2025 Review of the Year

As we head into the new year, I decided to post a quick month by month summary of the year gone by.

It was a busy blogging year - 99 posts, with a Book of the Month post every month of the year for the first time (see my list of Books of the Month on my index page). I've included lots of links to posts that I blogged along the way, so if you have a lot of free time, you can enjoy those too! 

January

Work was full throttle from the get go, and there were some changes in our team. We also have a trio of family birthdays in the same week so I spent a celebratory weekend in Shrewsbury. (More stuff in my round up of the month.)

February

I spent the best part of a week in Glasgow working a big national conference. It was tiring work and at the end of it I hopped a train to Edinburgh for my first ever visit to stay with my sister and her family. 

Glasgow sunrise

March

I spent St David's Day weekend in Edinburgh, taking in the sights and catching a football match - it was my Scottish nephew's first ever live game! The following weekend I was at the opposite end of the country with Cathy for a weekend in Exeter. 

My March travels weren't over and we ended the month at the Lipodystrophy UK support day in Cambridgeshire. Cathy appeared in the awareness video for World Lipodystrophy Day, which premiered at the conference. 

April

We went from Cambridgeshire to Buckinghamshire for a week's holiday over my birthday, including a trip to Legoland on the day itself, a nostalgic visit to Bekonscot model village, and an encounter with Nev the tapir at Beale Wildlife Park at the end of the week. 

A couple of weeks later we returned to Cambridge for a specialist appointment and then drove to Manchester to see comedian Nate Bargatze at the 02 Apollo. This was the first of three trips we made to that venue in 2025. 

In a year where I got increasingly political, I went on the Yes Cymru march for independence in Barry at the end of the month. 

Finally, I had some disappointing medical news. Almost ten years after successfully reversing my type 2 diabetes, I was symptomatic again. So I made the decision to lose weight and have been eating mindfully and trying to be more active since then. 

May

I was all over the place again in May. I went to the NEC for the big Europhilex stamp exhibition. My work involved another trip to Exeter and a couple of nights in London.  My commitment to be more active meant I did some London Wandrin'.

June

A big life change in June. After 11 years with Marco the Polo, we got a new car - Vincent, a Mazda 3. It has been quite an upgrade both in comfort and gadgets. 

Vincent's first big trip with us was to North Wales. We spent a fab week in Dinas Dinlle. 

July

In terms of life impact, the biggest event for me in July was joining Plaid Cymru. It's the first time I have ever been a member of a political party. I launched straight into canvassing for the Grangetown council by-election and things really haven't stopped since!

We also had another weekend in Manchester, mainly to see comedian Taylor Tomlinson. But while we were in town we also went to the National Football Museum, which I have wanted to do for ages. I was travelling again for work - this time to Warrington and to Cotswold Wildlife Park where I met Darwin, a giant tortoise!

August

I learned that delivering leaflets and canvassing can really help a person lose weight during the Grangetown by-election. I was disappointed we didn't win, but it was valulable campaigning experience. 

More travels - a weekend in Shrewsbury (where I succumbed to football nostalgia) and a football trip to Swindon combined with a visit to STEAM, the museum of the Great Western Railway. 

September

Cathy and I celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary with a trip to the ice hockey!

Politically, we were straight into another by-election, this time in Caerphilly for a Senedd seat. Campaigning started in September and would conclude the following month. More great exercise for me! I also ran the quiz at the Yes Cymru Caerdydd branch AGM. 

October 

My political involvement included attending my first ever party conference (in Swansea) and more canvassing in the Caerphilly by-election, which Plaid Cymru won!  

I had some encouraging medical news as my six months of mindful eating and increased activity had resulted in me reversing my diabetes for a second time. All that canvassing helped me no end. 

Cathy and I paid our third visit to Manchester, this time to see Counting Crows at the Apollo (again). The football fixtures favoured us and I was able to go and watch Shrewsbury Town play at Oldham the following day. I had my third trip to Scotland at the end of the month, heading to Dundee for work and stopping in Edinburgh into November...

