Europhilex

My first stamp show of 2025 and it was a big one. Europhilex at the NEC. I visited yesterday (Friday 9th May).

Given this was a large international exhibition, I was expecting a bit more from it. There was a large number of competitive presentations, including some great thematic exhibits. But overall, the hall wasn't full and there were fewer dealers than I was expecting. Unlike previous international exhibitions there didn't seem to be much presence from postal agencies from other countries either. 

My favourite display was an excellent analysis of diabetes, with a huge amount of material related to the history and science around it. 

The main reason I went to Europhilex was because the British Thematic Association were holding a meeting. This included a presentation about postcards from North Borneo followed by an opportunity for members to show some of their stamps. 

I took some bits from my collection of the Statue of Liberty on stamps. There was a real mix of other topics ranging from puffins to mistakes on stamps (like depicting Christopher Columbus holding a telescope, which hadn't been invented when he set sail).

I didn't buy much, but I did find a stamp featuring my favourite baseball player, Tony Gwynn. As it was Tony's birthday, I had to buy it!

I also got something for Cathy...

Covid recollections - five years on

We recently had a 'National Day of Reflection' about the Covid-19 Pandemic, marking five years since the first lockdown orders were issued. The week after the day of reflection, I met up with my former work colleagues Heather and Tracy, and we talked about the last week we worked together, as in, together in the same office. 

We were a team of three who worked in an office tucked away under the Children's Hospital. I used to refer to the room as the bunker, because although we had a window, we were well below street level. The window looked out onto a concrete area surrounded by high walls. We were located below a ward that acted as temporary housing for patients from various wards as wards elsewhere in the hospital were being renovated. In the time we were there, the ward was a cardiac ward, then a renal ward, then something else.

In early 2020 it got turned into a respiratory ward. Patients admitted with breathing difficulties caused by the new virus were being cared for there. I found this out in an inter-departmental meeting on a Tuesday morning. I also knew the kitchen serving that ward was located just down the corridor from our office and staff were preparing food for the ward and transporting food trolleys along the corridor without any protective gear. 

I went back to the office and said to Heather and Tracy that we needed to pack up our things, take our laptops and work from home for the rest of the week until we got some clear answers. Within an hour the three of us had left the office... and that was the last day we worked there. 

Just before I moved to a new job the office was permanently requisitioned for another team and I went in with Heather to clear it. I threw away so many half-completed to-do lists! 

Covid hit our wider network hard. Many of the teams we worked with had staff redeployed. There was a huge shift to virtual consultations and home working. Most of our teams had tried to start virtual consultations but had always been frustrated by a lack of support from IT and sometimes point blank blocking by Information Governance. Suddenly, everyone was on Microsoft Teams and encouraged to talk to patients that way. As one consultant said to me 'For years we have been trying to go virtual, and all it took was a global pandemic...!"

I feel a bit guilty, really, talking about my experience working in healthcare during the pandemic. I recognise that I got off very lightly. I know people who ended up in Nightingale Hospitals and others who were given minimal training handling needles and were launched into vaccination centres. One former colleague worked in ICU and talked about having to intubate people she worked with who had caught the disease. 

But my experience was being at home, locked away. Cathy and I spent more time together than we had done for years. It was nice eating lunch together every day. Yes, it was all a bit scary. I was flicking through an old journal and for a long time I was noting the covid death statistics that were being published daily. 

Along with journaling, I got into blogging a lot more. One of my lockdown projects was launching my (now sadly neglected) blog about baseball cards featuring Tony Gwynn. That was one of several Lockdown Projects, which I wrote about in May 2020.

I didn't blog excessively about the pandemic, but I did record some things, which make an interesting read now, with the benefit of hindsight. (That Lockdown Projects blog post was the first mention of the pandemic on my blog.)

In the first few months of the pandemic, lots of people put home made rainbows in their windows as a message of hope and solidarity with each other. Blog post: Grangetown Rainbow Art

Shortly after the Covid-19 lockdown began my Uncle Malcolm and my good friend Ben both died, although not from Covid. I wasn't able to go to their funerals, which added to the pain. Blog post: The fractional losses, being human in a viral world

A bit like the Rainbow Art thing, we joined in the first Grangetown Zoo. 

