2022 - a year in review

Rather than a long reflection, here is a month by month rundown of highlights and happenings during 2022. I published over 100 blog posts in 2022 and I will also be linking to some of them. 

January

We spent my Mum's birthday weekend with her and met up with some of my cousins who we hadn't seen since before the pandemic started. I went to several football matches and also supported Gambia at the African Cup of Nations. I published my tenth Annual Christmas Card Audit, and also blog posts about beliefs versus reality, "doomscrolling", and the five dimensions of personality. 

February

Whatever I was up to in February was overshadowed by the invasion of Ukraine by Russia - as I said in my review of the month. I didn't blog too much in the month, but I did write a piece about how one of the characters in The Mandalorian was being removed from the merchandise following the transphobic social media posts by the actor involved. 

March

Cathy and I had a week away in Calstock, on the county border between Cornwall and Devon. While we were there we watched the film of The Day of the Triffids from 1962. It hasn't aged well. 

April

I called my review of April 'A month of endings'. I finished working as the manager of the Children and Young People's Wales Diabetes Network ahead of starting a new job. I also attended the final service at Hope Church in Shrewsbury as the trustees had taken the decision to close the church down. I saw 10 football matches, making it a "decamonth", and unfortunately saw Barry Town close out a relegation season, ending their time in the top flight of Welsh football. 

May

I had a week off before starting my new job. During that time Cathy and I visited Oxford to see a friend who had moved back to the UK and took some fun photos with street art that I now use across all my profiles on social media platforms (and at the top of this post!). I also caught covid, which prevented me from going into the office for my first week and a half at my new employers. For Star Wars Day I blogged about the Disney Plus series The Book of Boba Fett, which I didn't feel actually went anywhere. I also blogged about how the FA Cup final makes me sad since my Dad passed away.

June

I rounded off a record-breaking football season with my 60th game of the season. Cathy and I said goodbye to the Snoopy statues that had been around Cardiff for a couple of months, at the farewell event outside City Hall. I went to my first stamp fair since before the pandemic, at Swinpex in Swindon. We also made a rare foray to the cinema to watch the new Pixar movie, Lightyear, the origin story of the character Buzz Lightyear. I completed the Prince2 project management course to Foundation and Practitioner levels and blogged about the barriers to project success that came up among the group of people taking the course. 

July 

After several months of scandals and shame. Boris Johnson finally got the boot from being Prime Minister. This felt at the time like it was the end of a chaotic era. Little did we know what was in store! I described it as 'popcorn politics' in my blog post about it and also wrote about the 'lucky unlucky' students studying politics this year. We took part in the Grangetown Zoo for the third year in a row, and I even dressed up as a dinosaur as the zoo went Jurassic this year. For the second month in a row we went to the cinema, this time to see Thor: Love and Thunder, which included some naked anti-theism that I subsequently blogged about. I watched a lot of the Women's Euros - the second international tournament of the three scheduled for this year. 

August

I booked a summer week off and we spent a week in Shropshire, including attending the relaunched (and slightly disappointing) Shrewsbury Flower Show. I went to the Cardiff Model Railway Exhibition in the ice rink in Cardiff Bay. August was another "decamonth" of football, including three Shrewsbury games, and a game with a very rare scoreline - a 4-4 draw. I also had a short article published in When Saturday Comes. 

September

Another major event in the wider world, with the passing of Queen Elizabeth II shortly after a new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, was finally appointed. The late monarch passed away just before Cathy and I were due to spend a week in Caernarfon, where we stayed within a few hundred yards of the castle. It was a slightly subdued week although that didn't stop us from enjoying some lovely days out in North Wales, including trips to Anglesey and a scenic drive around Eryri / Snowdonia. 

October 

Cathy and I went to our first gigs since before covid shut the world down. We saw Counting Crows in Manchester and at the end of the month we saw Tony Wright, the singer from Terrorvision, at a small venue in Newport. I saw three Shrewsbury games - at Cheltenham, Shrewsbury and Portsmouth. The latter game was the 450th game I have attended and I blogged about how I passed up going to other games so that I would record the trip to Portsmouth as a significant number on the footballing app I use. My blog post about it has been one of the most read posts ever on my blog. Politics went chaotic again, with Liz Truss ousted and replaced by Rishi Sunak who became the first British Prime Minister of Asian origin.

November

As a family we lost Cathy's Grampy at the start of the month. I blogged a tribute to him where I said how blessed I felt to have acquired another grandparent in my life. As ever, all the occasions come at once and at the end of November I became a godfather for the third time, as our friends Tom and Helena asked us to be godparents to their son, Herbert. It was a Catholic christening, so each time I have been a godparent has been in a different church denomination. The bizarrely timed World Cup started as well, but my sporting highlight of the month was a "two-sport twofer" with my brother, Dave. 

