As soon as I saw the So MAGIC Wonder Garden I loved it. As a child I was fascinated by real and imitation miniature gardening, and my Grandmother used to buy me magic trees as a very special treat. We've been sent the DIY Wonder Garden for review and it's great to introduce my own children to one of the real joys of my own childhood.


The main packaging is a sturdy cardboard box, which my postman trashed, so this is a rear view. Inside there are lots of smaller separate components which are mainly packaged in plastic bags. You can play instantly, so it's Christmas morning-friendly, but lacking points for Earth-friendly.

Included are: several different colours of sand, small gems, glittery stones, 4 characters, an arbour, a rainbow, 2 magic trees, instructions, 2 double-ended tools, cylindrical terrarium cover, plus of course the actual garden base itself - in shocking pink!

Rain Town has been sent to me by Matador for review and it made me laugh aloud. It's brilliant. Written in a very modern tone and full of comments and 'Dad jokes', it's actually a light-hearted look at modern life, corporate crime, middle age and redundancy.

The stars of the book are father and son Sidney and Stanley, and their respective friends. Stanley's schoolfriends are Billy and Chloe, and Sidney's initially more reluctant sidekicks are Terry and Billy's Dad, Bobby.


Sidney is a struggling single parent to Stanley. He's also The Raven, a nightime crime fighter alter-ego, sometimes described as "the crazy guy in the bin bag". No-one is entirely sure The Raven really exists, except Billy, who met him once and is his greatest fan.

Strictly Briks manufacture building blocks and other elements which are designed to work along with your own collection of building products and give you new and different options during play. We've been sent a couple of products to review. A 156 piece Classic Brik Set and the Strictly Briks AlphaBriks Set, which contains a 10" x 10" green baseplate, 100 letter and symbol tiles plus drawstring storage bag.


Strictly Briks produce elements you won't find from other manufacturers of building blocks, such as tall stacks to create levels, silicone baseplates, trap doors, flexible joining pieces and much more.

We were very honoured to be invited back to Timber Festival for a second time to review this year and it was even better than the last one. A very laid back festival which intertwines arts and nature, and takes place in the woodland in Derbyshire. It's a place I really feel at home...


Timber Festival 2019 took place on Friday 5th to Sunday 7th July at Feanedock, near Ashby de la Zouch in the National Forest and it was, to put it bluntly, epic*.

*Except for the bit where I drank 'not enough water', bumped into Stuart Maconie and told him who he was, that I hadn't caught him on stage this year and that he'd just done the Jarrow March - clearly he already knew most of that, so I'll just pretend that never happened...

Photo heavy - click on an image to enlarge it...


We arrived around 6pm, set up camp, collected our wristbands and went into the festival. There's plenty going on, even after 8pm on the Friday. The sunset was amazing, as was the view from the top of the big hill - all across the site and over to where they are still quarrying. You relax immediately...

This month didn't exactly go as expected for us, in fact the last week has been a bit of a roller-coaster of emotions. We had an excellent 4 days at Timber Festival (as guests and I will get my review live this week), but we came home to find that Gary the cat was not well.

Gary was an internet star from the moment he arrived, and possibly my glowing review helped. He lived his life on the internet and I know a lot of people cared about him. He owed a lot of people a coffee.


Gary was really poorly. He didn't survive the night and died in the early hours - peacefully and not in pain. We all had an extra day off work and school to say goodbye and help bury him. I think it was harder because Gary arrived at a time when we really were feeling the huge gap left by Elspeth. Losing him was like losing another part of her, but it was right I told everyone, and I did so in a blog post eulogy. 

He brought us joy and laughter, love, and someone warm who was always willing to have a cuddle. I admit it, my opinion of cats has changed somewhat. I miss him. He's left a shredded stair carpet, a box of chewed cat toys and a small cat-shaped hole that will never be filled in.


The universe realised we were short of a pet and needed a distraction, so it intervened and sent us another to save. My eldest son saw a magpie fighting a tiny bright green budgie near a park in Withington, stepped in and rescued the little fella.

He might be a full grown bearded adult, but he did what all kids do when they aren't sure what the next move is, he took it to his Mum. That's me. In his pocket, on the tram. I preferred it in a cardboard box (it's a proven rescue animal storage method).

Gary was left outside our house. At first we thought he was a lost kitten, and we printed off big photos and put up posters looking for his owner. No-one rang and we were sad for an imaginary young family of children or elderly lady pining for her cat.


When he arrived, despite the fact I had a strong dislike for cats, Gary was determined he was at the right place. He knew how soft I am really and he knew he could break me down. I think he knew everything. Cats are smarter than we realise.

Thing is, he was really scared of outdoors and he really didn't want to go back out. He stayed with me all day, following me around the house and climbing onto my knee whenever I sat down. His eyes barely left mine and I chatted away to him the same as I did with my toddlers. Sometimes he even replied.


No-one ever came forward to claim Gary - who was named Gary by our youngest "because that's his name". We fed him boring dry food and left the door open for him to leave, but he didn't. He even went to the toilet inside - in the actual toilet (or the bath). It's one of the things I particularly liked about him.

