Doorstep Days - August 2025

Every month I say it's been a busy month. And August was no different. The quieter day isn't coming.  

Spotted while canvassing

The first two weeks of the month I discovered how much fun canvassing was, knocking doors on behalf of Plaid Cymru in the council by-election. I continued my election tradition and reviewed the leaflets from all the contesting parties. It was a bit weird that I was giving out some of those leaflets this time. Although the result didn't go our way, I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would - and the exercise did me good too. I went out canvassing or leafleting at least ten times and didn't get rained on once, which I feel is pretty good going. 

I started August with a gig on the very first night. I had some free tickets to see Catfish and the Bottlemen at the Principality Stadium, courtesy of Cathy's cousin, Adam. (He'd won them and asked if I could make use of them.) I went to the gig with Ian, which was the first time we had done something together since watching Alien: Romulus last year. I wasn't massively impressed by the headline band, but it was fun seeing Travis in their role as support act.

Pre-gig selfie

The fans got into the headliners

In the middle of the month I went on the Keep Grangetown Tidy litter-pick, on another warm morning. Litter-picks are so much nicer in the sunshine even if the amount of litter seems to be getting worse. I usually find a lost toy; this time it was a Baby Shark.

Do do do do do do do do do,
do do do do do do do do do,
do do do do do do do do do,
in the bin!

Sports-wise, I went to seven football matches, including Shrewsbury Town's opening game of the season accompanied by two of my nephews. I bought a Shrewsbury shirt because it was a nostalgia trigger. The trip to see Shrewsbury coincided with my sister and her kids being in town and we had a great time hanging out as an extended family. 

On the second Saturday of the month I drove down to Carmarthen to watch Cardiff Draconians in their first away game in the Welsh second tier. Carmarthen was a great away day. I met up with my friend Charlie, who I hadn't seen for a couple of years, and also ticked off all the ground in the Dracs's division! 

I made the most of a long weekend with three football matches and an ice hockey game on my bank holiday of sport, which included a diversion in Swindon to STEAM, the museum of the Great Western Railway. My seventh game of the month was another Dracs game, a disappointing defeat in the league cup, which is sponsored by the Welsh Blood Service and is therefore known as the "Blood Cup" (Cwpan Gwaed in Cymraeg!)

Last minute 'goalie up for the corner' excitement

Speaking of the "Blood Cup" I lost my Blood Bowl game with Bryan this month with my 'naive Norse' getting turned over by the wood elves. We have managed to get a game in every month this year so far, despite both being really busy! I still haven't picked my Blood Bowl team for September yet. But it's probably not going to be Norse...

Recap of the month - February 2023

This monthly round up is a bit late because the end of February and the beginning of March proved to be very busy with a work trip to North Wales, followed by adventuring to the eastern side of England - but there will be more about that when I review March!

I didn't blog much in February because it was a very busy footballing month, including a new milestone on the first Saturday when I travelled with one of my footballing friends called Paul to the Kassam Stadium in Oxford. This was my first visit to that football ground and it became the 100th ground I've watched football at since I started keeping a record of football matches in 1992. 

The Friday night immediately before hitting my century of grounds on the Saturday I went to Abergavenny Town's rather dilapidated old ground, which was my 99th ground where I've seen a game. On both the Friday and the Saturday I was supporting the away team - Barry Town and Shrewsbury Town - and both times the team I supported won 1-0.

In total I went to 8 games, which was a new record monthly total for February. In addition to Oxford and Abergavenny, I saw two games at different grounds in Port Talbot. The Viking ship on the Port Talbot Town logo caught my eye.

I went to two Barry home games, and saw Barry play a game in Taff's Well too. I dragged my buddy Connor along to one of the games at Jenner Park. It was the first time he'd seen them since before the pandemic.

I even had a trip to Caldicot where I saw my friend Ben play for Caldicot Town against Tredegar Town. 

Due to an injury crisis at the club, Ben was playing in an unfamiliar role at right back. Despite that his team won. 

It wasn't all football though. In the middle of the month, we had a lovely Saturday with my sister, Sarah, and her three kids. We met them in Bristol and visited The Wild Place, which is a well-planned zoo park with a variety of animals kept in nice environments. The highlight was the walkways through woods populated with lynx, wolves, wolverines and bears. The bears were hibernating but we were able to watch them snooze on the den-cam. (Even if they had been awake, you're not allowed to play with them anyway.)

I went back to Oxford for a second time later in the month, this time with Cathy. We stopped to have lunch with a friend on our way to Haddenham, which isn't too far away.  Our friend, Colin, had passed away and we were on our way to his funeral. 

We got to know Colin because we became good friends with his daughter, Viv, when we started attending the same church as her back at the start of the century. He was a kind, gentle man with a good sense of humour. He was also a skilled potter and he gifted us several ceramic items that will remind us of him. 

Colin's funeral was in the parish church of St Mary the Virgin in Haddenham. We had visited the church before, when Viv and Ian got married there just over 15 years ago. 