December

And the year closed out with the usual pressured excitement of the run up to Christmas. We spent Christmas and the subsequent few days in Shrewsbury. I captured some of the other stuff that happened in my monthly round up last week.

This wasn't meant to be such a long post, but it turns out a lot of things happened in 2022!

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!

A tale of two funerals

On Saturday night Cathy and I watched a livestreamed memorial service for Cathy's first cousin once removed, Andrew. Personally, I had never met Andrew as he moved to another continent before I ever met Cathy. However, through the service streamed from Vancouver, I felt I got to know him. 

The tributes from Andrew's daughter, his friends and colleagues in Christian ministries, were warm and moving and shared some of the character and keen interests of Andrew as a person. 

Today we watched the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. There was a contrast. Not just in the scale, but in the content.

In the Archbishop of Canterbury's tribute, he quoted some of the statements the Queen made in various public speeches. But, as in life, so also in death, it was very much repeating what was already known publicly. There were no anecdotes or accounts of how people asked for advice. It was strangely impersonal, following the identikit pattern of the funeral service book. Her name was said in the commissioning at the end, and that was about it. 

In some ways I feel sorry for the Queen's family, with their personal loss and grief being co-opted by so many people and made inescapable. The expectations of a State Funeral outweighing any wish to express their own loss and their own love. I hope for them they get some sort of space for that at the interment or in a private memorial.

The contrast between the two services has made me think that tributes from those who knew us and loved us are more valuable than any level of pageantry. I know which one felt more meaningful. 

End of the EIIR era

While there has been an undercurrent in news reports for a little while regarding the health of Queen Elizabeth II, there was an unexpected suddenness in events last Thursday. The news cycle focused on the Queen under the care of doctors in Balmoral, it was revealed family members were travelling to see her, and then came the announcement that she had passed away, all in the space of an afternoon. 

This news rather eclipsed the installation of a new Prime Minister a few days earlier. That saga which started months ago had finally concluded with Liz Truss winning more votes from Conservative Party members - meaning that there was briefly a Monarch and a Prime Minister with the same first name. One of the Queen's last public appearances was welcoming the new Liz.

Events since the announcement of the Queen's death have unfolded quickly. The new king proclaimed at events around the country, a new Prince and Princess of Wales entitled, plans for a funeral procession and state funeral bank holiday announced. The "lucky unlucky" politics students I envied back in July have even more big political happenings to assimilate into their studies. 

But I feel like I am out of step with a lot of people right now, in this period of mandatory mourning presented as a time of unstinting sorrow by the BBC without any 'balance' or dissenting voices. (It's not like climate change or Brexit, when the state broadcaster will leave no rock unturned to find a voice to present the other side.)

Maybe my dislocation from the mainstream narrative is because I don't like being told how I should be feeling about things. It's inescapable. Mournful music played in fast food restaurants. Messages of condolences on websites and in apps. Endless rolling coverage and talking heads on TV. The subtext is very clear - you must feel sad; sadness is the only acceptable emotion. 

I have no doubt that the people who are posting about their sadness on social media, or are texting in their grief to radio stations, genuinely feel that way. While everyone knew the Queen was not going to live forever, this has been sudden, unexpected, a shock. It is a massive change to a key element of the societal background in an afternoon. For most of us - anyone under 70 - the Queen has been queen for all our lives. Change like that, beyond our control, provokes a sense of loss, which feels like grief. 

There is a theory that our culture is still very much 'keep calm and carry on', bear your burdens in silence, maintain a stiff upper lip, recognise that 'it could be worse', and so on. Even if we don't feel that way on the inside, we might project that to the outside. Then along comes a moment when we have permission to actually feel things, and all that grief comes out. It may even be easier to grieve for a public figure like the Queen, instead of processing the private grief for family members and beloved friends that is harder to face and deal with. 

That might explain some of the grief-talk. It's also true that lots of people admired and liked the Queen, or at least their projection of her. Because, really, nobody outside a very small circle of people actually knew her. What people like is a version of the Queen they carry in their own heads - a caring, decent human being who wanted to do the right thing, considered her regal duties as an act of service, and was friends with Paddington Bear. (And that seems to have been an image the Queen encouraged.)

People go as far as asserting that the Queen had a deep 'personal' Christian faith. The people claiming this seem certain, but it's impossible to know what anybody really believes about anything, let alone how deep their piety goes. Ultimately the only people who know the strength of a person's religious faith are the believer and their god, and I have doubts about how much the latter knows. 

