My ongoing type 2 diabetes recovery

I blogged last year about how I had a diabetes relapse and was making a recovery. I'm really pleased that at my follow up check up today, my recovery from type 2 diabetes was well established. 

My HbA1c - the measure of blood glucose over time that shows if you have diabetes - was down to 38. (It needs to be below 42.) 

At the end of April 2025, my HbA1c was 54, so I have dropped it by 16 points in 13 months. The nice practice nurse, Fiona, printed out my graph for me. Check it out:

This graph doesn't have the very first HbA1c result that got me sent to hospital way back in January 2015. But it wouldn't fit on this graph anyway because my score then was 91. (Strangely that first result doesn't seem to be on the system at all, which might explain why I keep having to tell my diagnosis story every time I see a different healthcare professional.)

Anyway, this is the lowest my HbA1c has been since 2020. I'm not saying the pandemic is to blame, but the shift to home working didn't help my waistline much. Losing 11 kg since April last year is what helped me drop my diabetes score. (I recommend canvassing - my foot mileage in election week was quite high!) 

I feel I can now safely say I have reversed my diabetes twice. The challenge will be keeping it this way. That's why I like to refer to it as Recovery. Every day I have to make the conscious decision to make choices that are better for me - what to eat and when to exercise. 

Some days are easier days to make that positive choice to stay diabetes-free. But on the hard days I now have a graph to remind me what's possible.

Covid recollections - five years on

We recently had a 'National Day of Reflection' about the Covid-19 Pandemic, marking five years since the first lockdown orders were issued. The week after the day of reflection, I met up with my former work colleagues Heather and Tracy, and we talked about the last week we worked together, as in, together in the same office. 

We were a team of three who worked in an office tucked away under the Children's Hospital. I used to refer to the room as the bunker, because although we had a window, we were well below street level. The window looked out onto a concrete area surrounded by high walls. We were located below a ward that acted as temporary housing for patients from various wards as wards elsewhere in the hospital were being renovated. In the time we were there, the ward was a cardiac ward, then a renal ward, then something else.

In early 2020 it got turned into a respiratory ward. Patients admitted with breathing difficulties caused by the new virus were being cared for there. I found this out in an inter-departmental meeting on a Tuesday morning. I also knew the kitchen serving that ward was located just down the corridor from our office and staff were preparing food for the ward and transporting food trolleys along the corridor without any protective gear. 

I went back to the office and said to Heather and Tracy that we needed to pack up our things, take our laptops and work from home for the rest of the week until we got some clear answers. Within an hour the three of us had left the office... and that was the last day we worked there. 

Just before I moved to a new job the office was permanently requisitioned for another team and I went in with Heather to clear it. I threw away so many half-completed to-do lists! 

Covid hit our wider network hard. Many of the teams we worked with had staff redeployed. There was a huge shift to virtual consultations and home working. Most of our teams had tried to start virtual consultations but had always been frustrated by a lack of support from IT and sometimes point blank blocking by Information Governance. Suddenly, everyone was on Microsoft Teams and encouraged to talk to patients that way. As one consultant said to me 'For years we have been trying to go virtual, and all it took was a global pandemic...!"

I feel a bit guilty, really, talking about my experience working in healthcare during the pandemic. I recognise that I got off very lightly. I know people who ended up in Nightingale Hospitals and others who were given minimal training handling needles and were launched into vaccination centres. One former colleague worked in ICU and talked about having to intubate people she worked with who had caught the disease. 

But my experience was being at home, locked away. Cathy and I spent more time together than we had done for years. It was nice eating lunch together every day. Yes, it was all a bit scary. I was flicking through an old journal and for a long time I was noting the covid death statistics that were being published daily. 

Along with journaling, I got into blogging a lot more. One of my lockdown projects was launching my (now sadly neglected) blog about baseball cards featuring Tony Gwynn. That was one of several Lockdown Projects, which I wrote about in May 2020.