Outside the church is the village duck pond. This is an important cinematic landmark because it was the film location for the scene in The Great Muppet Caper when Kermit, Fozzie and Gonzo land in the UK after being thrown out of the cargo hold of an aeroplane. I feel Colin would have appreciated that we stopped to take a selfie with it (see the picture at the top of the blog post).

Album review - Gospel by Mica Paris

Recently I was in a shop and heard a song I liked, so I googled it and discovered it was a song released by Mica Paris in 2020. I played it a few times online and still liked it, enough to add the album, called Gospel, to my wishlist. It subsequently became a birthday gift from Ian and Viv (thanks guys!), and I've given it a few listens since.

In the sleevenotes, Mica talks about how her voice has matured and fits into the gospel sound. The album is about hope in a troubling time (which is one way of summarising 2020) and she says how she hopes it will uplift and encourage people. 

The song that introduced me to the album is an original track called Mamma Said. I really liked the line "Don't you know your darkest hour is only sixty minutes long." (Here's a YouTube link.)

There is another original track on the album, along with a mix of ten other hymns, spirituals and covers. The spiritual I found most interesting is Go Down Moses, probably because that's not one I know very well. Oh Happy Day is delivered well too. A slow-paced version of Amazing Grace doesn't add much to the album though, possibly because I'm overly familiar with it, but mainly because on an objective level it's actually a pretty dull tune. Motherless Child is a traditional spiritual and I like this version, although I prefer the version sung by Darius Rucker on a different covers album.

The covers include (Something Inside) So Strong, I Want to Know What Love Is, and A Change is Gonna Come. Mica offer perfectly reasonable versions of all of them. There's also a cover of Human by Rag'n'Bone Man, which is probably the most recent track to be featured. That's a fairly well-covered song now, but I like this version. 

The best cover on the album, though, is I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For. I've always loved that song, ever since I started listening to U2 albums back when I was a teenager. It still resonates with me. Bono has joked in the past that he likes it when people who can actually sing cover the song. Mica sings it really well and it's easily the next best track on this album after Mamma Said. 

Overall, I think this is a great album. If Mica releases more albums in this vein, then I'd definitely be interested hearing them.

Musical review: ‘Cappuccino Girls’ at The Gate, Cardiff

Billed as ‘Sex and the City meets Desperate Housewives’ and with predominantly pink posters and other marketing, this show obviously wasn’t aimed at blokes. As my mate Ian said “It was alright… if you have ovaries.” Cathy disagreed. She has ovaries and she wasn’t keen on it.

So what was wrong? Well, technically it was very good. The songs were good, the acting was generally of a very high standard (two actors were much better than the others, but that’s always the way), the plot was okay (with some ‘twists’ you could see coming from the middle of the first act), the venue was, well, if you’ve been to The Gate, you’ll know how it looks like a good venue until you actually have to sit in it for more than five minutes.

But as a show it left me feeling dissatisfied and slightly uneasy. [[[spoiler alert]]] The concluding happy ending happens when one character comes into money – more specifically £20million – and is able to pay for a bone marrow transplant and bankroll her friend’s magazine. So, money is the answer to all of life’s problems, is it?

Well, fine and dandy if you have an estranged dad to leave you £20million, but if you don’t, it’s fair to say you’re screwed. A far more satisfying story would have been if the girls had to find a happy ending without the financial fallback of a sudden windfall. Maybe one of them would have to give up their childhood sweetheart in order to stay with her husband, the bone-marrow donor, or another scenario. It would have been a darker show, but a better one.

Every musical has a message, for good or ill, and this was no different – a father trying to make good his wrongs and set his child free. But there are other ways that could be done on stage, without the insinuated message that money sets you free and solves your issues for you.

And there’s also the edge that this was billed as a celebration of independent women, drawing strength from each other, and taking on the world. But their independence in the end stemmed from a fortune left to them by a penitent father, rendering all their independence as a result of paternalistic largesse. Instead of the respect earned by building up a magazine circulation and reputation from scratch, being bank-rolled by a millionaire friend isn’t exactly the triumph of hopes and dreams that it was portrayed as.

Hardly a celebration of emancipated womanhood.

Ultimately, Cappuccino Girls lived up to its name. Frothy like the coffee, and girls, not women, living out a fantasy where they are saved from the harsh reality of life.

Seems it's a fine line between saviour of humanity and humanity's darkest fears

Irony Boy sent me this the other day (see I credit people when I publish the stuff the send me, Ian...)





















Source

Aim for the hand

At the culmination of Ian's stag and Viv's hen weekend we went for a picnic to Rest Bay. It was sunny enough to colour me pink and we introduced lots of new people to the simple pleasure of throwing stones.


After experimenting with a variety of targets like Coke bottles, I set off down the beach and found a plastic pole and a 'skatch'-type beach game shaped like a hand, which we then set up as a target. And very good it was too until Tim destroyed it with a well-aimed throw.