In the October, lockdown had been eased a bit and then suddenly returned. Blog post: Lockdown freedoms (a "Fire Break" post)

At the end of 2020, I listed five positive things from the year. One of them was being at home for Christmas - yes, it was another lockdown but it was still nice. That was the Christmas my mum went to Edinburgh for Christmas at my sister's and wasn't allowed back into England for four weeks due to emergency travel restrictions.

By February 2021, I was really missing going to football matches. As a result it felt like the 2020-21 season never really happened at all. 

But then in March I got called for my first covid vaccination, in the repurposed former Toys R Us building in Cardiff Bay. It wasn't long before it was known as Jabs R Us. Blog post: Jabbed

I really remember that day. Firstly, when I walked in I met my colleague Nick who worked in the Service Improvement Team in the health board. He had helped design the mass vaccination centre and was there checking it was all running smoothly. 

The second thing was just the feeling of tearful relief when I got back into my car after being vaccinated and suddenly feeling like I had some protection at last from this awful thing that had been threatening me for so long. I have such a strong memory of that emotional response, but I didn't mention it in my blog post at the time. 

That year there was a weird anti-lockdown party in the Senedd Election. Blog post: Senedd 2021 Election Leaflets Review & Ranking

I had a surprise when I cleaned out the detritus from my car. Blog post: Mundane markers of pandemic life

In June 2021 we went to the cinema for the first time since before lockdown. We saw In The Heights. 

And in July 2021 I was able to go to my first football match since early March 2020. Blog post: Back to football after 16 months away

I posted several review posts of 2021 at the end of the year. One of them was all about the pandemic. Blog post: Reflecting on 2021 – the second year of the pandemic

In early 2022, I wrote about how Covid-19 was a good example of how sincerely held beliefs - however strongly they are held - are no protection against reality. This is a lesson that has become ever more apparent politically since I blogged about it. Blog post: The boat of belief and the rocks of reality

I also noted how the pandemic had left it's mark when I took part in the Keep Grangetown Tidy litter pick in January 2022. 

In May 2022 I caught Covid-19 for the first time. I was due to start my new job and had to spend the first week of it attending virtual meetings and apologising to people. It was a key part of my blog post review of the month that month.

In September 2022 I had my fourth covid vaccination and was very pleased to finally get a sticker! (Cathy got one the very first time she got vaccinated.)

And in October 2022, we went to our first gig since before the pandemic - a postponed Counting Crows gig in Manchester

Covid was still around in 2023. I caught it again in March, as mentioned in that month's round up post. (And yes, I might have caught it off a giant rabbit!)

Happily, I have managed to stay free of the virus since then. 

I hoped that after the pandemic settled down the world might be a more reflective and kinder place. Sadly, that hasn't happened. We have had two years of war in Ukraine now, and a year and a half of atrocities in Gaza. The USA seems to be spinning apart, headed up by a destructive narcissist. It seems like the chaos caused by covid wasn't enough and some people just want more. 

Talking about stamps... and baseball cards... again

I sort of still collect stamps, although it's not something I'm doing as actively as in the past. Last year, the society I belong to, the British Thematic Association, started doing meetings on Zoom. I presented about my collection back in March 2021.

The Zoom meetings are recorded, so if you would like to hear me talking about my collection of stamps featuring the Statue of Liberty, you can watch it here:

Since then I was asked to present again (virtually) at the Newport Philatelic Society back in November, and in March I'm due to present to the Caledonian Philatelic Society based in Glasgow.

I haven't added anything really to my collection for ages, except for a few things I inherited from my dad's collection as Cathy and I have been sorting through it. My collecting focus has switched to baseball cards, specifically cards featuring Tony Gwynn, the all-time greatest player for the San Diego Padres. I closed out 2021 on 1,052 different cards featuring Tony. One week into 2022 and I had a nice mail day when two envelopes arrived containing 3 new cards for the collection.

The card on the handwritten note came from Nashville and is from a set released in 1999. The others were from a collector in the UK and were released last year. My blog about baseball cards is currently on a midwinter break, but these cards will be featured on there some time this year!

Reflecting on 2021 - blogging renaissance

It may be a bit early to start reviews of the year just before Christmas, but I've been thinking a lot about the year as it comes to an end. This first 'reflections' post is a bit self-indulgent.

I blogged more posts on this blog in 2021 than for the previous nine years. In fact, almost as many as I blogged way back in 2011. Over the years I have posted quite a bit about the decline of blogging. But this year I have tried to use my blog as a way of just keeping track of things with at least a review of the previous month's happenings. 

The blog mascots - The Panperth Hogs

I'm not one to blog much about current events, with the exception of elections where I do my now customary analysis of election leaflets. This year I have also posted a "Snack of the Month" every month. I've enjoyed having a monthly thing to blog about. I might try to blog a different monthly thing next year.

I have also been blogging about baseball cards, with well over 200 blog posts published on my blog about cards featuring Tony Gwynn. I have now written about 900 baseball cards. There are still more yet to be blogged! So with the baseball card blog and this blog, that is over 300 blog posts this year; almost one blog post every day!

That's a lot of material to inform my cloud-ganger as that version of me coalesces. (If you don't know what I mean, then this might help, and this as well.)

This output hasn't really been balanced with input. I have barely read any books this year. I don't feel any poorer for it, although I feel guilty about not reading more. The piles of half-read books and unread books look at me reproachfully as I sit scrolling on my phone or absorbing sporting spectacle on the TV. Maybe when we can restart our book group meetings in person, I will get kickstarted into reading more. Until then, maybe the imbalance between content creation and content consumption will continue. 

July 2021 - End of month review

July started with us coming back from a week's holiday on the Lleyn Peninsular in North Wales (see blog posts here), and ended with us on holiday in Shropshire with family from Salop and from Edinburgh. 

There's a cheetah in this card game!

Inbetween these times away, we squeezed in quite a bit.

I came back from our North Wales holiday with a sore throat and sneezing more than usual. Apparently that can be a sign of coronavirus infection in people who have been double-jabbed, so Cathy and I booked appointments at the drive-through test centre at the Cardiff City Stadium. I now feel I have lived the full pandemic experience, now that I have had to stick a swab up my nose! 

Our tests were negative. I was impressed with the organisation of the test centre. Everyone there really knew the drill. They knew we were coming, and processed us through very politely and quickly. We had the results texted to us in less than 24 hours. It was a good experience in a stressful moment.

We also watched the European Championships semi-finals and final. England blew it, is my verdict, with a terrible penalty shoot-out in the final that will potentially have scarred another generation of kids. I mentioned last month how this was the first international championship I have experienced since my Dad died, and after the final I have thought several times about how he would have rung me up to dissect the failure in detail. These are the unexpected moments when grief catches us.

In my other blogging project, I reached a new milstone - 700 baseball cards featuring Tony Gwynn. I feel I am starting to run out of steam a bit with the baseball cards and my blogging has been very gappy of late as the supply of new cards has run out.

It might continue to be gappy, as I have started going to football matches again. I've blogged about my trips to Bristol and Aberdare. I added a third match in the month of July as The New Saints were playing Kauna Zalgiris from Lithuania in a Europa Conference League Qualifying game during our week in Shropshire. As TNS play in Oswestry, just half an hour away, I went with my brother for a fun evening out.

TNS already had a 5-0 lead from the first leg in Lithuania, so I was hopeful we would see some goals. And we did. 

It was a very one-sided affair. Kauno Zalgiris played suicide football, trying to build from the back and repeatedly giving the ball away as TNS played a high press. Several moves broke down in their own half and resulted in TNS having chance after chance to score. There was a Lithuanian guy in front of us and his partner started laughing as me and my brother started shouting 'Nooooo!' as the Kauno defenders set up for another futile attempt to play out from the back. It was cringeworthy to watch. 

