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Marco the Polo has done a lot of miles this month |
I had one weekend at home in March. I started the month celebrating St David's Day in Edinburgh. Then Cathy and I had a weekend in Exeter, and two of the other three weekends I was in Shrewsbury and then in Cambridge for the Lipodystrophy UK Patients Day.
Our trip to Exeter was mainly because I wanted to see Shrewsbury Town play at Exeter City. While the game was another disappointing defeat, I did have a long chat with Will, who I was at school with. It was great to reconnect.
It's been a bad month for Shrewsbury Town generally and by the end of the month the club had replaced their manager again, after he had walked out, and news broke that the secretive takeover that was supposed to inject some much-needed cash into the club was off.
On the Sunday after Shrewsbury's defeat in Exeter, we took a short trip down to Torquay to visit the crematorium and have a little look around the town centre.
We have got into a habit of buying a picnic and driving up on to Dartmoor to eat it on the way home when we visit Torquay these days. This time there was a friendly Dartmoor pony mooching around the car park hoping to cadge some grub off the people who had parked up.
My weekend in Shrewsbury was a week early for Mother's Day, as I couldn't be there for the day itself. I went out with Mum for lunch on the Sunday. She also opened some presents with 'assistance' from Fred, who gets very excited at the prospect of presents and very disappointed when he finds out they aren't food!
I would have gone to see Shrewsbury play on the Saturday when I was up but the game was postponed due to their opponents having players called up for internationals. Instead, I took Dave, Joy and Zac to Flint to watch Flint Town v Barry Town. It wasn't a great game and Barry lost to a very late, rather harsh penalty.
Despite barely being in Cardiff, I did manage to join in the Keep Grangetown Tidy litter-pick on the middle weekend of the month. It was the second month in a row I made it along.
I said we had one weekend at home, but we actually spent a good chunk of it up in Merthyr, meeting Matt, Lauren and Alex and then having a little look round up there.
Bryan and I completed a Blood Bowl fixture for the third month in a row as well. Here's the full write up, if you're interested.
In addition to the Shrewsbury and Barry away games, I went to Spartans v Bonnyrigg in Edinburgh, Barry's home match against Aberystwyth, and went to Marlow v Havant & Waterlooville on the Saturday after the Lipodystrophy UK day. Marlow are the only football club to have applied to play in the FA Cup for every season since its inception in 1871! It was a small, friendly ground with its own resident flock of red kites swooping low over the pitch. Apparently the red kites will steal unguarded chips if they can.
I wasn't the only first-time visitor. Former Manchester United and England defender Rio Ferdinand was also there, as his son Lorenz was making his debut in goal for Havant. Rio was swamped by kids (and a few sheepish looking adults) at half time and happily signed lots of autographs.
The game at Marlow was my 45th match of the season. My season total so far - at the end of March - looks like this: