To kick off the new year, my first challenge is a health and fitness related one - to stick to a Les Mills challenge schedule. I was in two minds about this because, you know, the new year resolution to keep fit and change your life and be the absolute epitome of health is such a cliché and I am fully aware of that. But when I sat down and thought about it, the timing is perfect.

I feel like I must have read this as a kid, it has that sort of friendly familiarity you get from books of your childhood. But I really couldn’t remember any of it - that it starts in the current time, all that happens as Carrie remembers her past, being evacuated to the countryside and getting caught up in the middle of a family row, and the devastating end that has traumatised her for so long. There’s ultimately a nice ending though and it’s all so realistic and well drawn that you can’t help feeling as if you’re there.

Wahey, we have reached a new year and there’s a fresh 365 days awaiting us. Last year was a bit of a rollercoaster on many levels, and although this is just another night turning into another day, it’s nice to have that clean slate feel of a New Year. I usually take this space to talk about what my aims and goals are for the year but for 2022 I mixed it up with a whole heap of 30 day challenges instead of twelve months concentrating on one thing. In my round up post, I already discussed how brilliant this was - not every task was a success but I learned something from them all and really enjoyed having a structure to the year. Some of those habits have stuck, as well, which is even better.

There are some good nuggets of self help in here, great wisdom and advice for living your best life. It’s written very well in terms of approachability and friendliness, Laura’s great, chatty, lovely personality shines through. I just feel like it’s a bit of a muddle of thoughts thrown down on the page, which have been tried to be wrangled into different chapters and themes but are still quite messy. Topics jump around, particularly in the first chapter/introduction style, and I sometimes think they haven’t all been explored to their full depth. But, if you can live with that, it’s a great book with lots in there to think about, and some examples from Laura’s own life to make it relatable and worth reading.

I can be a snob when it comes to reality TV, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. Oh, of course I was on the bandwagon when things like Big Brother, The Apprentice and I’m A Celebrity first appeared, but have long since given them up (or they themselves have given up). I love a Bake Off or a Strictly, as you well know, but the jungles and islands and Chelseas and Essexes of this world pass me by.

The festive holidays have previously been a time when stand up comedians release some of their recent content for the public to buy. It used to be DVDs that could be given as gifts, but of course, more recently that has been a show popping up on streaming services to be enjoyed from the sofa. The pandemic put a bit of a hold on stand up comedians doing what they do best but it feels like the humour train is rolling back into action.

As a way of clearing the palate from Christmas reads, I opted for a rom-com book set firmly in the sunshine. This one features our main character going on her honeymoon alone and getting tangled up with various romantic threads including a famous film star, and the inevitable reappearance of her almost-husband. This was easy to read, funny and friendly with good characters and interesting twists and turns along the way. I quite liked that Lila was a romance fiction author so there were elements of book within books and plot within plots. And it was a happy ending, so hooray for the final book of the year.

There was no Christmas Day edition of Top of the Pops this year, which was both completely understandable and also a real shock. The show has been drifting further and further from the TV schedules and therefore the public consciousness that it was inevitable it would one day drop off the festive TV guides. But it was still a shame to see it was missing. However, BBC Four is still dedicated to showing old episodes of the music show and the 1998 Christmas Day special has been available for a while. It’s a great show, stacked with 90s pop hits and some surprises along the way, all capably helmed by Jamie Theakston, Kate Thornton and Jayne Middlemiss. SO NINETIES!

Lovely Bill Turnball wrote this in 2010, giving some insight into his hobby of beekeeping, with a few stories from his life along the way - his time on Strictly Come Dancing, a visit to New Orleans after the hurricane, and time spent in Northern Ireland. But the point of the book is to give an insight into what it is to be a beekeeper, good or bad. What it takes, whether you should do it, and what an important role it can be. A lovely book.

Yay for another Emma Roberts holiday movie! This one was quite similar to Holidate but with a focus in on one specific time of year - New Year! It took a minute to get going, I thought, with us all having to get through the trick of them looking like they were talking about and to each other but actually not, etc, etc. But once they properly met and the evening began, it was fantastic!

Yesterday, I wrote a very short post about photos of the moon that didn’t have a lot of point to it other than ‘wahey, photos of the moon!’ I realised that previously, I might have just tweeted something like that, but I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Twitter is going through some stuff right now.

I like Simon Brett’s work and hadn’t indulged in the Charles Paris series before. I want to listen to some of the dramatisations but thought I should check out the original novels first. I listened to the audiobook of this, read by the author, and annoyingly it’s the second in the series as the first one isn’t available. But it was good. A murder takes place during the Edinburgh festival, and Paris, an actor/detective, starts investigating. It’s an interesting mystery, with a handful of good characters, and I’m interested to read more.