TNS won 5-1 on the night, with some superb goals, to cap a 10-1 aggregate win over the two legs.

Spending a week with family also meant there were opportunities for back garden football with an array of smaller people. My eldest nephew is getting pretty good these days - he graduated from his soccer course with three trophies a couple of weeks back. He also hits the ball harder than he used to and his Dad has had to reinforce the back fence, as you can see in this photo!

I will do a summary of our week in Shropshire in a future blog post, although our big days out were actually in Cheshire and Wales, so it will be photos from not-Shropshire in the main.

10 cards from the ACCA2020

A selection of Christmas cards that we received for Christmas 2020. It's harder to make this selection than to do the actual audit!

One of the categories that we usually get a few entries in is "Christmas Food". Unusually this year we didn't get any cards of Christmas puddings or mince pies. We did, however get a picture of these adorable cupcakes.

(Pretty sure that says Merry Christmas, although the font makes it look like Messy Christmas at first glance.)

Staying on the theme of food, there's always a very good chance of your card making it into the selection for my blog if it includes a pun, as this one does. This card made me hungry every time I looked at it.

Speaking of puns, this year was the first time I got a card with a Welsh pun on it. Unfortunately I didn't say the greeting out loud until I had already asked what the joke was. Then I got the joke before the reply text arrived.

Some of these scans are a bit wonky and odd (like the one of E.T. there) because I set up my overhead scanner to scan one card and then tried to scan them all using it. This next card was the reason I set up the overhead scanner. If I'm a sucker for puns, I'm a ma-hoosive sucker for googly eyes.

That's tinsel on the bottom as well. I didn't know how it would work squashing it into a flatbed scanner. 

That card is the reason the ACCA2020 records 4.5 penguin cards and 0.5 Snowpeople cards. I couldn't assign it to just the one category.

Penguins are popular on Christmas cards, even though they aren't North Pole animals. They're cute though.

That one at the bottom right looks like he is shouting "Hooray!" Probably because he's been able to swivel his wings in an utterly unnatural direction for a penguin.

I always try to include at least one religious-themed card in the selection. Truthfully, they tend to be quite dull. However the following card was a bit different and the only card received this year to mention Jesus on the front.

The lettering is foil and shiny, but hasn't scanned very well. I couldn't get this to scan properly under the overhead scanner so resorted to the flatbed.

"Sport" was a new category this year, occasioned by a card from a fellow baseball card collector. This card has featured on my baseball card blog as well - it was my Christmas Day post.

For those who don't know, I collect baseball cards featuring Tony Gwynn (over 570 so far!), but this is the only one in my collection that's been doctored to show him in a Santa hat!

Talking of Santa hats, there was another returning category this year - dogs! We had two cards with pictures of dogs wearing Santa hats, but my favourite one had several hatless dogs on.

I must admit, it surprises even me that I chose to show off hatless dogs rather than behatted dogs, but that card's just too cute.

Another new category this year was 'References to the Pandemic'. We had one card in the category, and I really liked it. Everyone, meet Rudolph the Red Masked Reindeer.

And if that's got you humming a tune, this final card might well have the same effect. This was actually the card that Cathy gave me and as usual, she brought some strong game. A cute design, a cracking pun, and raccoons. Gotta love raccoons!

There's only the first line there, so I've added to it.

"Raccoon around the Christmas Tree

In the Christmas Party bins

Eating the trash so merrily

With our furry bandit grins."

Seriously, someone needs to make that into an actual song.

So those are 10 cards that I really liked from the ones we were sent this year. Many thanks to everyone who sent us a card. Look out for some forthcoming extra posts about Christmas cards coming soon.

Review of 2020 - 5 positive things

As it's New Year's Eve, I thought I would close out 2020 with a blog post. While it's a hard year to review, for fairly obvious reasons, here are 5 things that made my year a bit special. 

