July was a strange sort of month and quite lonely for me really. I have been up in Scotland while Jayne was in Crawley working out her notice. In some ways I had the better end of the deal because I was in a fully-furnished house (well, no sofa yet but enough furniture for one person) while Jayne was in an increasingly bare house. On the other hand I was up here on my own, knowing nobody at all, while she had friends and family available.

It wasn’t all bad though. Jayne came up to visit and I got a lift back to England with her. I took a couple of days off work and got to experience the empty house for a couple of nights, then we both went out to Essex for my sister’s 60th birthday party. While I was back in Crawley I went down to the Harley dealers with Jayne so I could bring her back after she sold them her bike, and I dropped into the Crawley record fair for the last time. I was quite pleased to pick up a Stanley Clarke LP and a live LP by the Crusaders with BB King featured. After the weekend I flew back to Glasgow.

I saw quite a bit of Glasgow during the month. At the weekends I was taking full advantage of my bus pass and going into the city, where there is always something going on. One week it was an Orange Parade and a city full of My Chemical Romance fans in for a big concert, another week it was the Pride march, and another week it was the Merchant City festival – and some racist demonstrations. In my various trips I got to see the Kelvingrove Gallery and park, the Barras and Barrowlands, bits of the West End and generally did a lot of walking around. At the Merchant City festival I bought a book at a stall with lots of Glasgow walking routes, so future trips should be a lot more structured.

As it happened I was visiting all the record shops in the city to see which ones I might want to visit more regularly. I didn’t actually buy anything, except a few second-hand 70s and 80s LPs at Missing Records, but I now know where to go in the future. And where not to bother. I find that having a destination at least gives me an excuse to discover new places.

More locally, I also had a long walk through the woods and fields to end up at Dumfries House, which was a lot busier than expected. It turned out there was a dog and horse show which pulled in the crowds on what was a really warm day. I had intended to fly my drone there, but when I tried I realised that I had not installed the app for it when I changed phones. Such a shame because it was one of those rare (up here) days when it was bright and clear and not too windy.

With all that exploring to do I still got through a few books – 8 novels in the month. A lot of that was from reading on all those free bus journeys. It was a good month for books because I read the new Christopher Brookmyre book (a welcome return for Jack Parlabane) and the new Andrew Hunter Murray book.

Despite all the time knocking around in the house on my own I still didn’t get round to watching much TV. I did get sucked into the World Cup, despite my huge reservations about the whole thing, but apart from that the only programme I really watched was Ann Droid. It wasn’t as good as I had hoped it would be, but I did have very high expectations, and still enjoyed it.

Part of the reason for not watching TV was being busy sorting stuff out in the house, and having to do all the cooking, laundry and so on, but the main reason is the general enshittification of Virgin Media. We have the new fibre service instead of the old Tivo-based box and I really do not like it. I used to set up series links on the Tivo and then whenever I went to ‘My Recordings’ I could see everything I wanted to watch. The new watchlists are just not the same – and you can’t just fast forward through the ads. When I did turn on the TV I would just end up on one of the repeats channels watching old episodes of Mock the Week or Would I Lie to You, or rather half-watching them. It is now such a faff to remember what I might want to watch that its easier to just put on some podcasts and play a game of Age of Empires instead.

I did watch a film on Netflix though. Lou (2022 – 109 minutes). It was yet another of those retired spy/assassin/thief/special forces/whatever getting forced to do one last job or to rescue a relative or relative of an ex-colleague sort of films. For a change this does not feature Jason Statham.

I also dug out my DVD of Blow-Up (1966 – 110 minutes) and watched that. I bought it ages ago with good intentions and never quite got round to it. It must be nearly 50 years since I last watched it as part of film studies at school. Seeing on a TV was not quite the same as on the big screen – even if our big screen was just a 16mm print on the school projector. As is so often the case I was amazed by the slow pace of it compared to modern films, You really have to immerse yourself in it and let it develop (pun intended, as it is all about a photographer developing his film). Watching it from a modern perspective you spend half the film marvelling at the sheer lack of traffic in London back then.

I suspect I am going to be digging out more of my DVDs from now on.

At the end of the month I flew back down to Gatwick for a family barbeque, knowing that in August I will finally have some company up in Scotland. I just hope that I have not got into too many routines that will be disturbed by having somebody else around.

One nice little surprise was that, despite me cashing in a lot of my Premium Bonds to go towards buying the house and refreshing the kitchen, I still managed to get a £125 win from the few bonds left.

I have given up on trying to keep track of how much I drive now. It was easy in Crawley where I was within walking distance of work, the town centre, supermarkets and other shops and would only get behind the wheel once a month or sometimes not at all. Now I am in a village miles from anything I expect to have to drive a lot more – though I will try to use the bike where possible and the buses when time allows. Going into the office is a 45-minute drive or a 2.5 hour, 3-bus journey on public transport!