I didn't blog excessively about the pandemic, but I did record some things, which make an interesting read now, with the benefit of hindsight. (That Lockdown Projects blog post was the first mention of the pandemic on my blog.)

In the first few months of the pandemic, lots of people put home made rainbows in their windows as a message of hope and solidarity with each other. Blog post: Grangetown Rainbow Art

Shortly after the Covid-19 lockdown began my Uncle Malcolm and my good friend Ben both died, although not from Covid. I wasn't able to go to their funerals, which added to the pain. Blog post: The fractional losses, being human in a viral world

A bit like the Rainbow Art thing, we joined in the first Grangetown Zoo. 

In the October, lockdown had been eased a bit and then suddenly returned. Blog post: Lockdown freedoms (a "Fire Break" post)

At the end of 2020, I listed five positive things from the year. One of them was being at home for Christmas - yes, it was another lockdown but it was still nice. That was the Christmas my mum went to Edinburgh for Christmas at my sister's and wasn't allowed back into England for four weeks due to emergency travel restrictions.

By February 2021, I was really missing going to football matches. As a result it felt like the 2020-21 season never really happened at all. 

But then in March I got called for my first covid vaccination, in the repurposed former Toys R Us building in Cardiff Bay. It wasn't long before it was known as Jabs R Us. Blog post: Jabbed

I really remember that day. Firstly, when I walked in I met my colleague Nick who worked in the Service Improvement Team in the health board. He had helped design the mass vaccination centre and was there checking it was all running smoothly. 

The second thing was just the feeling of tearful relief when I got back into my car after being vaccinated and suddenly feeling like I had some protection at last from this awful thing that had been threatening me for so long. I have such a strong memory of that emotional response, but I didn't mention it in my blog post at the time. 

That year there was a weird anti-lockdown party in the Senedd Election. Blog post: Senedd 2021 Election Leaflets Review & Ranking

I had a surprise when I cleaned out the detritus from my car. Blog post: Mundane markers of pandemic life

In June 2021 we went to the cinema for the first time since before lockdown. We saw In The Heights. 

And in July 2021 I was able to go to my first football match since early March 2020. Blog post: Back to football after 16 months away

I posted several review posts of 2021 at the end of the year. One of them was all about the pandemic. Blog post: Reflecting on 2021 – the second year of the pandemic

In early 2022, I wrote about how Covid-19 was a good example of how sincerely held beliefs - however strongly they are held - are no protection against reality. This is a lesson that has become ever more apparent politically since I blogged about it. Blog post: The boat of belief and the rocks of reality

I also noted how the pandemic had left it's mark when I took part in the Keep Grangetown Tidy litter pick in January 2022. 

In May 2022 I caught Covid-19 for the first time. I was due to start my new job and had to spend the first week of it attending virtual meetings and apologising to people. It was a key part of my blog post review of the month that month.

In September 2022 I had my fourth covid vaccination and was very pleased to finally get a sticker! (Cathy got one the very first time she got vaccinated.)

And in October 2022, we went to our first gig since before the pandemic - a postponed Counting Crows gig in Manchester

Covid was still around in 2023. I caught it again in March, as mentioned in that month's round up post. (And yes, I might have caught it off a giant rabbit!)

Happily, I have managed to stay free of the virus since then. 

I hoped that after the pandemic settled down the world might be a more reflective and kinder place. Sadly, that hasn't happened. We have had two years of war in Ukraine now, and a year and a half of atrocities in Gaza. The USA seems to be spinning apart, headed up by a destructive narcissist. It seems like the chaos caused by covid wasn't enough and some people just want more. 

Toys R Us R Back (sort of)

Toys R Us went bust a few years ago now - so long ago the former store was used as a mass vaccination centre (Jabs R Us) during the pandemic. 

But now it's back, resurrected by WH Smith and relaunched with a flurry of branding.

It had a clearly demarcated section in the branch of WH Smith where I first saw the Toys R Us sign.

And the company has gone all in on the branding, bringing Geoffrey the giraffe back to life in a variety of toys and other merch.

