Monthly round up - December 2024

Happy New Year! What better way to welcome 2025 than a long post about the last month of 2024?

Our Christmas decorating was delayed because we were getting a new floor and carpentry work done in our hall for the first week or so. However, we were able to welcome 'the Boys' who were dressed up ready for Christmas! 

Rather than add to the semi-permenent upheaval of stuff everywhere due to the building work, we decided not to bring the tree and decorations down. Instead, we bought a small rainbow tree to brighten up the front room.

The branches soon filled up with decorations.

Work was busy in the run up to the Christmas break, including travelling to London, Bristol and Port Talbot. In London I posed with a film star at the station.

I also saw this Lego model of the new station that is effectively going to replace Paddington station when the HS2 project is completed. (The model had 14,000 pieces.)

Meanwhile, in Bristol, two famous people associated with the city had left their marks on the pavement.

The best part of Christmas is meeting up with people. We had a great afternoon in Tewkesbury with Mary and Steve. (Selfie outside the Abbey where we saw 'The Longest Yarn'.)

Between Christmas and New Year I met up with Connor briefly in Birmingham. We got to pose with Ozzy the Bull.

We also had a great time spending nearly a week with family. Cathy's sister was in town just before Christmas and my sister drove down from Edinburgh for the day on the day after Boxing Day!

The December weather (including Storm Darragh) interrupted the football. However, I set a new record for going to games in December - managing six. There were three before Christmas and three afterwards.

I saw Barry play twice before Christmas - a cup semi-final defeat to TNS and a come-from-behind league victory over Cardiff Met. My other pre-Christmas game was watching Caldicot Town just round the corner from my house when they played Canton.  My friend Ben, who plays for Caldicot, had just become a dad for the first time so it was nice to see him and say congrats. 

I also got a Futbology badge when I checked in at the Caldicot game as it was the 10th time I'd seen them.

The games after Christmas were two Shrewsbury home games, on Boxing Day and the 29th December, and Barry's game away at Briton Ferry on New Year's Eve. On Boxing Day, Shrewsbury battled to a win against Lincoln in murky midwinter mist. On the 29th, they drew against Northampton (in much milder weather). I've now seen four Shrewsbury home games this season and they haven't lost any. 

And so to my final game of 2024, which ended 0-0. This was my first scoreless game of the season and ended a run of 49 games since my last goalless game back in March. 

Here's how my season stats look at the end of December:

And that, as they say is that. We had a quiet New Year's Eve, building Lego, watching comedy on Netflix, and then it was midnight and 2024 was done!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Our decorations went up in early December. Unlike last year we have had people come into the house this year and they seem to like them, so I thought I'd share a few pictures on here.

First off - the Lego shelves.

Over the years we have bought a few of the buildings that make up the Lego Christmas Village, and of course, I had to get the train! On the lower shelf is Santa's house, a gingerbread house and the clubhouse whre the elves get some well earned kip after working long shifts in the toy factory. The other assorted sets include all the Christmas-themed Star Wars figures from advent calendars in past years. 

We have mistletoe new for this year too.

This is made by Jellycat, who make the most adorable soft toys. I bought this at a lovely little toy shop not far from my house called Honeycomb Toys. They have lots of cool stuff in there, including some great wooden toys. Well worth a look if you're in south Cardiff.

One of the highlights of Christmas for us is visiting the red and white craft stalls in the city centre, particularly the one run by Sian Davies, a ceramic artist from Abergavenny. We have several of Sian's creations including a flock of dragons that normally reside on our mantelpiece but hibernate in a crate over Christmas. This year we have a couple of sheep cutting a Welsh edge to our Christmas decorations.

(I can proudly say that we bought one of the first Santa Sheeps than Sian produced because it was on a stall a few years ago as a one-off!)

Keeping it Welsh on the tree is one of Sian's dragon tree decorations. 

As of a couple of weeks ago, these dragons are now sold out this year. I bought the very last one off the stall to send to a friend who has been very generous sending me baseball cards this year. We have a few other ceramic decorations made by Sian - including this fun looking gingerbread man.

So, that's it for now. We love adding to our festive features so there will probably be even more next year!

The big Annual Christmas Card Audit 2018 (ACCA18)

I get a lot of questions about this audit, mainly along the lines of 'Are you going to do your audit again this year?' It seems to be the most interesting thing I do, which, now that I think about it, doesn't make me sound like the most thrilling person on the planet. (And quite a few people are deliberately sending me cards trying to bugger up my categories. I know who you are.)

