Well, that was 2024

Time for a round up of a very busy 12 months. I squeezed in a lot! 

January 

I had two trips to Shrewsbury - for football and for family birthdays. I also went to London for work and visited the newish shopping centre in Battersea Power Station, mainly to visit the Lego Shop.

February 

Our building work on the house started - with a new roof in the wettest February on record. (At least we knew immediately that it didn't leak!)  I was mugged on my way home from the city centre and had a swollen blacked eye for a couple of weeks. But I also got to see my first ever international ice hockey games. 

March

A month of travelling! Mother's Day in Shrewsbury, journeys to Cambridge (and home via Oxford), work in London and a Wales C International in Llanelli (on the anniversary of my dad's death - a fitting tribute to him, I felt!) On Easter Sunday at the end of the month, Cathy and I went to our first gig of the year to see Tony Wright, in Abertillery.

April 

My brother, sister-in-law and their four kids visited Cardiff for the Easter bank holiday Monday (and my birthday the next day!) Work began replastering the hall and landing, which involved chipping off the hideous Artex that I have wanted to be rid of for 30 years! I spent a week manning a stall at a conference in London - and afterwards got to visit the Moomin Shop. 

May

The plastering was completed and we thought we were close to finishing the work in the house (little did we know....). We had a bank holiday trip down to Torquay. The men who attacked me in February pled guilty and were given prison sentences. And the Prime Minister at the time, Rishi Sunak, called a General Election. 

June

I went to the Major League Baseball game in London. We spent a week in North Wales with my Mum and our friend, Ella. I watched a lot of the European Championships on TV!

July 

A super- busy month! We had a visit from my sister and her three kids and took them to Techniquest. England reached the European Championship final. The UK got a new government in the General Election. We saw Frank Turner play at the Tramshed in Cardiff. The new football season started with a thrashing for Barry Town in a friendly at Oxford City. I went to a model railway exhibition. After being messed around by an electrician, we finally got the electrics sorted and could book a decorator to come and paint the house... in September. 

August

The big event for us in August was seeing Billy Joel play live at the Principality Stadium. It was a spectacular gig. I also had a big football awayday, watching Shrewsbury play at Huddersfield Town. We also acted as witnesses at a wedding for a couple who had put out an appeal for witnesses on Reddit. 

September

We spent the week of our wedding anniversary in Shropshire, and went to see Terrorvision play KK's Steel Mill in Wolverhampton on our actual anniversary. The hall, landing and upstairs WC all got painted! 

October

More work in the house - this time carpentry with a new little cupboard in our hall to hide the fuse box. I spent two days filming for work in Barry - and we were blessed with some great weather that made Barry look spectacular. 

November

It was World Diabetes Day, and I spent a weekend in Northern Ireland with the local team over there (and got a selfie with Mr Tayto!). A few days later it was Cathy's birthday. We had a chilled day out and went to watch a movie, in a cinema with a lack-of-heating issue so, literally, chilled! Shrewsbury Town appointed a new manager and I was there for his first game in charge - an unexpected win against Birmingham City. The final bits of work in the house started and we had new flooring!

December

In the first week of December, we finally finished the home improvements we started in February! I felt incredibly relieved that the mammoth undertaking was over after ten months. I had work events in London, Bristol and Port Talbot. Then it was Christmas - starting with seeing Mary and Steve and visiting The Longest Yarn in Tewkesbury, followed by nearly a week in Shrewsbury. I concluded the month with a football match on New Years Eve.

And that was a wrap for 2024!

Speeding towards summer - May 2024

Me in most of May

In my previous monthly round-up I mentioned how we had moved out of our house due to home improvements. We spent the first few days in May in a flat in Cardiff Bay and then had a few days as guests with our friends Bryan and Elaine. That gave me and Bryan an opportunity to try out a new game called RumbleSlam - blogged about here.

But soon the plastering was complete and we were able to move back home. Besides being unsettled by being out of the house, there have been several other things to deal with. 