I appreciate how WH Smith have leaned into the branding, including this timeline of former iterations of Geoffrey that ends with him arriving in WH Smiths. 

This feels like more than the reappearance of a 'zombie brand'. There's been some investment in the launch.

And in the store where I first saw the Toys R Us comeback, there was even a photo opportunity with Geoffrey.

He looked rather relaxed about his return.

Pandemic heritage

Having a day out on the Severn Valley Railway for my birthday. This vintage advert for Tizer caught my eye and when I saw it was next to a hand sanitiser dispenser I had to take a pic for posterity.

In a strange way the hand sanitiser is as evocative of a period in (recent) history as the advert for a delicious drink!

First gig since Covid - Counting Crows

On Tuesday night, Cathy and I were in Manchester at our first gig since the entertainment world came to an abrupt stop in 2020.

Counting Crows had already rescheduled their tour dates twice, so we kept checking in the run up to this gig whether it was still going ahead. We had been to the Manchester Apollo before - to see Bastille a few years back. (For various reasons, the most memorable thing I remember about that gig was having to drive back to my parents' house in Shrewsbury via Birmingham to drop off my pal Connor because there were no trains from Manchester to Birmingham after 9pm.) 

I was getting a bit weary of gigs prior to the pandemic as I'd been annoyed by loutish behaviour by other gig-goers, and truthfully was fed up of paying high prices for tickets and then treated like dirt by venues. So I was apprehensive about this. However, I was really impressed with the Apollo as a venue - they had loads of staff on, there were no delays on entry, and there was an orderly queuing system for the bar instead of a scrum!

Here's a pre-show selfie of us in our seats, way up in the second to last row of the Circle/

We were a way back, but we had a great, central view. I clocked the techie with the laptop who walked behind us during the second song of the set and fiddled with some settings. After that the sound mix was absolutely perfect. 

We have seen Counting Crows several times over the years as they have toured different records. I wasn't too up to speed on the latest release, Butter Miracle, as it's only been released on vinyl. There are four songs in a 'suite' that they played one after another about two thirds the way through their set. I enjoyed the songs even though I didn't know them. They also included a healthy mix of older tracks, including the big singles off their first record which got the liveliest response from the crowd. 

It feels to me that the band have grown into themselves more on recent tours and now enjoy giving the fans what they want to hear. There is pride in playing classics like Rain King, Round Here. Mister Jones, and Omaha and holding the mic out into the crowd for them to sing along. They seem to enjoy playing the hits more than they did twenty plus years ago when they were touring their earlier albums. Maybe it's a new sense of perspective - Adam the singer seemed genuinely grateful when he thanked the crowd at the end of the gig for showing up and being fans. 

Here are ten photos from the gig that all look a bit the same but hopefully give you an idea of what our evening was like. 

September 2022 review

We are now three quarters the way through 2022 and September felt like a busy month, both personally and in the wider world. 

Towards the end of the month I had my fourth anti-covid vaccination, and this time I got a sticker!

Unlike some previous jabs, I felt the effects of this one, spending most of the following day feeling poorly with flu-like symptoms. Still, it's worth it to be (sort of) covid-proof as we head into winter. 

The main news story this month was the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, which dominated media output for days. I blogged about how I felt out of step with a lot of people regarding it - and I have had some feedback that will probably inspire some future posts. It may have been too soon to ask awkward questions, like I did. 

The state funeral was declared a bank holiday, which added an extra day on to out week's holiday in Caernarfon. I blogged about that too! And here are a couple more bonus pictures.

Conwy's three bridges

Full steam ahead!

After a "decamonth" of football matches in August, I only went to four games in September. Partly this was because all football was cancelled the weekend after the Queen died. This affected our plan to celebrate the birthday of our eldest nephew, Zac, by going to a game with him and some of his friends. If we had made it to that game, I would have seen three successive Shrewsbury games for the first time in decades.  

