To celebrate Father’s Day on Sunday 17 the of June, Frederick Thomas London have offered one of my lucky readers a fantastic £100 voucher to spend in their online store. I also have a voucher to spend on my partner, so I've been having a look around their website too.


Frederick Thomas specialise in high quality men's ties, socks, cufflinks and accessories. Even if you don't work in an office, as we head into Summer it's easy to forget you might need something other to wear than Hawaiian shirts and swimshorts. Summer is also Wedding season and the time when a lot of clubs host formal dinners and presentation evenings.

Our latest review for Spinmaster is a fantastic Meccano model set - the Motorised Rally Racer Car. This set is from the 10-in-1 range and there are instructions for 10 model vehicles that you can create from just the elements included here, as well as an infinite number of your own creations.


Inside the box is everything you'd expect. The Meccano elements, metal nuts and bolts, instructions and the all-important tiny tools. In 120 years Meccano hasn't really changed in principal, and using small version of genuine tools and fixings is very appealing and long-lived. Batteries are not included, you'll need 3 x AA.

Out tomorrow 21st May is a brand new children's book from author Kate Wiseman. Released by Zuntold Press, Gangster School is suitable for young readers around 6-8+, full of good humour and friendship, and it's sure to be popular.


We were sent a pre-release copy to review, so we already know all about Blaggards, the very desirable school for future criminals. Less desirable is Crumleys, which is nearby and offers plenty of opportunity for the pupils from both schools to test their skills on each other.

Our heroes are Milly and Charlie, who are just starting out at the school. They are both smart young people and have excellent skills that will make them master criminals, but they both lack a passion for delinquency, preferring fairness and feeling uncomfortable with the behaviour of fellow students and what they are learning in classes.

Back 20 years ago I used to watch re-runs of The Prisoner and when he uttered his catchphrase cry of "I am not a number, I am a free man", we'd grin. I even visited Portmeirion and bought souvenirs with No.6 on and thought it was cool and funny. Now I just think it was pre-emptive and maybe a bit sinister.

It occurs to me that while our population is being impersonalised and reduced to numbers, our mental health is dropping. The more you are one of many, the less you are an individual.

It's Ferocious Friday and I have a great giveaway to celebrate. The most ferocious of them all - dinosaurs! Okay, he might really only be a tiny bit ferocious, but he's very, very cool and cute. A relative of the incredibly popular Fingerlings, the UNTAMED Raptor responds to your touch and movement, and will even close his eyes and go to sleep - plus he's a dinosaur!


We recently reviewed UNTAMED Raptor and he's great. We were sent Stealth to review, but there are four different characters available, each with their own colour: Blaze (orange), Fury (blue), Stealth (green) and Razor (purple)!

Carlton Kids children's books are bright, colourful and full of information, and To The Moon And Back is no exception. This is a beautiful book crammed with facts about space and everything in it. What's different is that this a papercraft book and has 25 different cut-out and press-out projects for your child to create.


Susie Brooks' papercraft projects are incredibly varied in type and trickiness, and over the 80 pages there really is something ideal for anyone. All of the pages are designed to pull out easily, without ruining the book.

In a couple of weeks time we'll be heading off to sunny Bolton Interchange for the start of a very different theatrical performance, when we review Summer Holiday.

Rehearsals are well underway and I think the cast with their pretend bus made of chairs is such a wholesome and grin-inducing image it would have been mean not to share...


Showing from Thu 31 May - Sat 23 June, the audience start at the interchange and then get onto an actual bus for the first part of the performance, before travelling to the Octagon Theatre for the second half of the show. I've been on the East Lancs Railway for their Halloween and Christmas specials, but that's the closest I've ever come to anything like this...

Pinch 'n' Pass is a family board game for 3-6 players aged 12+ and we've been sent a copy to review by Ginger Fox Games. Very fast-paced and loads of fun, this is one of those 'tip-of-your-tongue' games that really makes you laugh with frustration at your own inability to answer simple questions under pressure.


Packaged in a sturdy box, you can store it away safely between games. Inside you'll find the board with spinner, press out cardboard 'Head To Head' tokens, counters, 2 packs of (a whopping) 150 cards, game rules and the electronic buzzer/timer. Batteries are already fitted, so this is Christmas morning friendly.

This week is Mental Health Awareness Week and in case you weren't aware, I collect and share smiles because it helps my mental health. My monthly posts started off as a way to update everyone on how we were coping after the sudden loss of one of our teenage children. I began to realise that every smile was a win. It showed we could do it, life could have good bits, it could have joy. I shared the first few smiles I took and eventually The Brick Castle Smiles, or #TBCSmiles was born.

Since then you guys have shared with the community your most precious smiles. Birthdays, weddings, Christenings, anniversaries. You've shown Grandparents meeting brand new relations and baby's first smile. You've shown sports wins and educational achievements, graduations and first days at school. The ones that always make me smile the most are the ordinary moments (that's a different link up). Kids playing in fields with sticks, a toddler discovering the world, the love of a parent looking at their child, however old. A grown up who has forgotten all about the outside world and has let themselves live in the moment.

I'm grateful to everyone who joins in, you fill my month with smiles. I know that some people have reasons for joining in and sometimes smiles are hard-fought, and I know how much that makes them worth. Each and every one is a precious treasure.

I hope you take the time to check the hashtag too, it's worth it - it'll make you smile, I promise. Anyone can join in, and we have a lot of new people this month, so thank you for coming along. All you need to do is tag any photo on Instagram with a smile in it - the bigger the grin, the better.

Here are 9 of the brightest of this month's smiles, which was a fantastic crop. I think we have all enjoyed this glorious weather...


This month's 9 were provided by the following photographers and/or comedians:


We had our own smiles as well. We've been enjoying the sun too - as much as my pasty lot can manage anyway - and we had a lot to smile about, but I really didn't take many photos. I'm storing most of them in my head.



Until next month...


If you find yourself part of TBCSmiles by accident and wish to be removed then please let me know. It's not happened yet, but stranger things have happened...

This post is for Mental Health Awareness Week 2018 and carries trigger warnings.

For most of my life Mental Health was something I felt affected other people. Don't get me wrong, I've had my fair share of sobbing into my pillow, not wanting to leave the house, drinking a few too many because it made my reality further away. My life has not been plain sailing, but in general I seemed to skim round all the sinkholes and emerge relatively unscathed.


As a teenager I was a volunteer for MIND, spending my evenings playing pool and smiling yet again at photos of a stranger's family and great times, carried around as precious treasure. A reminder that life can be good, and a reason to carry on. I learned quite quickly about some of the realities of poor mental health.