In September we finally got to go away on our three-times rearranged holiday and we were lucky to have really good weather!

What I have read

I didn’t read a lot – I took my Kindle on holiday and attempted to read Gone Girl having seen the film. I read 4% that whole week and barely even finished the Sabrina the Teenage Witch book I found in the holiday house. Despite that I am on 94/100 books this year, which is 20 ahead of schedule.

• Alice in Wonderland: A Puzzle Adventure – Aleksandra Artymowska
• Night Witch (Rivers Of London Graphic Novel #2) – Ben Aaronovitch
• How to Argue With a Racist: History, Science, Race and Reality – Adam Rutherford
• Milady’s Dragon – (Sabrina the Teenage Witch #38) – Cathy East Dubowski
• The New Big Noddy Book (#6)
• Going Green – Nick Spalding
• Prue Theroux the Cool Librarian – Gillian Rubinstein
• The Julius House (Aurora Teagarden #4)
• Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn
• Best Foot Forward – Adam Hills

And I’m currently reading:

• Come Again – Robert Webb

What I have watched

• Hollyoaks, Only Connect, and the first in another new series of Taskmaster
• I finally finished all the episodes of Hoarders that were on Amazon Prime and moved onto the CBBC adaptation of Hetty Feather.
• We only managed one Tuesday night movie this month and it was Raising the Bar (another terrible gymnastics movie) but on holiday we watched Quiz Show.
• I missed the last few nights of the Paralympics when we went away so after I came back I watched the episodes of The Last Leg which I had recorded.
• The newest Tomb Raider film. I didn’t know that they had rebooted that film franchise but it was strange watching it, as it’s based on one of the more recent games, and I had watched Ewan play enough of it for it to be oddly familiar.

What I have done

Well, obviously we had our holiday – did I mention we went on holiday?

We stayed near Portsoy on the north-east coast of Scotland, in between Aberdeen and Inverness. While we were away we:

• Visited a lot of beaches. Namely Portsoy, Cullen, Spey Bay, Macduff, and Portknockie and Sandend. Some were sandy, some were stony, some had rockpools. At Cullen and Spey Bay we saw seals, and also at Cullen we found crabs, little fish and lots of anemones. At Macduff we gathered a whole load of sea glass and bits of pottery, and a few bits of rubbish – we also did some litter picking on both our trips to Spey Bay which Brodie really enjoyed! At Sandend my sister and I braved a sea swim (it was a really warm day!) and I found a starfish in the shallows.
• Visited the Moray Motor Museum, the Macduff Aquarium, Little Treasures Toy Museum, and the Gordon Castle walled gardens – one of the oldest and largest working walled gardens in the UK. On the way home we stopped in at Wynford Farm Park for lunch, a play and to feed the animals.
• Explored some former railway lines – in Portsoy and the impressive viaducts at Cullen.
• We had ice creams a couple of times and got fish and chips our last night (as is our tradition – less washing up to do when you have to pack up as well).

Back at home we:

• Finally picked the veg we had been growing on the window ledge for months, the crop was not impressive!
• Visited our local transport museum for its special bus event, and again for their steam day.

What I have bought

Cullen had four vintage/antique shops which is a lot considering how small a place it is. I was excited to explore them so made a special return trip on a Thursday when I knew they’d all be open.

I spotted one or two Noddy bits and pieces in them, but my best finds were in the book room of the ‘Antiques and salvage yard’ shop.

I bought the Bom Annual (my first Bom book) for £1 which was an absolute bargain and a the 6th Big Noddy Book for £5. I put back a copy of Mr Pink Whistle’s Party as I already had a copy, even if it wasn’t the soft-cover with the lovely artwork.

Tangentially related to Blyton I also bought a copy of a 1952 guide book for St Andrews as that’s exactly when Julian, David, Sally Darrell and Anatoly were at university.

In another shop I also bought the first Trixie Belden mystery which is a series suggested by Sean who has reviewed some of the Bobbsey Twins mysteries for us.

What has your month looked like?