I’ve been looking forward to this and although I feel like it’s a bit of a weird time to watch a mystery movie set in the heat of summer on a Greek Island (not so festive!), I had to watch it soon after being released because of spoilers. I’m glad I had to make the effort though because it was as brilliant as expected.

The main aim of the Artemis I mission this year was to test out the Orion ship and the SLS rocket in an unmanned capacity, to make sure it would be fit for future missions with humans on board. It succeeded in its testing, but along the way, it also managed to take lots of fantastic pictures - particularly of the moon. I love a moon photo and there are a good few to peruse on the Artemis I collection on Nasa’s image gallery.

I quite enjoyed the other books in this series featuring Van Lifers travelling around in their little vans and having cosy encounters with their movable bookshops and bakeries. This one was similar but featuring a new set of characters as Flora left her life behind and started over in a Christmas shop campervan in Lapland. It’s a nice rom-com with funny moments and plenty of fun characters to follow around.

I wanted to watch this after suddenly hearing about the meme that Kermit is responsible for 9/11 (in the alternate universe without him the towers are still standing) but unfortunately, I didn’t get that far. It was all just a bit scrappy, the various muppets were all over the place and I only got about half the references anyway. If there was a story, it was taking its time to get going… plus Whoopi and David were watching from a summer meadow which wasn’t very Christmassy.

My seventh year of listening to albums has drawn to a close and it’s that agonising time where I need to decide on a top five. Each year I listen to 100 albums, one new and one old each week for fifty weeks, and they each get two listens to make sure I really get a feel for the sound. Then, at the end of the year, I pull together my top five from the new albums. It’s always a hideous choice and this year’s shortlist of ten albums made it really difficult to decide on the final five. But I’ve done it, so here goes!

There’s no getting away from the fact that this is a slightly oddball movie - the fact that the brother immediately starts hitting on SJP’s character is supremely uncomfortable, but then Elliot wasn’t exactly subtle once the sister showed up. It was never quite clear what the focus was or where it was going, or what the main aim was, but perhaps that’s because the main point of the whole thing was that families are weird.

Mm, couldn’t get past the twenty minute rule on this one. We flicked between lots of different characters without really getting a good sense of who they are and how they relate to each other, somehow there was a lot of scenes but the story didn’t progress at all, and more than anything, the main guy just didn’t seem sympathetic at all so I didn’t care what was going to happen upon his homecoming. Pass.

When I heard there was going to be a tv series continuing the Santa Clause film franchise on the small screen, I was… bemused. I watched the first film a long while back, and thought it was okay, but hadn’t got round to watching the next two so it obviously wasn’t that special. And I didn’t know they were popular enough to warrant a return of the characters to the world of Santa, elves, and the North Pole.

I listened to the audiobook of this, ready by Gareth Southgate himself. It’s a book aimed at young people to help inspire and guide them, and give them some tips and tools to start goal-setting and really making progress in their lives & careers. But this advice works for anyone, and is dispensed in a really clear and concise way, with solid examples from Gareth’s own life experience to illustrate the points. Very good, I particularly enjoyed the short and long term goal setting section.

Sometimes I write about festive episodes of series that I like but this time I thought it’d be fun to focus on every Christmas episode from ten years’ of Friends. They spend more time on Thanksgiving, obviously, with some really classic episodes in November: the football game, Brad Pitt, Joey with a turkey stuck on his head, etc. But Christmas does crop up every now and again, quite inconsistently, through the decade.

This was a different book to the one I was expecting - it wasn’t just a festive rom-com, I mean, it was hardly that at all really. Emma splits up with her partner and has an unfortunate accident that means she heads home to recover and re-connect with her family. It had elements of magic and long family feuds and that village mentality where everyone knows each other’s business. It reminded me a lot of Practical Magic (the movie, I haven’t read the book yet), so it was good but it wasn’t quite what I had hoped.

Mixed feelings about this one - it’s a great cast (except, you know) and the concept is interesting and fun. I like that it’s a slightly darker take on festive stories, to balance out the sugary sweetness of many others. But I feel like it could have been so much better. Vince’s babbling didn’t quite fit, for me, I’m assuming a lot of that was him improvising. And the CG to make the elves smaller fell a little bit into that uncanny valley so that it was a little bit creepy. But it was entertaining and certainly a lot better than many other Christmas films around.

I started this when we had a bit of a cold snap, thinking listening to people in slightly colder conditions than me would make me feel a bit better. This is one of those adventure thrillers that has a deep underlying mystery about it but you’re so busy going through the rollercoaster of dangerous situations you don’t have much time to think about whodunit. This has many elements I love, most being the perils of travelling on a submarine, but also the survivalist aspects of being near the poles. And ultimately it’s a great thriller ride right to the end.

