Another successful two weeks of Roland Garros is complete, with our attention turning swiftly to the grass court season. However, there was plenty to enjoy on the clay courts of Paris, here are just a few notes I made as the fortnight unfolded: As always, loving Radio Roland Garros. They seemed to get a lot of heat about the balance between ball-by-ball commentary and general chatter, but I think they’ve got it right. I did learn why Hawkeye isn’t available at this tournament (the accuracy hasn’t fallen into the acceptable limits due to the constraints of the ’living’ surface) which makes the umpires popping out of their chairs understandable, if no less irritating. I always forget how much the crowd are almost an extra opponent for some of the players. Norrie had to take on the crowds two games in a row, facing popular French players across the net. It was also slightly baffling when good players would get booed - sometimes for not shaking hands, sometimes for arguing with the officials, sometimes even just for having the temerity to win! There seemed to be a lot of upsets on the women’s side, but it was fun to watch Muchova’s progress - her style of play is really engaging and a couple of her matches were really intense and a lot of fun to watch. Unfortunately she didn’t quite make it to the big trophy, but what a great tournament. I’ve also loved the return of Svitolina, who seems to have got back into the swing of things really quickly after maternity leave. I was worried the draw was a bit one-sided with Swiatek, Rybakina and Jabeur all in the top half, but it turned out the bottom half of the draw was much more interesting! And so we roll on to the lush green grass courts and it always looks so ‘right’ to see players taking to the grass. It’s a short season, so we have to make the most of it but hands up who can’t wait for Wimbledon?

It’s the Monday of WWDC week which means Apple Keynote day, and it is always a lot of fun to see where they think technology is going next. This time, it’s all about the mixed reality headset, something which has been discussed for a while and leaked more seriously by tech journalists recently. So it wasn’t a surprise when Tim Cook announced the Vision Pro headset, but it was a surprise to see how space age looking their set of goggles were, and also quite shocking to see the price. (Starting at $3,499!)

I’ve just wrapped up watching A Small Light, the series that chronicles the life of Miep Gies, the secretary and incredibly brave woman that helped hide Anne Frank and family during the Second World War. The series is incredible, beautifully made and well told, but also difficult to watch - eight episodes that chronicle the build up to the war, the hideous slide into occupation and oppression, and the terrible aftermath.

I feel like it’s been a slow start to the year, vegetable gardening wise. I somehow managed to start things off too soon, before all danger of frost had gone, but then also the things that I did time right have been so slow to start coming through. However, we are starting to see some greenery and things are looking more promising as the sun comes out.

I recently finished watching the mini series Daisy Jones & The Six on Amazon Prime and what a journey that was! The show documents the rise and fall of a new band in the 1970s who gain popularity very quickly but find that drugs, rock and roll, and the intricacies of managing relationships on the road can be a downfall just as fast.

Last year, I, along with a lot of other people, watched in joy and awe as Ukraine won the Eurovision Song Contest, closely followed by the UK with our best performance in a good long time. I’d actually sworn off Eurovision for a bit, despite being a fan since before I can remember. I’ve had, and still have, an issue with the scoring but I won’t get into all that again. Last year’s contest brought me right back into the Eurovision fold and I was excited for this year to roll around.

My obsession with the UK’s National Trails has taken a bit of a backburner recently, but I decided to go in search of another starting point. This time, I looked for the trail that practically divides two countries - Offa’s Dyke Path. The path is a wobbly straight line hovering around the border between England and Wales, following the 8th century Dyke construction by King Offa. Lots of history.

Season three of The Mandalorian wrapped up last month to very mixed reviews, and it’s taken me a while to decide how I feel about it. Overall, I liked it. I don’t think it quite lived up to the hype and quality of previous seasons but there was plenty in there to amuse.

I wanted to just practice the feeling of knitting and test out my endurance and patience levels, so decided to go with a superbly basic garter stitch scarf next. I didn’t think this wool was particularly good, it was labelled as craft wool rather than something you might make items of clothing out of, but as it was just practice, I wasn’t bothered. Turns out, the end result is really quite soft and is super stretchy.

I was so happy with the result of the little blue hat in all aspects except the size of it, I immediately had another go making it a bit bigger. This turned out just as well and has the added bonus of fitting on my head, so a big step forward. I made my first tassle to go on top, with a cardboard circle method. It was a bit fiddly and didn’t turn out that well, so I immediately invested in those little gadgety tassle maker things. Haven’t made another one since, but when I need to, I’m ready to go!

