Kickstarted this month with my step-dad coming to visit, his first visit since my Mum died so I was a little nervous as they spent a lot of time down here in the past, but it turned out to be a really enjoyable time. 9 hours roaming from Old Portsmouth into Southsea where we visited the Spice Island Inn, Still & West, The Sally Port Inn, and The Barley Mow, all of which were lovely pubs, however the Sally Port really called to me and I had a great time there. It was good to get this social time in with him and it really means a lot that he made the effort to come all this way as driving along the south coast is such a pain!

My pre-order of the Wet Leg Moisturizer vinyl arrived and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it, I also found the front cover of it to be fantastic and really enjoyed looking at it. I also booked tickets to see them perform at the Portsmouth Guildhall in November - very excited by this! On the topic of music, another gig was added to the list for this year; The Wave Pictures who are performing in Reading, I’m quite looking forward to seeing them perform again, and also to visit Reading.

On the 10th of July we took a trip down to the New Forest in the van and camped out to avoid the heat, you can read more on my Ashurst Campsite entry.

Next month it’s my plan to host A Mighty Fine Summer Shindig, as I have been calling it, hopefully the first of an annual get together of friends. So this month has been about getting the garden sorted and taking down my child’s old ‘pirate ship’ which was way too young for them now anyway. It’s been quite an experience taking it apart and removing the concrete foundations, especially with the heat we’ve been having. However now it’s down it really does open up the garden; it was such a big climbing frame! I’m really looking forward to having friends from all walks of my life come together, and as said, hopefully it’ll be the first of many!

Finally settled on a car to replace the golf, so I’m now on the hunt for a Toyota Yaris Cross, I’m rather excited about the prospect of moving out of my 2007 VW Golf and into something with a few more modern day features, I’m also really excited about getting something that’s automatic so I can sleep behind the wheel (that’s what you do in an automatic, right?)

I ended up rejoining FEELD and subscribing. Long ago I used FEELD and did find some connections with people in a purely platonic way, they became good friends who shared the same core life principles as me, unfortunately those friendships didn’t last. Although I’ve lived in Portsmouth for a long time now, I don’t feel I’ve had the chance to make any close friends until recently, and I am missing the whole going out and having an open and non-judgemental natter with friends, we’ll see how this pans out.

Unfortunately we couldn’t get the whole gang over for board games night this month, however we had one over where we played some Takenoko (one of the house favourite games) and a case from the Sherlock Holmes board game. With it being just three of us it made for a more intimate setting and I feel I got to know James a lot better.

Since around 2019 I’ve been keeping records of my life off and on, and from about 2022 I’ve been keeping a daily diary running. This month I’ve started going through my old entries each day and tagging them into my current entries, it’s been a very interesting process looking back over the past 3 years in detail each day and has been quite enlightening. This month over the past three years has been quite a rough one, this has been the first year where the month has been relatively relaxed, hopefully it will continue this way through the years.

I also joined the “Holy Squad” this month and started drinking Holy Hydration and Holy Energy powdered drinks, obviously I turned this into a taste testing thing. The hope is that the hydration powder will help my child drink more water, and so far it’s working quite well. I also intend on using it for when I do my hikes as I used to use SIS tablets which did help with the hydration, but this powder seems to be more ‘natural’ and has a much bigger selection of flavours. So far the firm favourite of all of us is the White Peach, with my child favouring the much sweeter Sour Cherry.

Gaming

It has been too hot to do any real gaming this month, but I did manage to play some Helldivers II with a friend, which was good fun and so much better to play with company rather than solo. I’m enjoying the game as something to dive into every now and again, but I don’t think I could do a long session of it.

I’ve finished the 3.4 Honkai Star Rail questline, which, I will be completely honest, I am so confused by! I have no clue what’s going on. However I’ve finished building my two teams now and managed to get Sunday in the banner, he’s all kitted out and ready for when Acheron’s banner is back out as I’d like to E2 her and replace Cipher with Sunday. I’ve also been working through my backlog of underleveled characters to bring up to ascended 60 for the standard warp tokens, at this point I don’t need to grind materials for my main teams.

On a whim I downloaded the Wanderstop demo as I’m craving something casual, cosy, something to chill out doing and the demo did just that… To the extent that I bought the game the next day. Absolutely adoring this game and the message it sends; slow down, enjoy what’s around you, you don’t need to be working or being productive 24/7.

Deep Rock Galactic has been keeping me busy too this month, I played a bit with an old friend in our weekly sessions (although not so weekly this month due to life), and have been playing a little solo as it’s a game I do thoroughly enjoy. I have to say Helldivers II has taken a back seat as I’m preferring my time in DRG and Wanderstop. I’ve kind of come to a conclusion that I prefer more casual games and love a pause screen.