However, we saw Zac on our way to Caernarfon, and on the way back we got to see our second eldest niece, Iona on her birthday, as my sister and brother-in-law had brought their clan down to stay at my Mum's house. We even got to go with them to see the DC League of Superpets movie (reviewed here). 

The four games I saw included a new record scoreline for me - with Cardiff Corinthians winning 16-0 (sixteen-nil!) in the FAW Trophy. 

The day after the Corries racked up that massive score, I drove over to Nailsworth in Gloucestershire, where Forest Green Rovers were hosting Shrewsbury Town. It was back-to-back Shrewsbury away games for me, having been to Bristol Rovers the previous week. 

Shrewsbury won 2-0, which made climbing up the massive mile-long hill to the ground almost worthwhile. 

Talking of large scorelines, I wore my new Barry Town colour-themed Converse sneakers to Barry's home game against Goytre United. Barry won 5-0!

Despite the reduced quantity of live football, we have started watching the Welcome to Wrexham documentary on Disney Plus. I have found this surprisingly moving, mainly because Wrexham is a place that I know well due to family connections. The strength of feeling the fans have towards their football club underlines the importance of these cultural institutions. The Hollywood owners, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenny, seem to understand that and have come across well so far.

However, it's kind of funny watching the documentary about last season and knowing how the season ended. The documentary editors have been clever at foreshadowing about how difficult it will be if Wrexham miss out on promotion at the end of the season... oh dear!

Popcorn politics

Well, this is some week in politics (and it's not over yet).  It's been a week to break out the popcorn, settle down and watch the news. Much of the country has watched faintly aghast and disgusted as the Prime Minister has tried to hang on to office like a particularly persistent bacteria fights a rear-guard action against antibiotics.

I'm just going to go ahead and post this tweet, because it's rare enough that I get to say "I told you so" quite so spectacularly. So indulge me.

If you want to see some other things I've tweeted about Boris Johnson over the intervening period, here is a handy preloaded Twitter search. It's not complimentary. 

The real problem, as Cathy succinctly pointed out to me, is that people knew what he was like - he has a history of racist remarks, abandoning his multiple families, lying, taking large amounts of money from dubious donors, and pandering to right wing racists. And people overlooked all that and voted for him anyway.

This current political meltdown is on all of the people who voted for this arch-charlatan. We know why they voted for him in droves. He said he would get Brexit done. Which, I will admit grudgingly, is about the one promise he has kept. Even if it was a brutal version of Brexit that is tanking the economy and will impoverish future generations.

Almost immediately after the UK crashed out of the EU we had the pandemic, which is being spun to us as a Boris success. Except it wasn't. The UK has the highest number of deaths compared to EU and EAA countries in Europe (including 20,000 people who have died so far in 2022). It wasn't Boris that saved the nation from an even worse outcome. It was NHS staff who reorganised services in double quick time, worked to breaking point, and organised the largest vaccine roll out ever seen in the UK.

The NHS saved his life too. And what was the thanks - when the wave of stories about lockdown parties in Number 10 broke - Boris Johnson's defenders said it was no different to nurses having a drink in the break room at the end of their shift. This slur has been angrily challenged by every healthcare professional I know.

In my most uncharitable moments, I have said that the biggest tactical mistake ever made by anyone working in the NHS was keeping Boris Johnson alive. I'm not saying a replacement would have been outlandishly better, but it can hardly have been any worse.

So we come to the last few months. Almost every week has brought a new scandal. More hypocrisy. More corruption. More sexual indiscretions. (The most recent one caused an explosion of jokes when he was alleged to have knocked up his hairdresser. Most people seemed incredulous that he had a hairdresser.) More lies - until eventually a civil servant said enough was enough and publicly stated that Boris Johnson definitely did know that his deputy chief whip was a serial groper and his denials were lies. 

