After a long time with no holidays during the pandemic, we not only had a week away in September but also a weekend in October!
What I have read
October was another slow-ish month for reading. I started one I thought I would enjoy but have found it rather dull and difficult to get into, which has then had the knock-on effect of stopping me from picking anything else up for a while. Still, I reached (and exceeded) my goal of 100 books!
- Come Again – Robert Webb
- Five Go To Billycock Hill – reviewed here and here
- The Cornish Midwife (The Cornish Midwife #1) – Jo Bartlett
- The Library Book – Rebecca Gray
- 84 Charing Cross Road – Helene Hanff
- The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street – Helene Hanff
- Dead Over Heels (Aurora Teagarden Mysteries #5) – Charlaine Harris
And I’m currently reading:
- Tinker, Tailor, Schoolmum, Spy – Faye Brann
- Hidden Figures: The Untold Story of the African American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race – Margot Lee Shetterly
- Death of an Avid Reader (Kate Shackleton #6) – Frances Brody
What I have watched
- Hollyoaks, though I allowed about three weeks’ worth to build up on the Virgin box before binging my way through.
- Only Connect and Taskmaster
- I watched the rest of Hetty Feather and just could not get enough of it! Every episode ends with a preview of the next and it was so hard to turn off the TV. It was brilliantly acted and although it deviated quite a lot from the books after the first couple of series, it was still excellent and true to the characters.
- After Hetty Feather I began on the new adaptation of The Worst Witch. This is not as good or as well-acted but it has some amusing moments.
- We didn’t watch any moves on Tuesdays, instead we watched the last episode of the Spice Girls documentary that channel four were showing, and the BBC’s one-off of Spice Girls performances at the BBC. Then we started season two of The Baby-Sitters Club which has just landed on Netflix.
- Only Murders in the Building, which was very quirky but fun. I hope it does come back for a second season.
- The first Scream movie, seeing as it was Halloween. I don’t usually do horror/slasher films but I’ve seen this so many times I’m OK with it!
What I have done
- We had a weekend away in Aviemore, staving in an AirB&B for the first time. Thankfully it turned out to be a very nice little house as I was a bit nervous!
- While up there we visited The Highland Wildlife Park, Landmark and The Highland Folk Museum.
- Back at home we’ve visited our local museum (The McManus) twice, the V&A, and the Discovery. We also visited a funfair when it came to town, we spent a fortune but Brodie enjoyed most of the rides. (The ghost train and a faster spinning ride ended in tears).
- We did one of our favourite walks again which takes up past a stony little beach which is absolutely covered in sea-glass and pottery. The tide was in but I still collected loads. We also went for a woodland walk ending on a larger, sandy beach even though it was coats and wellies weather.
- We rode on the big Ferris wheel that comes to town during the holidays sometimes, and went for fancy desserts at Kaspa’s after.
- We decorated the house for Halloween, and I took Brodie to a special Room on the Broom story-telling and craft session at the library. We also collected twigs and a stick and made our own broom for teddy.
What has your month looked like?
Fiona
pippastef
worldofblyton
World of Blyton 
October and May are my two favorite months. The heat is finally gone (or has not yet started), no high humidity and being outdoors is fun.
Last year we went for a long weekend to Nantucket at the end of September. It was still too hot, it was too crowded and too loud. People didn’t obey social distancing at all. We were forced to avoid people getting too close to us over and over again which was pretty annoying.
So at the end of last year I started looking for a quiet place and remembered Popham Beach from Douglas Kennedy’s masterpiece “Pursuit of Happiness” which is mostly set in post WW II Manhattan and focuses on the unfortunate HUAC witch hunt, but has several beautiful chapters taking place at Popham Beach in Maine which is located near Bath and 5 kilometers long.
Popham Beach is next to Fort Popham at the mouth of the Kennebec River. As I have lived near the upper part of the Kennebec River when I immigrated to the US, I was curious to explore the Kennebec River mouth which we did with a boat tour (Autumn Lights Cruise) starting in Bath at the Maine Maritime Museum. On this tour we saw 6 light houses and two bald eagles. It was an incredible trip and I took 300+ photos. The Kennebec wilderness is very beautiful.
However, what thrilled me the most about Popham Beach other that it was very quiet at this time of the year were the 5 spectacular morning skies that I was able to catch on camera. The sky is usually the most beautiful 10 to 15 minutes before sunrise, so I took photos of different morning skies on 5 mornings, one was blue, one was pink, one was flaming red, one was golden and one was purple and the clouds looked like cotton balls pressed together.
After our week at Popham Beach I was busy with working on the 1.165 photos in PhotoScape (and I’m still not done, found some photos which I need to make smaller yesterday). So there was not as much time for reading as during the summer months when I read the most.
At the beach cottage I found an autobiography called “A Seal called André” by Harry Goodridge which was cute and had a happy ending (Gavin Maxwell’s “Ring of Bright Water” had a sad ending). I read another crime novel by Peter Robinson on DCI Banks which was as good as the previous sequels.
From the public library I read an excellent Gary Cooper biography by Jeff Meyers (Gary Cooper: American Hero). I thought I knew a lot about Cooper’s interesting life (he spent a lot of time in Europe and was born in the UK which I didn’t know), but learned a lot more.
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You certainly are a busy person. ♡
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Exciting news!
https://www.atvtoday.co.uk/186557-bbc/
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