My April 2026 round-up (part 2)

This month has been so busy I've had to do two round ups. In part 1, I mentioned canvassing, litter-picking, going to a local history evening, football and loads of other stuff. I've also blogged a Book of the Month, an Album of the Month, and about my monthly Blood Bowl fixture with Bryan.

I spent the first and last weekends of April in Shropshire, celebrating my birthday at the beginning of the month by feeding rhinos at West Midlands Safari Park, and then celebrating my youngest niece's birthday with a family party on the final Saturday.

Since my interim round up post I have been in Liverpool for the Diabetes UK Professional Conference (DUKPC). 

The programme I work on had a bigger presence than ever before including involvement in some sessions. This meant I had my second bucket list moment of the month (after the rhinos).

Nine years ago, in 2017, when I was working in the NHS, I went to DUKPC as a punter with my friend Sara. It was being held in Manchester. I remember saying to her that one day we would be presenting together at the conference... and nine years later my prediction came true!

The whole conference went very well from our perspective. We had a great team of young people working with us. It was even sunny the full time we were there.

After the conference I went to Shrewsbury for the weekend. My niece's birthday party included a bouncy castle and a piñata. I took this photo of my Mum just before she delivered the killing blow that smashed the poor colourful donkey.

Everyone else had a go too. Some people were more dangerous flailing with a stick than others!

I went to Shrewsbury Town's final home game of the season in the afternoon. It closed out a nice symmetry as I was at their opening home game back in August. It's been a long old season and they looked in danger of a second successive relegation for much of it. But they were safe by the time this game came around. It finished 2-2 and Shrewsbury's equaliser was voted goal of the season a few days later!

Blue the Lion, the Shrewsbury mascot, got injured during the half time mascot race with Fleetwood's Captain Cod and had to be helped away. It's perhaps an indicator of what a poor season it's been that their mascot lost a foot race with a fish.

I got to see some bonus football watching Zac on the Sunday morning. His team were drubbed so we went to Greggs afterwards to drown our sorrows in sausage rolls.

My final game of April was Gloucester City v Poole Town in the play-off semi-final in the Southern League Premier Division South. I went with Steve. It was a great game but I'll mainly remember it for some terrace aggro that delayed the game when two scrappers fell over an advertising hoarding.

Gloucester won 3-2 after extra time. I think it was the first game I'd seen this season that went to extra time.

It was my 10th Poole Town game. I got a Futbology badge when I checked in.

And then on the last day of April I did my final station trip of the Senedd election campaign, with my friend Anna.  I have done 28 of these weekly sessions since October and I am weirdly going to miss them when the election is done.

May is going to be busy with the election and then some traveling. So next month's round up will likely be another full one.

Another philatelic presentation

If you have a spare 50 minutes and want to hear me talking about the 'passports' that are issued at stamp exhibitions, you can watch the recording of the talk I gave to the British Thematic Association in November last year, which is now on YouTube. 

I got my first philatelic passport at Stamp World London in 1990 and have since acquired several others from all over the world. I like the random mix of stamps and postmarks and how no two passports are exactly alike. 

Noticeboard - I will be talking about my stamp collection on 18 March

On 18th March I will be doing a Zoom presentation for the British Thematic Association about my collection of stamps featuring the Statue of Liberty. It's open to anyone who would like to join in. Details here

From the presentation

It's seven years since I last did a presentation about my collection. I found the little thank you notices from the philatelic societies in with my stamps when I took them out to scan some stamps for this presentation. It was a bittersweet trawl through my collection as I found stuff my late Dad gave me, complete with little notes of where he had acquired the items. 

My collection started around about the time Cathy visited New York in 2005. A couple of years later I got to visit as well. Here is a vintage photo of us on a very chilly day on Liberty Island in April 2007.

That was some time ago now. I'd really like to go back to New York.

SPOILER

I'll also be mentioning my great-great-uncle who emigrated to America. I blogged about him last year - you can read about him here.

Ignite Cardiff - 40 Letters and More (or what I didn't give up for Lent)

I've never been very good at giving things up for Lent. This year I decided to do something positive and wrote a letter to a different person every day. (Cathy did as well.)

Ignite Cardiff is a fabulous regular event which anyone can apply to speak at. I pitched the idea about speaking about the Lent Letters project and got accepted. I was first up on the night and you can watch my talk here - it's about five minutes long.


After the talk I had loads of very positive comments about it and several people said they were thinking of writing letters to people. So far two people have tweeted me to say they actually have done it, which is really lovely.

I asked Sim_n how many he planned to do and he said 7. This next chap went a stage further.

I think that's a really cool bit of art there.

One of the things many people commented on was how cool it was to get a hand-written letter through the post. Hopefully a few more people will have that pleasure soon.

(Not all post is fab post. Check out the barmiest junk mail I've ever received.)