I picked this up in a recent Kindle sale. I like a good travelogue, but there are so many out there, it’s hard to know which one to try without a bit of a prod. I love Ireland, and having just watched a lot of kayaking in the Olympics, the two things came together to make a very interesting read.

The first time I saw this trailer, I turned my nose up and thought it looked a bit stupid. I don’t know of the original, only what Mr C has told me about Johnny Depp and the like. However, I heard an interview with someone, I forget who, and they said they really liked it. So I watched the trailer again and decided to give it a chance. Massively better than I’d thought it would be, and I laughed a lot more than expected. There was far too much swearing, and the occasional low-humour moment, but I could pass them up for the better things.

Pretty good, all things considered. I really did find it difficult when you’re left cheering for Mark just because he is the least bad of a really bad bunch. It’s a great scheme that he’s got and we had fun trying to figure out what he was doing before he did it. We didn’t manage to foil him, but it was good trying. I liked the direction, some of the shots were great - moody images of a big ol’ container ship floating through the night.

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.

Although I am developing a bit of a penchant for Young Adult book series’ like this, I don’t think I would have read it if it hadn’t been on the Big List. I heard an interview with the author a while ago and knew that it was about a boy that was generally to be considered bad, and also set in a world of fairies versus humans. That was all I knew, but it turns out, that’s all it is about too.

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.

The book is made up of several chapters detailing what it is to take a gold medal at the Olympics - how much work goes in to it, all the unexpected things that come along with it, and what it’s like to try and stay at the top of your game. Michael Johnson talks us through his own career history, as well as interviewing other top athletes from track and field, plus swimming and cycling as well.

Really enjoyed this one. The series continues to grow on me, although it continues to be not quite for my reading tastes whilst being a subject matter that I adore. This one felt a lot more serious than those that went before, not in terms of the level of peril our characters were in but more in philosophical thoughts of the world they’re 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.

I’m so glad I finally found my way to read all about Mma Ramotswe’s adventures. There’s something so gentle and endearing about both the character and the way the stories are told, and yet it’s so different to anything I’ve read and the world I live in; it was a bizarre mixture.

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.

I went through a bit of a phase reading these true life occupation-based memoir-style books a while back, and I must have picked this one up at the time. I remember it was very popular in the Amazon Kindle charts for a while but I’ve only just got round to reading it.

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.

Oh. so. good. And I do love Ben Whishaw! Cannot wait.

Most people know of the Stepford Wives concept but I hadn’t read where the idea came from, and now that I have, I realise I didn’t understand it fully. Starting with the arrival of a new family into Stepford, this short book charts Joanna’s life as she gets to know the town around her, and finds out she doesn’t like it! Weird things are happening, the wives are too good to be true, and Joanna wants to know why.

It’s a short book, which makes it easy to digest, and split into handy bite size chapters. My only issue with the book is that my cultural knowledge doesn’t live up to the challenge. I didn’t recognise many names, and I had to look up a lot of the films to get a frame of reference.

A collection of short stories from various different writers all focusing on the glory of the library. It doesn’t sound like an amazing read, and I can’t remember what prompted me to buy it in the first place (I was probably swept along in an Amazon sale somewhere). However, there are some glorious little nuggets in there, along with some that may or may not have been included just to fill the space.

The story itself is fantastic, part ghost story, part mystery, part romance. It’s over before it begins, of course, but along the way there are some lovely descriptions and plenty of engaging words (some of which I had to look up in the dictionary). It was playful and delightful and yet creepy where it needed to be. I loved it.

I started this one immediately after finishing the second book in the series, and got stuck in. They are such page turners, and the time travel is so enticing that I read it in just a few hours (not all at once). I wasn’t quite so keen on how many other characters were brought into the picture in this one. It’s fun to see the time travellers interacting with others, but having to convince people about time travel over and over isn’t as much fun.

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.

I read the first book of this series a while back and although I enjoyed the time travel subject, I wasn’t completely sold on the book itself. However, I was always going to give the second one a go and when I couldn’t decide what to read off my list, I thought I’d head back to my favourite sci-fi concept.

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.

So good! Hard to know what else to say. Mr C demands I give it ten out of five. Not possible, but it really does deserve it. There were so few plot holes compared to the other, and so much more to love - big explosions, funny one-liners, Simon Pegg was fabulous, even Cruise was good. There were breathtaking stunts, the stuff on the Burj Khalifa was incredible.