November 

Just like in March, I started the month in Edinburgh. This time I got to go to Murrayfield, the home of Scottish rugby and watched Scotland overpower the USA in a record international victory. 

It was a big birthday month! Cathy turned 50. We went to a local wildlife park on her birthday and met Roly the armadillo. The following couple of weekends we had a family gathering in Shrewsbury and met up with friends in Cardiff Bay.

The local Plaid Cymru Senedd campaign kicked off. I spoke at the campaign launch about getting involved in canvassing and invited everyone there to get involved. 

December 

December has been the usual end-of-year whirlwind, with getting ready for Christmas and seeing lots of people. We spent the festive period in Shrewsbury before returning home in time for New Year. 

And now it's 2026...!

Long hot summer - June 2025

June is probably my favourite month of the year. Long nights. Warm weather. It's usually busy. And it definitely was this year! 

It marked the end of the football season. I saw both Wales women's and men's team playing within a few days of each other to round off my season.

One of the big life events of the month was replacing dear old Marco the Polo. I'm now droving a Mazda 3, in "soul red" (their name for it) and we've called him Vincent. 

Here's a picture of Vincent looking suave and a teeny bit sandy on our holiday in North Wales at the end of the month.

My first long distance trip in Vincent was to Swindon because the British Thematic Association was holding its AGM at Swinpex, the annual stamp show of the local philatelic society. This year we had a presentation about daffodils, but there was surprisingly little Welsh content in the display. There was some, though.

Speaking of flowers, I went along to the Grangetown History Society's talk about Grange Gardens on the park's 130th Anniversary.

It was very interesting seeing pictures of the Gardens when they were newly opened, and also when it was turned into vegetable patches during World War 2.

There was even a cake, provided by the Friends of Grange Gardens. 

I've already mentioned our week on holiday in North Wales, where we encountered butterflies on Anglesey and played underground golf! 

But on the way back we stopped in Shrewsbury. Joy, our eldest niece, had her birthday during the week before we popped in, so we were able to give her some presents.

She so big now!

We arrived back home with just two days of the month left. On the last Sunday of the month we went to a big print fair at Chapter Arts Centre. 

I really liked this big print, but decided I didn't have the wall-space to do it justice!

And then on the last night of June, I accepted Sara's invitation to an event with Rhun Ap Iorweth, leader of Plaid Cymru. He was a very engaging speaker and came across as honest and realistic. I liked him. (He was funny too. When I told him I'd driven past his office in Llangefni a couple of days before, he told me I should have popped in!)

Sara is standing as one of the Plaid candidates in her area in next year's Senedd election. It was great to meet some of the other Plaid members who will be helping her try to get elected. 

And that was a wrap for a busy month!

Three quotes from Coming Up For Air

This month I read Coming Up For Air by George Orwell. (Review here.) I like Orwell's prose and he has a sharp wit. Here are three quotes that made me laugh or nod in agreement.

As the main character ruminates on being married...

"When a woman's bumped off, her husband is always the first suspect - which gives you a little side-glimpse of what people really think about marriage."

I knew exactly the kind of day he meant with this...

"You know the kind of day that generally comes some time in March when winter suddenly seems to give up fighting.  For days past we'd been having the kind of beastly weather that people call 'bright' weather, when the sky's a cold hard blue and the wind scrapes you like a blunt razor-blade. Then suddenly the wind had dropped and the sun got a chance."

And as a driver of an older car with a lot of mileage on it, this bit about his car rang true too...

"You wouldn't believe any machine could vibrate in so many directions at once. It's like the motion of the earth, which has twenty-two different kinds of wobble, or so I remember reading."

It shows how good a writer George Orwell was that 85 years after this book was published I was smiling and nodding as I read it.