In the middle of the month, a friend and colleague was made redundant, the second member of our small team to leave under redundancy in the last few weeks. In addition to the sadness of the circumstances, it's left a hole in several plans we had in work. 

I also had the unsettling feeling of knowing that the two men who attacked me back in February were due to be sentenced. I wrote a victim impact statement for the sentencing, although opted not to attend the sentencing hearing. The man who actually hit me received a ten year imprisonment sentence and his accomplice who stood by and watched was given three years in prison. 

Overall, I feel physically and emotionally fine about the whole event. I don't feel particularly nervous or panicky about walking around outside. I've walked past the place where it happened a few times. It just all feels very surreal, and I feel slightly detached from it - like it happened to someone else. The police and the witness support unit have been excellent throughout, answering questions and keeping me updated. I know they are also pleased with the quick resolution and successful conviction. 

The day of the sentencing, I saw posts on LinkedIn saying that someone I used to work for had passed away. Professor Sir Mansel Aylward CB was chair of Public Health Wales, where I worked, and requested my services supporting his think tank the Bevan Commission. I worked closely with him to write various reports and we ended up chatting about all kinds of things. I remember him telling me about hearing Aneurin Bevan speaking, and about the aftermath of the Aberfan disaster. 

Once when I was on the team running an exhibition stall for NHS Wales at a big international conference in London, I ended up having a meal with him and my fellow stall-manager, Kelly, where he regaled us with stories from when he worked in the area when it was under the thrall of the Krays. But beyond the stories, Sir Mansel always seemed interested in hearing what everyone around the table had to say. I noticed other tributes on LinkedIn from people who worked at a similar junior level to me, saying the same thing, and expressing genuine sorrow that he had passed away.

Lots happening, but also, goslings!!

On the last bank holiday weekend of the month, Cathy and I had a day trip to Torquay. This was mainly to visit the memorial stone for Cathy's parents at the crematorium. But we also had a drive along the sea front, visited the big toy shop in Paington, and had a picnic tea at Hay Tor on Dartmoor before driving home. We couldn't see much of Hay Tor because of the mist, but we did get to see some of the wild ponies that live on the moor!

Ponies!

In the wider world, we also had news that a general election has been called for 4th July with the Prime Minister standing in pouring rain during the announcement. That in itself prompted lots of comments.  

So far, I haven't received any political bumf through the letterbox, but I will be doing an election leaflet round up like I've done previously (most recently for the Senedd elections in 2021). 

The election announcement torpedoed a news story for us in work because two of the young people who volunteer in our programme had met the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care just the day before the election was announced!

Then right at the end of the month, another big politics news story broke, with Donald Trump becoming the first former US President to be convicted of criminal charges. This made me think back to when I was complaining about how boring politics was when I studied it at A-Level. I can't imagine anyone studying it now would find it dull.

I also managed to fit in five football matches in May. I will be writing them up soon and there will also be an end of season review because that's it - the season is over for me! (But I will be watching the European Championships next month...)

Hectic itineraries and home improvements - April 2024

Some highlights from April 2024...

Train of the month:
Docklands Light Railway

The month began with my brother, sister-in-law and their four kids visiting us in Cardiff for 48 hours over my birthday. They stayed near us in Cardiff Bay. We had a lot of fun with them including riding the big wheel in the Bay and a trip to the amusement arcades on Ynys y Barri.

A highlight, as ever, was the play park round the corner.

Besides my birthday there were a couple of other celebrations. I saw my godson at his birthday party as he celebrated being 2. And I went to the studio-warming held by my friend Sian in her new business premises on Barry High Street. 

Sian is the exceptional photographer who came and took photos at our Silver Wedding Anniversary in September last year. It was great to see her new studio and she was already taking bookings for shoots.

Then I spent the best part of a week in London at the Diabetes UK Professional Conference. I was part of a team running an exhibition stand for the youth programme that I work on. The team included volunteers from each of the four regions in England and the other nations of the UK - so seven young people in total. They were an absolutely brilliant crew who worked incredibly hard to represent the programme and talk to healthcare professionals about the impact of the work. 

