Post-Christmas December round up

As it's New Year's Eve, I thought I'd round up the month's activity before launching into the year-end posts. 

I covered the first three weeks of the month in a previous post. My final day in work was Monday 22nd. On "Christmas Eve Eve" (the 23rd) we headed up to Shrewsbury and we stayed until "Boxing Day Boxing Day" (the 27th).

Christmas Eve morning, we went with my brother and three niblings to watch The Muppet Christmas Carol in the cinema. I don't think I've seen it on a proper cinema screen since it was released in the early 90s. It's a film that seems to get better with age. It was only the second time my youngest niece had been to the cinema. The film was a bit long for her, but she did very well at not being too bored. 

Later on Christmas Eve I went with my brother to the midnight communion service in the village Anglican church. We have done this as 'brother-time' for a few years now, with a stop in the pub on the way, and it's something I look forward to as part of the Christmas experience.

My sister and family drove all the way from Edinburgh to spend Christmas Day with us. We managed to fit 8 people round my mum's dining table for Christmas dinner. 

Auntie Cathy and Scottish niblings 

Mum's Christmas Cake

There were some exciting presents.

I will be blogging about this!

And some family members were completely tuckered out by it all!

On Boxing Day we had another brotherly outing as the two of us went to a local derby football match - Shawbury United v Haughmond FC in the United Counties League. Haughmond play on the north edge of Shrewsbury and Shawbury is less than 10 miles north of Shrewsbury so the two clubs are in close proximity. 

I was impressed by the set up at Shawbury. They had a nice clubhouse and a lovely pitch. The Haughmond Ultras (4 pre-teen boys with a flag and a drum) had ensconced themselves in one of the small stands and kept up a noise throughout. They went home happy, having seen their team win 3-1. 

I've been fortunate enough to be off work during betwixtmas, so have had a relaxing few days since coming home, sorting some life admin and things. Today (New Year's Eve) I went to my final football match of 2025, watching Barry lose away at Briton Ferry. 

I went with my friend Paul and we arrived to find the pitch was still very frosty in places. Kick off was moved back an hour in the hope the pitch would thaw out enough to be playable. It passed the pitch inspection but Barry will wish it hadn't as they were second best all game and lost 2-1. They also had two penalties given against them, with goalkeeper George Ratcliffe saving both of them! 

Frosty pitch!

Moonrise over Briton Ferry

And that concludes a busy December!

Recap of the month - November 2023

My November started with a weekend in Newport on the "Type 1 Family Weekender", which is a special weekend hosted by Diabetes UK for families with a child with type 1 diabetes. All the groups were named after woodland animals, and my group - the kids aged 8 & 9 - were known as the bears.

One of their first activities was to design a mascot for the team. We couldn't settle on the name Billy or Bob for our bear, so he ended up as Billy-Bob. 

You might notice Billy-Bob has an insulin pump and is holding his own teddy bear mascot. 

I had a great time on the weekend. The outdoor activities were a bit wet but huge fun and the indoor laser tag was probably the most exercise I've had all year. (It's a low bar, to be honest.)

At the risk of this recap being too work-focussed, I'm also going to mention World Diabetes Day on the 14th November.  I was invited by the Diabetes UK Cymru team to a special event at the Senedd, which included a tour of the Senedd building for the young people from Wales involved in the programme I work with, Together Type 1. 

I liked these maps in the Senedd building that show the topography and electoral boundaries in Wales. 

My friend Sara joined us for the tour so we had a selfie opportunity. You can see me branded up in my Together Type 1 hoodie.

I also snuck in when the young people had a photo with Eluned Morgan, the Welsh Government Health Minister. I'm the old guy looking old next to all the young 'uns. 

Shortly after World Diabetes Day Cathy and I had a week away in North Wales. I've already blogged about it. It was a great relaxing break and we had a lot of fun dodging the rain and eating unseasonal ice creams. 

And then to round off the month, I went to my first Christmas celebration of the season - with the very friendly Cwmbach Diabetes Group. I wore my Christmas jumper and had to have yet another photo with Sara. You can see I'm wearing my paper crown from the cracker, which makes me look even balder than usual. 

And as that officially kicks off the Christmas season for me, here's to a festive December. Hopefully we will close out the year on a high.

