Love and crime - events of February 2024

And suddenly we are at the end of February, even though this year we had a bonus Leap Day. 

For Valentine's Day, Cathy and I celebrated by building a cute Lego set together. I hope these two hedgehogs are as happy together as we are.

February was a difficult month all told. Halfway through the month a "change programme" was announced in work, which will have an impact on my team. Morale and motivation have definitely taken a hit as a result. It's almost inevitable that it will, particularly if people are leaving as a result - it's reminded me of several aspects of organisational change that I studied in my Business Psychology MSc. 

On the home front we have had some stress too. What started initially with enquiries about some repairs to the house turned into a full blown roof replacement. We are very happy with the result, which included taking the top part of the chimney out and roofing over it. The state of the chimney has been worrying me for a long time and I'm very glad it's sorted. 

However, getting a new roof during one of the wettest Februarys on record meant it took a lot longer to complete than anticipated. The benefit of having it done while it was lashing down with rain every other day meant we could instantly check whether it was watertight. Fair play, it held during some downpours even before the new slates went on. 

Also, I've discovered that getting a new roof fitted is a great way to meet some of your neighbours. We had several people knock on the door asking if our roofers were any good and seeing if they could get quotes for their roof repairs. 

Our roofer, Sheldon, was very good. I liked him a lot and when he finished on the final day and said goodbye I honestly told him I was going to miss him. Apparently he is going to be back in our street soon working on someone else's roof and he says he will knock on the door to say hi. 

Less pleasantly, for the first time in my life I was the target of muggers. I won't go into too much detail, but basically, I was walking home from the city centre at about 6.30pm on a Friday evening. There were two youngish lads at the end of the street and as I walked past them one of them lashed out without warning, hit me and pushed me to the ground, then demanded some money. 

After taking some money, he proceeded to run off. His mate ran off after him. I phoned the police and talked to a 999 call handler all the way home, which was only a few minutes. Obviously Cathy had a horrid shock when I walked in bashed and bleeding. Police officers were able to attend and take a statement within minutes. CID called round the next day. And I'm very happy to say that within two weeks, the police had arrested my assailant, had charged him and he's currently being held on remand.

While the incident was horrible, the response I have had from family, friends, neighbours and colleagues has been lovely. I genuinely felt loved and supported by so many people, many telling me how outraged this had happened to me. Some of our neighbours brought a box of cookies because they saw the police car outside and saw my black eye and wanted to check I was OK. That was the only time I cried about what had happened - crying because of their unexpected kindness.

So, yes, a bad thing happened, but there are still lots of good people in the world and the response to the bad thing really brought that home to me. 

And on a final note, even having that incident happen, didn't stop me from going to nine football matches (full report to follow!), my first ever international ice hockey game, and making a dent in my pile of shame by building one of my Blood Bowl teams that had been sitting there unbuilt for two and a half years! So a good sporting month all round. 

New Blood Bowl Orc team ready for mayhem

February 2022 - end of month review

This is a bit late as we are already into mid-March, but we had a week away last week so I am playing catch up now. Being almost 2 weeks into March means that I feel like I've forgotten what happened in the shortest month. 

Another reason why the monthly review is hard to write is because events in the wider world took a rather grim turn as Russia invaded Ukraine, prompting the first war in Europe since the early 1990s when Yugoslavia fell apart. I have several thoughts about why this war feels different even to the post 9/11 invasion of Iraq, the long war in Afghanistan or the Syrian civil war. 

There has been a democratisation of war reporting now, with anyone on the ground with a mobile phone supplying footage and commentary. Twitter is full of shaky handheld footage from people in or near the combat zone. This is probably the first war to be livestreamed. It's all very sad and stupid and depressing. 

However it has lifted the lid again on the utter corruption of the UK Government and how easy it has been for Vladimir Putin to purchase the souls of Conservative politicians. It's the ultimate Thatcherite mindset - to put a monetary value on everything. Although Margaret Thatcher would have been horrified to see the way her successors have shilled themselves and her party to malign despots. 

There was a show of solidarity across football crowds with the people of Ukraine. Barry Town fans have long used blue and yellow Ukraine flags as decoration, so it was suddenly sadly relevant to see them being held up by fans at the game against Caernarfon Town at the last game in February.

There were a couple of other notable things about the game. Firstly, the Caernarfon manager had decided to copy the hipster's choice of football manager, Marcelo Bielsa. by sitting on a tub at the edge of his technical area. He got a chant of "Discount Bielsa, you're just a discount Bielsa" aimed at him.

The other was Barry's supporter's rep on the board, Ian, turning up in a suitable costume to celebrate Fairtrade Fortnight.

The free bananas that he was handing out were especially welcome as it was a 12.45 kick off and I hadn't had my lunch yet. (I bought chips from the chip van.)

That game was the final one of six matches I attended in February. Barry had two Friday night games so on the free Saturdays I went to Pontardawe Town near Swansea and to Cambrian & Clydach in Clydach Vale near Tonypandy in the Rhondda. They hadn't updated their match board, but the game was on. 

In the middle of the month, Cathy and I celebrated Valentine's Day by watching the film Singin' in the Rain. I thought I had watched it as a kid, but remembered nothing about it at all apart from the iconic bit where Gene Kelly is dancing along singing in the rain, which I reckon I must have seen as a standalone clip. The film has aged quite well, I felt, with the theme of celebrities faking relationships to keep the gossip industry happy being weirdly up-to-date. 

Then towards the end of the month we had a sudden announcement that something we were planning to attend in Cambridge wasn't happening, so we suddenly had no reason to go and stay over there at the beginning of March. In typical fashion, we had just booked accomodation in Cambridgeshire the day before we were told that we didn't have to go. 