1) February's Five Football Saturdays

It feels like a long time ago since I was freely able to go to football matches. Although the pandemic derailed my matchgoing last season, and has meant I haven't been to any games this season yet, I still feel pleased about getting to a game on all five Saturdays in February. This can only be done in a leap year, and only when the 1st and 29th of February are Saturdays. 

I blogged about the games I went to here

2) Achieving a collecting target

On 9 May I started a blog about baseball cards featuring the Padres greatest ever player, Tony Gwynn. I set myself a target of collecting 394 cards featuring him - in honour of his batting average in 1994, when he recorded a modern day record of .394. On 7 October I completed that mission. I've actually exceeded my target by some way and have now blogged well over 500 different cards.

3) A surprise knock at the door

Quite unexpectedly my former colleague Sean, who now works for Diabetes UK Cymru, knocked on my door and presented me with a Diabetes UK Cymru Director Award for Campaigning and Influencing Change. It was both unanticipated and humbling to receive that recognition and in the middle of a tough week, work-wise, it was a timely encouragement. 

Sean also took a photo of me and stuck it on Twitter. I'm holding up a planter that came with the certificate. In hindsight I could have posed a bit more elegantly. At least Sean timed his call when I'd just had a haircut and wasn't sporting Lockdown Hair!

At the end of October many of my NHS Wales colleagues were successful at the Quality in Care Diabetes Awards. There's a full write up here. One of the projects I've been involved in was shortlisted. It's a picture book about a dinosaur who has diabetes and the two girls who wrote it were also given special awards - which I was really happy about.

4) Dwi'n wedi dysgu Gymraeg 

I started learning Welsh in September 2019. In January this year I sat an exam and passed my Lefel Mynediad (Entry Level). I then went on and completed the Sylfaen (Foundation) course, most of which had to be taught on Zoom. I didn't find the remote learning as good as the classroom experience. 

I didn't enter for the Sylfaen exam because it would have been on a date I was supposed to be at Hampden park for a Euro 2020 game. That game didn't happen... and neither did the exam!

I have really enjoyed learning Welsh. It's a challenge because languages were never my strong point, but I am able to write the occasional email in Welsh now, and have some very basic conversations. I can also understand a bit of the commentary on Sgorio when watching the highlights of the Cymru Premier games, although I have a bit of a way to go before I'm able to follow it properly. 

5) An unusual Christmas

I blogged a couple of months back about "Lockdown freedoms", which were some of the good things about this horrible year. I worked from home from the middle of March. Although I miss my office colleagues and seeing people face-to-face, it does mean I have had lunch with Cathy nearly every day.

Another bonus for us was planning to have Christmas at home. In the 22 years we've been married, we had only spent two Christmases at home. Once we had a last minute change of plan when I was really poorly with a terrible bout of 'flu. And two years ago we had Christmas at home with my sister-in-law as Cathy recovered from surgery.

We decided a few months back that the most sensible course of action that was least likely to be derailed by events, was for Cathy and me to plan to have Christmas on our own at home - for the very first time. As it turned out, this plan worked out best for everyone. My brother's family expanded with two new children in November, so they needed some space. My foster-sister was given an appointment for dental extractions two days before Christmas and needed my Mum to go and stay with her to help with childcare. (They travelled up on the day the Tier 4 restrictions came in and Scotland closed its borders about an hour after Mum arrived in Edinburgh!)

So Cathy and I had our Christmas together, just us. And you know what? It was lovely. We had a leisurely time opening presents. I made a roast dinner. We went out for a little walk in the afternoon. We watched the new Pixar film, Soul, on Disney Plus in the evening. And it was just really nice and relaxing. 

So, looking back on the year, there have been some good times and I've managed to achieve a few things despite the best efforts of a nasty virus. Even the small wins are wins. 

Meanwhile, to kick off 2021, I'm planning on doing my Annual Christmas Card Audit for the 9th consecutive year! So keep an eye out for that...

Lockdown freedoms ( a "Fire Break" post)

Wales is back in lockdown, although this time it's got an end date specified from the outset. The Welsh Government has branded it a "Fire Break". We are all supposed to stay indoors and not see people.

