original soundtrack, one of your favourite songs? Happens to us all, right?

New trailer released for The Golden Circle, the sequel to Kingsman: The Secret Service (which I can’t believe I watched two whole years ago!). I actually ended viewing this trailer with my mouth agape. The first film garnered a 5 out of 5 stars rave review from me, and this second one looks just as good. It’s also a great excuse to have to re-watch the first one again… just to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything.

I recently got a chance to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the two part HP play that is currently featured in London’s West End. Around the same time, the play broke records for Olivier Award nominations and actual award success, so I was going in with some pretty high expectations. Naturally, I have to #keepthesecrets but it’s fair to say that I can fully endorse the awards for production, lighting and sound. The general production values of the entire five hour play are astonishing: incredible music, wonderful visuals and some astounding effects. We’re watching wizards, after all, so there’s some exciting stuff to behold.

I was having a bit of a panic over the last few weeks that I’ve listened to lots of albums but can’t remember them all. What do I like? What don’t I like? Why so manyyy? And then I took a step back and realised this project isn’t about learning every single song I listen to. I compared it to the Film Watch odyssey, which isn’t about remembering all 700+ films consumed. Both projects are about immersing yourself in a medium, soaking up the general love and enjoyment of the genre, learning, growing, and, dare I say it, being in the moment.

If you’ve watched tennis for any extended period of time, particularly outside of the main grand slam events, then you might have seen the moments when coaches come on court to have a chat to the players mid-match. It only happens on the women’s tour, and isn’t at every event, nor does every player choose to do such a thing, so it can be a blink and you’ll miss it type of event.

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with streaming music. At first I hated it because I wanted to be more in control of… well, everything. And then I loved it because I wouldn’t have been able to afford to listen to 100 albums in a year if I had to purchase every single one. Plus, I would have had to buy Drake’s album and that would not have made me very happy. Now I’m in a neutral place because for the most part I’ve let go of controlling my music, and I’m happy to just stream as and when I want. But I am a bit confused. I wanted to listen to Kelsea Ballerini’s effort again after she was nominated for a Grammy, but found this:

It was announced a couple of weeks ago that Peter Capaldi will be stepping down from the BBC role everyone’s talking about – no, not the lead of whatever baking show will replace GBBO, but in fact, the titular role of Doctor Who. It’s no secret that Capaldi hasn’t been my favourite Doctor, and I’ll admit that I have watched only two episodes of his since his tenure began. So unlike many, I’m glad that the show is adapting and changing once again, and I can only hope the replacement is more to my tastes.

I’ve just started reading Amy Poehler’s memoir Yes Please, and I only got as far as the introduction before I wanted to share some of the incredible wisdom. That’s the sign of a good book, I think. So what do I do? What do we do? How do we move forward when we are tired and afraid? What do we do when the voice in our head is yelling that WE ARE NEVER GONNA MAKE IT?

It all started with this note from my Zombieland Film Watch post: 5:06 – Recognise that petrol station from that music video. Because there was a shot of a petrol station right at the beginning, when he was laying out some of his ground rules for surviving the zombie apocalypse. Now, I know what you’re thinking - it looks like any petrol station ever, and… well, we’ll get to that. For now, stick with me. It rang a bell in my head as the same fuel depot as spotted in a country music video that I’d seen a year or two ago.

James Corden continues to do fab and fun things for his late night US talk show, but his latest exploits with Queen grabbed my attention like no other. A faux battle between him and current front man Adam Lambert saw the pair having something of a riff off with Brian and Roger backing them on guitar and drums. I’m so jealous of the things James gets to do and this tops the lot. Singing with actual Queen must be the biggest dream of all.

A recent episode of Back to Work featured a brilliant quote from Merlin Mann. The conversation was actually about sending spam-like emails to people hoping they will promote your business in some way. But I actually think it’s an interesting idea to consider in all aspects of your life. I want everybody out there who is a listener to think about this. What if everybody was doing what I was doing? Or, put slightly differently, what if ten times more people did this than currently do this.

I thought I had given up this tea tasting lark, but I was walking through the tea aisle of my local shop recently and all the packaging is just so tempting. I figured if I was going to ease myself back into the world of fruit and herbal tea, I should probably do it cost effectively, so I opted for a box of mixed flavours. And given that it is January, there’s only one option on that list that seems appropriate - detox! At first glance, the list of ingredients doesn’t sound all that appetising. Aniseed isn’t my favourite flavour, but mix it with coriander, and fennel, and even celery? What’s that about?

Apple’s limited edition January-only new year’s activity badge worked it’s magic in our household. The first available week, Mr C and I were both working on maxing out our activity rings each and every day, and it got a bit competitive. Turns out when a badge is limited edition, it really does have a motivating effect. We managed this January one in the first week… come on Apple, what’s next? More badges required!