But I do find this sort of thing interesting. The trends. Why are the rich, well-dressed three kings of the Orient so much more popular than the smelly shepherds? Why do religious Christmas cards almost never mention Christmas? Why are penguins perennial paradigms of Christmasness? What happened to all the dogs in Santa hats (none again this year!) The numbers. The charitable causes. The glitter.

Ah, the glitter.

Can I have a word about the glitter? It's incredibly bad for the planet. But never mind that, just when I've finally managed to hoover every stray bit of tinsel and fake green bits off the tree (why do plastic trees shed?), I then have to take down the Christmas cards. Glitter doesn't stay stuck. It's one of the laws of physics, I think. (Maybe I should have paid more attention in science class. If it's not a law, it should be.) Or rather, it doesn't stay stuck where it should, so I now have a glittery carpet, glittery socks, glittery thumbs and by the end of this, a glittery keyboard too, no doubt.

I'll get to the stats in a minute, but first something we've never received before - a very early Christmas card that doubled up as an advent calendar.

And so, on we go. New categories are asterisked.

Total number of cards: 82 - a year-on-year decline of 8 

Hand-made / home-produced cards: 7 (same number for the fifth year in a row)
Cards designed by kids: 5
Cards with glitter: 17 (exactly the same as last year)

Cards sold in aid of charity (or fundraising):50
Total number of charities represented: 36
Most popular charity represented: British Heart Foundation were the winners this year with 6. Cancer Research UK and the Traidcraft / SCIAF / CAFOD / Christian Aid combination were joint second with 5.

Religious themes
Religious-themed cards: 30 (down 1 from 2017)
Cards featuring the Nativity: 15 (down 1 from 2017)
Christmas story 'characters':
Three kings: 6 (same as last year)
The shepherds: 1
The star of Bethlehem: 1
Angels: 1
*Choirboys: 3 (All three looked very much alike - groups of choirboys in red and white robes standing outside a village church in the falling snow.)
'Cartoony' religious: 1

Other themes
Santa: 6
Penguins: 3
Bears: 1 
Deer/reindeer: 1
Christmas decorations: 2
Christmas trees: 6
Christmas food: 4 (mainly Christmas puddings)
Robins: 2
Donkeys: 1 
Sheep: 3
Winter scene/scenery: 3
Snowmen: 5
Licensed characters: 0 (no Star Wars cards this year)
*Llamas: 1 (Cathy wanted this as it's own category, even though it's really just a Peruvian deer)
*Hares and Moons: 2 (This year's 'dogs with Santa hats' type of trend, maybe? But less joyful. Because a dog in a Santa hat is always fun, even if it's a grumpy pug. but hares by moonlight look a bit mournful.)
*Holly and wreaths: 3

Messages (front of card only)
Cards that mention 'Christmas' on the front: 30. Only 6 of them were religious themed. This just confirms my annual observation that religious themed cards don't use the word Christmas. Also 1 card saying Nadolig Llawen. 
"Seasons Greetings": 1
Mentions "Jesus": 0 but 1 card did have "Emmanuel" on it
Bible verse: 2 (Well, kind of. They both said "unto us a child is born" which is a Bible verse, but neither had a Bible reference saying where it was from. But I'm going to count them because otherwise there would be zero.)
*Lines or titles of Christmas carols (including) "Joy to the World": 7
*Lines or titles of Christmas songs: 3

Previous years:
2012
2013
2014
2015 plus 10 favourite cards, senders analysis and Bible verse breakdown
2016 plus favourite cards
2017 plus a dozen favourites and Christmas carol audit

The big Annual Christmas Card Audit 2017

Welcome to the ACCA for 2017! (I've started calling it the ACCA. I've done this for 6 years now so it feels fairly safe to say it's annual.)

I like the sentiment

I'm just going to crack on with the figures and make comments as I go along. Links to previous years are at the end of the post. New or altered categories are asterisked.

Total number of cards: 90 (a new record low, although we only had 91 in 2016)

Hand-made / home-produced cards: 7 (same number for the fourth year in a row)
Cards with embellishments (bits stuck on): 3
Unusually shaped cards: 3
*Cards with glitter: 17

Cards sold in aid of charity (or fundraising): 57 (2 up from 2016)
Total number of charities represented: 41 (down from 48 in 2016)
Most popular charity represented: Macmillan had 6, as did the Traidcraft / SCIAF / CAFOD / Christian Aid combination. British Heart Foundation had 5. Children in Need and the Phoenix International Charity both had 4.