Most parents have at some time discovered their miniature Picasso has decided to do some impromptu home decorating - usually their bedroom wall with the only working permanent marker in the house. ColourMyWall have created a solution to give amateur artists a nice big safe area to doodle and draw without causing any damage.


ColourMyWall create repositionable vinyl stick on wallpaper, which can be drawn on with dry wipe markers to your heart's content and then wiped clean and you can start again. Perfect for doodlers and amateur artists...

We've all made volcanoes before and they're a real crowd-pleasing, reliable experiment which is easy, safe and dramatic and teaches children a lot. This month Bandai have sent us the Build Your Own Volcano Kit to review and it's hands down my favourite home volcano science kit.


Inside the box is everything you'll need in generous quantities, and it's all in a cardboard tray which pulls out and can be used as a work surface to keep everything neat. I love the National Geographic STEM Kits for this.


You are given plaster of Paris and a 3-part mould to create your own volcano. There is masses of plaster and we propped the plastic mould up in the shaping of the box to hold it still while we filled it and it set hard.

Gen 7 is a mainly co-operative 'crossroads' game, where players decisions affect the outcomes and change how gameplay and the storyline progresses. Made by Plaid Hat Games, we've been sent a copy to review for the Asmodee Blogger Boardgame Club, and it's brilliant.


Suitable for 3 to 4 players aged 14+, you are the 7th generation to exist aboard a huge colony ship fleeing Earth for a fertile new home planet. The journey is around half way through and everything has gone well so far, until now. The entire mission and lives of everyone on board are threatened and it's up to the crew to find the clues, solve the puzzles and save humanity.


There are more elements included in the Gen7 box than just about any game I've played. It makes it seem very exciting, but it also seems much more complicated than it actually is. The secret nature with lots of hidden information adds to the anticipation.

A couple of weeks ago we were sent the Rocketbook Everlast for review. An almost everlasting intelligent notebook which can be used, scanned, erased and reused for years. Combined with a clever app. which includes Optical Character Recognition, you can save or send your scan, and convert handwriting to typed print instantly.


We were all excited about receiving the Rocketbook because we use a lot of paper. My household includes myself, an I.T. Man and 3 University students who all makes lists and notes constantly and rely on notebooks every day.


In the Rocketbook Everlast Executive pack are the Rocketbook itself, plus a soft cloth to wipe pages clean and the Pilot Frixion pen, which you do have to use, but they are a gorgeous pen to write with.


The pages in the Rocketbook are made from a special hardwearing but thin plastic coated material, which feels pretty much like regular paper when you write and wipes completely clean afterwards. I've found if you press on hard then the pen leaves a slight indent which scared me at first, but so far even this has actually vanished after cleaning and resting for 5 minutes.


The clever stuff comes with the app. Each of the 32 pages has a QR Code and very faint symbols across the base of the page, which can be read when you scan into the app. You can really easily associate those symbols with cloud services or email addresses, so when you mark over the symbol and scan a page, it is automatically sent to the folder you want.


I was a bit daunted before I started because it seemed like it would be complicated, but it took seconds to work my way around the app. and decide where I wanted everything to go - all to my own email address as default - I jot, doodle and work mainly alone.


There are lots of cloud services the Rocketbook app. can link to, and you can also choose to 'share' in the same way as you can share any images or documents from your phone, so sending to multiple people or places is again, really easy, intuitive and familiar.


Still in Beta, but working exceptionally well, is the OCR - Optical Character Recognition. The software 'reads' what you've written and converts it to typed text. When you scan and send a page, you can choose to also include a printed text version, and you can even search your notes.


You can give a page of written text a title using double hashtags, which is a really handy feature. I didn't make any effort to tidy up my writing because I wanted a real test of how well it read when I was behaving normally. I'm really impressed. For notes the transcription is perfectly good enough, and when I've made only a tiny bit of effort it's been perfect.

My partner has also found that the Rocketbook app. can read his writing, and I can't, so bonus! You can see it in action and hear what we all thought of our Rocketbook Everlast in this 3 minute video:


I mainly use my Rocketbook for lists and notes - my job list, weekly job list, daily to-do lists. Shopping lists, household chore lists and for noting down points for reviews as they come to me. I've found it ridiculously handy because I can delete and add to my lists or notes at will, and a clean page is a job well done.

I genuinely didn't realise how much paper I was using each week and it's a great bonus for my uni students, who have reams of notes from lectures. We like Rocketbook Everlast - two of us have already swapped from paper to Rocketbook.


Rocketbook is available in different sizes. 'Letter' is similar to A4 costing £34.99rrp and 'Executive' is similar to A5 at £32.99rrp. You only need plain water to wipe it clean and replacement Pilot Frixion Pens are available at most stationers in a variety of colours and thicknesses.


I also have a Rocketbook Executive Everlast to give away to one of you. Entry to the giveaway is via the Gleam form below and open to UK entrants only. Your details are only used to administer this giveaway and not shared with anyone else. The giveaway will end at midnight Sunday 28th July 2019. Full terms and conditions are at the bottom of the Gleam form.

You can find a link to help if you are new to Gleam and see my other UK giveaways here...

Rocketbook Everlast - Almost Everlasting Notebook Giveaway (paid collaboration)