After some of the early bits and pieces, I wanted to knit something actually useful so opted for a hat. I wasn’t ready for circular or double pointed needles (still not, if I’m honest), so this fantastic pattern which knits a bobble hat on straight needles was a gem of a find. I dived straight in without thinking about measurements or gauge or anything, so the end result was way too small to fit on any adult-sized head. I didn’t bother to put a bobble on it because I don’t currently have an intended user for it. BUT I was super happy with the results, the way it decreases, the nice stretch of the rib at the bottom, and the way it stitched together. Hooray!

I’ve been knitting a couple of months now and am currently working on a bigger vest project, but realised I haven’t shared evidence of the small early projects I started with. Pics or it didn’t happen, right? The first one was a small bag that came from this book. Whilst I appreciate beginning with a small and super easy project - garter stitch and two separate parts just to join together afterwards - this bag is completely useless. It holds half my phone, so I don’t fully know what the point of it is. However, I don’t want to undo it because it was my first!

I expected to like one of the latest shows on Apple TV+, Hello Tomorrow! because I’ve grown to love Billy Crudup and he was front and centre of this series. Oh and he’s selling real estate on the moon and we all know how much I love that celestial object. The show is styled as ‘retro-futuristic’ which is a word that makes my head fizz a bit, but I guess that’s the best description of it. It’s like the 50s but with the addition of flying cars and robot waiters and frequent rocket ships to the moon.

So sad that Mark Sheehan has died. The Script were one of the last shows we went to before the pandemic and had hoped to see them a lot more times in the future.

I love this blog post from Duolingo recommending ways to increase your language learning by utilising your television and its various audio/subtitle options. The post runs through the different scenarios you can try to help boost your listening and reading skills, for example, audio in your own language and subtitles in the language you’re trying to learn, or vice versa. Or the pro option, audio and subtitles in the language you’re trying to learn.

Apple launched a separate music app for Classical music this week, dedicated to the classical music genre, whilst continuing to work with your existing Apple Music subscription. I think this is an interesting idea, and if I hadn’t been taking a pause from monthly challenges then 30 days of classical music could very much have been on the cards.

I love this project Diaries of Note which is reproducing one diary entry from the past for each day of 2023, featuring well known writers such as Beatrix Potter and F. Scott Fitzgerald, people you may not know as writers such as Louis Theroux and Andy Warhol, and then, of course, lots of people you’ve not heard of at all.

A week or so ago, the final episode of the first season of Shrinking was released and it wrapped up what has been an incredible series of television. This show, inevitably linked to Ted Lasso thanks to creators Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein, focused on the life of a therapist who was in the grieving process as his wife had just died… and of course the friends and family that surrounds him.

I mentioned in my wrap-up of the March challenge that I’m taking a pause on these monthly endeavours, because there are only so many hours in the day. That’s part of it: I don’t know why I assumed time would just keep expanding to allow me to add hobby after hobby. But there is more to it than that… in having to pause the project, it really proves what a success it has been.

My challenge for March was to read the front page of the Financial Times website every day, and see what interested me, read through some of the articles and generally get a bit smarter. I’ve talked already about how surprised I was at the variety of content for what is originally a newspaper about financials and economies, and that continued as a pleasant surprise as the month went on.

I have always, always been a cheerleader for blogging in any form. I think the spirit of sharing things, writing things down, just having an outlet and tiny corner of the web for yourself is a brilliant and important thing. In the past, I’ve come up with challenges to help encourage people to read and comment on blogs, and taken part in other experiments to share thoughts and feelings about various topics. Ultimately, I talk too much and I want to encourage other people to do the same!

Even though the time and inspiration to watch films (particularly new ones) is still eluding me somewhat, I’m starting to feel just a shimmer of excitement about what’s upcoming. These quarterly sneak peeks at the fresh releases are helping no end, and this quarter feels quite blockbuster heavy. Let’s see what we’ve got in store.

If you’ve been following along my musical album odyssey over the past few months, you’ll have noticed that a lot of inspiration for the choices recently has come from the time shifted repeats of Top of the Pops that are available via the BBC. Currently they’re airing episodes from 1994, and I’m loving (almost) every minute of it.

I saw this on Kottke a while back and really wanted to share - Wonders of Street View - a super simple site designed by Neal that just shows you random pictures from Google Maps. It’s one of those things that can suck you in and take up far more of your time than you want, so do be careful before clicking the link… but once you do, it’s a lot of fun.

