On the trail of the greatest secret agent in the world

A work trip to London meant a short stay near Baker Street and a chance to visit the secret entrance to the spy headquarters of none other than Danger Mouse himself!

Massive shout out to Gawain who humoured me and acted as my official photographer!

January 2025 monthly review

I've seen several social media posts about January being the longest month and people just wanting it to be over. Personally, the month seemed to fly by - helped by a hectic work schedule and a week of birthdays at the end of the month that meant spending a weekend with family. 

In work we are gearing up towards a big conference at the end of February with lots to do in readiness for that. We also said goodbye to two colleagues, one who left for a new job and one who started her maternity leave. So, lots of change to navigate. 

I also had a midweek overnight stay in London, which meant I was able to catch up with my friend Gawain before I got my train home. Because I was getting the late train, I managed to score a special offer on a first class ticket at cheaper than standard rate - a brilliant way to end a long couple of days in London.

I fitted in quite a bit outside of work too. Last year was the year of "quels" at the cinema, and Cathy and I are following a similar pattern so far this year, with a trip to the flicks to see Moana 2. I managed two evenings of Blood Bowl with Bryan - game 1 was a narrow win for my giant rats, game 2 was a hard-fought draw. I also helped out at the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch event in Grange Gardens, organised by the Cardiff Park Rangers. 

A three day weekend in Shrewsbury celebrating three family birthdays included a successful trip to take my Mum sofa shopping. We found some nice new ones that will actually fit into her living room configuration. When we weren't sofa shopping, we were playing games of Scrabble. 

I won both games and Mum has already told me she wants a rematch. My best score was 104 for a word using all seven letters that hit a treble word score (anchore[d], top left). 

I also took my nephew, Zac, to his juniors football game, played in cold wind and icy rain. He was borderline hypothermic by the end, but he earned and scored a penalty and helped his team to a 2-0 victory. He's wearing number 7 in the team now, a bump up from number 14 last season.

I went to two other football matches besides Zac's game. Both games featured Cardiff Draconians - an 8-2 victory at home, and their first league defeat of the season away at Swansea University. Losing to a late goal was tempered by it being a new ground, and my friend Jon joining me and Scott at the game. I am gradually dragging Jon to lower and lower level games. We started at Newport County, then Barry Town and now the Ardal League, the Welsh third tier. Parks football next!

Baseball in London - watching the MLB World Tour

A few weeks back my friend Gawain asked me if I'd like to go with him to a game in the Major League Baseball London Series between the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets. Naturally I leapt at the chance to a) see some live baseball, and b) spend a day hanging out with Gawain! So off I went for the Sunday game in the series.

I saw the Mets play the Phillies a long time ago, way back in 2007 (and in the very early days of this blog! Here's my write up, which omits the most memorable part of that game, which was Art Garfunkel singing the National Anthem!)

I was in Swindon on the Saturday, so had driven on to Reading in the evening and stayed the night there. In the morning I caught a nearly empty train to London Paddington before swapping to the Elizabeth Line to Stratford station near the London Stadium, which was hosting the series. 

Train selfie

I was repping the Padres for the day. That's a thing at these games - everyone wears the shirts of the teams they support. I saw most of the MLB teams represented, a few minor league teams, and also some shirts from British teams including Cardiff Merlins, Sheffield Bruins and a guy with 'Telford' emblazoned across his shirt. I also saw an Expos cap - repping a team that disappeared almost 20 years ago when the franchise was relocated from Montreal to Washington and the team became the Nationals. Gawain was unique in his Cuba international shirt.

I visited Stratford station a few times during my time working a conference at the Excel Centre back in April. I had also visited the London Stadium in April to watch a football match - the playing area was quite different this time, however. It took me a while to work out where I stood in the stadium last time. But I got to see more of the stadium this time as we were able to wander around quite freely. 

We went and stood behind the Mets bullpen to watch the starting pitcher warm up, then meandered around to find some free seats.

We ended up sitting with the Mets wives and girlfriends, who all had very natty jackets with their names on the back. I imagine this was a road game where they all wanted to join their husbands and partners. We were joined at this point by Jamie, a Mets fan from the UK.

Cinnamon pretzel!

