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.

It's funny when it's not your upholstery

I wiped most of the zebra drool off the interior of Viv's car after our safari trip for Irony Boy's birthday. Later Cathy said 'I don't think you're supposed to feed the zebras. Fortunately, it's not as if there's any photographic evidence of you feeding the zebra (checks camera), oh, wait...'

But you have to admit he's a cutie...


Even when he's got his nose in the car trying to mug me for treats.

Know a lion, looks like Elvis

In case people thought I'd abandoned my blogging - or died - the last two weeks I've been laid up with a very bad cold/cough. I actually had 10 days off work as a result. I was signed off right until my planned leave for the Glenwood panto, this week.

Even now I've still got a bit of a cough. I seemed to spend most of my time onstage in the panto trying not to cough. For those who don't know, I was Elvis the Cowardly Lion in our own Cardiff-ised version of the Wizard of Oz. That meant I spent most of my time broiling in an all over fur suit, before changing into my Elvis garb, complete with massive quiff, for the final scene.

Here are a couple of pictures, if you didn't get along to see me...

Roar!



"Oh no I scared myself"




Elvis being menaced by Peggy Witchell (it's a long story) played by Emma D.

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.

Extending my vocabulary

According to Helen who I work with, her daughter calls a bra a “booby vest”.

I think I have definitely got to start using that term myself. It tells you everything you need to know about the complex and mysterious items that are women’s underwear.

Viv tells me that the German for bra is “Bustenhalter”. This, again, is a very useful word to know. (My favourite German word is “Fussballrowdie” meaning ‘football hooligan’.)

House Christmas

Last night we had house Christmas. This was because Viv has to work over Christmas, we're visiting rellies and Irony Boy is off to his homeland - although, technically, he isn't part of the household; he just pretends to live here when ordering stuff off the web.

One of our Christmas traditions is to watch Bernard and the Genie. It's a BBC film, written by Richard Curtis of Blackadder and Four Weddings fame, which we have on video from 1991. As you can imagine, it's a bit crackly and faded by now, so maybe it's time to lobby the BBC and get them to release a decent version on DVD.

We also opened some presents. I was given another B*Damen to keep the one I bought a few months ago happy. Or, maybe they'll fight... who knows?

Legoland

“You’ve never been to Legoland?” was Rowena’s incredulous question yesterday. Well, today I have and, apart from the many screaming grizzly children, it was well worth the visit. I particularly loved Miniland, with its scaled down version of London’s skyscrapers (and Caerphilly Castle too!), and I also spent a few quid in the Lego pic’n’mix shop.

We didn’t have to travel too far from Viv’s family home in Haddenham where we were staying for a long weekend. The weather was fantastic considering it’s October. It was even a bit too hot when we sat in the sun to watch the (fairly lame) Johnny Thunder stunt show, and I had to strip off down to my T-shirt. Plus, they had a Cinnabon – the only one in the UK! Mmm, cinnamon doughnut fingers…

I must admit though, I didn’t think that much of the actual Lego shops. The clearance outlet was especially disappointing; and the regular shops were charging top-of-the-range prices, but, bizarrely, didn’t seem to have the full range of product. Perhaps I know my Lego too well to be bowled over. The only kit I hadn’t seen before was the Death Star II set, which weighed an absolute ton and was apparently the size of a small child when assembled.

Legoland is very much a kid’s day out kind of place, and we got some odd looks as four adults going on the rides. Next time I’ll have to borrow some kids so I don’t look quite so weird. The other thing I noticed, and perhaps it’s because it’s the end of season, but a number of the external Lego models looked like they needed a good clean. There was a certain aura of tattiness around some parts of the park, which surprised me considering this is one of Lego’s flagship investments. However, the modelmakers centre and hall of fame was classily laid out, and I could have happily spent a good few hours more in there.

I know as a ‘very mature’ 30-year old, perhaps I’m not the demographic they’re aiming for. But as Cathy said, it would have been nice to have a few more historical exhibits. I would have loved to see some of the sets I remember so well from when I was a kid, like the Technic Arctic Explorers series, or the space base from the 80s that I adored.

Whether the next generation of kids will ever get nostalgic for Lego Spongebob Squarepants (I kid thee not!) only time will tell!