When the stand was set up and still looked neat!

And Sara dropped by to say 'Hi'

I stayed on after the conference and had a crazy weekend that started on the Friday night in the Moomin Shop in Covent Garden and ended on a sunny Sunday in Colwyn Bay queuing for ice creams inside a football ground. More details will appear on my posts about the football matches I've been to this month. But I did get to see Mum and the Fredster as well. (Here's the hound posing with Zac!)

I treated myself to a first class ticket home on the Monday morning. It was worth the extra £3!

Got a cracking cup of tea as well.

The final weekend of the month was spent getting ready to move out of our house ahead of the next tranche of building work. Our hall, stairwell and landing are getting replastered and it's just easier to be out of the way of the workmen. So we decamped to a teeny tiny flat in Cardiff Bay for a week. It was very small, but had a great view of the Pierhead Building from the window. 

And we were sort of, but not really, on holiday, so we had an ice cream (super low fat blackcurrant sorbet for Cathy) despite the rain...

Uncovering cute messages of yore

This weekend we started stripping wallpaper in our upstairs bathroom. It's wallpaper we stuck on nineteen years ago. Under one chunk was a message that I think I wrote on the bare wall using a paint tester pot after Cathy had gone to bed one night.

In case you can't read that it says 

Morning 

Cathy 

I 

♡ 

U

Aw, soppy and adorable. 

I had forgotten that message. I don't think I wrote it expecting ever to see it again once we had covered it up with wallpaper. And yet there it was, sitting unread all that time. 

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

At home with the mice

For the last week we have been trying to deter some unwelcome guests of the rodent variety.

Fair play to Cardiff Council, their pest control service came out the day after we called them and were very helpful in a) helping us realise this wasn't an insurmountable problem, b) reassuring us that this was a very common problem for lots of people at the moment, and c) advising us on what to do.

So we now have a house full of tasty poison, which we think is working, The mouse poos, that they handily leave behind as evidence of where they've been, are getting smaller. Which presumably means the mice are getting smaller, which means we've killed off the big ones and now the small ones are venturing out.

As an animal lover I do feel a bit conflicted poisoning mice, but less so after we discovered one had pooed on our toaster (and possibly in our toaster). We have now binned said appliance and are waiting for the mice to be eradicated before replacing it.

We have also been using a lot of anti-bac cleaning wipes and having a big tidy / clean under and behind the furniture. It's quite hard work, but necessary. If only, because otherwise you sit there wondering what is behind / under the sofa you're sitting on.

And that's not a nice feeling at all.

Pressure produces diamonds

Apparently. (It also breaks continental plates.)

It hasn't been an easy month or so. Cath has been ill and off work. On Tuesday the doctor told her that (and this is a paraphrase, but it's Cathy's summary) 'you're broken and I don't know how to fix you.'

Two of my friends experienced an unexpected bereavement when a pregnancy fell short.

Work hasn't been easy. Managerial caution at the highest level (some of it justifiable) has pushed one of my already-fragile colleagues almost over the edge. I have my own issues with another person who seems to have a fantastic knack for making easy jobs much, much harder than they should be, and a definite talent for creating work for other people. Unfortunately I am other people.

I still get surprised by reminders of Grandad when I least expect it. Occasionally I am ambushed by grief.

But there have been some good things shining through like sun rays in a cloudy sky.

Last week on my birthday I saw all three members of my immediate family. And it was sunny, so we went to Rest Bay and breathed in sea air and saw starfish in the rock pools.

The dodgy bit of our roof is finally - after months of stress - fixed!

Along with all the other staff I got given a Cadbury's Creme Egg in work from our CEO for Easter. Sometimes it's the littlest gestures that mean the most.

I am now working on helping with two more books. I may be involved in four books getting published this year now.

My eBay purchase of a box of 100 Padres baseball cards arrived, and I've been geekily cataloguing them. Happy Excel Spreadsheet fun!