When I kicked off July's 30 Day Challenge, to get a full month's streak on the health tracker Waterllama, I thought it was just a fun thing to do with a cute app that would help me keep hydrated. How could I have predicted that it would be around at exactly the right time - when temperatures in the UK hit their highest ever for a couple of days and …

Apparently Black Sabbath are credited with having a hand in creating the heavy metal genre, so this is one of the first outings of that kind of music. I didn't mind it, the bits that were musical were great, but there was a lot of that thing where songs just go off into something completely different, noodle around a bit, and then come back. I swear there was a minute long drum solo in there somewhere. So I liked it more than I thought I would but it's probably not really to my taste.

Mabel's second album is very good, featuring lots of that pop sound she's become famous for. Quite a lot of the time, I could almost visualise her dancing along with her troop on stage. Yay for pop! There really wasn't a standout song on the album, though, a couple were better than others but no real anthems, unlike the first record which was stacked full of them. Fun but not particularly memorable.

This was a free book of the week from Apple Books, so low stakes investment but actually it was a really good read. I whipped through it in super quick time, and enjoyed watching the characters gradually relax and unfold into their surroundings. The bit where there was a supposed mystery over the emails and money and stuff was annoying because it was so obvious what was going on and our hero Maeve even laid out the facts and still couldn’t see it… annoying. BUT once that was out in the open, the rest read like a dream. I’m curious what the other books in the series are like too.

I was excited for this movie - getting the gang back together - who wouldn't be? And it was fantastic to see Dern and Neill, Alan and Ellie, back on our screens with their will-they won't-they chemistry. The trouble is, that's really all that was good about this movie.

Not long ago, I wrote of a new fondness for gin, particularly as June celebrated World Gin Day. Since then, I've learnt even more about the tipple and even managed to find a whole gin universe to be unravelled. Bear with me on this. I talked of James May's gin, the cleverly titled James Gin, which has the broadcaster's traditional understated marketing and labelling but is packed full of taste. …

I'm not great at planning or being organised or looking too far ahead, although it's something I've been working on for a long time (especially if the number of to-do apps I've reviewed on this blog are anything to go by). However, when it comes to gardening, apparently, a bit of forward planning is necessary. I've talked about how this year I've dived into Huw Richard's step by step book …

Overall I think I enjoyed this book but I have to admit to find it quite slow going. There’s a murder and a mystery at the heart of it, but it seems to take such a long time to make any progress at any point. It has the problem of a non-police character getting involved where they probably shouldn’t but then as a relationship was developing with one of the detectives, it kind of worked. I liked the character building and really felt part of the family of Ericka and Anna, but, yea, it just seemed to take a long time to get to the big reveal.

I love stories about time travel so I was very intrigued by Sky's new TV show, The Lazarus Project, an eight part series about a covert group trying to stop the end of the world. The premise is that this group keep an eye on world events and if there's an extinction-level threat, they press a reset button that loops time back to the 1st July. The neat thing about …

This is a great resource book for kids and adults alike, delving into all aspects of space. There are breakdowns of each planet in our solar system as well as a view of what’s further afield. There are details about space travel, what has been discovered so far and what future missions might find. And there’s talk of the big bang, of the various types of stars, and quite a big section on constellations and looking up into the night sky. Great book to refer back to in the future.

After whipping through the TV show in super quick time, I was curious to see what the source material was like. I’m not a huge graphic novel reader but had to dip into this one and was glad I did. The art is of a unique style, quite scrappy, but it draws you in and you connect as if you could have drawn it yourself. The story is very similar to what occurs on TV, although it finishes much sooner than the episodes do, so I’m already interested to read what happens in volume two.

It’s not clear whether this book is fact or fiction, it presents as a diary recovered from a German prisoner-of-war, as a factual record of his progress through the German navy and the first World War. But there’s not a lot known about it so it could be fabrication. Regardless, it does a great job of showing how human both sides of a war can be, people just doing their jobs, falling in love, missing home and doing their duty. A good, quick, read.