I know people who have really struggled with all the restrictions placed on us during the pandemic. I've talked to friends who were desperate to go to a pub as soon as pubs reopened, and who were equally desperate for their children to go back to school. It was hard on people to have their children at home all day, seven days a week. 

On the plus side, I've not had to deal with any of the veiled pity normally measured out on child-free people like me. But then I've not really had to deal with people generally. 

As someone with a lot more introverted characteristics than are obviously apparent, I don't mind not seeing people. In fact, the summer just gone was one of the few summers where I have felt free to sit indoors on gloriously sunny days and not feel like I was somehow wasting the good weather by not being out in it. I'm an indoor person, quite happy working in a bunker with no windows.

I've also been free of the pressure to socialise. I can be sociable. I like people and I like meeting up with them. But I find big groups harder to deal with. It takes energy. Some people get energised by walking into a room full of people and talking to everyone. I'm the reverse. That's not how I recharge after a hard week. The lockdown removed some of that pressure to be outgoing and expend energy on group situations. 

I have enjoyed having more free time with less guilt that I'm not out doing stuff. My lockdown project - to blog about 394 baseball cards featuring Tony Gwynn - has exceeded expectations. I met my target after 152 daily blog posts, and am continuing both to blog and to accumulate more cards. I have also heavily modified a Lego set (actually combining two Lego sets) to build a big station building for my Lego train. 

I haven't written a draft of a novel or a screenplay, or anything, but my creative output has been higher than for a good number of years. I've felt like I've had permission to stay inside and do things I enjoy.

However, there has been a trade off. I wrote back in May about the fractional losses from the pandemic. We have experienced a few more of those recently. 

Some friends had twins a couple of weeks ago and we have admired their cute little faces through a window. We have no timeline in place for actually holding them. One of our best friends is turning 40 during the fire break and we are not allowed to party with her. Similarly, our godson is hitting double digits and Cathy's Grampy is having a birthday too. The football season has kicked off but the teams I support are playing behind closed doors. My work colleagues had some fabulous success in some industry awards last week, and we all had to watch in our own living rooms instead of clinking beers together at a fancy soiree.

Overall, I would trade the small freedoms I've found in lockdown for being free of the threat of Coronavirus. While I have enjoyed having time to myself, I would like that to be something I choose rather than imposed by a viral threat. I really hope this fire break works.

Lockdown projects

Have people been blogging about the way life has changed because the world is in the middle of a pandemic? I feel I ought to mark it somehow on my blog given that it's so important at the moment and it has been going on so long.

The last football match I went to before lockdown was a painful 2-3 home defeat for Shrewsbury against Oxford United, Shrewsbury were cruising 2-0 up in the first 25 minutes until the referee intervened and decided to send a Shrewsbury player off when he was the player who was fouled. Oxford eventually won it a couple of minutes before full time. It was a nonsense decision that ruined my afternoon. If I'd known it would be my last football match for two months, and possibly the season, maybe I would have savoured it more.

That was also the last weekend I was in Shrewsbury. I haven't seen my Mum since then. It's felt weird because we spent a lot of time with her in the autumn and spring trying to help her get the house sorted and ready to sell. And then suddenly, two months of not travelling up to Shrewsbury at all. 

So, stuck in the house. There's lots to do. I'd like to say the house is spick and span now, but it's not. I saw a funny meme with a person saying "I always said I didn't have enough time to do the housework. Now I know that's not true." Yep, that resonated.

So, what have I been doing? Well. Quite a bit actually.

Painting my Blood Bowl teams. 

I bought the Blood Bowl game in 2017. Three years later I've finally got round to painting some of the figures. It only took a global pandemic. These are the skaven team of man-sized rats (plus an ogre). (And, yes, they are wearing blue and yellow.)

Buying more baseball cards. 

Not really essential purchases but people in the collecting Facebook groups I belong to have been having clear outs. And eBay is still going strong. I'm scanning my Tony Gwynn cards for a standalone blog project that I've wanted to do for ages. Now I have time...