This is a lovely gentle little movie about people finding the meaning of Christmas in connecting with other people. At first, you’re really uptight with all the commuters and thinking there’s no way this party can work, but gradually as the film unwinds, you start to relax into it too. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to talk to commuters all of a sudden, but it’s a great message not to judge people as you never know what’s going on in their lives.

Terrible, terrible film! The guy is basically one step away from being a serial killer, and the woman is completely unflexible and holding a grudge for something that didn’t really sound like much of a problem at all. The film spends a good 15 minutes in the American sunshine, which is never ideal for when you want a Christmas movie, but it does eventually get near the festive season.

This time last year, I wrote a quick review of the first series of Acapulco which was good and bright and fun, and exactly what we needed in the dark winter months. The second series has just finished being released on Apple TV+ and I had to come back to say this new collection of ten episodes is even better than the first.

This is another take on the Shop Around the Corner/You’ve Got Mail story where people are rivals in real life and falling in love via their writing - this time it’s app messaging. That part of it was kinda fun, it’s a good storyline and they update it quite well. The leads do better when they’re bickering than when they’re getting on, but that’s okay. The other part of it is the whole business side, which I think is a fundamental flaw to the whole movie.

Ah, this was a pretty dull movie, to be honest. It started okay, looked like it might have something interesting about it, but then it felt like all the threads that were set up didn’t go anywhere. What was the point of the viral video? And what was the big deal about the dad knowing before the girl about the casting? For a movie about dance, there wasn’t a lot about dancing. All a bit odd. The only chemistry in the movie was between father and daughter - because they are real life father and daughter! The rest is completely forgettable.

I’ve been on the Sarah Morgan festive book train for a couple of years, and enjoyed them. This one was another very good Christmas rom-com, with a family coming together with very different viewpoints and learning to forgive and respect each other’s choices. I liked the story, I liked that the big confusion of Lucy’s arrival was actually dealt with quite quickly and just set up everything that happened next rather than being a big plot point. I did think some of the dialogue was a bit clunky and it was a little bit drawn out in places, but these are minor complaints for another entertaining read.

Yay, a new and decent Christmas rom-com. This one took a minute to get going, at first I wasn’t sure either of the characters were going to be engaging (she was getting excited about Eureka lemons, etc) but it didn’t take long for the action to get going and their real personalities to shine through. I thought the lead two had brilliant chemistry, to the point that it felt so confusing what they saw in their other partners. But a great journey to get them together, even if his phone forgetfulness was just a little bit contrived to help up the stakes. Otherwise, perfect, and with a Say Anything reference at the end, too.

A batch of proper cheesy Christmas movies appeared on iPlayer and with a spare ninety minutes, I figured it couldn’t hurt to watch one of these babies for free. This one was actually pretty respectable for a Hallmark movie, although not a patch on some of the better festive rom-coms we’ve watched. Some of the story choices didn’t really make sense, and the sentimental nature of it sometimes veered into irritating, but the male lead was great and I think they had the beginnings of some good chemistry.

I think I liked this more than the previous one, although it’s all still more of the same - these stuffy British characters trying to hold their own in an era of servants and class that is quickly dying out. But I did like the mystery of the Countess, and I thought the silent film turning into a ’talkie’ and that being a threat to the stars was really interesting. A good couple of hours, I hope they do more!

Ripped through this in super quick time, the 13th book in the Jessica Daniel series. I loved that it was a sort of standalone, concentrating on one story - the disappearance of Bex - and in one new location - Blackpool rather than Manchester. Lots of new characters appeared as Jessica couldn’t resort to the usual gang and it was an interesting mystery that worked itself out really well. The author sums up this story afterwards by calling it the end of Jessica’s second season, so I might pause my reading there until we know what the future of this series is going to be.

Another good entry into the Jessica Daniel canon, with our hero pulled into a secret investigation over some crimes that may be a copycat or may be a prisoner just released back into society. I liked the growth of relationships in this one, with Jessica working closer with her new superior and of course relying on Izzy and Dave to do a lot of the legwork. There are moments of danger for the wider group but it all comes good in the end, with another clifthanger right at the last moment to leave me diving into the next book.

Agatha Christie’s second book features the duo Tommy and Tuppence who I hadn’t heard of before, really, and at first thought it sounded like some kind of Enid Blyton kid’s adventure. Of course it’s not that. I liked the set up, and how these two sort of fall into an adventure by accident, or simply by not saying things they know and managing to bluff their way on things they don’t know. The stakes get higher and the back and forth and whereabouts of everyone gets more confusing, but it comes to a happy ending and I enjoyed the ride!

I’m going to be honest, going into this final I really wasn’t very excited. Two of the four finalists weren’t my favourites. I feel like they’ve all been so good at the dances that we’re not going to learn much by seeing the same dances over again. And we all knew right from the start that Hamza was going to win. The guy was trending first thing in the morning, it was never going to go another way.

This has to be the album of the year in terms of classic songs being brought back into the modern consciousness - thanks Stranger Things. It had to be the one I closed the year on. Kicking off with Running Up That Hill is a brave move as it is an absolute tune, but the rest does stand up. The album is in two halves - purposely - with the first being a collection of great songs and singles. The second half is a bit more of an experimental work, a woman falling through the ice and experiencing… something. I was less enamoured with that but actually considering it’s a bit out there, I liked it.

This album came out of nowhere for me, I wasn’t expecting it at all and it’s come right at the last minute for the album adventure. And I loved it! So, so, SO GOOD. Every song is an absolute tune and it manages to try lots of different styles without being too much of a ‘just pick one and pipe down’ hotchpotch of things. There’s a bit of George Ezra, Imagine Dragons, Sam Smith, all sorts in there, but it’s also its own thing with Sam’s incredible vocals. A contender for the top five, right at the last minute!

I finished watching the third series of Staged recently and I’ve been trying to decide how I feel about it to be able to write this post. The truth is, I don’t know how I feel about it. Oh, it was good, obviously. In Simon Evans we trust, because this was another series that subverted the format of the previous two and added an extra layer of complexity and ‘how much of what we’re seeing do we believe’ and who is going to guest star this time?

I loved this. A short collection of essays by the author about the joys and horrors of Christmas, and particularly about those horrors that are really joys and you would miss if they weren’t there. They’re written so well to really bring you into the moment. I can completely imagine the swimming pool situation - Santa in a swimming pool is such a weird concept. And the endless obsessions over the moistness of a turkey. Brilliant. Just a great read and so easy to get through in one sitting.

There’s not really a lot to say about this, it’s just the TV show for an extended period of time. These are characters that are so beloved and they all go on a little adventure both above and below stairs. It’s nice, charming, the cast do what they do best, and I quite enjoyed it.

I’m racing through these Jessica Daniel books, having picked the series up again after a long break. This one featured a handful of different crimes again, with the main focus being on a prison break and the effects that flow out from that specific moment in time. I found it a little bit hard to follow in the middle but of course, it’s the main characters and how they interact that really keeps you reading - the camaraderie, and of course, keeping up with what’s going to happen next!

This is such a weird movie. It feels like it’s trying to be a comedic take on the cheesy Hallmark movies, but it doesn’t quite do enough with that to make you sure that’s the aim. What it does do, though, is lead you on as though it is a cheesy movie and then suddenly someone says something completely startling and unexpected that just can’t help be funny. I liked it, it was really entertaining. I don’t know that I could recommend it and it’s certainly not going to be one that is watchable over and over for Christmas forever. But it was a great experience.

Semi-finals and two dances each, this week is a real challenge. Although technically the dances had a bit more time due to the earlier than usual scheduling last weekend and the later than usual scheduling this weekend. Thank goodness it’s the final next week so we can stop getting sompletely confused about what day it is. On with the dances! Fleur & Vito - Paso Doble Shirley: “Fleur, Paso Doble, and Vito. That has got to be a winning combination.” It’s good but it felt like a long 90 seconds. We had a chat about Moloko instead. Too much power to my eyes, but Anton said it was her best dance so far.

This was a nice, cosy Christmas read, As per the traditional rom-com Christmas story, the girl who fled to the city has come home to face up to her family and her past.. and find love along the way. I liked this because although some elements of it were really predictable, it didn’t all happen in the way I was expecting. The pair were happy by mid-way through the book so then something was bound to come and split them up for a bit but what was it… and then the whole parentage thing. A good read.

I can hardly believe it but today, 12th December, marks my 20th anniversary of blogging. Two decades of me blathering on about TV and books and films and baking and the moon and any other inane thought that comes into my head. It’s been an absolute rollercoaster of a ride and there’s still so much more to write about and discover.

My new year goal for 2022 was to complete some 30 day challenges, try out some new things, get some habits forming, generally be industrious throughout the year. I completed 11 30 day challenges some of which have formed habits which have stuck, some of which I never want to revisit again, and some which were good but probably need another go. I think it’s been a really successful year and something I might try again in 2023. Until then, though, and having taken December off from a specific challenge, it seems like a good time to reflect on what I did achieve this year.

This is a perfectly fine retelling of A Christmas Carol, great voice cast, good enough songs, nice animation. But it doesn’t really add anything to the Dickens universe, there’s not a lot new or exciting about it. I feel like at this point, the story has been done so often that you need to add something to it or have a unique take on it to make it worthwhile. This is fine, but there are other better ones to watch. (Muppets!)