Hi, all. Sorry for the wait. Here’s some things i’ve watched and (mostly) enjoyed since August. Hope you enjoy.

Films watched

• Michael Sarnoski’s Pig (2021): Nicolas Cage. (B-)
• Cary Joji Fukunaga’s No Time to Die (2021): Having never seen a James Bond film before, i have to say i enjoyed it, even if the artsy-fartsy cinema i saw it at wasn’t the ideal venue for a massive blockbuster. A racist gets kicked into a vat of acid; what more do you want? (C+)
• Lana and Lily Wachowski’s The Matrix (1999): The most 1999 movie to ever 1999 its way onto the screen. It suffers somewhat from its own success; i’d heard so much good about it that, even though by technical standards i could of course tell it was a good film, i still found myself somewhat underwhelmed by the ending. (B)
• Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: _{Part One} (2021): I got the immersive experience by really needing to go to the toilet about halfway through and having no idea when the film was going to end. Amazing visuals, amazing scope, amazing score, i did not feel a single emotion. (B)
• Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch (2021): Part two of an unexpectedly Timothée Chalamet-filled day at the pictures. It’s another Wes Anderson film! If you like Wes Anderson, you’ll like this. If you don’t, you won’t! There is nothing more i can say about this except that the projector was slightly broken and cut off the top 10% of the frame. (B)
• Mary Harron’s American Psycho (2000): Me and a group of friends watched this over Discord for laughs and generally memed our way through it — and yet, even among our decidedly unserious, Scorcese-killing atmosphere, we were all genuinely fucking terrified at the chainsaw scene. A masterclass in tension and subtle comedy. (A+)
• Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man (2002): Watched with friends over Discord. It feels like i’m throwing an axe at someone’s altar here, but good fucking heavens, this movie was laaaame. It ticks off basically every cliché on the list, with seemingly no self-awareness… i’ll admit, though, i did have fun on a purely campy level. (C-)
• John McTiernan’s Die Hard (1988): An absolute thrill-ride from start to finish. Every time you think it can’t get any more extreme, it does. “No shit, lady, do i sound like i’m ordering a fucking pizza‽” (A)
• Brian Henson’s The Muppets Christmas Carol (1992): Greatest Christmas film ever made. (B-)

Music listened to

• Sam Fender’s Seventeen Going Under: I’m naturally biased as a Geordie boygirl myself, but the second i heard this, it went straight to the top of my album-of-the-year rankings — and it’s not even a contest. (A+. Best track: “Seventeen Going Under”)
• Lucy Dacus’s Home Video: No spoilers, but the closing track? Ye Gods, did the closing track give me a teary eye. (A. Best track: “Triple Dog Dare”)
• Underscores’ Fishmonger: A fascinating fusion of hyperpop and pop-punk. It’s patchy in a few places, and the repeated samples got on my nerves, but i’m excited to see what this band(?) does next! (B-. Best track: “Spoiled Little Brat”)
• Sigur Rós’s Takk…: I love it. I really do — but i found myself having to take breaks every so often because lead singer Jónsi’s falsetto came dangerously close to giving me a migraine. (B. Best track: „Hoppípolla”, natch)
• Some interesting stuff from the Isle of Wight-based band Wet Leg, dripping with wit and sardonic vocals. Can’t wait for the album!
• I went to my first concert since, you know, the thing. All glory to Elbow.

Other recent minutiæ

• I’ve been taking up sketching in my journal to ease the brain. I’m not anywhere near good enough to be posting anything on here — trust me — but it’s just nice to have a creative outlet. :)
• I went on a brief jaunt out to the old Roman temple at Benwell, but to tell the truth, there wasn’t enough interesting about it to turn it into a full post. I did, funnily enough, pass about five different religious denominations on the bus there — a church, a mosque, a gurdwara, a Hindu temple, and a Hare Krishna society.
• Storm Arwen absolutely fucked parts of Northumberland. My neck of the woods was largely unscathed, but the next town over didn’t fare so well — they didn’t have power for about a week.
• There were a couple of Barbadians interviewed on Radio 4 about the country’s transition to a republic, and it rather struck me how similar their dialect is to our West Country accent.
• You simply must listen to this poor woman’s Aspidistra getting absolutely roasted on Gardeners’ Question Time. It’s at about 10 minutes in.
• Now that the nights are getting longer again, it’s getting to be good weather for stargazing. I really must get myself out to that observatory in Wark again at some point…

Relevant pictures (and one audio file) from jaunts out

As the month winds up and summer draws to a close, it's time again for the menstrual (not that kind!) look back on the month that was.

