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!

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!

Snacks of the Month - choccy goosegogs and chin chin

Two snacks this month. First, another random snack from Lidl: chocolate covered  gooseberries. 

Cathy spotted them while we were having a mooch round one of the stores. I expect they were part of one of the themed weeks that Lidl do - in this case Polish week.

Gooseberries aren't massively popular berries. I like them in desserts and as jam - mainly because my mum had a very productive gooseberry bush in her previous back garden and both gooseberry jam and goosegog crumble featured in her home cooking. 

There's also a story about how some bitey creepy-crawley that lived in the productive gooseberry bush bit Mum and a little while later the infected bite hospitalised her... in the USA. But that's another story.

These goosegogs are creepy-crawley free and are coated in a rich dark chocolate. They're about the size of Maltesers.

I was able to remove the chocolate coating and leave the gooseberry intact. It was brown and didn't look appetising. Instead here's a cross section with the chocolate still on.

Cathy reckons she wouldn't recognise the taste as gooseberry but to me they had all the tangy sharpness I'd expect. The dark chocolate works well to complement the sharpness of the fruit. 

They taste very rich, though. I wouldn't be able to scoff a pack in one sitting (and I know I shouldn't anyway). But for an occasional burst of tart sweetness these are pretty good.

My second snack this month is Africa's Finest chin chin, which I found in Asda. Despite claiming to be Africa's Finest it's actually made in the UK.

One reason I bought this was because of a funny thing I remember when I was a kid. A few years after my family came back to the UK from Africa we were invited to a wedding. The groom's family were from Nigeria and his relatives had brought some African food to the reception.

My brother and I ignored the normal British style buffet and went straight for the African food, much to the amusement of the groom's female relatives who were surprised to see little white boys so keen to try their cooking. One of the things they had was a massive sack of chin chin. 

Chin chin is a crunchy biscuit produced in small square chunks and fried rather than baked. Sometimes flavourings are added, sometimes not. There usually isn't much sugar in it, just a tiny amount to give it a slight sweetness.

In contrast to the home made stuff I remember with heavily nostalgic bias, this commercially produced and packed chin chin wasn't as good. It had a great crunch. It tasted fine. 

But, honestly it was never going to live up to the chin chin I had at that wedding. 

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 - January 2024

The first month of 2024 was very busy. I had two trips to Shrewsbury and two days in London, where I made the most of an evening to myself and visited the new Lego Shop in Battersea Power Station.

But first, a couple of "train" photos. 

New Lego minifigures released!

New silly photo opportunities in Asda!

The first trip to Shrewsbury was to see Shrewsbury play Wrexham in the FA Cup. More details to follow on my football recap thread. The second trip was for a combined birthday weekend, that included my youngest nephew's birthday party at a soft play centre, my brother's actual birthday. and seeing my mum on her birthday eve! So there was lots of present-opening and other fun. 

Mum and Dave shared a cake 

And Fred willingly got wrapped up in a blanket!

There has been some other sporting action as well, with two Blood Bowl games. You can read up on how the orcs lost to the lizardmen here, and how the humans beat the dwarfs here. I also managed to read a hefty science-fiction book (over 500 pages) which was my book of the month. 

On the final weekend of the month the Friends of Grange Gardens supported an activity morning as part the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch. It was well attended as kids built bird feeders and learned about nests.

I was on bird wrangling duties, looking after Terry Dactil, the orange hoopoe from Newport. (He had a complicated back story.)

Thankfully I survived my encounter! So, here comes February. Let's see how quickly it flies past. 

The 12 cards of Christmas

I have decided not to do a Christmas card audit this year. It's something I might do again in future, but I felt like a Christmas off. 

However, I haven't dispensed with all my blogging traditions - here are a selection of the cards we received this year. It was tough picking just 12 from the pile. I have only included cards that could scan easily on the flatbed, so you will just have to picture the 3D musical R2-D2 card with flashing lights that Connor gave me in your minds eye!

First up is a card that just made me smile. Santa has upgraded his transport - to a big red bus!

I'm never sure whether "peace" counts as a religious theme or not. It felt very apt this year with some of the horrors grinding on in other parts of the world, particularly in the middle east. I really liked the design of this peace dove. 

A more definite religious theme - the three "kings" (AKA wise men or magi). The curly shoes of the king in the middle amused me. 

I love cards designed by kids. This one of robins sat on a goalpost (I think) was by Delilah. It was printed as a fund-raiser for her school. 

And this drawing by Jowan was hand done. Got to say this is a contender for my very favourite card this year. A duck-billed platypus in a Santa hat? What's not to love? (Although I don't think platypuses quack, despite their duck-bills.)

Keeping on an antipodean fauna theme, here's a tree of koala bears from my friend Jon in Oz.

This card was given to us 11 months early by my friend Sian. It's a pun and a moose.

And another moose! Including this card is a bit of a cheat because it's one of the ones that I gave to Cathy. It's designed by Cardiff-based artist Ana Palamar. I liked his wellies. 

More animals. This time it's some sheep saying "Baa humbug!" I liked the stripy sheep who actually looks like a humbug. 

But nobody does humbug as well as the Modern Toss cartoonists. This gave me a belly laugh when I first saw it. 

Cathy's card to me. Very cute. 

And then the final card of the selection. This one really had it all. A pun. Camels! Wearing Santa hats! Fair play to my Mum, she ticked all the boxes with this one.

As ever, a massive thank you to everyone who sent us a Christmas card. If it wasn't featured in the post, I can promise you it was very much appreciated.