Recap of the Month - May 2023

Random selfie of the month - Salisbury Cathedral cloister

May was a very busy month and I barely managed to blog. I missed writing my traditional Star Wars Day post. I was able to post on my blog about Tony Gwynn's baseball cards on Tony's Birthday - it was the first post in months on that neglected project. But apart from a snack of the month, that was it. 

So, what have I been doing? Well, Cathy and I have mainly been trying to sort out the stamp collection my Dad left behind. The collection is in several boxes and lots of it was still unsorted, over four years after he passed away suddenly. We had a date at the end of the month to take them to be valued. Although that turned out to be a waste of time, it was good to have a date to work towards. Deadlines focus the mind and all that. Plus it gave me the opportunity to visit Salisbury. 

After my disappointing trip to Salisbury, I contacted another stamp dealer who said they could collect the stamps from my Mum's house in Shrewsbury. So, we reloaded all the stamps back into the car and I set off for an unexpected bank holiday Monday trip. Mum was pleased to see me and her doggo, Fred, was almost equally as pleased!

In work I have been serving my notice period. We had a great event up in Merthyr Tydfil, which was my main focus for the first half of the month. Now I am starting to work on planning a handover and identifying what I can wrap up before I leave so I don't leave too many half finished projects behind. 

I went on my first Keep Grangetown Tidy litter pick of the year. Among the haul of rubbish on nearby streets I found a TV and an abandoned fish tank. 

Those were probably the most unusual items I picked up. We have started collecting discarded vapes for recycling as well, as the lithium batteries in them can prove a fire risk in rubbish lorries. So they went in a separate bag. Our litter picking crew found several, which adds to my theory that smokers are litterbugs, even when they are vaping instead.

Near the end of the month, Marco, our trusty and slightly battered VW Polo, successfully passed its MOT, so our little red car was clear to carry on motoring. Just as well, given I was ferrying stamps around the country!

Cathy and I had a cinema trip to see Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3. I've enjoyed the Guardians movies ever since the first one came out almost a decade ago, as well as the contribution the Guardians have made to other Marvel movies, especially Thor: Love and Thunder last year. This film focused on my favourite character, Rocket Raccoon, and gave all the characters a satisfying character arc as this particular part of the Marvel franchise came to an end. 

And in the lobby I got to see what it would be like to be a Ken doll!

And even though Barry Town's season ended at the end of April, the football season continued right to the end of May. I saw six matches, including my first 0-0 of the season in a game that went to a penalty shoot out after extra time. I had not seen a 0-0 for well over a year - a run of 75 matches. 

I also watched five Cardiff Draconians games as they battled to escape the relegation zone in their league. 

The Dracs survived by winning their final game, against the team who were one point ahead of them and who ended up getting relegated instead. I was really pleased the Dracs stayed up and look forward to visiting the Orange Llama Stadium again next season. 

A time of change (farewell to 'the tank')

My beloved Golf finally reached the point where money spent fixing it would be money wasted. For the past fortnight and a bit I've been driving my 'new' car, a Vauxhall Vectra. Having learned to drive in a classic boxy Cavalier back in the early 90s, it does feel a bit like coming home.

The Golf, known to us as P-TAB was a great car, though. I drove to Mull twice in him, although Mallaig was the furthest North we went in him. I tried to work out the extremities of our journeying - furthest south would be Hastings to the East and Plymouth to the South. We took him to Northumberland and the Eastern borders of Scotland. We even went to Llanidloes. You don't get much more wild west than that.

When I sold him on to those people who say they will buy any car (any, any, any!), he had over 175,000 miles on the clock. I put 75,000 of those miles on him.

I took these photos just before saying farewell to the car I affectionately called the tank.

In all his battered glory

The clock - 75,000 of those miles were mine

Setting off on the last journey

Some more photos of Scotland

When it wasn't raining the scenery was quite breathtaking. Here 'the tank' enjoys the early morning sunshine on Mull.

Later on the mainland, an oystercatcher searches for supper in Loch Sunart.

Marketing synchronicity

It's so nice to see a company make sure that all their communications potential supports their brand.

