Welcome to Issue #39

It’s been a minute since my last post, and even longer since I wrote anything other than snappy film reviews. So what’s been going on?

Baby

The last time I revealed we have a baby boy was just under three months ago, when he was a wee 1-month old. By my calculations that makes him… 4 months old and he’s changed sooo much in that time. Reading back that previous blog post, it sounds like he had just started smiling, whereas now we have full blown grins and laughs all day every day. He seems to be such a happy baby and it’s lovely watching him slowly grow and finding new skills to master every week.

At the time of writing, his latest tricks include:

• Blowing raspberries

• Properly lifting his head up during tummy time

• Bringing his hands together, grabbing objects them and bringing them straight to his mouth

• Proper laughs, rather than squeals of delight

It’s mad to think he weighs more than double since bringing him home, although we can believe it from how tiring it is carrying him around all the time. He still struggles to sleep without a lot of support, by which I mean he wants to be held and will wake up from naps or at night if he’s put down. Some nights are better than others, and this mini heatwave we’re having in September certainly isn’t helping.

Work

This will come as news to some of you, but I was made redundant earlier this year. The timing was quite nice in that it happened just before the baby was born and a month before our wedding. It meant I was able to sort all the wedding prep and have been at home to help out, effectively taking over the household chores and being around during the days to give my wife lots of breaks.

I received a fair redundancy package and have been lucky enough not to be desperate to find work immediately, but over the last ~month I really started to focus on my next move. I updated the content and template of my CV to bring it into the modern era, had a good think about what I actually wanted to do next and started applying for anything which looked interesting.

I’ve had a few interviews although unfortunately haven’t yet been made any offers. There are a couple more interviews lined up, but I’m not feeling particularly hopeful; part of the ‘what I want to do next’ thought process resulted in a decision to change career paths and it’s proving tricky finding a role for which I’m qualified, but isn’t an entry level salary. I’ll keep looking.

Films

I’ve seen ten more films in the last month and I’m not in the mood to play catch up to review them all. Here are some of the high/low lights:

• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 - I thoroughly enjoyed the ending to this trilogy. Possibly as good as the first, definitely better than the second. Every character gets their moment to shine and a definitive ending. 9/10

• They Cloned Tyrone - Interesting sci fi comedy mystery set in the context of a drug dealer living in a poor American suburban neighbourhood. It gets a little lost in the final third, but refreshing to see something so original. 8/10

• The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent - An action comedy starring Nicolas Cage as…. Nick Cage. It’s knowingly bonkers, constantly breaking the metaphorical 4th wall as the actor becomes tied up in an undercover CIA mission. Pedro Pascal gets just as much screen time and is fantastic. It’s funny, silly and well worth a watch. 8/10

• Super Mario Bros. Movie - Terrible. I played the games as a kid and I still didn’t like it. Boring story, not funny, felt like a badly written computer game. 3.5/10

Allotment

Autumn is right around the corner and the heat wave we’re having in the UK this week, may well be the last of any hot weather this year. It’s been an odd year for growing produce as June was very hot and very very dry, while July and August were relatively wet and cold. The result being a lot of my plants shot up early and those which needed sustained sun (tomatoes and corn), took a long time to get to where they needed.

Runner Beans - I don’t seem to have many picture of these, but they did really well. Grew to about 7-8 feet high and I’ve been harvesting them for probably the last 6 weeks. They’re just starting to slow down now.

Corn - This is the second year we’ve attempted it. Last time was a failure where the plants just didn’t grow big enough, but it’s been a huge success this time around. We initially sow them indoors, and planted out after maybe 4-6 weeks of growth and once any risk of frost had passed. Once outdoors, the plants grew quickly and we’ve got 2-3 corn on approximately 10 plants. The one pictured below I ate last night and was the first one I’ve tried. Genuinely delicious!

Courgettes - These seem so easy to grow. As long as the plant survives being put outside, they grow so quickly. During July we had a real glut, with 2-3 courgettes ready to harvest most days. It’s lucky I like eating them. They don’t really taste of much but are good at filling out a sauce, curry, stir fry, etc, and taking on the flavour.

Tomatoes - these have been a pain and probably suffered most with the summer weather I described earlier. They’re producing now, although I think some of the plants which were late to be sown, just won’t get there. The six pictured below were the first and these are the ones we are now able to harvest, but there’s another seven not pictured which weren’t put out until a month later and I kept delaying it with the bad weather in July.

Potatoes - My first time growing potatoes and they seemed pretty straightforward. The plants grew quickly and as advised by my neighbour, I ridged them up to try to encourage more growth. I’ve harvested just under half of them and have maybe 3-4kg of potatoes so far, so they give a good crop.

Red Cabbage - My allotment neighbour kindly offered me a spare plant, I grew it and turned it into a braised red cabbage and apple dish, as pictured below!

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Thanks for reading and have a great week.

Adam