The weather has definitely turned autumnal now, so it seemed like a good time to try out a knitting pattern for fingerless gloves. I’ve found a few different ones available online, but opted to go for this free pattern that looked relatively simple. It was back to the double pointed needles, and although it took me two attempts at the first glove, it actually was quite easy.

This is pretty good and has some stand out classics on there - I LOVE Always on Time, that’s been a favourite song for a long time now. And J-Lo pops up too. I could do without the skits, of course, although the opening one is very atmospheric, dramatic, almost like setting the scene for a musical. It’s a good album, will stand the test of time.

Hmm, I love Pretenders and Chrissie’s voice but this album really didn’t do it for me. It’s hard to fully put a finger on why, but there were no stand out songs on there and the whole vibe of it was just a bit different to the normal Pretenders rock and ultimately was a bit depressing.

This is such a good, short book that breaks some of the barriers that you might have built up if you’ve ever thought about writing a song. Jeff Tweedy of Wilco talks through the basic mindset you need to start writing, and then gives some hints, tips and exercises on ways to kick off that creative process. What I love about it is that it makes songwriting seem possible, where most of the time it seems like a magical untouchable process. Tweedy admits there’s an element of that but the hard graft you put in makes that moment possible. I’m not in the right headspace to start a new hobby of writing songs but if and when I ever do want to, I’m reaching for this book first.

This was a weird book - an odd story and written in a really quirky way - but somehow it grabbed my attention and I didn’t want to give it up. And by the end, I loved it, it was really moving and somehow sad and uplifting at the same time. I think part of the reason I persevered with it was the structure - mostly super short chapters and snippets of a scene (a style referenced within the book itself) but you just think, okay one more quick chapter then… and one more… and maybe another… and then you’re hooked. Loved it.

I watched the TV show adaptation of this book which was good, but a while ago, so I couldn’t remember all of it until I started reading and it gradually came back to me. The book is pretty similar to the series, the plot was followed quite closely, except the end result of who actually started the fires. But it was a solid read, if not spectacular for me.

The week after a theme week, when we go back to normal and a random collection of dances and songs, always feels a bit flat. But this week there’s a really interesting selection of songs that mean I’m on board to see who can pull out all the stops and earn another week of dancing. Ellie & Vito - Samba I’m quite enjoying that each week Vito comes up with a new way of pronouncing something. This week, his attempt at peacock. Anyway, the dance, I felt like it was a bit frantic and I don’t know if it was the character but she didn’t look like she was enjoying herself. A good and entertaining dance for the samba, which is notoriously tough. All the judges mentioned her turned in feet, something to watch for in the future.

Lovely Dawn French is back with another memoir of sorts - this time leaning heavily in to embarrassing incidents and moments she feels somewhat ashamed of. It’s all about times when she’s been a twat, either being funny, embarrassing, or very occasionally, a bit mean. I listened to the audiobook, read by the author, so it was a wonderful listen, and is one of those books that makes you feel less alone in this awful universe.

We’ve been working through the Bring It On movies and were keen on getting to this one as the two main stars are slightly more famous than the pair in the previous movie. It follows the same sort of pattern - two cheerleading teams are going head to head and there’s rivalry and trash talk and romance and bitching, and plenty of cheerleading in between.

Just like the other album I listened to this week, this one was really good but it just went on for too long. Particularly on this one, it started out well, great guitar music that clearly inspired the Busted and McFly of this world, but by the end it sort of became just background music and one song not that indistinguishable from the next. Talented but just a tad too long.

This is a perfectly good country album, Old Dominion know what they’re doing by now, and it does have some good songs on there. But if I’m being honest, it just went on a bit long - almost an hour - so that by the end I was just ready for it to end. Also finishing the album with a repeat song featuring Blake Shelton seems unnecessary but hey, artistic choice isn’t it!

I’ve collected quite a few of the Star Wars books (since they rebooted the ‘canon’ ones anyway, I’ve not really dipped into Legends at all), and I believe this is among the first of the new legitimate stories. It was great! It has that traditional Star Wars story at the heart of it, the Empire creeping their way to commit atrocities and a plucky bunch of resistence fighters trying to stop them. But it also has the added element of telling the story of Kanan and Hera’s first meeting, before they became a formidable part of the Ghost’s Crew. Good stuff.