Films watched

• Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) — I want to live inside of this film, and if that is not possible, i will somehow find a way to hang the entire thing on my wall. A strong contender for my second favourite film ever. (A+)
• Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009) — You do have to wonder if their German and French was actually any good. (A)
• Ilya Naishuller’s Nobody (2021) — A good action film with fun setpieces which i’ll probably forget i ever watched. (C)
• James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad (2021) — I went to the cinema for the first time since the pandemic began to watch this — I think i would have taken just about anything! (B)

Albums listened to

• The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band — I am not entirely sure i could give this album an objective ranking after all these years of it being talked up, so, uh, (Classic/10) [Best track: A Day in the Life]
• Chvrches’ Screen Violence — It’s.... fine, i guess? Not their best, not their worst. (C) [Best track: Better If You Don’t]
• Lucy Dacus’s Home Video — Beautiful. Just beautiful. (B+) [Best track: Triple Dog Dare]
• Green Day’s American Idiot — By the end of it it all starts sounding a bit same-y. (C+) [Best track: American Idiot]
• Will Wood’s The Normal Album — Chaotic good. (A-) [Best track: I / Me / Myself]

Miscellaneous photos and videos

My apologies for the delay. I knew i’d forgotten something!

Music listened to and TV watched

• Bo Burnham’s Inside: A strong candidate for my favourite Thing of 2021. It is, frankly, unfair that one man can make me feel so many emotions in the span of an hour and a half — loved almost every minute of it! (That song about sexting does drag on a bit, though…) (A+)
• Wolf Alice’s Blue Weekend: Bloody brilliant. (A)
• Beabadoobee’s Our Extended Play: Yeah, this’ll do for new music from The 1975 while we wait for that Drive Like I Do compilation album. (B+)
• Haim’s Days Are Gone: Didn’t really do much for me. Some alright singles, though! (C-)
• Porter Robinson’s Nurture: After months of promising i’d listen to it in full when i got my hands on the vinyl, i finally admitted to myself that it was out of stock and i’d have to wait until August otherwise. It’s a pretty good album, but part of me wonders how i’d feel about it if i hadn’t worn the singles to death already… (B)
• Euro 2020: I’d never really thought myself the football fan type. Nevertheless… come on England!!

Most viewed pages on the site last month

1. Index page: 256 views
2. Linkroll: 136 views
3. The Garden (index page): 65 views
4. About the author: 46 views
5. Things to do before i die: 28 views
6. Music i like: 26 views
7. What i believe: 25 views
8. Toaster shade generator: 24 views
9. Songs i have cried my silly little heart out to: 20 views
10. There Are Two Continents: 20 views

Most read posts on The Garden (in no particular order)

• Men, women, ha’men?
• Bog trotters, heart attacks, and a paranoid Auntie
• Our Christmas tradition
• Backslashes aren’t real (and other Ascii weirdness)
• Links for the 4^th of June

So this is June
and what have you done?
Another month over
a new one just begun

Films watched

• Guy Ritchie’s Snatch (2000) (A-)
• Barry Sonnenfeld’s Men in Black (1999): Ruthlessly efficient. Gets in and out in 90 minutes. (A-)
• Dreamworks’ Shrek (2001): Watched as it was meant to be seen, in the original Polish (C+)
• Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (1998): While sailing across the internet, i happened across a copy of the original draft of the script. It is so much darker, and so much weirder.
  • It’s set in a constructed version of New York City instead of a small town in Florida
  • He finds his own name in a dictionary
  • Truman threatens to kill a baby and it is played completely straight
  • Instead of ending when he disappears out the door it continues and he hijacks a tram and has a shoot-out on the roof of the studio????
  • He hires a prostitute to recreate his encounter with the girl who told him it was all a TV show
• Anyway, the cut that got released is a very good film to show to your friends who haven’t seen it before and watch their reactions. It’s also — for me personally — one of those Back to the Future-type films, where it’s all so immaculately put together that you can watch it over and over and there’s always something new to enjoy (A+)

Top 10 most viewed pages on the site this May

1. Index page: 219 views
2. Linkroll: 82 views
3. The Garden (front page): 59 views
4. Toaster shade generator: 46 views
5. About the author: 35 views
6. The log of changes: 26 views
7. Music i like: 21 views
8. Things i would like to add to my site: 20 views
9. What i believe: 16 views
10. Toaster: 15 views

The rest of the “primary” pages on my site (that is, those which aren’t part of any kind of regular series) are, in decreasing order of views, The foreſt of ſhrines, My coat of arms, Discord funny moments, the Marijn van Hoorn style guide, my bucket list, ‘There Are Two Continents’, the Gender Tetrahedron, interesting Wikipedia articles, yelling into the void, Heximal, the NEOcharts (RIP), Quotes and other assorted aphorisms, a calendrical table, My vinyl record collection, s → ſ, the log of dreams, my conlangs, noughts and crosses, ‘this’ll be on my videotape’, Kunstgalerie van Hoorn, A nicer ƿaȝ of ƿriting Engliſh, the Compendium of Good Words, country counting, and songs i have cried my silly little heart out to. Zero views were received by copypastables and holocene history, which… you know, fair enough, they’re both indescribably boring pages.

Top 5 most read entries on The Garden

1. Welcome to the new Garden
2. 7AM puzzles
3. Site statistics for April 2021
4. ‘Testing, testing… If this goes through, this should be my first successful blog post made from my phone.’
5. Links for the 22^nd of May

Top 10 countries where most people are reading from

1. The United States
2. The United Kingdom
3. Canada
4. France
5. India
6. New Zealand
7. Sweden
8. Germany
9. Hong Kong
10. Brazil