If you're ever reviewing your finances, it's easy to look at the bigger picture: current accounts, savings, mortgages. But as the saying goes, it's useful to look after those pennies as well because they can start to add up to more meaningful numbers. The Pennies app helps you do just that, with a super simple and clean interface that sets up a budget and tries to ensure you stick to …

Feeling a little the worse for wear from our weekend at two music concerts, we decided the ideal remedy was to head to the Edgbaston Priory Club for a spot of tennis. It's the second year in a row we've attended the event, and was just as good this time round. There's a nice relaxed feeling at Edgbaston, in fact when you walk in it feels more like a summer …

My write up of our outing to see the Spice Girls at Wembley mentions the fact that I had previously not been a concert-going person. I had practically no experience of seeing music live and in person, but that was all set to change that year. My realisation that I could now probably cope with it all coincided nicely with the Backstreet Boys going on their huge DNA World Tour. …

The Spice Girls recently wrapped up a short UK reunion tour with three dates at Wembley Stadium and I was at the middle one. It turns out that Mr C saw them live way back when and when he got his hands on tickets for the Spice World 2019 Tour, he somehow convinced me to go with him. Now I've previously not been a concert-going person. I've been to one …

Let the games begin!

Union Jack dress count so far is six and rising.

Mr C needed a friend to see the Spice Girls with him so here I am!

I'd sort of only heard of Open Farm Sunday from when I used to listen to The Archers. But finally I have tracked one down and attended. Cute animals, robotic milking machines, a walk through the fields. What's not to like?

My parents recommended a visit to the Purton Ship Graveyard, where boats go to die. It's an area of river-side fronting on the River Severn, with a canal not so far inland. The land was eroding too much and so to protect the canal, boats were deliberately brought in and abandoned on the shore. According to the Friends of Purton, there are 96 boats scattered along the riverbank. It's bizarre, …

You'd probably have to have been living under a rock to have missed that there was a docu-drama programme telling the story of the Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor disaster and what happened afterwards. It has been very well received and widely considered one of the best things on TV so far. I'm not going to add too much to the overwhelming level of support this TV series has got, because I …

Two recent conversations about movies have made me realise there's a key component of the digital rental process that is missing and would make life so much better. At the moment, on Apple in particular, you can buy a film for a high price initially that drops the longer a film has been in the world. Or you can rent a film for a slightly lower price but only keep …

Every year, Mr C and I sit down and watch the Apple Design awards. Every year we download several of the apps that we've missed over the months. And every single year, Mr C says: "They should do more with the design awards, a podcast, a TV show. You should blog it." I was confident I already had, and looking through the archives proves me right, but I can't quite …

I’ve been watching Apple WWDC keynotes for a few years now, and they’re often quite interesting with bits and pieces that make a difference to me and how I use my devices. This year seemed different – perhaps because I made strides towards learning Swift and being a developer myself, but perhaps also because they announced such a lot of things. I was hooked, and afterwards my brain was buzzing. …

I suspect I have talked before at length about how fun I find the Apple Watch activity badges, and how they encourage me to keep moving. Recently I've been less obsessed with them, getting on with my own plans and seeing what badges fall my way without forcing it. However, this month, something weird happened and I wanted to get the monthly badge so desperately despite the odds being significantly …

I've never really got on that well with Siri. Apple's voice activated assistant can do some cool things but she never really listens to me and I find it easier just to swipe and tap to get what I want. I'm not alone in getting frustrated with Siri, but I've long been complaining to Mr C that she just doesn't listen to me. He's not experienced the same level of …

Well, that escalated quickly. From testing out a random Cornish beer in a bottle, now I'm faced with a 5 litre keg of the stuff. Despite being called a mini keg, this thing is so big we had to dismantle the lower third of our fridge. Which in turn means we now have no food to eat, but five litres of prime Cornish ale will see us through, I'm sure. …

Game of Thrones spoilers within! Hey people, we did it! I mean, I can't pretend that I have joined you all on an epic eight year long journey to find out who would finally be sitting on the Iron Throne, but it has been a pretty intense ride for me too. I think the fact that I binge watched all eight series in about six weeks means that I've a …

Backstreet Boys have been celebrating the launch of their new tour, 20 years of their best album Millennium, and a host of other things. Lots of content, tweets, videos, competitions, the works. I really liked the recent videos they released featuring their videos from the Millennium album with added information. It's like the good old days when MTV was actually comprised of music videos, and you could sit all day …

Late last year, restaurant chain Frankie & Benny's launched an initiative to ban families from using their mobile phones whilst having dinner. As in, handing over your phone to the restaurant while you ate, and then getting it back at the end if you were a good family and ate up all your greens. It was an initial trial for a month in 2018, and the company said: "We've found …

A walk around Glastonbury Abbey is well worth it, they are exceptional ruins. Especially on a nice and peaceful day.

I can see the Pyramid stage. That means I have practically booked my spot, right?

I've been up and running with this new website structure for about two weeks now and I'm still loving it. I don't know if it's just the novelty of it all or if the effort gone into simplifying everything has paid off, but I want to blog more and when I do, I write more too. The film and album review process is more immediate which means I have more …

Just a bit of inspiration from an old episode of Radio 1's Screen Time podcast with Ali Plumb. As I've said to people on Instagram and Twitter quite a lot lately, don't be ashamed of your opinions. If you happen to, for example, not like The Favourite, and everyone's saying how amazing it is, but you're like, I don't like it. Don't feel ashamed, don't be like, oh I've got …