Er, I think you mean "generic"

So the other day we were out for dinner and for some reason my Dad was explaining how he had proper Peugeot branded car mats and mud flaps, "not like those unisex ones you buy in Halfords."

Me: "Unisex?"

Car trouble isn't always trouble

We were driving up to Shrewsbury yesterday and just as we reached Pontypool the exhaust decided to break. After an RAC man gave us the all-clear we drove on, sounding like rude boys in a done up car, to Abergavenny. At Kwik-Fit we were told we could go back to the depot in Newport where they had the part. 'Forget that' we thought, and carried on to Shrewsbury, roaring through the countryside like city hoons on a day trip to ruralshire.

After eventually arriving in Shrewsbury I booked my car in with the family mechanic for Monday morning. Today I borrowed the parental Peugeot to drive over to Wrexham to see my Grandma. I wasn't even half way there, when the 'STOP' light came on on the dashboard, the temp guage was banging the side beyond the red, and there was blue smoke trailing from the exhaust.

Another RAC-man, who appeared deceptively young but had done six years fixing motors in the army, arrived and diagnosed that the water pipe had blown and the engine was dry. A jury-rigged fix later and we wended our way carefully back to Shrewsbury (Mum and Dad had driven to the rescue too), stopping for pancakes at a Little Chef first.

On reflection, this was a load of hassle on a weekend I could have done without it. But on the other hand, this could have happened on Tuesday when we were driving over to my Grandad's funeral. And it turned out my Grandma had forgotten I was coming and had gone out for the day anyway, so if I'd made it to Wrexham it would have been a wasted trip. So, the hassle served a purpose, and if it was going to happen it was good that it happened then.

Wahey the car has heat.

So last Friday, I took the car into the garage for them to work out why the heater wasn't working. The basic problem, it appeared, was that the heater motor was dead, no more, gone to meet it's maker, shuffled off it's mortal coil etc. etc. And the really bad news was that new one would cost £158.

My mechanic, Phil, suggested I find a replacement online, which they'd then fit. He plucked a figure at random out of the air and said 'You'll probably find one for about £30'.

So, on Monday I went spare part hunting. I found a website which links into 2500 breaker's yards across the country. You type in what part you need and what car it's for, and your details, and then you get emailed quotes. I had about 9 people get in touch with me within about three hours, but I thought I'd wait and see if any came in overnight.

Sure enough, on thr Tuesday morning, there was a new quote in my inbox, from a place which only does VW and Audi spares and it was cheaper than all the others. The price including postage was... £30.

I rang them up. "Yeah, this is for a mark III," said the guy. "It came out of a P reg. Is that OK?" Well, as my car is a P reg, that was perfect. I gave him my credit card number and asked for him to send it to me at work.

On Wednesday, it arrived at work, wrapped up in bubble wrap and a bin liner. "Is that a severed head?" asked a colleague. "Yes," I said, "of the last person who asked me about my parcels." I rang the garage asking if they could fit me in. Phil told me to bring the car in the next day and leave it with them.

So, Thursday I took the train into work (Grangetown station is right opposite the garage - handy!) and then returned after work to find the heater worked perfectly. Woo hoo! No more having to be a human demister with a wipey pad thing. In fact, it works so well I'm beginning to think the old heater motor was broken for the whole time I've had the car.

So, it took me about a week to get the heating sorted, but it saved me £128 and I felt very manly sourcing my own car parts and everything. (I've left out the part where I rang Phil and asked him what the difference was between a heater motor, a heater fan motor and a heater blower motor, only for him to laugh and say they were all the same thing, as that undermines my manly abilities.) So, yeah, it all worked out well.

Dashboard Dalek

My friend Matt has given me a car air freshener in the shape of a Dalek (apparently because his wife didn't like the smell). So now I have a little Dalek on my dashboard, who swings left and right depending on whether I'm going round a corner*.