Evolving sports to appeal to new generations of fans usually involves adapting to shorter attention spans, and that is something that can cause plenty of debate amongst the more traditional sport lovers. I’m in favour of making sport approachable wherever possible, but there’s likely room for all formats - long and short alike. Tennis is taking this approach, it seems, and I recently learnt about a new format. I’ve talked before about whether tennis needs to think about making all matches just three sets long but perhaps there’s another way. I’ve heard of Tie Break Tens, which is an end of season celebratory tie break tournament but today I learnt about the Fast4 format for the first time. It’s been the format for the Hopman Cup, where mixed double teams represent their country. In 2017, it was won by Team France but for me, the format was the most interesting thing about the tournament.

I love Demi Lovato, but I realised recently that she is an expert at picking songs to be featured on. Whilst her own work is plenty good enough, when she is featured on a song, it’s always a brilliant one! Don’t believe me? Let’s review. First up, The Vamps. Yeah, you! Then she teamed up with Olly Murs for the catchy Up, and took on the myth created by N Sync in Irresistible. Teaming up with Fall Out Boy, Demi stomps her way around a toy store, looking at the action figures and generally having a good time.

Anyone who has been following this site for a while will know that at the end of each year, I like to hand over the reigns to Mr C to share his top five songs and films of the previous twelve months. Last year was an absolute disgrace as he was unable to narrow down his shortlist to five and after a full month of arguing about it, we ended up with top tens instead.

Although I’ve stopped making specific New Year’s Resolutions (for the most part), there’s always one thing that I try and reboot each January 1st and that is being organised and staying productive. Whether it is trying out a new task list software, or actually finding a use for the notebooks I buy when I raid stationery shops, it is really difficult to end the year in the cool, calm state I start it.

Over Christmas, the 80s TV show Pop Quiz returned for a two-part special, and it was brilliant! I’ve never heard of this show before, but was keen to give it a watch as it looked just like Question of Sport only about music. It even features genuine music acts, including Toyah Wilcox, some guy from Spandeau Ballet and other people I don’t know but who were a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the intros round, as well as the “guess the song from the lyrics” round. It’s always amazing how hard it is when lyrics are taken out of context and read with the wrong rhythm.

It has been an incredible year for me, listening to 100 albums in total across 50 weeks and learning an enormous amount about albums, artists, and music in general. The biggest lesson, though, is that there is so much more to learn. This album listening thing will continue into next year, but it seems only right to wrap up what has been a brilliant 2016 of albums for me. Firstly, it’s worth saying that whilst I’ve always been a bit skeptical of the subscription music business model, this album adventure couldn’t have happened without it. When I was a listener of “just the songs that I like” then I wanted full control over what I did with them, which playlists I put them in, and wanted to hoard them which meant subscription services weren’t the right thing.

It has become a tradition in our household to watch Love Actually at some point over the festive holidays. It’s a sugary sweet treat, although usually ends up in both happy and sad tears, particularly as each year passes and makes us feel ever more closer to the characters involved. Anyway, we indulged this year and instead of the floods I was expecting, I actually found the whole thing to be uplifting. Maybe it’s because it’s been such a bad year, maybe because there are so many moments in it that you just feel wouldn’t be possible anymore (a politician standing up for what they believe in? Don’t be silly). But mostly, it’s just because the premise of the film, whether you like the saccharine nature of the movie or not, is that it’s about love and it proves that no matter the situation there is good to be found in people.

Apple have presented Watch users with a new challenge for January, hoping to encourage people to stick to their new year’s resolutions and get active. A notification on the watch this week highlighted a new and unique badge that can be earned during January 2017 by completing the activity, stand and exercise rings for a full week Monday to Sunday. It’s harder than it sounds, particularly if you’ve spent Christmas lounging on the sofa, but it’s totally doable and I love, love, love the motivation a standalone badge can give you.

Earlier this year, I wrote about the return of Top Gear - the new and not-so-improved version with Chris Evans and Matt Le Blanc. My basic conclusion of that show was that it didn’t have enough new things to make it worthy of the revamp name. I was keen to see what the Clarkson, Hammond and May trio would do in their Amazon Prime odyssey, and six episodes in, I think we have a good idea of how it’s panning out.

A while back, at the height of my new-found Star Wars obsession, I realised I needed to find a way to watch the Star Wars Rebels TV show. I discovered the DisneyLife iOS app, which allowed me to watch the series, and as long as I watched it within 30 days (which I did), then I could cancel the subscription and only have been charged for one month’s use. I did all of the above and then forgot about the app, until it was updated just ahead of this Christmas period. The price was lowered from £9.99 to £4.99, the app migrated to the Apple TV, and more content was added. With the knowledge that the festive period means lots of time spent at home, I signed back up to watch some more stuff.