Tinkering with a Lego train station.

This is just a slightly modified set that I bought in a Tesco sale after Christmas. It's going to be the frontage of a station. I needed to rebuild the set to take out the 'play functions' and make it more robust. The front is now reasonable. Just the booking office, waiting rooms, concession stands, platforms and track to go... as you can see from this view of the back!

Collecting Rainbows.

This is a big thing at the moment. People are drawing rainbows and putting them in their windows. On my daily exercise (which is more like every other day) I have been walking around Grangetown taking photos of the rainbows in people's windows. I've been tweeting them too, and the Grangetown Community Blog has featured some of them. I keep finding new creative expressions and it really brings me joy when I go out walking. 

My collection of collections, part 2: baseball cards

Baseball cards aren't a particularly random thing to collect (unlike souvenir monks). They are one of the most well-known things that people collect. Maybe not in the UK, though.

I first fell in love with baseball cards when I was 10 years old and we went on a family holiday to America. This was in 1987. The cards looked like this:

We had collected football stickers back home, and baseball cards were a bit like them, except that you got loads more in a pack for hardly any money at all, plus a stick of gum, and they were cards not flimsy stickers. The backs of the cards were covered in weird statistics and facts using incomprehensible terms. Of course I loved them. They were everything about America, that culture that was both foreignly weird and discomfortingly familiar. This was sports, but not as I knew it.

Baseball cards got me into baseball. I've since seen four major league baseball games while exploring North America, and been to the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown. I've watched the Boston Red Sox on Star Wars Night, and heard Art Garfunkel sing the American national anthem before a New York Mets game. But my first game was in San Diego, watching the Padres play the San Francisco Giants. Barry Bonds was the San Francisco star player and he had just been busted for using steroids, so the reaction to him from the Padres fans was savage.

Anyway, I have been a Padres fan since that first game, even though they aren't a successful team. As I've been collecting baseball cards I've tended to collect cards of Padres players, and one player in paticular, "Mr Padre", Tony Gwynn.

I still like random cards. I am about 40 cards away from completing the set of Topps cards from 1987 (there are hundreds in the set). I frequently ask friends who visit the USA to buy me a pack or two of baseball cards. But in terms of a collecting focus, Mr Padre is now it.

Tony Gwynn is a sporting hero of mine. He played for the Padres for 20 seasons. Baseball is all about the statistics and Tony's are stellar.  He won eight batting titles in his career, tied for the second-most in Major League Baseball history. He accumulated 3,141 career hits, one of just ten players to make 3,000 hits while only playing for one team. He had a .338 career batting average and never hit below .309 in any full season. Now what that means is that for about one in every three times Tony went up to bat he would get a hit and make it safely on base.  That ball comes at a batter at anything up to 95mph. Ordinary mortals can’t even see it.

In 1994, Tony was batting at .394 - almost a 40% success rate when the season was cut short because the baseball player's union called a general strike. The season ended in chaos. There was no World Series. In the summer of 94, Tony was in the form of his life, hitting .475 in 10 games in August just before the strike started. Tony was literally three hits short of .400 for the curtailed season. It's a classic 'what might have been' and remains the highest single season average since 1941.

4 of these cards look the same. But they aren't.

Tony played in the World Series in both 1984 and 1998; the only two times the Padres have made it to the World Series. In the World Series games he batted .371 - that's almost 4 hits every 10 times he went to bat. He was a 15-time All-Star - when the best players in the American League and the National League play against each other. He won seven Silver Slugger Awards for batting and five Gold Glove Awards for fielding. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2007, his first year of eligibility.

Tony Gwynn died at the age of 54, from cancer. Among the many tributes paid to Tony, many people  commented on his loyalty to the Padres, staying in San Diego even though there were several opportunities for him to leave and play elsewhere. In fact, his willingness to accept less money to stay in San Diego than move to another team got him in trouble with other baseball stars, because they said he was driving down the market value for top players.

He is "Mr Padre". When I saw his plaque in the Hall of Fame, I felt very emotional.