In the last couple of days I have been really struck by this image, which sums up where we are as a country. (Borrowed from the artist Dayvid. who posted it on Twitter)

That picture caused me to stop because for all the nice versions of the Queen people have in their heads, she was still the monarch - pretty much the absolute representation of the institutionalised inequality and inequity that is baked into our society. One reason why I have been a republican for most of my adult life is because I see no reason why one person should be memorialised on an illuminated sign and another person be left to beg next to that sign.

However, now is apparently not the time for questioning privilege. People who have protested mildly at various ceremonies around the country have been arrested - one man in Oxford on his way home from church was arrested for just asking who elected the new king. He was later de-arrested because asking questions isn't actually a crime... yet. Other people have been threatened with arrest for holding up signs saying 'Not my king', or for holding blank pieces of card that they could write a protest sign on. 

We are mandated to grieve, not question.

But now is the best time to ask questions - and that is precisely why things are moving so quickly. That's why King Charles was proclaimed in key cities in the United Kingdom within 72 hours. That's why Prince William had the title Prince of Wales conferred on him so rapidly. 

This haste, while the rest of the country is pausing activities to mourn, is about acting fast to retain privilege. There can't be a gap in the accession, because if there was a brief window of time when we didn't have a monarch... people might get ideas that maybe we don't need a monarch at all. 

Shadow Queens

Keep an eye out on your envelopes because the post office are celebrating 40 years of the 'Queen's Head stamps' (Machin definitives to stamp nerds like myself), and part of the postmark is a silhouette of the Queen's head design.

So what you might get through your letterbox tomorrow morning is a Queen's Head stamp with a ghostly shadow Queen's head printed over the top of it.

Well, I think it's cool.

Therapeutic Philately

It’s kind of an open secret that back towards the end of last year I wasn’t feeling too good. I took six weeks off work and started on some medication. Which meant that earlier this year I celebrated my 30th birthday feeling like a bit of a cliché: a writer on Prozac. How original.

One of the things that helped me get my head straight was rediscovering philately – stamp collecting to those who have an aversion to fancy words. I’ll bet you didn’t know that the most reproduced image ever in history is the portrait of the Queen by Arnold Machin that appears on UK definitive stamps. People often call them ‘Queen’s head’ stamps, but their technical term is Machin definitives. I spent a number of hours sorting through boxes and bags of stamps and compiled all my Queen’s head stamps into the right order in a large album – making sure my Machins matched.

Cheap therapy
The thing about stamp collecting is that it requires a lot of concentration, but isn’t actually very important in the long run. It’s time-consuming, but if you make a mistake, it’s not the end of the world. And therein lay the secret of why it was so good for me – at a time when my head was running with itself in terms of crazy thoughts, something so mundane could keep me enthralled and prevent me from stressing out.

I’ve kind of kept up with it this past year. Recently through a couple of chance finds I’ve become quite interested in stamps from the South African colonies before the Unification of South Africa in 1910. Considering these small bits of paper are up to and over 100 years old, they’re quite easy to find and, best of all, cheap. The other day I noticed the following stamp for sale on eBay, hard-to-find and consequently not cheap.



Head’s up
I just love this stamp. I didn’t bother bidding for it because it was pricey. But it makes me laugh, because it goes to show that we are all human. 

I don’t know if anyone showed King Edward VII, who was a keen philatelist and took a personal interest in designing the Royal Mail’s stamps, but if they did, I wonder what he thought of it?

Errors are big business in stamp-collecting. Mainly this is because they’re rare. When an error is discovered, the remaining stock is usually destroyed. They don’t tend to happen so much nowadays, anyway, because of the computerised printers that are used (although some Machins got printed a couple, of years ago without £ signs on). This kind of error is possible because the plates were assembled by hand, and each section of the stamp was printed seperately.

My point – and I do have one
It would be interesting to know what happened to the hapless printer (let’s call him Bob) who loaded the central image the wrong way up on this stamp. I can imagine Bob came in for some flak – maybe he was ‘investigated’ by his managers. You can bet Bob’s mates would have ribbed him mercilessly: "Hey Bob, you on the printer today? Don’t forget to put the King’s head in the right way up! Har har har!"

But the irony is that Bob’s cock up is now worth quite a bit, whereas all the printers who paid attention and never screwed up produced stamps that are worth only pennies now.

I don’t want to spoil this story by drawing a lesson from it, but it’s worth adding that I sent out a press release yesterday about an event that’s coming up. It was a beautiful press release – the headline was great, the quotes were great, it ran together nicely, it was concise and to the point.

The only thing I forgot to tell people about was the date.