A quarter century being fast and furious

On a recent cinema trip I saw a poster advertising a 25th anniversary re-release of The Fast and the Furious. 25 years? That made me feel old.

I was working in that same cinema when The Fast and the Furious came out. (It's changed it's name since I worked there - RIP UCI!) I remember some co-workers being really excited about it - to the point of running across the lobby to watch the trailers.

25 years later it's amusing how a central theme of the film is a cop trying to track down a criminal gang stealing high end electronics, in this case DVD players! 

That also makes me feel old, remembering how excited people got about getting a DVD player, a massive upgrade from VHS videos, without suspecting how quickly those devices would become obsolete. Hard to believe that it was ever believable that stealing DVD players would fund a selection of high performance cars for a street racer gang, but we all accepted it.

The Fast and the Furious quickly spawned a sequel: 2 Fast 2 Furious, with one of the stars of the first film, Paul Walker. The other main star, Vin Diesel, was filming XXX at the time, another film with over the top stunts, fast cars and explosions. 

2 Fast 2 Furious came out so quickly I was still working in the cinema when it was released. My last shift there was spent watching the film while helping people navigate the stairs. The little safety lights that illuminated the stairs had stopped working so I was sat there with a torch to help anyone needing to leave to buy more popcorn or go to the loo. Needless to say, most of that last shift I just watched the film.

Neither Paul nor Vin appeared in the third instalment of the franchise, Tokyo Drift, but both came back for the fourth film that started using CGI instead of physical stunts. That rather defeated the whole point of the movies, in my view.

With XXX not turning into a multiple-film franchise like he'd hoped, Vin Diesel turned The Fast and the Furious into a spy adventure series instead, with the gang becoming mercenaries for hire. The films continued after Paul Walker's untimely death, adding notable action actors like Jason Statham and Dwayne Johnson to their roster. (Stath and The Rock had their own spin-off movie too.) 

The franchise is still going with Hot Wheels cars and Lego sets to attract younger fans. I wouldn't have expected any of that 25 years ago when it all started because a street racer gang were stealing DVD players. 

Silver plus one - celebrating with rock!

This year Cathy and I celebrated our wedding anniversary by seeing one of our favourite bands - Terrorvision - on our actual anniversary itself. It meant taking a trip to Wolverhampton but it was well worth it.

The gig was at KK's Steel Mill. It's a converted industrial building that's now a rock and metal venue and owned by a former member of metal band Judas Priest. It was a decent size, well laid out and the staff working there were absolutely lovely. 

The gig itself felt like a throwback to when we first started going to Terrorvision gigs back in the 90s (and before we were married!) Most of the setlist was from their first two albums - including My House and American TV. They also mixed in songs from their new album, We Are Not Robots, which we had received in the post last week and listened to a few times in preparation for the gig.

We Are Not Robots is Terrorvision's first album in 15 years and for me it feels like they recaptured their sound from 30 years ago. They have returned to what they do best - fast, guitar driven songs with catchy hooks in the choruses. 

As a band they have also literally grown. Three of the original members remain, but there were seven musicians on stage. Millie, who plays a lot of gigs with singer Tony Wright when he plays his own stuff, was on keyboards. They also had a trumpet player and a saxophonist who added some depth on several songs - especially on Pretend Best Friend. 

They did one song for the encore. It will come as no surprise to fans that they signed off with Oblivion. 

The merch guy said they don't know what the plans are yet for Terrorvision gigs next year, which implies their might be another tour. 2025 will mark the 30th anniversary of when Cathy and I first saw them live - at the old Newport Centre - and hopefully we can mark that anniversary by seeing them again. 

Recap of the Month - September 2023

I didn't get around to posting a monthly recap for August, although the gist of it was covered in my football round up. September was different, with fewer football matches but as much travelling - and a major life milestone towards the end of the month: our Silver Wedding Anniversary!