Even the way he has sort of resigned today reveals the real Boris Johnson. He snidely blamed the 'herd mentality' of Tory MPs, subtly implying they lost their nerve and were bitter ingrates. He saw the last election as his victory, his parliamentary majority to do with as he wished, his mandate to rule, and now it was being taken away from him because of the cowardice of others. No sense that he brought this on himself. In his eyes it can't possibly be his fault even though his decisions are the fuel that has kept this bin fire raging for months. He's not even leaving properly - appointing himself the sitting duck caretaker Prime Minister so he can stay in his corrupt little palace for as long as possible. 

So he is going. Not gone. Like I said, the week ain't over, Neither is this shitshow.

May 2022 - a month of bumpy beginnings

I had a week off after leaving my previous job before starting my new job. We did plenty of stuff, including a trip to Oxford to see a friend. We had some time to wander around Oxford includng a very brief look into the Ashmolean Museum.

We also saw the Bridge of Sighs. Here's Cathy stood under it to give an indication of its size.

We really liked the gargoyles on Brasenose College. This owl really caught my eye. He looks like he's pumped!

And there was some modern cultural artwork in the shopping centre.

Unfortunately, I came back from Oxford with a respiratory memento.

Yes, over three years into the pandemic I finally caught the 'rona. I felt pretty rough with it for a few days, with a raspy cough and feeling like I could not fully inhale air into my lungs. 

Unfortunately, the timing meant that I couldn't go into the office on my first day. I spent my first week and a bit logging into meetings virtually. It wasn't the way I wanted to meet my new team but everyone was kind about it. I am slowly getting a handle on the new ecosystem I am working in now. It's a slightly odd feeling, leaving behind a work context I really understood and having to learn a new one.

In football terms, I missed a few games while isolating. I still made it to four games either side of having covid. The month started with the Welsh Cup final, which had quite an exciting end as Penybont scored twice from 3-0 down and were pushing for an equaliser at the very end of the game. But TNS held on and were crowned 'pencampwyr'.

As a bonus, when I logged into Futbology, I got a badge for being at a cup final!

There was another cup final at the end of the month. I've been to see Cardiff Draconians a few times this year. After the league campaign ended, there were some league cup fixtures. The Dracs progressed through to the final, which was held up at the Bont in Penydarren. That was a new ground for me so I drove up after work.

The Dracs were posing in the goalmouth before the game.

But it was Trethomas Bluebirds who lifted the trophy.

Sadly, I was having a problem downloading the update for Futbology so no 'badge' for me at this cup final. I did, however, have the most marvellous chips from the New Dolphin fish bar in Caeharris, which is up the hill and then up again from the ground. 

And despite the enforced break from going outside for both me and Cathy (who tested positive a few days after I did), we still managed to see the Snoopy statues on the Dog's Trail. I'm going to post a load of selfies at some point, but for now, here we are outside a toy shop in the Queen's Arcade.

The melancholy magic of the FA Cup

I watched the FA Cup final on Saturday. The timing worked well for me to watch it as I have been confined to the house isolating after being infected by covid.

A generic picture (by me) of the Wembley Stadium arch...

I have actually made more of an effort to watch the FA Cup final in the last few years. I enjoyed last year's game when Leicester won the Cup for the first time in this history. This year's contest was less exciting on paper, with both Liverpool and Chelsea winning it multiple times in the past and also being two of the really big teams in the league. FA Cup finals are always better when the less successful clubs get a tilt at winning. 

Back in 2019, I blogged about how the first FA Cup final after my Dad died was an unexpected moment where I keenly felt his loss. That feeling has diminished somewhat over the last couple of years, but it's still something missing from the occasion. Dad would always watch the cup final and talk to me on the phone about it afterwards, even when for several years I wasn't particularly fussed about it and hadn't bothered watching. 

People talk about the "magic" of the FA Cup and really what they mean is nostalgia. As I watched Liverpool and Chelsea punch and counterpunch their way to a 0-0 draw, extra time and penalties, I remembered watching the various cup finals when I was a kid. It made me feel melancholic as the nostalgia washed over me. 