I’ve seen the film of this a long time ago, and I don’t know that it grabbed me so much that I wanted to read the book but somehow I ended up with this in my to read pile, so got to it eventually! It’s a good book, an interesting story about a life well lived in service of making other people’s speech and therefore lives a bit better. I guess by the end it was a little repetitive - the king was nervous about this speech but they practiced and then he did it, hooray! - but ultimately it’s a nice uplifting story.

This is another movie that I’ve seen before a long time ago, but I really couldn’t remember anything about it. I thought there was something to do with the choir but perhaps raising money for the convent or something? Of course not, this is all about the delectable Whoopi Goldbergy causing trouble wherever she does but being absolutely adorable at the same time. I love the tension between her and Maggie Smith’s character, these two need more screen time together! It’s just a good movie, funny in places although not laugh out loud, really, and with some good songs. Although, My Guy being changed to My God is stuck in my head something chronic now. Thanks, choir.

Earlier this year, Apple TV+ released Drops of God, a multi-lingual series set in the serious world of wine-tasting. I’ve just wrapped up watching the series, and I want to write about it but I don’t really know where to begin. It took a while to start watching, and a while to get into it, and it wasn’t a priority series so it took longer than expected to complete the eight episodes. But every time I watched an episode, I absolutely loved it, even though I can’t put my finger on why.

Oh, you have to love Peter Kay’s stories, and I always choose the audiobook version when it comes to his books like this, as he goes off-piste and starts chatting sometimes, so it’s often just like listening to a friend. This book focuses on Peter’s relationship with and in television, from early viewing experiences to then making the brilliant content we know. Of course I would have loved more about Car Share but there was so much I didn’t know about previous shows and how a lot of the characters and stories link together… it was really great and very entertaining, a must listen.

Movie week! Disney celebrations. Incredible costumes. And lovely AMY!! Overwhelming and we’re only minutes in. Let’s go! Nigel & Katya - Jive (Batman) I like the glitterball bat signal but I do not like this dance. I guess expectations were high as Nigel’s been so good for two weeks but this just wasn’t his dance. The kicking wasn’t great, and there were quite a few mistakes. He wasn’t put off by them though and the character was good. The judge’s comments were surprisingly positive, although agree it did get better as it went on.

I’ve seen this before because I remembered the fact that mother and daughter were pregnant at the same time, but I could only really remember the scene where they were running across the corridor of the hospital between rooms. Everything that came before that was a surprise, and a pleasant one.

I’m a little bit late posting this, we’re already a week into the final quarter of the year - but the films will wait for me, I’m sure. There’s a real mix of stuff coming up, but we’re still on a bit of a lull from the various strikes and I’m also wondering what on earth the Christmas output is going to be like this year. But I’ve avoided the festive stuff here, and gone for the big hitters that interest me.

I know a lot of The Seekers’ greatest hits because they used to be played a lot when I was young and I loved learning all the words and singing along to these folky hippy tunes. I quite enjoyed the album (this is not their first but the first available on streaming), but there’s only a couple of tunes on there and the rest I could take or leave. If I’m honest, I really think I’d prefer to stick to just the greatest hits with this band.

This is a nice album from Barenaked Ladies, very pleasant with their nice riffs and rolling guitars and enticing lyrics. It’s good, but not groundbreaking, and it veers a little bit too much into ‘oof I’m getting old’ territory, which is fun for a bit but actually gets quite draining when there’s too much of it. But nothing to really complain about, you can’t go wrong with a Barenaked Ladies album, and I’d listen to this again any day.

Obviously, Johannes Radebe is a huge favourite of mine from being a Strictly fan, and I was curious what his autobiography would reveal. I listened to the audiobook of this, and it took a little bit longer than I would have liked to settle in to the rhythm of it - it’s not Jojo’s native language and the phrasing was a bit different but I soon got into it and then totally loved it. It’s a story of a passion, of how dance can not only fill you with joy but bring you so many opportunities - but also of a loving but difficult childhood and the challenges that come with being different. Well told and plenty more story to be told in future too, I’m sure!

There was a bit of a rumpus recently about certain fashion retailers starting to charge a fee for returning clothes bought online, which on the one hand doesn’t seem outrageous (I know there are customers out there that buy heaps of stuff as if they’re in a changing room and return what they don’t want), but on the other hand is a bit of a swindle when you never quite know what you’re getting when purchasing online.

I’m quite annoyed at myself for listening to this, after the last one I said I was done with this series - the last book was so frustrating to read and didn’t further the only will-they-won’t-they plot that is all anyone really cares about. But this one was so much better! The mystery being investigated was fascinating, going undercover in a cult absolutely terrifying, and the progression of various elements of the team’s personal lives was good, if not ultimately satisfying.

