Review of 2024

 

Every year I seem to start my review with some photos of the garden. It must be that all the borders are so bare this time of year, it's nice to look back to when they were full of flowers. The photo above is from the end of June. I planted dahlias too early in the bedding border, and most were eaten before they became established. They were replaced with some verbena.

My favourite flower is still the rose Blue for You.

We had two good holidays. Buxton in June.

And Chichester at the end of September. We will always remember the polo at Cowdray Park on our way down.

The circular routes that I can walk from the house that I wrote about this time last year have continued in 2024. Then in February I set out to trace the route of Wendover Brook from it's source to where it joins Bear Brook, all on my post of 18th February.

I have only been to the theatre twice this year. Redlands at Chichester and The Buddha of Suburbia at the Barbican. But there have been some plays shown live in cinemas with more next year. This year I cancelled my subscription for Cineworld in Hemel Hempstead, it's just too far to drive there and back. The Odeon in Aylesbury does not have the same choice of film, but The Rex in Berkhamsted has movies that do not have a release in the main chains. Here I saw a few marvellous films including Perfect Days, my favourite film of the year. 

In this week's Culture magazine in The Sunday Times, film critic Tom Shone picked his thirteen best films of the year. Somehow I had seen ten : The Holdovers, The Fall Guy, The Wild Robot, The Taste of Things, Twisters, Civil War, Challengers, All of Us Strangers, Drive Away Dolls and Poor Things. Inside Out was for children, The Bikeriders did not appeal and The Promised Land that I can watch on iPlayer. My film studies have included some excellent series on Sky Arts including Classic Movies, Art of Film, Powell and Pressburger and Classic Art and Cinema. 

I look forward to Sight and Sound Magazine every month, however I had only seen twelve of their top fifty films of the year, although most of these have never been on general release. Their Number one was All We Imagine As Light and if I wanted to see it, I would have to go to the Rex in Berkhamsted in January. We also made a visit to the BFI Archive for their Heritage Open Day in September. My favourite book of the year was Ann Patchett's Tom Lake.

Finally, back to the garden and particularly the lawn. Having dispensed with the services of the totally unreliable Green Thumb, the Pro Kleen products were a success. Their iron sulphate worked a treat on the moss (even the very far end looked better) and their Grass Green fertilizer was perfect.

I started this Blog in December 2006, eighteen years ago to coincide with my retirement at the age of 62. Having reached my eightieth birthday five days ago, I hope to keep posting for some time yet.