I’m relatively new to this John Le Carre journey so it’s a bit odd to be reading this, his last book, at this point. However, the title just called out to me. The book was basically finished before the author died, and it was polished by his son before release. I thought the writing was incredible and the characters are so well drawn… but I’m not sure I understood the point of it. What was the story, what was the plot? Review suggest it was showing the author’s disillusionment with the security services but, I don’t know, I think I just missed it all. It’s short though, so nice to just revel amongst these odd characters for a while.

I knew more of these songs than I was expecting which is always a nice bonus, and it was really interesting to hear The Police trying to figure out their sound. It did raise questions in my head when the tracks dipped into reggae - is there an element of cultural appropriation here or should people be allowed to experiment with inspiration wherever it comes from? I wasn't expecting a wider philosophical discussion to come out of listening to this album but it did! Good songs, though, that stand the test of time.

What a fantastic album this one is! Great songs, great vibe, wonderful pop and inspiring lyrics. I appreciate the change she made to Grrls in response to the wider conversation, but I don't necessarily appreciate sampling the worst Beastie Boys song I've experienced. And it's so weird listening to About Damn Time because I'm so familiar with that one section from TikTok that it's like when you suddenly hear the rest of a theme song from your favourite TV show. But loved it!

I was expecting your classic rom-com read here but actually it was a lot more nuanced than that. There was the romance (quite detailed in places!) and there was the comedy (I loved some of the back-and-forths between Gus and January), but there were other layers, the troubled history of our pair, the writer battle between them, and more than anything, how to deal with the fact that your parents are human too. A good read and a satisfying ending.

I loved the way this was written, I’ve always liked Ken Follett books but there were too many characters to keep track of in this, and all of them doing similar things. Dashing around trying to find a painting that may or may not exist whilst also making forgeries of paintings that may not exist. It’s short, so there wasn’t a huge amount of room for character development and so even though I usually love a good heist, this really didn’t do it for me.

I got a couple of episodes into The Undeclared War before I realised I needed to get Mr C on board with this show. It's airing on Channel 4 at the moment, or available as a boxset via streaming, and we very quickly demolished the lot. The programme tells the story of a young woman doing work experience at GCHQ (is that a thing?) at the exact moment a huge …

I saw this clip on YouTube recently of Olivia Rodrigo on tour in London, bringing out Natalie Imbruglia to sing the Australian's big hit Torn. It's fun and frothy and, of course, an excellent song. Unfortunately, the video isn't available to embed but it's worth going over to YouTube to watch it for the frankly incredible quality. For me, this answers the question of why people would want to be …

This is so good, fantastic beats, great vibes, and that wonderful voice on top. At first, it felt like a shame to have to wait through the whole album to get to One Love, but then it turns out the rest of the album is great too. I did have Jamming stuck in my head for a significant amount of time, but there are worse songs to keep bursting into! Loved it.

I love Imagine Dragons and this is some good stuff from them - very similar to a lot of their other work, and, if I'm honest, nothing that particularly stands out. But it's a good set of songs and easy to listen to. I don't fully understand what's going on with the album set up - Part 1 came out a while back, and Part 2 now, but it seems like Part 2 is just added on to the existing album, rather than being a release in itself. Slightly odd, but I just made it work.

Firstly, the trailer made this look like a very different film to what it ended up being. A fun little comedy about giving up technology for a weekend? Okay! But actually it was a weird movie about two people who are failing to communicate, finding a small town full of slightly odd people (and really odd people - Lea Thompson?) that think there's a big espionage conspiracy surrounding them, trying to get back home by stealing tampons, chickens and cars and with very few laughs along the way.

I liked the format of this book, the way it skipped through years and only dipped in and out of the lives of our two main characters. It reminded me of One Day, which also only visits the characters on one day a year. You really get a good sense of the life being lived, and it was worth going on the journey with these two. Actually, [spoiler alert] just like One Day, there’s a super sad ending, and if I’m honest I could have done without it. It’s well written and winds to a satisfying ending but just left me feeling despondent.

This was an interesting story - a child was snatched by his father and then some years later, returned to the grieving mother. It was fascinating because she could be confident the boy was still alive but had absolutely no idea where he was. Dealing with a child six years older and now with some trauma put the pressure on our protagonist which added to the intrigue. I did guess the twist but it was still a good read to get to the end.

