What's up in July, and what is up from here
Every month NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory puts out a short video called What's Up, which runs through the sky highlights for the coming weeks. It is made for North America, so a few of the details need translating to this latitude, but it is the most efficient three minutes of planning I know of. This is not my video; it is NASA's, and I am embedding it because it saves me writing the same list badly.
My notes, item by item
Dawn line-up, 11 and 12 July (the first segment, the opening minute or so). The waning crescent Moon near Mars and Saturn before sunrise, with Uranus nearby for anyone with optics. This one works well from here, provided you are willing to get up at about half past four. The eastern view from the back step is mostly roof, so I will be standing at the end of the garden in a dressing gown. Uranus in the binoculars is a possibility; finding it among the field stars without a chart is not.
Comet 10P/Tempel 2, around the New Moon on the 14th (roughly a minute in). The video is honest that this is a binocular or telescope object, a small fuzzy patch near Capricornus rather than anything with a dramatic tail. Capricornus is low in the south from here, and the south is where the town's glow is worst. I will try, and I expect to fail.
The Milky Way (from about 1:40). Same New Moon, same advice: get somewhere dark, give your eyes time, stay off the phone. The video points to Scorpius and Sagittarius low in the south. From this latitude Scorpius barely clears the horizon, and only its top half is ever worth looking for. The part of the Milky Way that is properly placed for us in July is higher up, running through Cygnus and Aquila. Nights are also still short: proper darkness only returns here in the second half of the month, and then for not much more than an hour or two.
Saturn's thin rings (the last segment, around 2:30). The rings are still tilted only slightly towards us, so the planet looks like a bead with a line through it. Saturn is a morning object at the moment and will be much better placed in the autumn, when it rises in the evening. The refractor can wait until then.
Moon phases are at the end: last quarter on the 7th, new on the 14th, first quarter on the 21st, full on the 29th. I have written the New Moon weekend on the calendar in pencil, which is the only kind of commitment the weather allows.