15 Christmas cards from the ACCA '18

Ooh, you lucky, lucky things you. In the past I've shown off 10 or a dozen Christmas cards that we've been sent. This year you get 15.

Let's start, like we usually do, with a token religious card or two. Religious cards are usually dire. I don't know why. In Christian theology, Christmas marks the actual moment when the creator God of the universe was born as a tiny, helpless infant, on a quest to redeem humanity from the stain of sin. Quite how you can make that idea boring, I don't know. But card companies do. Repeatedly.

Anyway, I quite like this card.

Obviously, it's not particularly interesting as a picture, but the artistry in the design elevates it above the herd of boring stables and lone stars in dark nights above stereotypical middle eastern townscapes.

But Christmas seems to have transcended its religious roots, merging with and absorbing all kinds of other traditions. And extra stuff seems to get heaped on with every passing year. Like Christmas jumpers. They started off a few years back as a bit of a joke. Now they are mass-produced in Chinese sweatshops year-round in anticipation of the cheap novelty jumper frenzy every December. 

If you were going to choose one cultural accretion to mash up with the religious aspect of the holiday, why not Christmas jumpers? I actually really liked this card with cutesy nativity characters on jumpers.

Of course, we all know who the real star of Christmas is. Move over Jesus, the kids are more interested in Santa anyway.

This year we got an advent calendar card with Santa on. It arrived the end of November. There are elves behind the doors - but you'll have to take my word for that because I scanned it with the doors shut.

Who buys Santa presents? Inquiring minds want to know.

Snowmen, apparently. Goodness knows what he's wrapped up in there. Something frozen, I hope. 

Speaking of snowmen, this chap amused me. However, this is one of the cards that arrived in an orgy of glitter, which I am still noticing on the carpet.

Some newish themes came our way this year, particularly animals in the snow. This blackbird had a mscheivous glint in his eye.

And this donkey looked surprisingly chipper, despite only having a scarf to ward off the perishing cold.

(Seriously, animals do not stand out in falling snow. Animals are smarter than that.)

Another random theme, featuring on two cards this year, were hares and moons. Not mooning hares, although that will no doubt feature at some point as any cultural shift gets debased. These cards were captioned "Hare by Moonlight" and "Moonlit Hare". See if you can work out which was which.

We had no dogs in Santa hats this year (which deeply disappoints me) so I'm declaring hares and moons as the new dogs in Santa hats, in terms of card fashions. I guess they'd also count as 'animals too dumb to shelter from falling snow' along with the donkey and the cheeky berry-thieving blackbird. (You know it's not his berry. He's nicking it. You can tell by the glint in his eye. And good for him. We need more anarchic animals taking on humanity; pinching berries, burning stuff, overthrowing capitalism.)

Another macro-theme would be 'cards that people send me to mess up my audit'. The next one clearly falls into this theme. I'm fairly certain my friend Stewart was trying to derail me with this card.

Also, now I have to have a llamas category because someone thought it wise to send us this.

I didn't want a new category but Cathy insisted, because llamas.

Penguins - that's a sensible Christmas category that we've always had since the audit began back in 2012. (Ah, remember 2012? We'd just had the Olympics. The nation was united. We weren't going to be leaving the EU and plunge into economic chaos because a bunch of gammons were fed up with foreigners coming over here and doing all the menial jobs and paying tax on their earnings. A simpler time.)

Anyway, enough of the reverie about a time before the country turned into a toxic hot mess. Penguins. They're cute on their own of course. But even cuter as a couple.

The "Cosy Christmas Cuddles" card was Cathy's card to me. It's probably not that surprising that every year two of my favourite cards are the ones that we give to each other. I went native with my choice. You can't get more Welsh than two sheep saying Happy Christmas in Welsh.

Seriously, how cute are they? I bought this card when I saw it in November, instead of procrastinating and doing my usual 23rd December late dash to a supermarket.

And so, on to the last card I'm going to show you from this year's collection. This was from my northern-dwelling sister-in-law, Abby. It's a Geordie version of a popular Christmas song. It's the perfect marriage of concept and design and it's even got the Angel of the North on it in faint outline. Now, that's my kind of Christmas angel.

Thanks for reading this. Only 49 weeks until Christmas 2019!