The fantastic Great British Bake Off has returned to our screens this past week, with a brand new batch of bakers trying to impress the lovely Mary Berry and feisty Paul Hollywood. For the last two series, I’ve been a passive viewer - sometimes drooling, sometime awe-inspired by what the amateur bakers are managing to achieve. The showstopper challenge still impresses me every time, particular as they draw near the end of the series.
I’ve kept a diary on and off for years. The first diary I remember writing was in one of those exercise books where half the page is blank and half the page is lines with enormous spacing. We would draw and write about our day. I don’t draw well, but I probably didn’t write very well in those days either.
I also recall later keeping a diary in the back of one of our English exercise books. We turned them upside down and wrote more about our day at school and at home. I can’t say that I was leading a particularly exciting life back then, but it probably seemed like it at the time.
Whilst my previous posts on this subject have been bullet point notes of things that have stood out for me, I can’t do the same for this one. Already, the specific details are beginning to fade from my brain, and we’re only one day post-Olympics. Mo was brilliant, obviously. There were some great final moments in the modern pentathlons, weird as they are. Tom Daley’s diving on Friday was fantastic, not just because he got the medal, but because the overall standard was so incredibly high.
I renamed the category for these posts a while back, opting to call it the Running Diary. As that is the case, here is a true day by day diary of last week’s workouts.
Monday Definitely in the mood for a run today, having not been out since Wednesday. It was a busy weekend, so no real time to hit the pavements. Went out for thirty minutes, felt good, relatively fast and it just started raining as I got in.
As with my previous post, here are just some random thoughts from the last few days of competition.
The Men’s 400m final was brilliant. Not only were there twins in the race, but they crossed the line at almost exactly the same time! They came 5th and 6th and were just two hundredths of a second apart! Of course, you can’t talk about brothers without mentioning the Brownlee duo who finished the Men’s Triathlon in gold and bronze positions. A fact someone was kicking about at work was that if the Brownlee family was a country, they’d have been 36th in the medal table. Ridiculously happy that Beth Tweddle got a medal. After such a great career and kickstarting gymnastics in this country, she deserved it. A little sad it wasn’t of a different colour, because we know she could produce the goods after her bars performance in qualifying, but still. A medal! We made the silly mistake of going out this weekend, which meant we had to find a bar to watch Jess Ennis secure her gold medal. Sitting in front of a TV screen with very low volume, Mr C and myself plus a few other people gathered to watch her cross the line in the 800m in first place. There was polite clapping. I’d secretly hoped for cheering, but there weren’t very many of us so clapping was the best we could do. I’m a little bit confused by the sports that have such a long endurance-style event - tennis, football, hockey. All these group fixtures and rounds seem immensely unfair. For example, the weightlifting, athletics, hockey - you get one day or one night to prove you can do what you do and that’s it. A medal rests on your performance on that day and you have to live with the result. Heats and semi-finals to knock the number of competitors down are fine, but these sports that are like mini-tournaments just don’t seem in-keeping with the same philosophy. Bit disappointed in the cycling. After getting confused with the pelican, I was looking forward to the action in the velodrome before realising there are no normal races. If it’s not slipstreaming this and that, it’s following an old guy on a pace bike, or playing cat and mouse. What happened to good old fashioned pedalling as fast as you can until you cross the line? For the first few days, I was a bit overwhelmed with all the choice, and ultimately came to the conclusion that there was too much! I was trying to catch up with things I’d missed during the day whilst the action was still going on, watching two screens at once and mostly coming back with very little taken in. In the end, I realised that what I needed to do was tune in to BBC1 HD and let Gary Lineker talk me through everything I needed to know. Once I relaxed into that, it’s been a gazillion times better. Who knew there really could be too much choice? In my last post, I said it was a great feeling when we won that first gold medal, because we weren’t always winning them all the time. Our first taste of metal was glorious and created a real buzz. Since then, they’ve been flooding in and we’re now sitting third in the medal table! I don’t understand what it is to be a country that wins stuff! Of course, there are still the more manageable moments where we go out of the football on penalties but this is a new, inspired Britain! I’m assuming the home advantage is playing a big part in this and in Rio things will be more normal, but even so, it does seem like we’re getting good at this crazy sporting business. Unreal to think that there are just, at time of posting (Day 11), there are only five days left!
Firstly, I can’t quite understand where the last two weeks have gone. These are meant to be weekly updates but they keep turning into fortnightly ones because the days are escaping me.
