June was a bit of an anti-climax after all the excitement of going over to Germany in May, but although I didn’t get as far as Cologne this month, at least I got out on my bike for more than just local trips.

I had a couple of 100+ mile days, one up to Essex and another down to Bexhill and Hastings, and quite a few more local errands like popping down to the chemist or to the record fair in Horsham. It was only an unfortunately-timed bout of illness that prevented another trip down to the coast at the end of the month.

As well as some biking I also did some car driving, not entirely by choice. Jayne broke her wrist at work and had a cast on, so I had to drive her to the supermarket. I also had to do even more cooking, and some ironing. I actually don’t mind ironing, but Jayne doesn’t like me doing it – too slow she reckons. There might be something to that, and it isn’t helped by my shoulder. Last year’s bike accident still plays up a bit and I find I can’t do much more than an hour of ironing at a time so it takes me several sessions over a few days to get through a load.

Aside from that, I bought probably more vinyl than I should because of the aforementioned Horsham record fair, a day trip to Brighton on the bus, and that bike trip down to Bexhill and Hastings. Amongst the haul was yet another Al Stewart album, bringing the total up to 7 now. I never would have predicted that my new collection would be so Al Stewart-heavy when I treated myself to that turntable for my 60th.

While listening to all that I got through another eleven books. Mostly continuing series of books, but there was one new (to me) author I took a chance on and greatly enjoyed; Mick Herron. I really liked his style of writing and think I will get stuck into his Slough House books, then I can take a dip into the TV series based on the books. It will get me some use out of the new Apple TV subscription I got for free through my bank.

To be honest, there isn’t a whole lot on Apple TV that really tempts me, but there are a couple of things, like Silo. Still, it could be worse. It could have been a free subscription to Disney+ which has even less to my taste. Part of the problem is that I am not a huge consumer of TV anyway. In June I watched the end of the Doctor Who series, and the end of the last ever Inside No. 9. I also binged on the new adaptation of Rebus. I really liked it, but it has so many changes from the books they might as well have just called it something different. It would still have been good, but I guess it wouldn’t have had such a draw.

The strange thing is that having watched Rebus, and read half the books, if you gave me a choice of seeing Edinburgh or going to Glasgow I would probably pick Glasgow.

I was a bit more voracious with film watching though. I actually watched three films in the month. Two were by-the-numbers, lone special forces type going up against gangs of redneck wrong uns films. The twist being that both were female leads. The other film was Under Paris, the film about mutant sharks being loose in the Seine. Of course it was ridiculous, but it was enjoyably ridiculous, even if the mayor who was insistent on not letting sharks get in the way of water-based festivities was a bit Jaws-y.

Finally, I am still not a millionaire, but I did manage to reach the milestone of winning at least something on the Premium Bonds for 12 months in a row. A whole year of winning! OK so it was only £225, which won’t change my life, but its better than a poke in the eye.

Now looking forward to next month. Mainly because it starts with a General Election. We should have a new government, but on a more personal level I won’t be getting piles of leaflets that need to be delivered within a week, and I might stop getting up to 6 emails a day from the Labour mailing list asking me to ‘just chip in’. If they will just stop sending all those begging letters I might re-instate the standing order donation that I used to make, but cancelled when Corbyn became leader.