Religious themes
Religious-themed cards: 31 (3 down from 2016)
Cards featuring the Nativity: 16
Christmas story 'characters':
Three kings: 6 (still much more popular than the shepherds)
The shepherds: 3 (staging a bit of a comeback after 1 card in 2016 and 0 in 2015)
The star of Bethlehem: 2
Angels: 0
"Joy to the World": 0
'Cartoony' religious (various themes): 0 - clearly 2017 was a much more serious religious year than 2016.

Other themes
Santa: 5 (still a long way down from 14 in 2015)
Penguins: 3 (drop from 5 in 2016)
Various cartoon bears: 1 (this seems to be seriously decreasing after the all time high of 12 in the first ACCA in 2012)
Deer/reindeer: 5 (increase)
Christmas decorations: 5 (the same)
Christmas trees: 10 (increase)
Christmas food: 1 (the same)
Robins: 3 (increase)
Donkeys: 1 (decrease)
Sheep: 1 (the same)
Winter scene/scenery: 2 (a big drop from 8 in 2016)
Snowmen: 6 (decrease)
Licensed characters: 3 (stayed the same)

Messages (front of card only)
Cards that mention 'Christmas' on the front: 37. Only 5 of them were religious themed. I've mentioned before how religious cards don't really use the word Christmas. It's quite odd.
"Seasons Greetings": 1
"Winter Wishes": 1
"Let it Snow": 0
"Ho Ho Ho": 0
Mentions "Jesus": 3
*Bible verse: 3 (only counting them if the verse is on the front of the card)

Non-scoring themes (from previous audits): 'Political' fund-raising cards; Dogs in Santa Hats; Mistletoe; Owls; Peace

Previous years:
2012
2013
2014
2015 plus senders analysis and Bible verse breakdown
2016 plus favourite cards
New for 2017: Christmas carol audit

You can learn a lot about your neighbourhood by picking up its trash

One of the things I do occasionally - when the fates and free time at the weekend allow - is join the community litter-picks in Grangetown organised by Keep Grangetown Tidy and Cardiff Rivers Group. This is far less boring than you might think and I've learned quite a bit from my experiences.

Archaeologists and anthropologists (and Wombles) can tell a lot about cultures from what they throw away and the discarded stuff on the streets is similarly illuminating. A couple of Saturdays ago I went along and was directed by Dave from the Rivers Group to go inside the Bowling Green and fish all the cans out of the hedge. Walking alongside the hedge to the entrance I thought Dave must be imagining things. There were no cans to be seen in the thick leafy healthy hedge. But inside it was a different story. The hedge was full of cans that had been shoved in from the street side and were hidden away.

I pulled out almost a full bag of cans, the oldest a faded Coke can in London 2012 Olympics livery, along with other rubbish and to crown it all (literally) the top of an artificial Christmas tree.

Coke cans are generally OK to pick up. The ones you have to watch are cans for disgusting energy drinks like Monster and Relentless. Those are always pretty much full when they are discarded, as if the teens buy them, take a swig and realise they taste horrid, and lob the mostly full can into the nearest bush. Or maybe they get a super burst of energy from the caffeinated swill and experience a full body spasm that causes them to launch the can reflexively away from their body as a survival instinct against drinking poison kicks in. Top tip: drain the can of it's nasty toxic contents before putting it in your bag.

Cigarette ends are even more annoying pieces of litter. They are fiddly to pick up with the litter-picking claws, If you needed evidence that smoking is an antisocial vice, then it's all over our local park because it's not just the butts that smokers chuck. Fag packets and empty lighters get lobbed into the bushes, even though there is a bin right next to the bench where the smokers obviously puff away.

You don't get much evidence of other drug use, except for the nitrous capsules. These are metal or shiny plastic containers shaped a little bit like lighters with a screw-thread on one end. They never appear alone. If you find one under a bush, you'll find 10. Compared to the nitrous, the occasional empty baggie or rizla packet is a rarity.

And then there are the odd finds that also tell a story. The skeleton of a broken umbrella, turned inside out by the wind and chucked over the park fence by someone who has finally lost their temper with the thing and given it up as a bad job. (That was tricky to get in the bag without tearing open the sides on the spokes.) And then there are the untold and unknowable stories. What happened to the other half of the bed frame found lying in a kerbside gutter? How much money did that person spend on the lottery scratchcards now in the flowerbed, and did he win on any of them? Where is the rest of the Christmas tree?