It felt like it was going to be a really good week/fortnight for running this time, although now I look back I didn’t go nearly as much as I had thought! After running on Sunday, I also went out for two thirty minute runs, one on the Monday and one on the Wednesday. I had planned to go again on Friday, but didn’t. I don’t remember specifically why - but let’s lay the blame on the Olympics.
This month the troubles at Brookfield came to an apparent end, so towards the end of July we had a glimpse of other impending storylines and a reminder that there are other people in Ambridge too! But, of course, the fire at Brookfield farm really was the key point of the last few weeks and still has some repercussions to come.
Fired up At first, everyone was abandoning the farm - the kids were whisked away, Ed was off on a course meaning Emma left to stay with her mum. But after another scare, they all piled back again and that’s when the trouble was bound to happen. The fire scenes were tense, although Emma’s relentless screaming of her son’s name did grate by the end.
With the Olympics taking over everything, I thought I’d spare five minutes to note down some thoughts on what I’ve seen so far. These are just scrabbled notes, not arranged in much of an order,
Opening Ceremony Highlights Rowan Atkinson’s moment of glory was fabulous. The ability of one man to captivate what turned out to be an audience made up of 26 million is so good. I’m sure there are people that don’t and didn’t like him, but I thought it was perfect. Likewise, giving Tim Berners-Lee centre stage was one of the top moments for me. We watched and commented the opening ceremony over on Sidepodcast which increased the experience ten-fold, and it wasn’t lost on us that without TBL, we wouldn’t have been able to do that. “This is for everyone!” The chimneys! There were plenty of moments where we scratched our heads wondering how it had been done, but the chimneys came out of the ground so smoothly, it was genius to watch. Kenneth Branagh’s slightly smug and proudly happy smile as he watched those Olympic rings being forged - something tells me there wasn’t much acting going on there, and it gave a bit of a warm glow inside. The Queen! HRH gained herself a lot of respect with the James Bond sketch. Lighting the flame. I wasn’t particularly bothered who got to do it, I hadn’t actually realised that was such a big deal. So I wasn’t moved or disappointed when it was the seven youngsters. It was still captivating to watch, and the moment all the individual flames came together to become one giant roaring fire was glorious. Opening Ceremony Lowlights It was quite long! I had to go bed late for the second day in a row, and I am too old for such things! Dizzee Rascal. I know not all of it was going to be to everyone’s tastes, and I’m fine with the vast array of stuff that was on display. I’m even fine with Dizzee getting some air-time, but did it have to be Bonkers? I hate that song so much. The gold armpits on the Team GB suits. Really, really bad. No wonder Stella McCartney distanced herself from them. Although I have my own issues with the team kits that she designed anyway. No Brian May. Or Brian Blessed. Actually, there was a distinct lack of Brians throughout. Days 1-5 Highlights Falling in love with athletes all over again. I tend to forget from one event to the next, but already I’ve become attached to Hannah Miley and Jennifer Pinches. I’m also desperate for Beth Tweddle to win that bars final but part of me is dreading the day actually arriving. That moment you finally win gold. I commented this on Sidepodcast at the time - whilst it must be nice to be like China and the US, racking up medals all the time, there’s something to be said for less is more. That buzz in the office when we found out about our first 2012 gold in the rowing… priceless. The overflowing Twitter feeds. I was just starting to put into place a system where I could catch up with my timeline and not miss anything, but I’ve had to throw that out the window. It’s great though, lots of updates and fab people to follow. So much choice! There is always something to watch, never a dull moment. I spent the entire weekend in front of the TV and could have kept that up all week too. Curses at having to go to work. Princes in the audience. I spotted Princes Wills and Harry in the audience when we got silver in the gymnastics (quickly demoted to bronze) and then silver in the horsey stuff. They are silver lucky for us! Learning about all different kinds of sports and enjoying them with the live comments. If you have any spare time over the next week or so, you should join in. It makes things heaps more interesting and plenty more fun! Days 1-5 Lowlights Finding out hockey is quite such a brutal sport. People keep getting carried off in stretchers and the Team GB women’s captain had to have surgery on her jaw. Now I feel like we got off lightly at school. Not managing to make it through the catch-up stream of the women’s gymnastics team final before they put up a lengthy highlights package on the TV anyway. Not so much from a spoilers point of view, but just because by then it was like… argh, give it up. Watch the highlights. Move on! Not comprehending the road cycling race with it’s peleton that I kept on referring to as a pelican. Still frustrated by it.