There have been several times in the run up to our 25th wedding anniversary that Cathy and I have discussed how we can't possibly be having a Silver Wedding because that's what old people have! And yet here we are and suddenly we are the old people celebrating being married for a quarter of a century.

We have been through a lot together. We have lost people we love along the way. And we have made lots of new friends - and some of them have made even more friends for us - since we got married. When we gathered some friends together to celebrate there were lots of kids to invite as well. 

We booked our friend Sian to come and do a photoshoot of us with everyone during the day - and that's her handiwork at the top of the post, when we got a few photos outside in the grounds of the venue. Sian would have been on our guestlist anyway, but she did a fabulous job coaxing our nephews, nieces and other younger friends to smile and pose nicely for photos. I've loved Sian's photography for a long time so it was great to actually be in the pictures.

Having family here meant I also got to watch a Rugby World Cup game with my sister and brother-in-law and the nieces and nephew who support Scotland. They were staying the night after the party and it was a rare opportunity to hang out with them.

My niece Jura in the photo under duress!

We had the celebration on the Saturday before our actual anniversary. On the day itself I had the day off work and we went to Porthcawl for a little look round the shops.

Jaffa Cake ice cream!

We stopped at Rest Bay for a snack in the car overlooking the waves. The wind was up and there was a nice wildness in the air there. It was a low key highly enjoyable relaxing day.

The celebration weekend was in-between two weekends with a Northern feel. The first one involved a trip to Leeds for Margot's memorial service. That was on the Friday and I stayed in Shrewsbury the weekend which meant I saw my eldest nephew, Zac, on his birthday. 

We also went to a football match with some of his mates - sadly a disappointing defeat for Shrewsbury Town.

The other weekend involved a trip to Manchester for a big work event. As a team we have been gearing up for this event since I started my "new" job back in July. It marked the launch of the new brand identity for the programme and a new name - "Together Type 1". 

Some of my team suitably branded up

I don't often blog about work but this was a very special day where I got to meet several of the young people with type 1 diabetes who are involved in the programme. They are a truly inspiring group of people and meeting them in real life was probably my highlight of a very busy couple of days where I was mainly in 'event mode'.

So, after a month of travelling and big events, both personal and professional, I feel I can relax a bit although looking at the calendar, October is going to be another month with a bit of travel in it too!

March 2022 - end of month review

March was a very busy month. The holiday we went on at the start of the month (blogged about here!) felt like a long time ago by time March ended!

Currently, in our little part of Grangetown, the state of the world is measured by crocheted post box covers. St David's Day was celebrated, as it should be.

Shortly after St David's Day, the dragon was replaced by an expression of solidarity with the people of Ukraine.

In the middle of the month, I went to a football match on the third anniversary of my Dad's death. He would have approved at the randomness - I went with my friend Paul to watch Treharris Athletic Western in the third tier of the Welsh football pyramid. It was a baking hot day. 

I wore my Dad's cap, which was just as well or I would have got sunstroke. In addition to being hot enough to melt football fans, it was the day when Wales lost to Italy in the Six Nations. The result was met with slight disbelief in the small stand we were sitting in. I only found out later that a work colleague, Scott, was also at the game, watching his son who plays for Treharris. We can't work out how we didn't see each other!

The big news of the month is that I told the people I work with that I have been offered a new job. I will be moving to another NHS organisation based just outside Cardiff. I have been up to the offices to meet some of the team I will be working with. 

That also meant that the first post-pandemic "hybrid" meeting arranged for the clinical network I currently manage was my last network meeting. It worked out nicely because I talked to several people from teams around Wales and said a few goodbyes. I am staying in my current role until the end of April and have got a lot of things to sort out!

The final Sunday of March was Mother's Day. I went up to Shrewsbury for the weekend and went to see Shrewsbury play Lincoln City with my mum, my brother, and his two eldest kids. My mum and the two kids are on the Shrewsbury "Wall of Thanks" for all the season ticket holders who let the club keep the credit on their season tickets in the abandoned 2020 season. We had to get a photo with their names.