I love this post from The Guardian last week that looks at a handful of artists behind the biggest theme tunes of the last couple of decades - how their songs were chosen, the impact it had on their careers and the legacy they have been left with.

Procrastination can be a bit of a problem when you’re trying to get something done, and focusing on one task at a time can be a challenge in this world full of endless distractions. There are lots of apps out there that can help with focusing, lots of timers and distraction-less environments and that kind of thing. My chosen one is the Bear Focus Timer, because Tom the bear is just adorable.

Like many others, I’ve been intrigued by the high concept building The Line in Saudi Arabia, and have been keeping an eye on its progress. I really thought it would just be a concept piece and never come to anything, but lo and behold, the building teams have actually broken ground and started work on the 170km long building. This video from Two Bit da Vinci sums up the project so far and adds some really interesting thoughts and questions about the next steps.

I’ve been talking quite a lot recently about programming on Disney+ and that’s because of all the streaming services around at the moment, they have some of the most high profile shows alongside some hidden gems. That’s because they are such a behemoth, the vast array of franchises Disney has under its banner is something to behold. As it is at the forefront of my mind right now, for whatever reason, it’s worth a second entry in the ongoing series Christine Reviews the Streaming Services.

I’ve been reading the Financial Times for about ten days now. I mean, I say reading it which sounds very grandiose but it’s more like scanning the homepage for interesting topics. There have been a couple each day, although naturally the weekend is quieter than during the week. I’ve been surprised at the variety, though, with lots of culture stuff that’s interesting, TV reviews, and even recipes! Plus all the expected economic talk as well, of course.

As part of the efforts to reduce waste and combined with a need to try and reduce grocery costs due to the wider economy challenges, I’ve been quite focused on the kitchen recently. It means considering how best to cook things in which devices, whether to bulk up and batch cook, and how much time is too much time to spend meal planning.

I’m not sure where I first saw this to be able to assign proper credit, but I’m mildly obsessed with the BBC Motion Graphics Archive compiled by Ravensbourne university. The archive is a collection of graphics that aired on the BBC, including some of the iconic channel idents that you know and love, as well as opening credits from some of the biggest programmes across the years (Doctor Who, Top of the Pops and Blue Peter, for example).

As I am now mildly obsessed with knitting, I bought a handful of balls of wool and various knitting needles and quite quickly realised I wasn’t sure what I had and what I needed for future projects. As you can imagine, there’s an app for that! My choice at the moment is YarnBuddy which seems like a simple enough app that has just enough detail to keep things ticking along nicely.

In 2021, Disney+ released a television special with Chris Hemsworth, where the Australian actor met and travelled with some experts to understand sharks in more detail - their nature, the threat they actually are compared to the image of them and, more importantly, the growing threat we pose to them. At first I couldn’t quite make sense of this show and the casting decision, but then I remembered that these streaming services are completely obsessed with sharks for reasons I have yet to understand, and then Hemsworth being part of the Marvel universe would have those Disney links in place. So I gave it a watch and actually it was pretty good. Hemsworth maybe wasn’t a natural presenter but he was likeable and interested and, you know, he’s pretty easy on the eye.

My first day reading the Financial Times and the homepage pointed me towards an interview with author Linwood Barclay, who writes detective books, about his hobby collecting model trains. I love model train layouts so this was a very good first day. In the interview, he talks about how he developed the hobby and what he loves about it, and then points towards a video created by his son Spencer. Spencer has made modelling his profession rather than just a hobby and this gorgeous video speaks of how the great love of model trains runs through the family.

Recently I’ve been trying to dive a bit deeper on the Disney+ streaming app, looking beyond the obvious Marvel and Star Wars categories to see what else is out there. Lots of people were talking about Extraordinary, a new comedy that is, admittedly, set in the world of superheroes, but couldn’t be further from the multiverses we are dominated by.

Last year one of my monthly projects was learning British Sign Language, which was really a lot of fun, very insightful whilst still being challenging, and something I want to dive into more. I stumbled across this article a while back, that discusses the evolution of language generally but more specifically how sign languages change with the times. I found it a really interesting read. Sign language is, obviously, a completely visual medium and that means many of the individual signs reflect the subject in hand. I remember enjoying learning the hobbies category during my month of learning because they were all so easy - swimming is just miming swimming, tennis is swinging a racket, basketball bouncing a ball. Brilliant. But, of course, that’s only brilliant if you know the subject under discussion, and assuming that it doesn’t change.