The only drawback is that he is a bit smelly. I had to apologise to my car-pool companion the other day for the overwhelming 'fresh' scent when we got in the car to go home. Cathy has also remarked that "Daleks smell much fruitier than you'd have thought they would..."

*And, mysteriously, he sometimes just moves round eerily slowly when I'm stationary at a traffic light... Not quite sure what's happening there.

New Batmobile design revealed

If you can't wait to see what Batman's driving in the Dark Knight, here's a spoiler...


see more pwn and owned pictures

Better news on the car front

They've swapped the wheels around and decided the clanking sound was due to the badgerised front wheels being buckled, and not the drive shaft.

So, new brakes notwithstanding, the car should make it through the MOT after all, and I'll have it back as soon as they find me a new set of wheels.

And the diagnosis gets worse...

After being told Thursday all the things which were wrong on the car and would need to be fixed for the MOT, I took the car in this morning to find out what was making the bizarre knocking noise which suddenly erupted on the way home from work last night.

Apparently the near-side drive shaft is kaput. My mechanic was very forthright and said I really needed to have a think about whether it was worth doing all the work on the car. There's no rust on it and the engine is clear as a bell, but the peripherals (brakes, the drive shaft etc.) are starting to wear out. Plus of course I've got to replace the badgerised wheels.

I reckon I've found one of the few honest mechanics around. This is the second time he's said to me, "We can fix it, but I'm not sure it's worth it. You have to decide." when he could have just told me I needed to get all the work done and then hit me with a huge bill. At least there's that silver lining on my car-shaped cloud.

Revenge of the kamikaze badger

A couple of weeks ago I had an incident where a badger leapt out of a hedge as I drove past, and ended up under my left front wheel with an almighty bang. Two days ago I noticed my front wheel tyre was down to the wire under the tread, so I stopped on the way into work to get it replaced.

The problem is the alloy wheel has buckled slightly, so it has one squared-off edge now. The tyre-guy asked if I'd hit anything recently. "Er... a badger," I said. "Yeah, that would do it," he said (although to be fair, he added the badger probably only dealt the "killing blow" to the wheel allignment).

So, even though I've now got new tyres on my front wheels, they're going to shred pretty quickly unless I replace the actual wheels. I could buy some more alloys, but what's the point if they're going to get bent by animals with a death wish? I'll probably swap them for steel wheels, which will a) be cheaper, and b) make my insurance cheaper too, because I'll look less like a boy racer chav.

But the problems doesn't stop with needing new wheels. While changing the tyres, said tyre-guy decided to have a poke around to see if there were any other causes of abnormal wear. He showed me how springy my front wishbones are, which probably means a more expensive MOT later this month than I had planned. In a few hours I changed from being a care-free motorist to a driver of a death-trap trying to scrape together the pennies to keep his motor road-legal.

Ah, the fun and games of car ownership.

A depressing tally

Driving back last night from Shrewsbury I hit a badger. It seemed to leap out from the hedge into my front wheel with a resounding bang and a thud. I thought it was a dog or a sheep or something because all I saw was a flash of white before it disappeared below the bonnet of my car with a thump.

Even though I'm an animal lover it adds to quite a depressing tally of wildlife roadkill. Once when I was driving home from Weston two baby foxes were on the carriageway. They seemed to want to play with the headlights of the car and wherever I moved on the road they moved too, until I slammed on my brakes, but it was too late to avoid hitting at least one of them. Then up in Scotland once, a squirrel dashed out and ended up under my wheel with a sickening crunch.

And now I've got a badger on my conscience too.

Just as good the second time around

Went to see Transformers again tonight - on another free ticket. I was expecting 'second screening syndrome' where you see the continuity gaps, spot wider plot holes etc. I'm happy to say the film went even more quickly and I was carried along with it. This is also one of the few films where the score would probably be worth buying - I really noticed the heroic music pumping at key points in the film.

The only problem now is my car doesn't seem as cool any more. Cathy chided me the other day when I said that, pointing out my alloyed up Golf is still a nice car. But it's not a robot. Sigh.