Fortunately, we were able to swap our accomodation for a week in Calstock next to the Tamar River on the border of Devon and Cornwall. I will tell you more about that in my next blog post!

February 2021 End of Month Review

February seemed to go by quickly. We are now one sixth the way through 2021. Even in lockdown stuff happens, so I thought I would do another monthly round up.

I joined up with some friends via Zoom to watch the Superbowl. It was especially important this year because the team my friend Bryan supports, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, were in the Superbowl. He was a lot more nervous about the game than the rest of us. But the Bucs won comfortably. 

We had some extremely cold weather and even a bit of snow. That made staying indoors to observe the lockdown rules a bit easier - nobody wanted to be out in the bitter cold. 

At the beginning of the month, I had a surprise. A cuddly bat arrived in the post. 

Cathy had arranged an animal sponsorship with the Cuan Wildlife Rescue Centre in Shropshire. Several years ago we took a poorly hedgehog that we found in my brother's back garden to their centre and I have followed them on social media ever since. They do fantastic work caring for injured wild animals and successfully release most of them after nursing them back to health. 

This year for Valentines Day we decided to buy ourselves a big Lego set and build it together. We both wanted to build the Medieval Blacksmith set, so spent most of the day doing that. It was great fun. The finished article now has pride of place in our dining room. 

The build is full of quirky little details. One of my favourite bits was the brick-built bearskin rug.

I had a week off work, which was every inch the staycation. I had a steroid injection in my frozen shoulder so I had to stay indoors for three days. I used the time productively and caught up on several movies from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). I watched the three Thor movies in quick succession. One thing I like about the MCU are the little cameos between the films. There is a funny Captain America cameo in the second Thor film, and a great scene with Doctor Strange in the third one. 

Now that the Mandalorian has finished, Disney Plus have been releasing a replacement marquee television series in WandaVision, which is set in the MCU. We have been tuning in every week. Having the time to watch all the films again has been really useful for me to understand the TV series a bit better. I blogged about how it offered a surprisngly mature viewpoint on grief in one of the later episodes.

In terms of other achievements, I read a book for the first time in months.

It was more like a pamphlet really, but it made me think, so that was good. I blogged about it here.

On my baseball card blog, I reached the milestone of my 600th card featuring Tony Gwynn and also received my first Tony Gwynn card released in 2021. My collection was also featured in a guest post on the blog Baseball Fans Only. In another milestone, Twitter reminded me that it was my tenth Twitterversary this month.

And in exciting consumer news, we finally found the newly-launched McVities cherry Jaffa Cakes on sale. They have been sampled!

Sneaky Valentine's Day Visitors

Cathy relates a story from last Saturday (Valentine's Day). It's mid-morning. I'm out. There's a knock at the door. Could this be a big bunch of flowers? Or maybe a special Valentine's Gift? Or even just an over-sized card that her husband bizarrely decided to post (I have an odd sense of humour, you see)?

No. It was the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Still you have to say, knocking doors on Valentine's Day is probably a good way of getting people to open the door. What a let down though.

A Valentine's poem

We had a power cut on Valentine’s night
So we played Scrabble by candlelight
I got two bingos, which was well nifty
And Cath had all vowels, but still scored two fifty

Nothing says "I love you" more than a cuddly Boba Fett

I love my wife. She's great. For Valentine's Day she bought me a plush Boba Fett for my collection.






She also bought me this - from the Galactic Heroes range. How great is he?








I now have 28 Boba Fett figures, 4 Jango Fett figures, and four other Mandalorians, including the legendary Mandalore himself.

Men and women, part 1,982,456

Yesterday on a late run to Tesco Extra, the main clientele were blokes buying Valentine's tat and flowers. A guy behind us in the queue had a bunch of roses costing £35.00.

In a discussion with (male) colleagues today we agreed he was probably buying them for someone other than a wife or long-term partner, mainly because a wife or long-term partner would flip out if you spent £35 on flowers instead of something useful. Of course, he could have been so rich, £35 was just spare change, but if he was that affluent, he hid it well.

In fact my wife/long-term partner couldn't believe someone would spend £35 on roses (especially not from Tesco) and said as much to me. "No," I agreed, wistfully. "For that money I could buy that really amazing lego set of the radio-controlled dinosaur that's marked down at half price..."

I do love lego.

Be my Valentine

One of my favourite Valentine’s Day experiences was a few years ago now, when my little brother was till at Uni. We were traveling back from the far North and stopped off to see him because he’d just been dumped and was feeling miserable. We took him out to tea at Pizza Hut where we were the only table for three in the place and the incredibly cheap candles sputtered wax all over the table in artistic patterns.

Why does this stand out? I think it’s because people can be so selfish on Valentine’s Day. It becomes all about you as a couple. I’d like to think that Cathy and I have a relationship that’s bigger than just the two of us – yes, we want to spend time together, but not at the exclusion of people who need some TLC.

Cath’s exciting gift today was a framed set of US stamps with the word “love” on; presented to her by a Mr Potato Head (which I’m sure will remind her of me). She gave me a mug that told me I was “the cat’s pajamas” – a mystifying turn of phrase that made me feel good nevertheless. Tonight our hot Valentine’s Date will be going to our life group where we’ll each be discussing a news story that’s caught our eye in the past few days.

Without wanting to spoil the surprise for anyone, my story is going to be about boffins finding the scientific equation to determine the “beer goggle effect” that makes women appear more attractive when you’ve had a few. I think the principle that I’ll draw from the story is “isn’t God great to give us beer to make ugly people more pleasing to the eye!”