There’s just a day or so left before the 2012 Olympics gets underway (or if you’re a football fan, they already have!) and I’m excited! I’ve only really got into the Olympics over the last couple of games, I paid more attention at Beijing than I have before, and I’m really looking forward to watching as much as possible this year.
It helps that we’ll have day by day threads on Sidepodcast, so there will always be a place to chatter about what is happening, and it also helps that the BBC’s overload of coverage means you’re unlikely to be able to miss anything. The games being held in this country is a bit tricky, because plenty of people are quite down about the situation (understandably so, traffic, politics, it can all be a nightmare). But I’m excited about the games for what they are - athletes who train religiously for four years from all across the globe coming together to put on a great show. And trying to win a medal or two.
Fresh from my experiment with the free taster teabags that Twinings send out to potential customers, I decided to go with the same company for my next purchase. I’ve never really understood the idea of nettle flavoured things - aren’t they those irritating plants that make walks in the country just that little bit more dangerous?
So, Nettle and Sweet Fennel. I bought this before realising it was quite so aniseedy. However, I think my perseverance with these types of teas has made that less of a problem as I grow used to the flavour.
(Bit late posting this one, but the heat! When you get to read about this week’s running adventures I already know it will say TOO HOT TO BE ALIVE! But that is for the future.)
I don’t know. Each week I start with the best intentions and they just get brushed aside as quickly as I can snap my fingers. Instead of whining on about when I did and didn’t run, here’s an interesting comparison.
At the beginning of the month, when I was catching up with the Radio 5Live Wimbledon podcasts, I was intrigued by this snippet of conversation between John McEnroe and Pat Cash. McEnroe was hosting one of those 606 listener call in specials, but Cash had to share a sudden irritation of his that wasn’t in relation to any question in particular.
Pat: Something that annoys me a little bit, people calling you former Wimbledon champion, or something. If you won the championship, they don’t take it away, do they? So, former Wimbledon champion is like taking it away from you. You’re always a Wimbledon champion. People say “you’re a former Wimbledon champion.” No, I’m a Wimbledon champion!
The second series of Episodes came to an end a week or so ago and already it has left a bit of a gap on my Friday night schedule. (Not really, we tended to watch it late anyway, god bless the iPlayer!) Thankfully, the second series lived up to the promise of the first and was a fantastic way to end the working week - laughing all the way.
Overall, I still believe the first series was the best and if they do carry on for more, I don’t think the first will ever be beaten. It was a perfectly crafted piece, with exceptional dialogue and incredibly funny scenes. My only complaint was the out-of-character action for Ms Grieg towards the end of the series, but even that was completely forgiven when the final episode fight scene had me in tears of laughter.
It’s an acquired taste, for sure, but I do so love this video that’s been doing the rounds this week. A compilation of heaps of unboxing videos, with the hosts desperately trying to get their hands on the Nexus 7 tablet. Stick through the introductions, the good stuff comes later.
How is it possible that Google or Asus or anyone didn’t try and open this box? Where’s the box-opening focus group that should have had a look before it went into production? The packaging looks nice enough, but you know they’re trying too hard if it’s impossible to get in. At least it doesn’t look dangerous though, not like Belkin products. The last time I tried to open one of those, the process required some scissors, a knife, an extra pair of hands, and almost a trip to A&E.
When we were watching Mission Impossible II, Mr C and I were very taken with the fort that featured at the very end of the movie. Whilst we were meant to be enjoying the big motorcycle sequence, we were busy saying “Where is that? We need to live there.”
Because, whilst an underground bunker is the ideal, there is also a lot to be said for living on a bit of an island, in a military designed fort.
There are plenty of ways and means of getting things onto your Kindle that don’t come from the Amazon store. Emailing to yourself (although I’ve never managed to get that to work) and using the experimental browser, and other such methods allow you to read things that don’t take the form of a book.
I am enjoying a site recently recommended to me, though, that combines the best of both worlds - Readlists. Not-for-Kindle content, in the form of a book. Readlists is an experimental page for now, and it comes from the people behind the social reading app Readmill. It allows you to collect together content from webpages, bundle it into a book and read it later.
I had to take it easy the week after my first ever 10k as I wasn’t feeling too good, and then the weather began to turn. It worked out okay, because the rest did me some good.