Philadelphia fan Rob McElhenny was there with his wife Kaitlin Olsen. He was introduced as the co-owner of Wrexham AFC. He was meant to be throwing the ceremonial first pitch and turned it into an even bigger "look at me" moment by changing it to "the first ever ceremonial double play!!" Later he and Kaitlin led the singing of 'Take me out to the ball game' during the seventh inning stretch

The Wrexham co-owner wasn't the only link to Cymru. Katherine Jenkins sang God Save the King before the game. She did pretty well to make that terrible tune listenable. But unfortunately she followed Marisha Wallace who sang The Star Spangled Banner with incredible force. I hadn't heard of Marisha before - she's a Broadway star apparently - but she had some pipes on her!

We also had some pre-game entertainment with songs from Jess Glynne. I don't know the names of the songs she sang, but I recognised them all when she sang them. She was pretty good and managed to sing without getting distracted by the mascots, Phillie Phanatic and Mister Met bobbing and weaving around her as she performed. 

Unfortunately I wasn't able to get near to the Phillie Phanatic and had to settle to watching his antics on the big screen. 

I got some relatively good photos of Mister Met though, as he came over to our section. 

As to the game, it took a while to get going. The pitching was atrocious. They had so many pitching changes the game ran over 3 hours. 

Both closers got relieved midway through the final inning. That was where the game lit up. The Mets were trailing 4-3 at the start of the ninth and were 3 outs away from a sorry defeat. Somehow they scrambled 3 runs from a mix of poor pitching and errors. The Phillies got a run back but couldn't tie the game and lost on a weird double play which involved the catcher tagging home plate before throwing to first after Nick Castellanos broke his bat swinging for the fences.

Some local knowledge from another UK based Mets fan, John, got us into Stratford Station without getting stuck in massive queues (like the ones I was in after the football match in April). From there it was another trip on the Elizabeth Line back to Paddington and then on to Reading and a drive down the M4.

Talking to Gawain, we concluded that many (maybe most) of the Mets and Phillies fans had come over from the USA to watch their team. This is probably what makes a series in London viable as both teams have large fan bases. There are baseball fans in the UK, and many are really into it, but there probably aren't enough to fill a stadium without being augmented by traveling support. 

The European series was meant to be in Paris next year but has apparently been pulled, so there probably won't be another opportunity to watch MLB this side of the Atlantic until 2026 at the earliest now. 

More freebie football stickers

My friend Gawain, who normally sources me baseball cards, sent me some freebie packets of Topps official Euro 24 stickers that he had picked up at a trading card show. These are different to the free ones I got in M&S last month.

There were three stickers in each pack - with no shiny badges or rarer variations included. Fair enough, they were free after all.

The stickers themselves are interesting. Players for England and France have only their faces shown whereas players for other teams are shown in full kit. I suspect this is due to licensing as Panini are doing an England sticker collection, for example, so they might have exclusive rights to showing the kit.

The Germany players might also be "heads only" - but Bastian there was the only Germany player I got in the packets, and he is a "Legend", not a current player. There are three marked spaces for legend stickers on the Germany pages and Germany seems to be the only team to have them.

There are other stickers too, including illustrations of the stadium and the official ball designed just for this European championship. Every country has a double-sticker of landmarks and architecture representing it. I got both halves of the Slovakia picture.

The double stickers give a choice of lining up the design or the edges. I've made sure the red border lines up here which shows just how off centre the stickers are compared to each other. It's only about a millimetre, but it's very noticeable.

I am resisting the urge to start buying these stickers, especially as I really enjoyed opening these free packs. 

Miles and memories - happenings in March

A dragon for St David's Day! 

Cathy and I covered lots of miles in March. I had a couple of days off work because we had an appointment at the specialist clinic in Cambridge (we have been heading over there annually for about six years now, pandemics notwithstanding). This year we decided to go via Shrewsbury and see Mum on Mother's Day weekend. I went to church with her (and most of the rest of the family) on Mother's Day and got to say hello to lots of old friends. 

Our Mother's Day dinner plans were thrown awry by the restaurant phoning up to tell us they were having a software problem so they couldn't process any food orders or payments. So we ended up with a stack of takeaway pizzas instead. In a weird way, it was a nice reflection of how resilient we are as a family that we can adapt to a situation and still have fun.