I love Kerry Wilkinson’s books, and this was another really good thriller mystery, where two sisters return to a Cornish village from their childhoods to move on from trauma, but in turn finding more to deal with as they go along. There are some really great, but potentially triggering, descriptions of struggling with an eating disorder, and the scenes in the cave were genuinely very tense. The rising stakes, the feeling that the truth might never come out, it was really well-paced and well-written. Good times.

Two weeks of tennis drew to a close yesterday, with the Wimbledon 2022 tennis tournament crowning its final champion and then standing down to give the grass its well-earned rest. It wasn't a simple fortnight, with plenty of discussion points and controversies, and a final day of tennis that included a fight for the men's singles championship between two less-than-ideal candidates. I kept abreast of the men's side of things …

At the end of the June, the fabulous West End live celebration returned to the heart of London - two days of various musicals and productions putting on their best efforts to show the crowds what they can see in the West End at the moment. I missed keeping track of what was on during the weekend, mostly because of Wimbledon, but was surprised and thrilled to find lots of …

I bought this a long time ago and only really started reading it to see how alike the TV show it was. This aligns with the first series and I was surprised how faithful they had been to the book - I could see scene for scene what was happening in my mind’s eye whilst reading, having previously witnessed it on screen. It’s long, and there are a lot of characters and a lot of history, and I think if I hadn’t already watched the TV show, I’m not sure I would have got to the end.

Recently, I watched The Butterfly Effect - a film I’ve seen before a long time ago and couldn’t remember a lot about. The movie features some kids going to the cinema in the 90s, opting to watch the thriller crime drama Se7en, and we get to see a few clips from that film-within-a-film. I hadn’t seen Se7en, something which was instantly rectified, but the fact that I watched it specifically …

I was surprised how many of these songs I knew, turns out there were five singles from this one album! It's great, KT is so talented, strong voice, great lyrics, and some nice singer/songwriter style tracks. Cherry Tree and Suddenly I See stand out but they're all good. It's definitely an album you can listen to over and over.

Loved this! Allen starts off with a full on country vibe, but then dips into some other genres - particularly going latino with CeeLo Green and then belting it out with Jennifer Lopez. It's long but it's so good that you're on board the whole way through, ending back with the country beats ringing out again. Great stuff.

This film is SO GOOD. Most of it leading up to the end is really tense and gross and violent and stressful, but the final showdown really pays off all that has gone before. I thought the actual ending was quite abrupt, I would have liked to know what happened to Mills, but I guess in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter, he lost the fight and became one of the sins. Amazing.

In anticipation of the third series of Apple TV's comedy series Trying, I've been rewatching this wonderful show and collecting the quotable moments, which are often and many. I've whittled down the best of each episode and am sharing them here with you (and me, when I look back on this in future). In case you're not aware of the show, Nikki and Jason want to start a family but …

This is just a short note to say, if you have access to Disney+, you absolutely have to watch Baymax! - the new spin-off show featuring the inflatable companion from the movie Big Hero 6. I don't actually remember a huge amount about that movie, other than how adorable this giant cuddly robot was, so I was super happy to see the lovable giant got its own TV show. There …

This was a free audiobook included in the Audible Plus catalogue, and I just picked it at random when I wanted something to listen to. I was only intending to use it as background noise but then I sort of got hooked on the story. The characters are never really fleshed out to a huge degree, but you care enough to follow them through their wartime struggle - with our hero Lily training to be a radio operator, dreaming of being a pilot, but dealing with a burgeoning love life along the way. It was actually a pretty entertaining listen.

Really good - written with diversity in mind, short chapters, key points, and an overriding message to be kind to yourself. There are tips for dealing with your ‘care tasks’ when struggling with depresion, but even if you’re not, there’s some helpful advice. It made me rethink the way I approach some tasks and definitely to consider the way I talk to myself about what I’m managing to get done each day or not. Very insightful and useful book.

