My October 2026 monthly round-up

Looking back on October I seemed to pack an awful lot in. This could have been a very long post.

I started the month with a trip North for the Plaid Cymru conference in Llandudno. I stopped for a night in Shrewsbury on my way home afterwards, which meant I got to hang out with my mum.

We are bad influences on each other!

Cathy had her regular once-yearly appointment in Cambridge. We went via Kent to pick up some more art. We had what will probably be our last seaside ice creams of the year in Whitstable.

I went to two gigs - seeing the Hu in Bristol and Creeper in Cardiff. I've blogged about both gigs and they were both great. At the end of the month we went back to Bristol for an event at Bristol Planetarium where we met the author and artist Oliver Jeffers. He signed some books and was lovely to chat with.

In a work-related activity I went along to the Type 1 Discovery Day organised by Breakthrough T1D at the Cardiff City Stadium. It was great to meet up with several friends from the diabetes world like Ros and Chris who both now work for Breakthrough, and it was fab to hear my friend Sara address the conference.

On the theme of sports stadia, the Grangetown Historical Society put on a talk about lost sports grounds of Grangetown, including the race track on the Marl, speedway on Penarth Road, and a nostalgic reminder of Cardiff Athletics Stadium, where I used to watch Inter Cardiff play back in the 90s.

Here are two of the lost stadia:

The Keep Grangetown Tidy litter-pick was moved to Halloween due to terrible weather on the original date. We had a great turn out.

It was a lovely way to end the month. We gathered up a lot of rubbish and four shopping trolleys!

I left the litter pick and went to my fifth football match of the month, travelling with Steve to Bath to watch Bath City v Poole Town. Steve's son, Jon, lives in Bath and joined us.

It was my second Poole Town game of the month, as I also went with Steve to watch them at Chippenham Town. I liked their mascot, Chippy the Bluebird.

Speaking of bluebirds, one of the Cardiff Dracs games I went to this month was up in Ystrad Mynach where Trethomas Bluebirds were the hosts. The other Dracs game was a home draw against Carmarthen where both teams had a man sent off in the first 15 minutes.

I took a selfie with Scott and Nic at half time in the Carmarthen game when the Dracs were 2-0 down and we had nothing to smile about. We smiled anyway. The final score was 2-2, which made us feel much happier. 

In case you missed it...

I published a poem inspired by Paddington Bear for National Poetry Day

My Blood Bowl game against Bryan was a horror show of disastrous dice rolls 

My album of the month was A Version of Now by Peter Garrett

My book of the month was The Long Shoe by Bob Mortimer