Last week, things were a lot better, and I went out on Monday and Wednesday. Finally, I was seeing 30 minute runs with average paces under 8:30 again. Phew! I thought I’d forgotten how to do that. I had planned a Friday excursion as well, but there was some epic rain out and about. I should have anticipated it, given that it has been Wimbledon fortnight.
June, June, June. The month in Ambridge has been completely overshadowed by the terror at Brookfield, but before we talk about that, let’s discuss some other bits and pieces.
First up, Jill says she’ll pay for some or all of Kenton and Jolene’s trip to New Zealand. That’s pretty flipping generous. Then she goes on to intervene between Ruth and David when it’s clear the strain between them is getting too much. More on that down the page, but sometimes I can’t decide if Jill is just interfering or if she’s pretty fabulous. It’s a fine line.
Yesterday’s Goodwood debacle caused an emotional rollercoaster, and as I was speeding home - enjoying being out of first gear for the first time in hours - I listened to only songs that would cheer me up. Some were just infectiously happy, others were rousing in an angry kind of way, and all helped just a little bit.
In the interests of rescuing future moods, here’s my playlist of 20 songs that made the difference.
I recently wrote about the cyclical nature of my feelings towards podcasting and how I am currently losing interest in many of the subscriptions I used to listen to. (As an aside, after years of listening to Leo Laporte talk about it, I finally signed up to Audible. The new-member special of £3.99 a month is great but when that goes away and it heads up to £7.95, I’m going to be less enthusiastic, I think.)
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
It’s a bit of a long title, but the trailer looks reeeally good. My only question is - where is Bruce?
Also this week, a new Paddington poster has been revealed. The bear we know and love on the big screen. Hard to know how to feel about this, but the poster looks like a good enough start.
This week, I did good. I ran on Monday and Wednesday and Friday. I didn’t do anything in between, which isn’t really sticking to the plan, but hey, running more. Go me!
I had Friday off work, which meant I had some time to do a longer run. I also needed to do a longer run due to some over-indulgence during Film Watch the night before. So, I started slow, and I ran and I didn’t really have a plan in mind. I got to 5k, and thought it would be really good if I could get past the 6.79km that has been haunting me since last time. I got that far, and figured I might as well try and get to the 8.06km which is my longest to date. And, once I got there, I was still surviving and decided that as I’d come so far, I might as well try and go all the way.
It’s no secret that I like whiteboards. I used to scrawl on one during live shows of Sidepodcast, and I was quick to nab one going spare at work. The trouble is, wherever I go, there seems to be a fundamental inability to stick things on walls. Whether it is because I am in rented accommodation, or because my desk is not near a wall, these small boards are always precariously leaning and almost impossible to write upon.
I turned my nose up when I heard about the Monsters Inc sequel idea. Not a sequel at all, but a prequel looking back at the monsters when they were at university together. Bah! What nonsense. What cashing in.
But a teaser trailer is out, and I laughed out loud. Twice!
I forgot how much I love Mike.
Recently, an underground house in the Swiss Alps started doing the rounds on the web. The house has one side facing out to the world, similar to the property in the Grand Designs episode I live-blogged about previously. The rest is buried underground so as not to prove an eye-sore in the beautiful landscape.
Apparently, Swiss planning laws say you have to have a timber frame version of the building put up on site before they will grant it. For this underground house, they skipped that part!
My weekly updates are more often than not becoming fortnightly, but that’s okay, there has been so little to report of late. This week has been a complete washout because back pain has stopped me doing anything more than walking like a robot and sitting. I don’t really know what happened, I thought at first I had just slept funny. I went for a run that first day but then as the night wore on, the pain got worse and worse.
It’s not a secret that I don’t buy into the birthday card thing, I only just about buy into the birthday thing! However, sometimes there’s a card that is just about perfect. This, from my mum and dad.
So true, Mr Goose, so very true.
Something odd is happening to my taste in audio entertainment. Since the dawn of podcasting, I have stockpiled episodes - subscribing to everything I might take an interest in, listening to make sure it’s my kind of thing, and then not worrying if I don’t get round to listening again for months. For me, the content had to be good, it didn’t necessarily have to be timely. My life has gone through cycles of having lots of time to listen, to very little time, and where sometimes the list of unlistened to shows would stack up, occasionally I’d catch up and be searching for potential new subscriptions.
After the last edition of my tea tasting adventure, my dad emailed me about the Twinings website, which offers you the chance for some free samples. You get to choose two different flavours and they’ll be sent to you in the post. I opted for two flavours that I thought I wasn’t going to like - thinking that if they were as I expected, I wouldn’t have an entire packet of tea I didn’t want. This was the first envelope I’ve ever gotten with a best before date on!