For a while now, I’ve had access to a digital Financial Times subscription and have I made any effort to make use of it? No, I haven’t. Mostly, I think the politics puts me off, but there’s so much the FT covers that I’ve really been missing out on some good journalism. They cover politics, sure, and particularly the financial impact of such goings on, but there’s also a lot of business talk, marketing, global events, culture and interviews with some of the biggest and most influential names. There’s a lot to dig in and get reading.

When I kicked off my February challenge of knitting, it was my intention to pop back in several times during the month and show off what I had made. I knew I wasn’t going to be producing sweaters and complicated patterns, but I thought there might be something worth shouting about.

Every now and then, a topic on Mastermind catches my attention and I have to know whether I would do very well if I was sitting in the hot seat. This time, the contestant Hannah picked the topic of guest stars on Friends. I assumed this might be questions like ‘who appeared in this episode’ and ‘what guest star did this silly thing on the show’ but it was much harder than that!

P!nk recently appeared on the Graham Norton Show on the BBC to sing her latest release TRUSTFALL and promote her new album of the same name. It was an incredible live performance. You can rely on P!nk to add a bit of gymnastics or circus skills to her sets and this time it was all about the trampoline. P!nk was focused on vocals rather than bouncing off the mat, but it’s all the better for it.

I was in two minds about watching the second series of Clarkson’s Farm. Some of the recent comments by the eponymous presenter are no good at all and he never really seems to show any motivation to think about what he’s said or change his ways. However, this show is one of the only ones out there that’s really managing to highlight how difficult farming is at the moment, in a way that is accessible to people who don’t know the first thing about life in the country.

I recently listened to the audiobook of Phil Wang’s sort-of-memoir Sidesplitter, where the comedian talks about many areas of his life particularly where cultures intersect - food, family, comedy, and more global topics like the British Empire past, present and future, and how race and racism affects people every single day. They’re heavy topics in places but the book is really well done, with wit and humour but also a great deal of insight and thought-provoking ideas. The section on cultural appropriation has really stuck with me, so I thought I would share some quotes here for future reference.

I love, love, loved the first series of Little America - an anthology show on Apple TV that focuses in on true stories of immigrants finding their way in the US, although ultimately it’s simply stories about being human. Sometimes that’s a drama in a family, sometimes it is someone doing something brave and heroic, sometimes it’s an unexpected person absolutely smashing it out of the park and inspiring us all to do better. That’s what’s great about this show, the mixture of people and the uplifting feel of each story, even if they are somewhat heartbreaking underneath.

Sometimes when I watch something really good and think about doing a post about it, I worry if it’s an old show that it’s not really relevant. But in this day and age when you can stream pretty much anything at your convenience, there’s no such thing as a late review. Heck, if people are still coming to Friends for the first time, then I’m good to write about something that was on TV in November.

Last year, in preparation for the new series of Trying, I started rewatching the show from the beginning and loved it so much that I had to start pulling out the best quotes from each episode to refer back to. I only got a couple of episodes done last year but I’m picking up the thread again now with some more absolute gems.

In a further effort to reach out and communicate with fans and players of The Sims 4, the team behind the game started the first of a series of streams called Behind the Sims where they shared lots of sneak peaks and updates about what’s happening and what’s coming soon. I didn’t watch the video myself but have seen plenty of the news that’s been reported on since, and some of it is very exciting.

In my recent round up of movies to look forward to, I didn’t notice or consider 80 for Brady, which is a film about a group of older friends travelling together to see their idol Tom Brady do what he does best on the football field. It’s got a great cast and is bound to be one of those charming movies where a handful of brilliant female actresses gel together and have a bit of a riot.

It feels like forever since there has been any news of Lara Croft and her tomb raiding business, so I was very happy to hear about a new TV show potentially in development for Amazon Prime. The names attached look good, particularly Phoebe Waller-Bridge who would be able to bring a great level of drama and humour that would fit very well with the character.

February has arrived, and that means a fresh challenge, another chance to try something new. Actually, this isn’t something new to me but something I’ve tried my hand at a long time ago and since mostly forgotten: knitting! A lot of my previous experience was based on knitting rows and rows of just plain stitches, marvelling as the length of knitted material grew, then frogging the sort-of scarf I made and starting over again. Pretty basic.

Wired writer Amelia Tait published an article this weekend about the fact that recent cinema releases have focused on a new kind of villain - the tech giant gone rogue. The new Knives Out movie is heavily focused on a tech billionaire, the surprisingly good Santa Clauses TV show had an Amazon style delivery company at heart, and further back the animations Ron’s Gone Wrong and Mitchells vs the Machines are all about modern technology being misused.