Cup final day was always a big day in our house. In the 1980s it was one of those very rare times that a football match was broadcast live on TV. It almost seems silly now - my time off isolating has been spent watching live football from almost every level in the top five tiers of English football - but back then there was the Cup final, and that was about it.

It was also on both main channels, BBC1 and ITV, so it felt like a real moment when the nation stopped to watch the football. (They did that again this year, but we have way more than 4 channels now so it dominates the schedules less.) We always used to watch it on the BBC, often starting with the build up before lunch time. Some years we would switch over to ITV for the bit presented by "Saint and Greavsie" (Ian St.John and Jimmy Greaves, who had a weekly football chat show on Saturdays). But normally we ignored the ITV output. 

Those were halcyon days for FA Cup finals. I don't remember the one from 1984, when we had just moved into our house in Shrewsbury. But I remember watching Manchester United v Everton in 1985 - notable for Kevin Moran becoming the first player sent off in an FA Cup final, and Manchester United winning in extra time through a goal from wonder-kid Norman Whiteside. I wanted Everton to win and was disappointed that they lost. 

I don't particularly remember anything from the 1986 final when Liverpool won the FA Cup and became the first team to win the League Title and the FA Cup in the same season (the "Double") in my short life-time. Everton were the losing finalists again.

I have vivid memories of the final in 1987 when Coventry City won the FA Cup for the first and only time in their history, beating Spurs. Firstly, there were lots of goals, including a great diving header by Keith Houchen, and a looping own goal that sliced in off Spurs defender Gary Mabbutt's knee. But it was also played in brilliant sunlight and the Wembley grass was bright, bright green. We had a video recorder and taped the game. My brother and I rewatched that match several times, which is probably why it burns so bright in my memory.

And then in 1988, there was the famous win by Wimbledon over Liverpool. Nobody gave Wimbledon much of a chance, but they nicked a 1-0 win. By then I was fed up with Liverpool winning everything and all the gloryhunters at school, so I was very happy that Wimbledon won. 

Those are the finals I really remember. I'm sure I watched others. I remember Gazza being stretchered off after injuring himself with a ridiculous tackle in 1991. But other memories are hazy. What I mainly feel when I think about the FA Cup final relates to the whole family sitting down to watch the game, my father's infectious excitement, the sheer novelty of football on the telly, and this marking the end of a football season and in its own way the beginning of summer.

The other thing I remember is the family sweepstake. Once the team line-ups were announced, my dad would write all the player's names on tiny bits of scrap paper and we would take it in turns to draw them. Whoever had the piece of paper with the name of the first player to score a goal won. The prize was picking a box of chocolates afterwards, when we would walk across the park opposite our house to the little paper shop near the school, where there would be a small range of boxed chocs behind a glass screen. 

It felt like my mum won every year, even when she picked unlikely players to score first. This might be a trick of memory as I have no record of who actually won each year. It just felt like it was always my mum who was lucky in the sweep. It didn't matter anyway because the chocolates got shared. 

That vignette in itself is wrapped in nostalgia, like all these memories. The paucity of television channels. The simplicity of a sweepstake with very little at stake. Just those little family traditions that made the day special. That's where the magic lay, if there was any magic at all. Not on the field at Wembley, but in our living room. We made those moments happen and then froze them in sunlit amber as happy-sad memories. 

Maybe Dad was trying to keep those moments alive, with those phone calls after the game all those years after I left home when we didn't watch the game together any more. I understand that now. Now that the phone calls have stopped. 

Picking up litter on a bright sunny day

The weather this past weekend has been glorious. I got roasted watching a football match on Saturday and on Sunday joined the Keep Grangetown Tidy monthly litter pick. As ever, I am going to blog about some of the more interesting stuff I found. I started out well with a shiny £1 coin!

Then I got a jolt of nostalgia. Remember when bands used to issue CD singles with bonus tracks like live recordings? Well, this is unplayable now, but it's a throwback to life before streaming.

