May 22, 2012 – SparklyPrettyBriiiight

If you wandering the streets of Baku right now, anticipation welling up inside of you like day old dogs you really shouldn’t have eaten, you’ll know it’s less than 24 hours till the first semi-final takes place at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. But as the rehearsals have shown, the Continue Reading

Fire up the playlists and let the music fly free: My top 25 songs of 2024

(via Shutterstock) People often talk about music soundtracking their life but in my case, it really is what happens. I listen to music on the train. On the way to and from the train station. In shops. When exercising. When I need to just chill out and escape a very Continue Reading

Popcorn and wine and a comfy seat in the dark: My top 25 films of 2024

(via Shutterstock) This was a year in which I still watched a lof of films but where I was just as apt to watch them on a streaming platform as at a cinema. It’s not that I’ve fallen out of love with seeing movies out in the cinematic wild, and Continue Reading

Conquering the TBR like a mountaineer: My top 25 books of 2024

(via Shutterstock) I’m not going to sugarcoat – this has been a tough year. Not because someone died or my world imploded dramatically in some way; it just felt like all the pressures of work, which was ridiculously and unrelentingly frenetic, ganged up on me, to the point where I Continue Reading

Merry pop culture Christmas to all … and to all a good streaming-reading-listening night! (Bonus The Penguins of Madagascar Christmas Special)

(courtesy Pinterest (c) Peanuts) Merry pop culture Christmas everyone! Another year has somehow zoomed right through, around and past us, offering up far too many books and movies and TV/streaming show and songs and graphic novels to consume in one lifetime, but reminding us as we gobbled what we could Continue Reading

Festive children’s book review: The Christmas Carrolls: The Christmas Competition by Mel Taylor Bessent

(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia) Is it possible to celebrate Christmas too much? That’s not something the titular characters from Mel Taylor-Bessent’s The Christmas Carrolls might ever have said; after all, they mark the most wonderful time of the year every single day with endless roast dinners, legions of Christmas Continue Reading

Festive holiday short review: The Boy & the Octopus

(courtesy IMDb) SNAPSHOTThe film follows the journey of a child who discovers a curious octopus has attached to his head during a seaside vacation. After returning home, the boy forms a true friendship with the octopus by introducing his new companion to his life on land – harnessing the power Continue Reading

On 12th day of Christmas … I read Christmas at the Little Bookshop by the Sea by Eliza J. Scott

(courtesy Storm Publishing) Whenever you plunge into a festive romcom, you rightly expect that you will feel like you’ve given the warmest and cosiest of hugs. One made of love and redemption and healing and all the trappings of the season from decorations and mulled wine, snowmen and wreaths string Continue Reading

Festive animated feature film review: Santa’s Apprentice

If you watched a fair amount of festive programming, you will be well familiar with the idea that there are not a lot of new ideas under the Christmas storytelling sun. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; we like our festive tropes and cliches held close and to pop up Continue Reading

On 11th day of Christmas … I watched new The Simpsons festive special “Oh C’mon All Ye Faithful”

(courtesy IMDb (c) Disney+) The Simpsons are known for their irreverence and willingness to skewer all the weird and strange and bombastically expressed pomposities of life. But for all the propensity of the 36-season-long, Matt Groening-created show to parody and satirise and push the critical envelope, it has demonstrated over Continue Reading

Festive book review: Finding My Elf by David Valdes

(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers) Life crises, especially those of a more existential variety, are never a loot of fun. All of the things you once took as gospel, the certainties you could count on in a world not exactly sporting them in profusion, are suddenly well and truly up in Continue Reading

Eurovision 2012: All the world is a (very brightly lit) stage

Road to Eurovision: Opening party fun! (Saturday 19 May)