My September 2026 round up

I had three work trips to London in September.  That meant lots of waiting around at Paddington Station. Which in turn meant plenty of opportunities for photos with Paddington Bear! I was even inspired to write a poem about him in time for National Poetry Day.

He paused eating his sandwich for a selfie

I also noticed something on the street outside Paddington Station.

We had a really lovely week's holiday in North Wales, which included a bucket list trip up Yr Wyddfa on the railway. At the end of the week we stopped for the weekend in Shrewsbury where there were birthday celebrations for two of our niblings. 

How else do you look at a poster you've just
been given for a birthday present?

As a bonus, I watched birthday boy Zac play football on the Sunday morning. At breakfast he told me had scored four times against that morning's opponents in both previous games and he wanted to maintain his run. He scored four in the first half, before being subbed out for a bit, mainly to give the opponents a rest! 

He was also on corner-taking duty.

I made it to the Keep Grangetown Tidy litter-pick this month. I remembered to wear my KGT green t-shirt, although the hi-vis vest covered most of it. 

We had a couple of sessions out canvassing again. Neil and I went to Pengam Green early in the month.

And on the last Sunday in September we had a session in Grangetown. We sought a blessing from St Francis before starting out. (As it was a Sunday.)

Just the four football matches in September, starting out with an FA Cup qualifying match in deepest, darkest Gloucestershire. I went to Bishop's Cleeve with my friend Steve and saw the Mitres play the Mighty Dolphins (Poole Town). It was a new ground for both of us.

I saw two Barry Town games with mixed fortunes for Barry. A 4-1 home win over Llandudno followed by a 5-2 defeat at Colwyn Bay. A total of 12 goals in 2 games, scored 6 and conceded 6!

At the Llandudno game I met my friend Dave from Bristol and Stefan, a German groundhopper that Dave knew from his travels. Stefan was heading up to York the following day to complete "the 92" Premier and Football League clubs for the 6th time!

I told Stefan this was the Welsh Space Agency's shuttle launch from Rhoose Rocket Range... but he didn't believe me.

An unusual photo angle for me,
of the teams entering the pitch

My final game of the month was Cardiff Draconians v Caerau Ely. It was a Cardiff derby and the visitors came out on top, winning 3-1.

And then, suddenly, we are somehow in October!

In case you missed it

My September Blood Bowl game with Bryan was powered by fruity Hot Tamales

It was the 25th anniversary of 9/11, and I blogged some thoughts about it

My Book of the Month was a Japanese tale of urban time travel 

I blogged about the entire run of The Mandalorian right up to the recent movie

National Poetry Day - "Blessed by the Bear"

On a recent work trip to London, I ended up waiting over an hour at Paddington Station for my designated train. As I waited I watched a stream of people visit the statue of Paddington Bear. I wrote the first draft of this poem while on the train home. As it's National Poetry Day today, I thought I'd share it.

Blessed by the Bear

Make haste to pause on platform one

His prints of paws guide pilgrims on

To selfies take with his saintly stare

Not hard, but warm; a gentle bear

See them come and seek to share

A sacred moment with the beloved bear

Take blessing from his worn-bright nose

And commemorate with smiling pose

Count them! Young, old, sullen, smiling

Teens too cool, then shyly styling

Greying couples grin for each other

And children clamber to shine for mother

And the bronze bear sees, and blesses, all

Safe travels, travellers, great and small

Bid adieu and quicken, journey on

Granted grace by Paddington

Previous poems:

We Are the Generation: X (published for National Poetry Day 2025)

Pethau Hen (published January 2024)

Older poems and stories

The Tomb Kings finally triumph (Blood Bowl match report)

Bryan and I have a new system where we roll to see which teams we will be managing in our monthly Blood Bowl contest. This month I was playing Tomb Kings for the second time while Bryan took charge of an orc team boosted by a star player.

The orcs were one of the teams in the starter set released in 2016 when Blood Bowl got a hefty reboot. They are one of the first teams I painted and the paint job on them is bad even by my low standards. 

Varag Ghoulchewer, the star player, was included in the second season starter box released in 2020. I've painted him as part of my Big Pink Nightmares black orc team. For the purposes of this game we just pretended Varag's red and white uniform went through the wash and came out pink!