I've grouped some studio portrait style cards

Baseball cards have been produced by a number of different manufacturers. In addition to the regular cards (known as 'base') some players will appear on special subsets within sets (know as 'inserts'). For example, players who make the All Star team, lead the league in particular statistics, or achieve notable milestones tend to feature on these extra cards. So, as you can imagine Tony Gwynn appeared on lots of baseball cards. There are actually over 10,000 listed on various baseball card indexes.

While most of the cards in my folder were printed while Tony was still playing, new cards are still being made. This retro style one was printed last year.

So there are still plenty of cards to collect, and probably new ones will be produced this year. Currently I have about 175 different ones. I'd like to collect 394 as that seems a suitable number. I think I need to set myself a target limit before the house fills up with oblongs of cardboard.

USA & Canada 2016 - Cooperstown; the National Baseball Museum and Hall of Fame, and an unexpected incredible lake

Having left Massachusetts, we crossed state lines and arrived in Cooperstown, New York - a place of pilgrimage for thousands of baseball lovers every year. We stayed at the Tunnicliffe Inn, quite an old building by American standards but very pleasant.

Our instructions to get there were 'Drive up the main street until you reach the big flagpole. Turn left.'

Here's the flagpole.

Here is the main street.

And yet this fairly typical 'Smalltown, USA' is also the famous Cooperstown, home of this - the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum!

I'd asked some people in the know who said wearing team colours was appropriate. So I had taken my retro San Diego Padres shirt along. (It's a bit big on me these days, but hey!)

We had signed up and become members before we went as this represented a good value deal. Members get in free, get 10 per cent discount in the shop and so on. We made our money back in one trip. What I really appreciated is the way they will send you a 'team' membership card if you specify which team you follow.

The first stop in the self-guided tour is the Locker Room. This is a series of lockers done out with memorabilia from each major league baseball team in turn.

The Padres had their own locker, of course.

The rest of the museum was chock-full of interesting stuff, including the San Diego Chicken!

The Chicken used to advertise a local eatery between innings at San Diego games in the early 70s. It is widely credited as being the first 'mascot' character at a ball park. All the others, including the Padres' 'Swinging Friar' and Wally the Green Monster (who we saw at Fenway Park) have followed since.

In another cabinet was a batting helmet worn and signed by the greatest ever Padre, Tony Gwynn.

There were tons of other exhibits too. Ranging from supporter attire...

...to bats used to set and break records...

...to stadium giveaways and food vendor garb.

In a big exhibit about Babe Ruth I discovered one of his early schoolmasters was the very stern-looking 'Brother Matthias'(!)

In another part of the museum, Cathy met the Philly Phanatic.

After the museum we visited the Hall of Fame itself. This I found quite moving; a really beautiful tribute to the great players of the past.

I was amused to read this disclaimer as I walked in, though.

I guess a lot of know-it-alls complain about inaccuracies they find on the plaques, and this is pre-emptive.

The first five inductees get their own section.

The hall is laid out very well and as long as you know the year a player was inducted, they are easy to find. We found Tony Gwynn's plaque without any trouble.

We still had some time and some glorious sunshine to have a bit of a wander round the actual town, marvelling at their quintessential Americanness. We particularly liked this church that had a church-shaped birdbox outside.

There are also a lot of shops selling baseball souvenirs, as you would expect. We bought some (cough!). You can buy pretty much anything baseball-related. This is the only time I have ever seen baseball card vending machines.

I also really liked this artwork print on the wall of the restaurant where we ate dinner. Unfortunately I couldn't find a shop selling prints like it or I would have bought one. (Still, taking a photo is cheaper, I suppose.)

And then the last surprise of Cooperstown. It's next to a nine-mile long lake. When we arrived the first evening, we walked down to the shore just as the sun was setting. It was magical.

And so after an all-too-brief stay is was time to bid Cooperstown farewell. And not just Cooperstown, but New York State as well. In fact the whole of the United States, because we were heading North. For the border with Canada. To Ontario.