What a weekend of sport that was! I’ll admit my focus was pretty much exclusively on Wimbledon, but it was hard to miss the fact we were doing well in the cricket, and there were a handful of motorsport events to also catch the eye. But the tennis held me in thrall for the full weekend. I’m not a huge fan of the men’s game anymore, it’s too whippy and too long, but I couldn’t help getting invested in the Federer/Djokovic rematch.

I have a vague memory of Skunk Anansie from the 90s but I don’t suppose it was my kind of music back then. I quite enjoyed this album, it’s a strong, proud and emotive rock from a superbly powerful front-woman. It did cross, occasionally, into the realm of being slightly too angry for my tastes, although by the sounds of it she has every right to get a bit shouty.

I really wanted to like this. I’ve enjoyed a few of Dave’s singles and his performance at Glastonbury was excellent. This album just didn’t work for me. It’s a concept piece, featuring Dave in a therapy session, and so the songs weave in and out of difficult moments from his life.

I’ve talked about Zac Efron’s YouTube channel before because I do applaud people opening up and sharing their workout insights - and it’s fun to see Zac win and lose against his celebrity friends. In his most recent video, he pairs up with Alexandra Daddario and they have a mega workout with medicine balls and generally kill their cores. One bit that stood out to me was Zac admitting the following about his Baywatch body:

If I’m honest, I never had any intention of reading this. It’s not so much that I was judgemental about the whole thing but I vividly remember when this trilogy first came out and people were excited about them but when pressed had to admit that they weren’t written very well and that the story wasn’t the best. So I could never understand what all the fuss is about. I decided to bite the bullet, you know, eight years later, after watching Book Club which revolved quite a lot around this first book. In the end, I’m missing out on some culture so I need to get on board.

Not really a fan of this one, I have to admit. I did think going into it that it was going to be kinda arty and maybe a bit hard-going but it surpassed my expectations. First, the good: I quite liked how quirky the script was. Weird sentences and funny moments. Not sure it came to any kind of satisfying conclusion but then again I don’t actually know what a satisfying conclusion would have been. Just disappointing that no one ended up happy.

So, my goodness. This is a flawed but very, very fun film. I’ll be honest and admit that at about 18 minutes we were very much considering the twenty minute rule. But it gradually got better and better and I got more and more invested. It’s an odd cast, some very talented people but do they all fit together? I don’t know. And my word, the accents. If it wasn’t for people missing their accents all the time, this would for sure be a five star film.

My obsession with time travel leads me to unexpected cultural output sometimes, and this book took me by surprise. It’s a full on action adventure, full of omg they’re changing the time lines drama, and oof this person could blink out of existence at any moment tension. I’ll admit, the finer details did get a bit clunky and confusing for me - a lot of people in the same place at the same time, and the extended family with an extensive history was a lot to take in.

This is one of those deliciously short but beautiful works, translated from French to English and losing nothing in the process. It tells the story of a simple guy who goes to work, looks after his friends, feeds his fish, and dreams of books. He also salvages single pages from the pulping machine he works with, and reads them aloud on the train to work.