There’s a lot of expectation going into a John Carney movie - he’s done such good stuff in the past, with Begin Again and Once, even Sing Street. This is right up there with the good ones - gorgeous Irish people living difficult lives and trying to connect with each other through the medium of music.

I have mixed feelings about this, it’s really well written with an interesting style in which our protagonist is effectively writing to her daughter about what’s happening now, and what happened in the past. It’s a story about the complexities of family life, particularly when you have a child that isn’t everything you expected and the difficulties of letting go of the past when it’s still out there. It was great, but I just feel like the ending didn’t quite fit together for me.

Maybe I was just keen but it felt like the show just dived straight in and got on with it. Opening dance, traditional welcomes, couples down the stairs, and let’s go. Of course at this point in the competition, the show is super-size in length anyway, and it was also hugely obvious towards the end when they’d given the judges the hurry up and one word answers were all we were getting. Seems unfair on those couples towards the end, but that’s live TV for you!

Here’s the thing about the Arctic Monkeys: I love, love, love the two great songs - Dancefloor, and Sun Goes Down. Something about them caught my ear at the time and I listened over and over and loved. But then I forget about the Monkeys complete and was surprised when they rocked up to headline Glastonbury this year. How could they possibly be so popular? But then they were a question on the Hit List about a band with lots of number one albums in the UK and it turns out they have had six. SIX.

Love Kylie so much, this is another great album from our pop princess, starting with the slightly odd but intensely catchy Padam Padam. The rest of the album follows in a similar vein, and I don’t think there’s a lot that fully stands out along the way, but it’s all a lot of fun and great pop dance tunes that boost you up for the day ahead.

There have been a lot of changes to Apple products and softwares around my house recently and I have barely scratched the surface of any of them. I mean, let’s be fair, I barely ever manage to scratch the surface of updates before the next lot come out but I’m always determined to try and I think that counts for something.

This weekend, the BBC released a new and quite lengthy trailer for the upcoming Doctor Who specials, featuring the return of David Tennant and Catherine Tate as the Doctor and Donna respectively. I was already excited for these specials and this reunion, but now my anticipation is off the charts. I’ve had mixed enjoyment following the exploits of various Doctors under various showrunners since Russel T Davies left the show, but it has to be said, seeing that trailer just brings back such a rush of fondness for how the show was during the first couple of series… there really is an element of magic to Davies’ TV-making.

I’ve just finished watching the second series of Annika, a police crime procedural starring Nicola Walker that aired on Alibi. On the face of it, it’s your standard detective fare - each episode features a murder that needs to be solved, and a group of police at various levels in their career come together to solve it, whilst also dealing with their private lives.

It’s good, I love this character, so methodical and calm in the face of everything, and quite honestly, I could have watched him driving people around the city for hours. But the main plot had to be gotten underway. It was a good thriller, although I felt like there weren’t huge highs and lows, there was a low level tension from start to finish, even during the final set piece during the hurricane.

The competition has started properly now, with our first full week of dancing - each couple taking to the floor and showing us what they can do. No one gets voted out in the first week, which means they get one more chance to impress us next week, but if I’m honest… I was impressed by almost everyone anyway! The start of the show was lovely, first featuring Amy in the opening credits, fingers crossed she can join in the series in some capacity at some point, and then the gorgeous location of Scottish castle ruins as the opening professional dance number. Then, the dancing got less professional as the contestants took to the floor.

We’re into the awesome 1995 on the BBC’s Top of the Pops replay, and that means proper Britpop era. Sleeper popped up recently playing Inbetweener and that led to this album choice for the week. Inbetweener kicks off their album and is probably the best song on there, but that doesn’t mean the rest is a disappointment. In fact, it’s a really good album, lyrically strong and keeps you engaged from start to finish. Not a five star album but not far off!

I had no expectations going into this album so it was a really pleasant surprise, it’s so good! Great songs, great messages, that nice modern country feel without getting too poppy along the way. It’s a five out of five in a way that, it’s never going to make the top lists of all time, but it’s a really good and listenable album that I enjoyed both times through and will enjoy again.

I just wanted to celebrate the fact that the Top of the Pops replays have started again on BBC Four, after taking an extended break to make way for the Proms. We’d just dipped our toes into the start of 1995 when the classical stuff took over but now we’re back, and it’s brilliant! Britpop is starting to emerge and breakthrough the dance numbers, we’re still seeing warblers like Celine Dion rule the roost, but also the oddities are cropping up like Cotton Eye Joe.