When the Kindle Fire initially came out, we saw ebooks the way they should be - nice layouts, gorgeous pictures, crisper graphics. The fact-filled and informative Pocket F1 book made use of the new table designs and looked all the better for it.
Sadly, the Kindle desktop apps and the original devices were left behind with less snazzy tables, but that has all changed thanks to Amazon’s latest Kindle update. The new version (4.1.0) should be rolling out to customers gradually, or you can head to that link and update manually if you’re tricksy like that.
Part of the big website overhaul of 2012 includes a lot of my time doing some rather mindless admin/housekeeping tasks - reformatting posts, moving information around, checking lists, etc, etc.
That is my excuse for having managed to watch five seasons of the US version of The Office in an embarrassingly short space of time. I’ve managed to catch up with all that Netflix have on offer, and I enjoyed pretty much all of it. Some of the episodes in the later series dragged a little bit, and there is definitely a change of feeling and tone once [spoiler alert] Jim and Pam get together, but altogether, I’ve liked what I’ve seen.
There have only really been two main topics of conversation over the past few weeks in Ambridge.
First up, Amy and Usha. What on earth is going on in that house? The relationship between Amy and Alan seems wholly too smothering for comfort, and Alan’s inability to stand up to his daughter to support his wife is quite shocking. In one of the last episodes of the month, Usha finally gets fed up of the mixture of cold shoulder and hideous sniping, and shouts: “I’m his wife! I live here!” Damn right.
It seems that O is a letter that is destined to cause me trouble. After the thwarted attempt to visit a previous O-shaped destination, I selected another. This did not go completely smoothly either, but I’m going with it, because I am running out of Os (and I want to get to P!).
During our recent heatwave in the UK, I took a day off work and opted to head outside. It was somewhat impromptu, because I wanted to make the most of the nice weather and the free time. I’d only discovered Osterley Park a week or so before, and realised it would make a good replacement O. The house and park is a National Trust property, situated just off the M4, right by Heathrow.
That E3 stuff is going on right now, and with it comes a bumper crop of Tomb Raider goodies. Except, I’m not finding them so good. Watch this trailer for the actual gameplay (I watched the trailer, and then muted the rest to ogle the goodness without the commentary).
Is it me or is this just too realistic? I don’t get how you can play it. I was watching the scenes thinking: “Yea, I want to see this movie.” But it’s not a movie, it’s a thing that you have to get involved with. It’s so loud and there’s so much movement, and she seems to be feeling a lot more pain than ever before… can that be right?
The Jubilee concert was a real mixed bag, as these things are, but at one point, it did make me stop and think. Many of the acts are from yester year - Elton John, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Annie Lennox, Cliff Richard, and Shirley Bassey. These are artists who are all still incredible (give or take a Cliff Richard or two), but can’t possibly claim to be anything but sliding past their best.
The latest phenomenon in reality TV, The Voice UK, came to an end this week, crowning a winner and dishing out a record deal. I stopped watching these talent shows after Hear’Say and Will Young, but for some reason this edition captured the attention of Mr C.
The opening rounds - blind auditions and battle duets - certainly were more interesting than other audition shows I’ve seen, but once it went live it was same old, same old. I wasn’t really a fan of how semi-professional everyone was, and the coaches having to sell themselves to the participants made me very uncomfortable.
I didn’t post an update last week because there was very little to report. We’ve been in the midst of a heatwave - probably the only summer that Britain will see this year - and it was just awful. I could hardly keep the motivation to stay upright, let alone go out and exercise.
The beginning of this week was similar, although I did think it was cooler on Monday and risked a run. It was not cooler. I felt ill for the rest of the evening.
I’m sure you’ve all seen this by now, but the teaser trailer for the new James Bond looks gooood.
Whilst I appreciate these new James Bond films for what they are, part of me does miss the silly Pierce Brosnan ones. Die Another Day was on TV yesterday and I didn’t get to see it but I wanted to. That was one of the few DVD’s I owned and I used to watch it over and over. Pretty Halle, crazy Madonna, silly Pierce and driving fancy cars around a melting ice palace. What more do you need in life?
I don’t watch the Graham Norton show. I don’t mind him in small doses but a whole show would be pushing it. However, I saw this clip with Will Smith and Gary Barlow, and loved it!