Hard to come up with any definitive conclusion for this - there wasn’t anything wrong with it, there were a couple of amusing moments, and it was nice and short. I wasn’t offended by Heigl, actually I thought she did okay. The story was entertaining enough but it wasn’t spectacular. The start of the franchise may also be the end of the franchise!

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!

This was recommended to me, actually twice I think, by the Olympics-mad Amy. I added it to my Wish List the first time round, but with the Olympics just around the corner, the second recommendation saw it downloaded onto my Kindle straight away. It’s an invaluable guide to each and every event that the coming sporting extravaganza has to offer, and although it was useful to read and digest, I think its real use will come as a tool to refer to during the Olympic period.

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.

In a weird turn of events, this series seems to me to be getting better with each sequel - and that’s not just because of Tom’s hair. This third film was so much better than the second - mostly because all the story was there and we weren’t left with massive gaping plot holes staring us in the face.

It was fabulous! So much better than I’d thought. Of course, you might have noticed, I had something of the Judi-love through the film, but each character was so well done and perfectly portrayed that they were all great. Dev Patel’s character in particular was fun, and by the end, I was rooting for him more than any of them!

I knew very little about this before I started reading, and after the first couple of chapters, I was expecting it to be another ‘wild child tamed by good home’ story. It was that to a certain extent, but there was quite a lot more to it. One of the most astounding things about the book is the degree of chatter there is, all from Anne’s own mouth. I adore her ability and enthusiasm for imagination - allowing her an endless optimism that her mind can carry her away from tough situations. All those speeches that she makes, you get out of breath just reading them.

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.

When I read the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, there was a feeling of relief because so many people like it, and I had liked it too! Once that was out the way, many said I had to read on to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe because it was even better. Thus the pressure was right back on again.

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.

The thing I remember most about the first film is that it had a very dark, and quite confusing start, an awesome middle and a completely preposterous ending. The end ruined the rest. For this sequel, things seemed a lot calmer. There were plot holes galore, I mean some real simple and quite important things, but it all seemed to be on the same level, rather than watching two completely different films.

This is another book that I had mixed feelings about. I really quite enjoyed the style of writing, and telling a story by meandering through memories. It was great to visit characters in such detail, and see how they reacted to mundane situations ‚Äì things that weren’t necessary to the story itself. However, there was a bit much of that, in the end. The book was very long with not a massive story to go with it. Also, there was a lot of foreshadowing that ended up being a bit annoying.

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.

We’ve got in the habit of looking at the Reception bit on Wikipedia for films after we’ve watched them, just to see how much we disagree with the world at large. This one appeared to be universally hated, so it won’t come as a surprise to find that we quite enjoyed it! It was absolutely ridiculous, plot holes and flaws galore, but it was funny and had some charm to it at the same time. The banter between the boys was excellent, I wasn’t as keen on the girls stuff.

It was exactly what I thought it would be up above in the introduction - an interesting premise, and an unusual delivery. The method of telling the story through character camerawork was both fabulous and sometimes something of a hindrance. Sometimes things felt a bit shoehorned in, and by the end battle in the sky, I wasn’t sure what camera was doing what. It probably didn’t really matter, but when you combine it with the issue of his first camera being buried… you end up with a massive plot hole (quite literally!)

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.

Oh, it was as good as I thought it’d be. Even the slightly cheesier moments won me over by the characters never taking themselves too seriously and even getting some digs in at the filmmaking process. It made me laugh, it made me aww, it was fun spotting all the cameos and guest stars. Jack Black was great, and they managed to introduce a new muppet without it being awkward at all. Fabulous stuff.

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.)

I think I owned a copy of Black Beauty as a child, but I must never have read it. When I sat down to read this, I realised I don’t know anything about the story - except the concept of Black Beauty. I had thought it was going to be more like Skippy, you know, horse showing super-animal intelligence and saving the day. Aside from the occasional fast gallop, it wasn’t really like that.

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.

I have mixed feelings about this book. It took me a while to get into it and to slow down to the pace of the story. Aside from the initial action - getting Ayla from her own home to the Clan via an earthquake and a lion attack - the story moves at a snail’s pace. Initially, I found it frustrating but then I realised that the writing just reflects what life would have been like back then anyway. The unfolding relationships would have occurred at a much slower pace, because cave people (presumably) only needed to get hectic when under attack.