You know that episode in Friends where Phoebe doesn’t know the true ending of a movie because her parents wouldn’t let her watch it? Well, this is my movie. The bit with the window… I can’t. And that really sums up what a bizarre film this is. It’s a romance, okay, but it’s also a comedy (when Whoopi shows up, at least, everything before that is an absolute snoozefest), but it’s also absolutely terrifying. The guy on the train is scary as anything, even when they become friends and he’s just laughing. Oof. The demon shadows are creepy, the window scene is unwatchable. And yet, it’s supposed to be soft and gentle and romantic and moving and a story about an everlasting love? I don’t get it.

I really enjoyed the previous book by Sarah that I read so was looking forward to this one - and of course it was brilliantly written. The prose is completely absorbing, you just get sucked into this world and the characters within it, and you want to know what happens next. I just was a bit disappointed that there really didn’t seem to be a point to it, we spent time with these characters but what did we learn?

In July, I wrote about the first part of a multi-part canal walk, following the towpath between two cities: Birmingham and Worcester. The first part of the walk was a lot of fun, and I quickly followed it up with a second outing. That was less fun. I was saving writing about it until I could potentially combine it with a more fun third element, but time has been ticking away and the weather is turning and who knows when that will be. So here we go!

I’ll be upfront about it - I’m not expecting great things from this year’s Strictly. Part of that is that I don’t know many of the contestants, although that’s not a dealbreaker. The last few years have seen me fall in love with lots of the contestants that I had previously never heard of, so not being too excited about the lineup at first glance might not be a problem.

I thought I would like this, a good solid 80s voice with all the synth pop elements that usually float my boat. But I didn’t gel with it at all and I don’t really know why. It’s a bit experimental in places, and the songs all feel just a bit longer than they should be… it’s not bad but I’m pretty happy to cross it off the list and move on.

I’ve been looking forward to this, considering how brilliant the first album was. I can’t imagine how hard it was to sit down and try writing the difficult second album! This is good though, pretty similar to the first, elements of all those great influences, pop and rock and grudges and love and revenge. It’s not quite as iconic as the first, but still a really great job, very listenable and mostly just fun.

The US Open drew to a conclusion last week with a new champion on the women’s side and the same old champ on the men’s side. I wish I could say I watched and enjoyed it all but I didn’t… the only way I managed to keep up with it was to have a copy of the draws, and read the news and scores each day to keep track.

This movie is a five star film for America Ferrara’s speech alone. But of course the rest of it is brilliant. Shiny, poppy, camp and funny, meta in places and shockingly brutal against Barbie’s history, whilst at the same time having incredible insight and messages. Barbie’s confusion when confronted with a boardroom full of suited men making decisions for and about women was perfection.

The final Famous Five book is a bit shorter than the rest, but it still follows the same pattern - mostly. This time we have more thieves looking for the vague but super important science stuff that the adults work on, and we end up where we began - on Kirrin Island! It’s weird, though, towards the end, George went off on her own so that really it was only one of the five that solved the whole thing! Still a fun story and happy to have completed the set.

Penultimate book, and this time the Five are dispatched to a holiday cottage to stay with a young boy. There’s another mysterious island with secret treasures to be found and that’s the main plot of the book, but I liked the asides - George having to deal with someone else getting on with Timmy, and the gang clearing up a golf course and ingratiating themselves with the neighbours. Fun times, one more book to go!

This is such a weird movie. There is very little to the story, and in this case the lack of dialogue just emphasises that fact. The scenery is outstanding, mind-blowingly good and realistic but then it doesn’t quite work with the cartoonish characters bouncing around. The form of the dinosaurs vs humans is confusing - I know it’s just a movie, but why would the dinosaurs know how to farm but humans be running around like wild dogs? This is a prime example of style over substance.

I was a bit meh about this book, if I’m honest. I liked the juxtaposition of people (hunters, naturalists, etc) searching for a beast, only for there to be a bigger threat than they ever imagined. The Lake District setting is good, but something about the telling of the tale just didn’t quite work for me. But on to the next!

I was nervous about this movie because the concept has always baffled me a bit (the movie of the toy from that toy from the movie) and generally speaking all the reviews I’ve seen have been negative. But… I loved it? Space movie, a sort of time travel story, a rag-tag group of people defying the odds, Taika Waititi being funny, what’s not to like? And compared to some of the recent Pixar movies we’ve watched, it’s at least vaguely sensible.