Everyone knows the words to the theme tune, it’s just one of those cultural things. I particularly love Gary’s input to the rendition though.
I’ve dabbled in internet radio for a long time, never a religious listener but always happy to give it a go. I wrote previously about how much I was enjoying Absolute’s variety of online streaming options - select your preferred musical decade and listen away, safe in the knowledge you’ll get none of that “noise” of today.
A new station has crossed my path over the last few weeks, and it’s called The Office on 181.fm. Presumably, it’s intended for people to listen to as they get productive and every time we switch it on, I am amazed at the great selection of songs. There are very few that I don’t know or don’t like, they’re all catchy but not overly so and it creates some great background listening. There also seems to be a lack of presenter and just a few adverts scattered here and there. All a bonus when it comes to radio stations.
I was a bit late posting the last update, so it feels like only five minutes ago I was writing about being rubbish at running. But here I am back again to talk some more! This week I managed three runs, so we’re back to the minimum that I should be doing, although I still want to do more.
It has been three shorter runs this week, though. As mentioned last time, I’m falling into the clutches of going out for just thirty minutes at a time during the week, as the 10k workout requires longer distances and I don’t have the evening hours to spare.
After my first tea tasting post, I finished the box of apple & ginger and the tea really grew on me. I bought a second box as well, and started to wonder if I hadn’t found the very tea I’ve been looking for at my very first attempt. Nevertheless, I browsed the tea aisle of the supermarket for a while, marvelling at the number of different brands and flavours there are. I have quite a job ahead of me!
I gave up my Franck blog because there was just no information about him out there. However, every now and again, something so fabulous comes along that I wish I still had the dedicated space to write about him. Good content makes it easy to forget the long periods of silence. But hey, I already have a blog and this will do very nicely indeed.
After Peugeot unceremoniously quit their endurance racing programme and dumped all their drivers, the guys have been scrabbling to find other work. Franck was recently announced as a Level 5 Motorsport man, and he raced at Laguna Seca this past weekend for his new team.
Two runs in a week, this is progress!
What I am finding now is that as the 10k program I’m working through gets harder, the runs get longer. Which is fine physically, because I am just about keeping up (if getting ridiculously slower as the distances get longer). It’s just timewise. I’ve said it before, but it’s tricky to justify more than an hour of running in an evening, unless I have an unusually free schedule.
My poor car is starting to get a bit worn around the edges. It’s been in and out of the garage over the past few months and is costing a few pennies to keep running. I can’t complain as it has been a reasonably well behaved vehicle for the majority of its life and it was bound to start racking up some repair bills at some point.
Whilst I’m sure it still has some miles left in it, I’m starting to think ahead to the next model that might take its place. When it first went into the garage, back in March, I immediately started pondering what it would be like to have a new one come back out again.
I’m getting a bit fed up of saying “well, this week I didn’t run much” but it turns out to have been another fortnight of frustration. What with family things, work things, and trying to find the right combination of time, weather and energy, I’m just about getting back on top of it.
So, last week there was just one run on Monday, and this week I also went out on the Monday. I was starting to think that would be all I would do and it would be a disappointing week, but then the weekend arrived.
This month, I’ve gone day by day again. I like to do it occasionally, because it makes me realise just how much does go on in Ambridge, despite the fact it doesn’t feel like it!
1st - Tom needs Jazzer to do some extra hours because of all the dreaded paperwork. A glimpse at what being an adult is really like! More on Amy’s new boyfriend. They dropped in all the Ambridge Extra story in one minute. Weird.
I’ve got a special affection for Jason Mraz, who I first heard of a few months after Mr C and I met. Back then, we found a live concert album available on Archive.org stacked with catchy songs and listened to it over and over and over again.
As with lots of artists, subsequent albums haven’t lived up to that first one, although I’ve enjoyed a few singles peppered over the years. We bought the latest album and that has yet to make much of an impact, but it’s early days.
This time last year, I was busy relaxing, writing, and pondering the future. Six months ago, I wrote about my return to work after a sabbatical that involved not finding my dream job but doing something just as worthwhile instead.
I’m on a fixed term contract, and thus the future is still relatively uncertain. But for now, I’m glad I can get back to something of normality. Equally, I’m incredibly grateful I had the chance to take some time off. I hope I got the most out of it. I was worried I’d just sleep late and play the Sims all day. Three books later, I’m happy I have something to show for my nine-month sabbatical.
