After months of dreary rain, cold, and high winds, I finally found some days suitable for flying my drone. The first attempt was just me on my own, down at Wytch Cross to get the hang of it. As I managed that without any disasters, I went down to Arundel to meet up with our daughter and her drone, so she could give me some flying tips. It was OK, but a very hot day so I was only wearing a summer mesh jacket on my bike and the heavens opened when it was time to go home, so I ended up soaked.

The week after that, Jayne and I were visiting family in Hastings and Hurst Green, and on the way back we stopped off at Alfriston. All the car parks in the village were full (next time I will go on the bike!) but we found a car park just South of the village, overlooking the valley, and had another go at flying from there.

Both times I took a few photos and some videos. The videos are below. Not brilliant, but acceptable as first attempts. I need to get out again and play with camera setting I think.

Apart from those trips out to play with the drone, I did get out of the house quite a bit in June. The highlights were a family wedding in Essex, a few days in Glasgow for work, and a record fair in Horsham.

The Glasgow trip was quite eventful. I was up there when West Ham were playing in the Europa Conference cup final and ended up watching that on my phone because the hotel TV didn’t have sports channels. I was supposed to return on the last flight on the Thursday but it kept getting delayed and delayed until it was eventually pushed back to Friday morning. EasyJet arranged a hotel for us and a fleet of taxis to take us there. The taxi driver was actually from Newham originally, so there was lots of talk about the game, before I ended up back at the same hotel I had been staying in for two nights. Not only that, but I got given the same room I had checked out of that morning!

It was a bit of a drag because I got there around midnight and would have to be up by 6am to get taxi back out to the airport the next morning, so no chance of breakfast. On the plus side, I did end up getting a £230 compensation payment from the airline for the delay.

My sudden deafness from the end of May was not cured by eardrops, so I had to resort to going for microsuction, which was a bit unpleasant but well worth it. I could immediately hear properly and the earache and tinnitus both faded over a day or so. As a bonus, I can now sleep comfortably on my left-hand side again. That has been a problem for months. Obviously that wax was building up for quite a while before it reached a tipping point into deafness.

Big news of the month: I actually had some alcoholic drinks! While I was at the family wedding I had a couple of half pints of fruit cider, and then later in the month I bought the DVD of John Wick 4 and had a large pina colada to go with my popcorn while Jayne and I watched it.

So what else? A few car journeys for family visits, and I even got behind the wheel myself – only for about 100 metres to get the car from the car park. I did do nearly 200 miles on the motorbike during the month though.

In terms of culture, I read 8 books; 6 fiction ebooks, 1 non-fiction ebook, and an actual hardback novel. I don’t have much space for ‘proper’ books now, but I could not resit getting the new Ambrose Parry book in hardback, to go with the others. I picked up 9 albums at the Horsham record fair for £30, which was a good result.

I only watched one film – the John Wick, as mentioned. As expected there was an enormous body count by the end of it, and Donnie Yen had a really interesting variation on the Zatoichi-type character. It took a few small liberties with Paris geography, but was thoroughly entertaining. My only problem with the John Wick films is wondering why Lovejoy is running a hotel for assassins. Well, that and wondering how the economics work, because the only people the assassins seem to kill are other assassins, of which there is an apparently endless supply.

Apart from that, I watched another 2 seasons of Bosch on Amazon Prime and that is about all I watched on TV apart from the routine stuff like Pointless and some of the Glastonbury sets. The highlight of that was obviously Elton John, but I also caught up with Manic Street Preachers, Arctic Monkeys, Amadou & Mariam, Guns N Roses and Sparks. I will try and catch up with a few more in the iPlayer before they all disappear. Probably Cat Stevens, Lizzo and Billy Nomates first and then see what else is there.

The only downer for June was that my winning streak on the Premium Bonds came to an end. After getting £50 for three months on the trot, there was nothing in June. Just a £10 consolation on the postcode lottery.