What a depressing month. I’m sure it did not rain all day, every day, but it really felt like that. It was certainly wet and miserable whenever it was a weekend so I didn’t get to go out on the bike at all, except for one short local ride just to make sure the battery stayed charged up. It was so bad that I even drove the car a couple of times, and my smartwatch app tells the story of me not going out for walks anywhere near as much as I should do, and have been doing.

All that not going out much should mean that I did a lot more reading and TV watching, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I have been getting a lot busier at work, knocking off later and later, and one weekend was lost to building a flat-pack wardrobe and moving furniture around in both bedrooms. As a result, I only read 8 books, although a couple of them were more ‘literary’. They get read more slowly than the thriller or crime books I have been reading, because they do generate a lot more thought or, in the case of Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, a lot more confusion about what the hell is going on.

I didn’t watch huge amounts of TV. Just the final season of Ghosts and the John Wick-related The Continental, which were both good in their own ways. I did start watching the new series of Brassic as well, but I am rationing that to only watch one episode per week when it is broadcast and not binge-watching the whole lot on demand. A very old school approach to TV, but its good to have something to look forward to.

I tried to make up for that by watching more films, and soon regretted that when I watched Bullet Train Down on Netflix. I expected it to be a trashy thriller, but it turned out to be a lot worse than that because it is one of those Asylum knock-off films. It does not even fall into the so-bad-its-good category. It is just plain bad. Bad writing, bad special effects, bad plot, bad casting and bad acting. The next night I re-watched the 1999 film Double Jeopardy, which felt like an Oscar-winner by comparison. After that I risked watching Plane, and that turned out to be very entertaining. It won’t win any awards, but its a fun watch.

My ridiculous vinyl-buying habit got a bit excessive in October, thanks to another trip down to Brighton, the first record fair for ages, and some too-tempting-to-resist offers on Amazon – like Judas Priest’s British Steel album for £8.75! I went to Brighton to look for something for Jayne’s birthday, but also came back with half a dozen albums. All cheap and second-hand, but all playable. I also got a bit carried away at the East Grinstead record fair, and because it was pouring with rain I took the car, so no worries about carrying records home on the bike. I came back with 9 albums, though it only cost £40 for the lot. The highlight was a Patrick Moraz solo album which I had never heard before but turned out to be extremely good.

So a miserable month, with the small consolation of some decent records to keep me busy during the winter, and the slightly larger consolation of a £250 win on the Premium Bonds!