We had a visitor from Wales Online for the litter pick. I don't know if this photo that I grabbed off the Keep Grangetown Tidy socials will be on the website or not.

One other person came prepared for sunshine and wore sunglasses. The journalist disappeared before I could offer some opinions and observations on litter picking. 

One of the main things I've noticed has changed since I first went on a litter-pick is the amount of pandemic-related litter. I picked up eight facemasks, two empty hand santiser bottles, two disposable gloves (in different streets - not a pair together), and one of the solution dropper things from a lateral flow kit. This is all garbage that wouldn't have been part of a litter pick three years ago!

Another observation is that smokers who switch to vaping are still inclined to discard items relating to their addiction in the street. I lost track of how many empty boxes of vape juice I picked up. This observation has informed my opinion that smokers are inherently dirty people. Because even if they switch to a less damaging means of self-poisoning, they still don't clear up their smoker's trash. 

Anyway, on with the "finds".

I do have some "found Lego" in my Lego stash. However, this Duplo went in the bin bag.

It amused me that this glass still had a straw in it. Were they really drinking Carling through a straw?

Someone had decided to start an impromptu street library. Unfortunately the books in the plastic bag had got wet and ruined. Charlie and Lola ended up in the bin bag too.

And this also got chucked. I have no idea what it is. 

Another weird thing was a frying pan in a carrier bag. I found a security tag like the kind you get on clothing. There was McDonald's trash with the Deliveroo stickers stuck on the hamburger boxes. I also found evidence that people buy and consume those awful-looking Weetabix drinks because I picked up an empty bottle that someone had chucked over a gate when they had finished chugging it. 

All that trash ended up in the pile of rubbish at the end. This picture wasn't the final heap of stuff but it gives an idea of how discarded items and rubbish mounts up when it's gathered altogether. 

Lots of people said thank you as I was walking around collecting rubbish. More people say thank you than actually pick up a grabber and join in. But at least they see people taking action to tackle the problem and maybe that will encourage more people to act that way. 

(And I kept the £1 coin!) 

The boat of belief and the rocks of reality

I remember my dad telling me that it didn’t really matter if a person was sincere about something, because you could be sincerely wrong. That’s just one of those things that has stuck with me, for more than 30 years.

I think about it every time someone talks about their “beliefs” and how they feel their beliefs should be respected, by which they usually mean not challenged. I also think about it when seeing the sort of things covid-denialists post on social media that subsequently appear on Reddit’s Herman Cain Awards. Confident statements that they are protected by the blood of Jesus, and that they choose to live in faith not in fear. Or propagating misinformation that covid is fake news and part of some planned assault on individual liberties.

The thing is, Sars-Cov2, which causes covid, doesn’t care about a person’s beliefs. What it sees are some nice, warm, unprotected airways that it can take up residence in, and multiply. It’s a virus – and a fascinating virus at that – and it doesn’t go away because people don’t believe in it or because people have rebuked it and invoked a deity’s protection.

One of the cleverest jokes in any Pixar movie is in Inside Out, a movie where the central characters are emotions felt by a girl called Riley. 

When the characters Joy and Sadness are accidentally cut off from the rest of the emotions, they try to make their way back through Riley’s mind to the central control room. They board the ‘train of thought’ accompanied by a character they meet in Riley’s subconscious – Riley’s semi-forgotten imaginary friend Bing-Bong. On the train Joy knocks over crates containing facts and opinions and remarks that they look very similar. Bing-Bong tells her not to bother sorting them out because no-one can tell them apart. (Here's the scene on YouTube)

That’s incredibly astute. It explains covid-denialists, conspiracists, woo-peddlers and religious fundamentalists. They literally cannot tell an objective, demonstrable fact from an unevidenced opinion. Everything has the same weight – a meme off Facebook, through to a talking head on a chat show, through to a peer-reviewed paper published in a reputable journal. And when we factor in confirmation bias, where we are more likely to listen to sources that corroborate our existing beliefs rather than sources that conflict with our beliefs, we can end up adrift in opinions, thinking they are truths.