If you haven't hocked your first born yet to buy a ticket, you'll have to wait til the general release on Friday. Still, gives you a couple of days to get some bids on the kids on eBay.

Snow 2 - Frosty's Revenge

I got sent home early from work today because of the unexpected snow that surprised those soothsayers at the Met Office.

Of course, the day I get sent home would be the day I took the train into work. Fortunately Grangetown station is right opposite the garage where I’d left my car, which was now under an inch of frosty precipitation. The central locking motor has gone and it needs a new one, so it’ll be the pfaff of manually locking and unlocking doors for the near future, until they can order the motor in.

Driving in snow/slush is always fun/scary. But at least I got home at a decent time. Poor old Viv got stuck for five hours at the Coldra junction on the M4, a hideously snarled junction overwhelmed with traffic at the best of times. Valley lines 1, Motorway 0.

Gratitude should be my attitude

Cath has this annoying habit of, when I'm in a glump, telling me to 'count my blessings'. But it does work as a pick me up. Here in no particular order are ten of my blessings at the moment.

1) Cath - who, even after all this time, finds ways to make me laugh. Like last night when she said Thomas Rosicky of Arsenal had bad hair and reminded her of a young k.d.lang. (And she's right, which makes it even funnier.)
2) My car - which probably needs a new wheel bearing but took us safely to Shrubbery and back AND has a CD player in it (a big step up from the broken tape player I had in the grey Escort)
3) The Lost Prophets CD in my car's CD player, 'cos you need a loud CD to mask the squeaks of a wheel bearing giving up the ghost, plus Adam 'Acker for giving me a HMV token for Christmas so I could purchase said CD
4) A nice warm house given that its gone below freezing for the first time this winter
5) Kinder Surprises - especially the French ones that Viv and Ian bought me that had an Asterix toy in them
6) The geeky fun of sorting stamps
7) My job, which has annoyed the hell out of me in the past fortnight, but at least gives me the chance to write for a living
8) In less than a month we'll be celebrating my Grandad's 90th birthday
9) Dave's nice warm house, which is a lot tidier now he's married, meaning we can stay with him in Shrewsbury and sleep in almost proper beds (!)
10) Commenters on my blog - cheers guys! (And if that's not a blatant request for more comments then I don't know what is.)

Good for another year

Talk about relieved. I put the car in for its MOT yesterday and it passed without needing any work done on it. I was a bit worried beforehand because last time it was serviced it needed new brake pads and the calipers were a mess, so I was expecting a hefty bill. But it passed – yay!

The great thing about the garage I take the car to is that its right opposite the entrance to Grangetown train station. I got on at Grangetown and had a free ride to Taff’s Well. As I was going to borrow the works van to help someone move house today I just chalked it up as a serendipity. Except that the move was cancelled, I didn’t need the van, so I ended up back on the train, expecting to have to pay this time because it wasn’t as crowded. I was wrong. Another free trip later (don’t they have conductors on trains any more??), and I was picking up my beloved Golf.

Finding the upside
My friend Carol, whose moving house, has been trying to move for ages but seems to have hit every obstacle going. Yesterday’s delay was upsetting, but I had an upside for her (of sorts). Cath had gone in for a regular eye test and the opticians had got a bit stressed and made an appointment for her in eye casualty this morning. Not having to help with the house move meant I could go with Cath to the ‘lovely’ Heath Hospital (where the new helipad is just about finished, I noticed), without letting anyone down.

After a few hours waiting to be seen (the irony!), Cathy had the usual sequence of eye drops and the eye doc had a good squint into the depths of her eyes. Turns out she’s fine, with a better field of vision than you’d really expect given the op she had 4 years ago to stick back a detached retina.

And her eyesight hasn’t really deteriorated in the past year, so as well as the clean bill of health, she doesn’t need new specs either! Hurrah! So, like me with the car, she had to pay for the test but nothing else.