Mentioning resilience makes me think of how we have adjusted as a family following the loss of my dad. This March marked the fifth anniversary of his sudden death. I found myself thinking of him quite a bit. I went to a Wales 'C' International football match on the day itself - I think he would have liked that. 

On the Monday after Mother's Day we set out to Cambridge. We had a trouble-free journey and after checking in at our hotel we went for a little trip to Newmarket. It's a horsey place with lots of horsey businesses and also a cracking toy shop!

After our hospital appointment on the Tuesday we headed home to Cardiff. We stopped in Oxford and saw our friend Ella on the way. 

We got home about midnight. The next morning I was on the 7.23am train to London for an all day meeting. I was also incubating a cold. Gotta admit, I wasn't at my best in that meeting. 

Before I came home I met up with my baseball buddy Gawain in an American sports-themed restaurant under Waterloo Station, in a warren of railway arches covered in graffiti. 

Selfie on the way to Waterloo

Meeting up had seemed like a great idea when we made the plan. By the time I got there though I was beyond exhausted. However, Gawain is very good company and we had a great two hours chatting before I had to get the train home.

All that excitement was just in five days. The rest of the month has been a bit of a blur. I made it to my first Keep Grangetown Tidy litter-pick of the year. Fiona who organises it took a picture as proof.

I also made my first foray to the cinema in 2024, watching Dune Part 2 (which I blogged about here). And we went to our first gig of the year - to see Tony Wright at the Metropole Theatre in Abertillery. It was on Easter Sunday, so we took him some Easter eggs, which Cathy presented to him afterwards.

We even had time this month for some ice creams in Victoria Park with the Wootten family. Spring is here. Summer is coming!

Recap of the month - December 2023

The final month of 2023 was relatively football-lite, although it started with a trip to Nottingham to watch Shrewsbury play Notts County. I went with my friend Paul, who is a Nottingham lad, so was able to show me around the city centre before the game. I got to see the statues of Brian Clough and Robin Hood, both of them much mythologised heroes in the city. 

Before the game I also met Chris, who I've known from an online forum for a while. We were meant to meet up at the end of August when Brentford played Newport County, but I got on the only train heading east from Cardiff that didn't stop in Newport so didn't meet him then. Happily, a few months later there were no such transport mishaps and we were able to finally meet in real life. 

The next Saturday I was helping to deliver a workshop in London, at the Diabetes UK HQ. It was an enjoyable, creative day and well worth getting on a train at 7.42am on a Saturday! 

I put this work trip to good use and booked a late train home so I could meet my friend Gawain for a meal before coming home.

I've known Gawain for a few years now. He is my main source of baseball cards for my collection. We have had several virtual chats about baseball, collecting cards, and loads of other stuff. But this was another first time meeting up in person. We went to Passyunk, which is an American sports bar transplanted from Philadelphia to London. 

I ran a risk and wore one of my Padres shirts to meet up - the owner told me it was OK to wear anything except a Patriots shirt. No chance of that...

For various reasons, including my travelling schedule and Cathy's health, we went for a restrained Christmas. The tree stayed in the loft but we still had plenty of decorations and Christmas stuff around, including 5 advent calendars. My favourite was the Star Wars Droid Factory calendar, which gave you the parts every day to assemble droids in festive colours. These were the first two assembled:

We saw friends and family in the run up to Christmas, focusing more on those connections than decorations. We had some mayhem with small children and a relaxing time meeting Cathy's uncle and aunt in Monmouth.

Awesome R2-D2 card from Connor

For Christmas itself, we went to Shrewsbury. We travelled up the day before Christmas Eve and came home the day after Boxing Day. I went with my brother to the Midnight Communion service in the local Anglican Church on Christmas Eve (via the pub!) and we had Christmas dinner with my mum (and Fred the dog). 

Photo and filter by Cathy

On Boxing Day my sister and brother-in-law drove down from Edinburgh for the day with their family so we got to see all the nieces and nephews. It was a lovely time together.

Coming back to Cardiff  with a few days spare before New Year meant we had some time to unwind. We went to see Wonka at the cinema with our friends Bryan and Elaine. I think it was only the 6th film I'd seen at the cinema all year. We also had a day trip to Oxford to see another friend, so I have chalked up a few miles in the final month of the year.