We were sitting in the Family Stand, and one of the perks of sitting there is that the players will come over and sign autographs and pose for photos before the game. My nephew Zac was thrilled to get a photo with one of his favourite players, striker Daniel Udoh, before the game. 

Daniel went on and scored the winning goal as Shrewsbury notched up a 1-0 victory. It has consolidated their position in the lower mid-table and it looks very likely that they will be staying up this year after being close to the relegation zone earlier in the season. 

It was my third Shrewsbury game of the season, and I don't think I will be getting to another one. My record is pretty good as those three games have been a win and two draws. I can't remember the last season Shrewsbury were unbeaten in the games I attended. On that happy note, roll on April!

Building a model railway part 6: New loco

I imagine very few men get given model locos from their spouse as a wedding aniversary gift, but I've long suspected my wife, Cathy, is the most awesome wife in the world!

Anyway, for my 13th wedding anniversary I was given a Hornby model of a Thompson L1 tank engine. It was, coincidentally, quite an unlucky class of loco. After a brief working life in the 50s and 60s, all examples of the class were cut up within 20 years of being built. None survived into preservation - a fact Cathy described as "very sad"

But in the world of model railways, one did survive into preservation, and is now on the manifest of the SCRHC. Number 67772 is known locally as 'Lacey', named by Cathy in honour of our 'Lace' anniversary. (Did you know that 13 is the Lace anniversary? no, neither did I.) Among the drivers, the dog theme means it also goes by other names - 'Black Dog', 'the Hound' (as in the Hound of the Baskervilles - a big black dog), or simply 'the Big Dog' because it dwarfs Pitbull and Snoopy.

Here's some pics of it 'running in'.

On this day in 1937...

...JRR Tolkien published The Hobbit.

I think The Hobbit was spoilt for me because I read Lord of the Rings first. After that The Hobbit was a bit childish.

See, I can be literary too. It's not all gigs and movies on here.

Five years on from 9/11

It seems weird that we’re already five years on from 9/11. Much has changed in those five years.

I was working back in my Minimum Wage Hell that was the cinema at the time and I remember one of the projectionists coming down from his booth to say that someone had flown a plane into the World Trade Center. 

I assumed he meant it was a stunt in a film he’d been watching, until he said he’d seen it on the news. From then on we took it in turns to watch the news coverage in the staff room. So I saw the second tower fall, live, in a state of numb disbelief.

This really was one of those events that just happened out of the blue. There were rumours, apparently dismissed in the upper echelons of the US government, but nobody really thought a war was going to kick off as a result of those rumours. But it did, and it has, and in many respects it’s going to be a long and dirty war fought on multiple fronts.

I worked in MWH with a number of Somali Muslim lads; all of whom were shocked and horrified by the events of 9/11. How any Muslim could launch such an attack was beyond them.

I imagine there’ll be loads of people blogging about this, talking about it on the radio, replaying the news footage on TV, and so on. Normally I don’t bother to comment on the things everyone else is talking about – what’s the point of adding one more voice to the maelstrom of conspiracy theorists, platitudinal pietists and would-be societal commentators? But, for what it’s worth, this is my story about 11 September 2001.

Hurrah for football

118 years ago today, on 8 September 1888, the first ever season of the football league kicked off.

And, if all goes according to plan, on Saturday I'll be seeing the mighty Shrews take on the Lincolnshire scummers who beat us last year. Hopefully, Town will do the business and this bloke who used to play for us won't get a look in.

Usually I've seen a game by this stage of the season, so I'm really looking forward to the match. I also want to meet the Arsenal fan that my brother and his comrades bought off eBay and who will be at his first Town game on Saturday.

With this weekend and also having a ticket to see Wales take on the might of Cyprus in October, it looks like my season of spectating at football matches is finally starting.