A very good, serviceable thriller. Oddly, I felt like the middle was the best bit, despite not knowing whodunit or even who had been killed. But it took a while to get all the characters straight in my head - always a tricky business when you’ve got quite a large cast of characters all arriving at the same time. And the end felt like it was just a little drawn out, not badly, and not a complaint at all. The end was satisfying which is great, and left with a sense of hope for the remaining cast.

This is a great book that delves into that problem that many people will have experienced - the drama that ensues when you are caught between your new romance and your close friend, particularly if they don’t get on very well. It’s highly engrossing, this story, and so well written that you can really get a sense of the characters and of the rollercoaster of swinging between sober and high/drunk. It brilliantly captures those moments where you say you’re going to be good and then wake up next day feeling rotten and remembering nothing. Some of it was kinda gross but that just made it more human - I did not want to stop reading.

I remember having seen this before and really liking it - time travel, you know - but I could only really remember the ending specifically. So it was quite a revelation to watch it again after such a long time. All the terrifying events that occur to these kids are so awful but you know you have to persevere to get to the bit where he can start to try and put things right.

After Lily's surprise appearance at Glastonbury, quite literally sticking her fingers up at the patriarchy, I had to listen to another of her albums - and luck would have it, I still had to listen to the one that features that song. This is a great album and really features Lily's lyrical strength - you can't not listen once she starts singing, you need to know where she's going next. And some of the songs really get stuck in your head, which is a sign of a catchy number. Top work.

I've not listened to any Foals before and I didn't really know what to expect but I quite enjoyed this album. It's a really nice set of songs, and lead you from one to the other with no jarring moments. The problem is, I didn't find it very memorable and even while I was listening, I felt like this was incredible background music. It's not one I'm going to remember for years to come but if it's on, it's doing the job.

This felt like a more normal movie than the first one, a bit less frantic and a bit more of your traditional adventure - bad guy trying to take over the world and must be stopped. New faces this time, with Tails and Knuckles, and the sister, omg. I don't remember her from the first movie but she absolutely stole the show this time round. Incredible.

In anticipation of the third series of Apple TV's comedy series Trying, I've been rewatching this wonderful show and collecting the quotable moments, which are often and many. I've whittled down the best of each episode and am sharing them here with you (and me, when I look back on this in future). In case you're not aware of the show, Nikki and Jason want to start a family but …

I've seen it before and thought it really wasn't going to stand the test of time but actually it was better than I remembered it being. It's cheesy and pretty far-fetched but it's a gentle funny rom-com that does the job. I also really like the time capsule of Wimbledon we see here - nearly twenty years ago, there were no roofs, no Hawkeye, the website was different, rain delays just meant sacking it off and going home. Amazing.

As always during the Apple Design Awards, this year I found myself downloading a variety of different award-winning and nominated apps. One of those was Waterllama, which is an adorable hydration tracker featuring several animals, including the titular llama, that you have to fill up with logged liquids to reach your goal. This app was a finalist in the 'Delight and Fun' category and it's easy to see why. You …

There's barely anything original about this movie - of course it has Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider comparisons, but also Romancing the Stone and more recently Red Notice and plenty of others in between. But it's okay because it's not earnestly trying to be anything but derivative and what it does do is be hilarious. Throughout. From start to finish. Sandra and Channing are brilliant together, Brad Pitt's brief cameo is wonderful, and Daniel Radcliffe really grows into the role of the bad guy (with a beard). Loved it and didn't stop laughing which makes it a top notch movie in this day and age.

This was a really interesting 30 day challenge for me. For the first week or so, it went perfectly, and then, of course, life got a bit busy and I started to lose the plot. In my head, ‘take a photo every day’ had become ‘take an amazing photo and post it to your website every single day.’ That, I think we can all agree, is much more challenging. So …

Day 30 of 30 Day Photo Challenge.

Glastonbury returned in triumphant fashion this past weekend and it's the first time I feel like I've been really properly involved - to the extent of even checking through the lineups and making a list of what I wanted to track down if possible. It wasn't all available to watch from the comfort of my sofa, but I think I did the best job I could and caught much of …

Day 29 of 30 Day Photo Challenge.