That's my neighbourhood. A few kids do nitrous, but most can't finish their energy drinks. Smokers sit in the park and litter when they smoke. Some people put their hope in a lottery win, while others shove their Coke cans in the hedge. And Christmas is over when the decorations get dumped.

But the neighbourhood are also out on the sunny streets, and in the muddy borders of the park, picking all this crap up. And that's the Grangetown I love, because the kind of people who give up a couple of precious weekend hours to pick up rubbish and make the place a nicer space, are the kind of people you would want to spend a couple of hours with. There is an unselfish goodness at the heart of this activity that leaves me smiling for the rest of the weekend.

The big 2016 Christmas card audit

This has become an annual tradition for me. I'm a couple of weeks later this year as I had a big university project to sort in the first fortnight of January. But that's done, I have my life back and I'm back to counting Christmas cards and looking at trends. For the record, here are the figures for 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2012.

I will post some of my favourite cards later, but for now, this is one of the ones I liked the most!

I haven't gone into as much depth as I did last year on the demographics of who sent what kind of card, or had a look at which Bible verse is considered the "most Christmassy" this year. That sort of thing is probably best done biannually, so keep an eye out in January 2018. Also, this audit has attracted some attention and at least one person deliberately tried to find the most uncategorisable card possible. And failed.

Here's the figures. New or altered categories are asterisked. I've listed categories that didn't feature this year at the end. UPDATED 29 JANUARY (as someone gave us a late card)

Total number of cards: 91 (lowest ever)
Hand-made / home-produced cards: 7 (same as 2014 & 2015)
*Cards with embellishments (bits stuck on): 4
* Unusually shaped cards: 2

Cards sold in aid of charity (or fundraising): 55 (down from 60 in 2015)
Total number of charities represented: 48 (Up from 39 in 2015 and the second highest ever)
Main charity represented: Five charities had 5 cards - Macmillan, Traidcraft / SCIAF / CAFOD / Christian Aid, Sue Ryder
Notable newcomer: Donkey Sanctuary, with pictures of donkeys on the front of course!

Religious themes
Religious-themed cards: 34 (bit of a drop from 2015)
Cards featuring the Nativity: 17
Christmas story 'characters':
Three kings: 5 (not as popular as last year but still much more popular than the shepherds)
The shepherds: 1 (scored 0 in 2015, so this was a big improvement)
The star of Bethlehem: 2
Angels: 1
"Joy to the World": 1
*'Cartoony' religious (various themes): 6

Other themes 
'Peace': 1
Santa: 6 (down from 14 in 2015)
Penguins: 5 (including 3 "couples" cards saying, e.g. 'to both of you' with penguin couples on)
Various cartoon bears: 3 (still well down from the all time high of 12 in 2012)
Deer/reindeer: 4 (increase)
Christmas decorations: 5 (increase)
Christmas trees: 8 (increase)
Christmas food: 1 (decrease) - that's the puddings card, above
Robins: 2 (no change)
*Donkeys: 3
*Sheep: 1
Winter scene/scenery: 8 (increase)
Snowmen: 7 (increase)
*Licensed characters: 3

No real clear favourite themes here, but Christmas trees were surprisingly popular. After the epic collection of Dogs in Santa Hats in 2015 (see pics!), there were none this year.

Messages (front of card only)
Cards that mention 'Christmas' on the front: 29. Only 2 of them were religious themed.
*"Seasons Greetings": 1
*"Winter Wishes": 3
*"Let it Snow": 1
*"Ho Ho Ho": 2
*Mentions "Jesus": 3

Non-scoring themes (from previous audits): 'Political' fund-raising cards; Dogs in Santa Hats; Mistletoe; Owls

Back in January 2015 (when I wrote the 2014 audit results) I said I would start producing graphs and stuff in January 2016, when I had 4 years worth of results. Although I did some demographic data-crunching, I didn't do any graphs. If I have time I will try and get to it in the next couple of weeks.

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

In 1995 Cathy and I were given a Christmas tree by some family friends who were replacing / upgrading theirs. It has served us very well, but this year we decided to buy a new tree for the very first time. We captured this moment on camera, with Cathy managing to take several unflattering photographs of me.