My January 2026 round-up

A very busy opening month of 2026, including a big birthday party for my mum who turneed 80, a work trip to Glasgow and the restart of political campaigning after a brief break over Christmas.

I was busy on the blog too, with a Blood Bowl match report, a Book of the Month and, for the first time, an Album of the Month post. I did a review of 2025, a sports round up and listed my cinema trips. I also marked Appreciate a Dragon day with a drove of dragons.

My Mum's 80th birthday party was on the final weekend of the month.  We had a loose theme of '80 years around the world' with a cake shaped like a hot air balloon.

A wall of photos, including a banner of family members spelling out 'Happy Birthday'.

Fred the hound was immortalised in icing next to the main cake we cut and served. His obvious misdemeanour attracted a lot of comments.

Mum with kids and grandkids...

At Mum's request we ran a short quiz. I was quizmaster. The most successful rounds were the picture rounds and the round where people had to guess the song title containing a country name.

My work trip to Glasgow was a day trip with an early morning flight from Bristol airport and a late return. I set my schedule to see if there and back in a day was doable. Turns out that yes it is doable, but it isn't desirable. I'm not going to rush to repeat it. 

We are now about 3 months away from the Senedd election and canvassing has started in earnest. I've been out talking to commuters at stations and knocking on doors.

I also went to the first Keep Grangetown Tidy litter pick of the year (photos by Fiona from KGT).

My top find was a dumped huge 80s style boombox, so I held it over my head like the famous scene in Say Anything.

On another weekend I supported the Friends of Grange Gardens 'Big Garden Birdwatch' on a wet Sunday morning. Despite the drizzle I saw goldfinches high up in the trees.

And I went to four football matches - three Cardiff Dracs games and a trip out to Cefn Cribwr as a random game at a new ground. That was just after New Year and they still had mince pies available with the half time cups of tea.

Illuminated by darkness

Bit of a profound way to describe a thought I had this morning at about half 7. It was very dark this morning, and as I sat munching my wheat bisks (none of that fancy branded cereal for me) I noticed just how incredibly dark it was outside.

And then the thought struck me: What if the sun doesn’t rise today? Of course, I know that I was being ridiculous, because the earth revolves on its own axis once every 24 hours, and day was going to follow night as surely as nauseous regret follows the snaffling of a dozen mince pies. (Not that I’ve done that… recently.)

But that half moment of fear made me realise that in pre-scientific times there was no sure way of knowing, which is why the Egyptians et al used to celebrate the sunrise every day (or at least I think they did – perhaps I ought to look historical trivia like that up). And how do I really ‘know’ that stuff about the Earth on its axis, other than that I’ve been told about it and apparently there’s this invisible, un-measureable, unquantifiable thing called gravity that would stop working if the world suddenly stopped spinning. So, the sun was going to come up because we hadn’t all been catapulted off into space while we slept – what a comforting thought!

The upshot of all this frenzied brain activity was me being a bit more grateful when the sky started to lighten than I usually am.