But the rocks of reality poke through the surface of the sea.

We see this in the multiple posts on the Herman Cain Awards Reddit, where so many people follow the same track. They post covid-denying memes, antivax propaganda, weird claims about conspiracy, then they get ill. Some continue denying the seriousness of their illness right up until they are posting from their ICU bed in hospital, often struggling to spell words correctly because of hypoxia as their oxygen levels plummet and their brains struggle to function. Then their relatives and friends start posting tributes to them.

Their belief boat has been holed by the rocks of reality. And they drown.

What is unusual about the pandemic, is that this is happening on a much larger scale than usual. Most religious people have experienced unanswered prayers, and have girded themselves with all kinds of reasons why people die instead of being healed, but this usually happens occasionally and can be dealt with as one-offs. It isn’t being chronicled the way these covid-deaths are being shown to be oblivious to the effects of prayer.

I come back to what my dad told me. Sincerity is no protection. Being sincerely wrong about covid can mean trusting in an opinion that isn’t going to protect you from reality.

Busy mid-January Saturday

I had a full day yesterday. I started out with a lateral flow test to make sure I was safe to meet people, then I was off to the first Keep Grangetown Tidy litter-pick of the year. Over 40 people turned up and we collected a huge amount of litter.

I'm in this photo - can you spot me? (Credit KGT)

The bags pile up (Credit KGT)

I've blogged about litter-picking before and noted that it provides insights into the community we live in. On this pick there were lots of evidence of the pandemic. I picked up a couple of facemasks and a disposable glove. If I had found a discarded bottle of hand sanitzer I would have scored the pandemic litter trifecta.

One of the facemasks was designer.

Behind a junction box on Clive Street I found a little collection of detritus that in it's own way tells a sad story. An empty whisky bottle and a scratched off lottery scratchcard. The can was a store-brand can of energy drink. It just all adds up to a tale of disappointed dreams. 

There's someone who won't be paying their parking fixed penalty notice as I found it thrown in the gutter on Clive Street. I also found a hubcap. It was too big for my rubbish bag so I took it back to the main collecting point. Later, I found it had been joined by a companion. They were different designs, but I noticed they were both Vauxhall hubcaps. 

It felt like a very productive two hours. I walked some of the way home with some new friends chatting about Grangetown. After a quick lunch, I was back out again, and off to my first football match of 2022.

I was able to go to a game because the Welsh Government eased restrictions on Friday. I headed over to Gabalfa to watch Cardiff Draconians, who were third in the Ardal South West Division, play Pontardawe Town, who were second in the table.

I met my friend Steve at the ground and we had a good catch-up about everything that had happened since we last saw each other. Neither of us had been to the Draconians home ground, Lydstep Park, before, and it's got quite an aspect with the Gabalfa Towers looming over the little stand. 

From another angle you can see the spire of Llandaff Cathedral. I only realised that at the end when it wasn't possible to get a good photo. So I will probably have to go back to another game some time to get that 'shot'.

The game itself was very tight. Pontardawe bossed the first half and led at the break. They looked in control in the second half, although with 20 minutes to go, the "Dracs" came more into the game. They had a goal disallowed, then scored. One of Pontardawe's centre backs then kicked a celebrating Drac player and got a straight red card. In the 89th minute, the Dracs were awarded a penalty, which they converted to somehow run out 2-1 winners. 

I have seen three games in the Ardal South West this season, starting at Penrhiwceiber Rangers versus Caerau Ely. Last month I saw Caerau Ely against the Dracs. Then yesterday I saw the Dracs againt Pontardawe. Now I have an urge to go to Pontardawe next to keep the run of attending a home match of the team I saw playing away going. 

And the day was not yet done, as my friend Connor was back in Cardiff for a weekend. We went out for a meal together in the evening. Connor gave me a late Christmas present of a Blood Bowl comic book. I'd not seen it before so it was a real surprise. Once I've read it I will consider reviewing it on the blog!