The Tomb Kings were in the starter set released this year, which Bryan purchased. They have no star players. They do, however, have four stronger players (the Tomb Guardians) who had a power advantage over every member of the orc team apart from Varag. 

The game started with a kick off towards the orcs. A breach in the defensive line saw some Tomb Kings players approach the ball carrier, whose attempted pass went badly wrong. The ball was dropped, a Tomb Kings blitzer picked it up and was able to make it into the end zone for the first score of the game on the very last turn of the first half. 

The second half started with a kick into Tomb Kings territory. The big Tomb Guardians managed to pivot the defence and open up a gap for three Tomb Kings players to run through and score virtually unmolested. They even got to showboat in the End Zone.

The orcs made a game of it and got the ball into a scoring position with one turn left. A player needed to rush one yard to get into the End Zone ready for a scoring pass. All he needed was his coach to roll anything except a 1. 

Bryan rolled a 1. 

That was the end of the game. Bryan rolled again to see if he would have made the pass successfully (he would) and whether the player would have caught it (he would!) but as Bryan said, that was just Nuffle, the god of Blood Bowl messing with him. If he hadn't rolled a 1 it feels very unlikely he would have made both those subsequent rolls. Nuffle is a capricious god who does whatever seems funniest to them in the moment. 

Final score: Tomb Kings 2-0 Orcs - the first time the Tomb Kings have won a game in 5 attempts.

Injuries of note: I'm not sure how you critically injure an undead skeleton powered by magic. But Bryan managed it.

Snacks: Hot Tamales Tropical Heat candy, Van Holten's Pickle flavoured puffs, and some Korean biscuits that tasted like custard creams with a hint of pineapple.  

See all my previous match reports here 

Acing the quiz

As mentioned on my post about our holiday in North Wales, I went to a football match and watched Colwyn Bay versus Barry Town.

What I didn't mention is I bought a programme at the game. (I don't always buy a programme. I mainly get them from away games for the various teams I support, or if I go to random matches and I want a souvenir.)

Flicking through the programme, I discovered one of the easiest quiz questions ever for a Shrewsbury Town fan to answer! 

I didn't need to guess the badge. I knew the badge!

Holiday team painting project

I took a portable painting station with me on holiday to North Wales last week. (This is a grandiose way of saying I filled a box full of paints and unpainted Blood Bowl miniatures.)

The great thing about being on holiday is not having a gazillion things that I ought to be doing instead of painting my figures. And as we have to carefully pace ourselves to marshall Cathy's energy reserves, that means some evenings in - which are perfect for painting!

I prepped for the week away by building the second half of my Elven Union team of elves. This has been a bit of a North Wales project, generally. I bought the team set on holiday in Bangor a couple of years ago, built half the team on holiday in Dinas Dinlle last summer (I think) and then completed assembling the team a few weeks back. 

I hadn't decided on a paint scheme for them before the holiday, but I had a pretty turquoise and a shiny silver, so I thought those would make a good elf-appropriate combo. I was quite pleased with the result.

They aren't quite finished because I left their decorative kneepads unpainted. I planned to do them a different colour, but I'm probably going to paint them silver to match their shinguard greaves. There are some other finishing touches I need to do as well.

Even though they aren't finished, mostly painted is better than grey plastic and I was pleased with the progress. I also got some paint on my Norse star player, Thorsson Stoutmead, my yhetee, and my werewolf star player as well. All in all, a very productive week.

Ar wyliau yn yr Gogledd - Medi 2026

We have had a week away in the North of Cymru, returning to a cottage very close to our favourite beach. Our big day out was taking the train up Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) and we had some other lovely days revisiting some of our favourite spots. 

Long range Cathy portrait

We went to...

Caernarfon

Football mural for a match I went to!

Pwllheli (in the mist)

Handy guide to the view...
I took it on faith the mountains
were there!

Llandudno

Goleudy Penmon on Anglesey 

And we did the things you'd expect to do on a holiday.

And saw some things you might not expect!

At the end of the week, I even squeezed in a football match in Colwyn Bay. Sadly, Barry were on the receiving end of a 5-2 thumping but I still enjoyed my evening there as I've decided not to let results affect my enjoyment of football!

And that was the end of another lovely week yn yr Gogledd!