Excited for next month with Mafia: The Old Country; I’ve been a fan of Mafia before it became big, adoring the original, it was my GTA. In all honesty it will likely be a day one pick up, may even be a pre-order… Borderlands 4 is also on the horizon, however that won’t be a pre-order, I love Borderlands games, although the last two haven’t really been up to standard in my opinion, I’ll wait for the reviews on this one.

Movies & Shows

Westworld, Season 3 - What a terrible season, I honestly started falling asleep through many of them. It was fight scene after fight scene, with a lack of gripping substance compared to the previous two seasons. It has put me off going into the final season.

Severance, Season 1 - Fantastic sci-fi so full of twists and turns, rammed with silly humour, and absolute weirdness!

Jay & Silent Bob Reboot - So full of fun and silliness, it had me laughing out loud quite a few times.

Secret Level - Great shorts but really wasn’t my cup of tea, it felt very lacking unlike Love, Death & Robots.

Severance, Season 2 - Continues to be fantastic. The storyline, the characters, the cinematography is superb and it has been an utter joy to watch. Can’t wait for Season 3 to come out!

Westworld, Season 4 - Improvement on Season 3, but I’m sure I fell asleep through some of those episodes. Delores is such a bore! I feel Season 2 should have been the end to Westworld.

Tropic Thunder - Still a great comical movie that is superb, although not the sort of movie that would get made these days. It made fo a great cleanse after Westworld Season 4.

Poker Face, Season 2 - Consistently great through each episode. An interesting ending which hopefully opens up a whole new avenue in a future season?

Practical Magic - I wasn’t sure if I’d watched this before, and I hadn’t. Great movie and really felt like a witch movie where it was much more authentic to the craft than the usual Hollywood/Disney tripe.

West Wing, Season 1 - This is Min’s favourite show and I’ve never seen it so… We’re watching it and so far I’m so lost but enjoying the depth of that lost feeling. I wouldn’t normally watch something like this but it’s good to try new things, and so far I want to see it through. Upon completing Season 1 I wanted more as it took me through a rollercoaster of emotions, so much laughter, sadness, frustration, it’s fantastic.

West Wind, Season 2 - The start of this season has hit hard and fast and done an excellent job at showing the emotions of the characters.

South Park, Season 27, Episode 1 - After hearing so much about it recently I decided to give it a watch. It hasn’t changed in 20 odd years and is still stupid, but oh so fun and doesn’t hold any punches. Had a good laugh watching this episode.

Photography

Last month I bought myself a Canon EOS R10 and began jumping back into my college days (minus the dark room). I’m thoroughly enjoying trying to remember how to do things, but equally amazed by how much the automatic setting does. With the R10 I bought the RF-S 18-150mm F3.5-6.3 IS STM which was part of the camera kit, I figured this would be the ideal “jack of all” lens and it really has worked out as such, allowing me to take day to day photos, as well as settling it on the tripod and getting some lovely shots of the sky.

Before taking my camera out of the house the first thing I needed to do was to find a sensible way of transporting it, rather than just chucking it in my day bag, so I picked up the Osprey Camera Chest Rig. I’m a big fan of Osprey with my backpacks, quality is always superb, and I didn’t want to have a flashy ‘camera bag’ that screamed “Hey I have an expensive camera in here” so a subtle bag was high on my list. The idea of having it strapped to my chest via the straps or my backpack really appealed to me with the ease of access to the camera itself. However after it arrived I quickly stopped using it as a chest harness and instead added my own strap to use it as a shoulder bag, a bag to go in my bag, or attached it to my hip belt which I found much more comfortable. However the bag itself is superb and fits all I need in it; camera, two lenses, two batteries, battery dock.

I also joined the EOS Magazine which sent out the April - June issue, in it was a project by Jeremy Flint where he did a long weekend in Paris taking his camera and two lenses, these lenses were well out of my budget but they did get me thinking about my future trips; what would I need? When I go anywhere I like to pack light, so taking multiple lenses with me wasn’t an option, taking two, now that could work. So this month I ended up buying the RF-S 10-18mm F4.5-6.3 IS STM for the wide angle which I figure would be better for those landscape shots as well as when I’m out and about and need more in the frame at closer distances.

I did manage to put these two lenses to work while in Ashurst, however I found that the 18-150mm lens was much more to my liking as I preferred to focus in on the details, like a butterfly or bee. The 10-18 is much better at getting a wide sweep of a landscape, but on this particular walk there wasn’t a great deal of open space so I didn’t get to give it a proper test.

One of the things I’d always been fascinated was photos of the sky, in particular at night and specifically of the moon, so this month I purchased myself the RF 100-400mm F5.6-8 IS USM telephoto lens which was a bit of a pain to get a hold of. Originally I bought it in the Prime Sale but the delivery kept getting pushed back, and back, so in the end I cancelled and ordered from the London Camera Exchange, which came the next day. Unfortunately I’ve not had a clear enough night to give it a test, but have taken it for a few walks around the garden to snap some photos.

Some of my favourite photos from this month are below.