January
We spent my Mum's birthday weekend with her and met up with some of my cousins who we hadn't seen since before the pandemic started. I went to several football matches and also supported Gambia at the African Cup of Nations. I published my tenth Annual Christmas Card Audit, and also blog posts about beliefs versus reality, "doomscrolling", and the five dimensions of personality.
February
Whatever I was up to in February was overshadowed by the invasion of Ukraine by Russia - as I said in my review of the month. I didn't blog too much in the month, but I did write a piece about how one of the characters in The Mandalorian was being removed from the merchandise following the transphobic social media posts by the actor involved.
March
Cathy and I had a week away in Calstock, on the county border between Cornwall and Devon. While we were there we watched the film of The Day of the Triffids from 1962. It hasn't aged well.
April
I called my review of April 'A month of endings'. I finished working as the manager of the Children and Young People's Wales Diabetes Network ahead of starting a new job. I also attended the final service at Hope Church in Shrewsbury as the trustees had taken the decision to close the church down. I saw 10 football matches, making it a "decamonth", and unfortunately saw Barry Town close out a relegation season, ending their time in the top flight of Welsh football.
May
I had a week off before starting my new job. During that time Cathy and I visited Oxford to see a friend who had moved back to the UK and took some fun photos with street art that I now use across all my profiles on social media platforms (and at the top of this post!). I also caught covid, which prevented me from going into the office for my first week and a half at my new employers. For Star Wars Day I blogged about the Disney Plus series The Book of Boba Fett, which I didn't feel actually went anywhere. I also blogged about how the FA Cup final makes me sad since my Dad passed away.
June
I rounded off a record-breaking football season with my 60th game of the season. Cathy and I said goodbye to the Snoopy statues that had been around Cardiff for a couple of months, at the farewell event outside City Hall. I went to my first stamp fair since before the pandemic, at Swinpex in Swindon. We also made a rare foray to the cinema to watch the new Pixar movie, Lightyear, the origin story of the character Buzz Lightyear. I completed the Prince2 project management course to Foundation and Practitioner levels and blogged about the barriers to project success that came up among the group of people taking the course.
July
After several months of scandals and shame. Boris Johnson finally got the boot from being Prime Minister. This felt at the time like it was the end of a chaotic era. Little did we know what was in store! I described it as 'popcorn politics' in my blog post about it and also wrote about the 'lucky unlucky' students studying politics this year. We took part in the Grangetown Zoo for the third year in a row, and I even dressed up as a dinosaur as the zoo went Jurassic this year. For the second month in a row we went to the cinema, this time to see Thor: Love and Thunder, which included some naked anti-theism that I subsequently blogged about. I watched a lot of the Women's Euros - the second international tournament of the three scheduled for this year.
August
I booked a summer week off and we spent a week in Shropshire, including attending the relaunched (and slightly disappointing) Shrewsbury Flower Show. I went to the Cardiff Model Railway Exhibition in the ice rink in Cardiff Bay. August was another "decamonth" of football, including three Shrewsbury games, and a game with a very rare scoreline - a 4-4 draw. I also had a short article published in When Saturday Comes.
September
Another major event in the wider world, with the passing of Queen Elizabeth II shortly after a new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, was finally appointed. The late monarch passed away just before Cathy and I were due to spend a week in Caernarfon, where we stayed within a few hundred yards of the castle. It was a slightly subdued week although that didn't stop us from enjoying some lovely days out in North Wales, including trips to Anglesey and a scenic drive around Eryri / Snowdonia.
October
Cathy and I went to our first gigs since before covid shut the world down. We saw Counting Crows in Manchester and at the end of the month we saw Tony Wright, the singer from Terrorvision, at a small venue in Newport. I saw three Shrewsbury games - at Cheltenham, Shrewsbury and Portsmouth. The latter game was the 450th game I have attended and I blogged about how I passed up going to other games so that I would record the trip to Portsmouth as a significant number on the footballing app I use. My blog post about it has been one of the most read posts ever on my blog. Politics went chaotic again, with Liz Truss ousted and replaced by Rishi Sunak who became the first British Prime Minister of Asian origin.
November
As a family we lost Cathy's Grampy at the start of the month. I blogged a tribute to him where I said how blessed I felt to have acquired another grandparent in my life. As ever, all the occasions come at once and at the end of November I became a godfather for the third time, as our friends Tom and Helena asked us to be godparents to their son, Herbert. It was a Catholic christening, so each time I have been a godparent has been in a different church denomination. The bizarrely timed World Cup started as well, but my sporting highlight of the month was a "two-sport twofer" with my brother, Dave.
December
And the year closed out with the usual pressured excitement of the run up to Christmas. We spent Christmas and the subsequent few days in Shrewsbury. I captured some of the other stuff that happened in my monthly round up last week.
This wasn't meant to be such a long post, but it turns out a lot of things happened in 2022!
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