10 albums

There's a thing on Facebook at the moment. People posting the 10 albums they feel are most influential on them. You're supposed to just post the pictures with no commentary, but most people can't resist a bit of commentary.

I thought it would make an interesting blog post, though. Which 10 albums would I pick? I've had a go, and included a couple of recent ones that will be influencing me for a while to come. 

I got obsessed with Midnight Oil in my teens and into my early twenties. I bought their entire back catalogue of albums and singles and anything I could get my hands on. I connected with them the first time I heard Beds are Burning playing on the Radio 1 breakfast show on the bus to school. Diesel and Dust was the peak of their success. I think what I liked most about them is that their songs were actually about stuff that mattered.

In school I got into rock. The next two albums were very big for me when I was 14.

Yeah, yeah, mock me all you want. But tell me Animal isn't a great 80s rock song. And New Jersey is stadium rock at its finest. 

I can't tell you how many times I listened to this next album in my first year at university.

I was also massively into the Eagles, round about the same time. Desperado was always my favourite Eagles album, and the one I would come back to again and again.

Then along came Cathy. She changed my life. So did this album that she introduced me too. It is one of the few albums ever produced where every track is solid. No duff filler to be seen.

Because I loved Midnight Oil, I bought a random protest single they recorded with a few other bands, including the Tragically Hip. That's how I got into the Tragically Hip. Fully Completely is another perfect album. I recite a section of At the Hundredth Meridian as my 'calm mantra'. 

Hot Fuss probably isn't the best Killers album. It has the best first five tracks though, starting with Jenny was a Friend of Mine and working up to All These Things That I've Done. Yes, there are other albums with great songs on. I love The Man off their most recent release. But Hot Fuss is where it all began and those first five tracks in particular are better than entire albums produced by lesser bands. 

This album is absolute gold even though it's only a couple of years old. We played it relentlessly on a summer holiday in Dorset so I associate it with hot long summer days, beaches and the sea. It is driving music, and relaxing music, and meal prep music, and background music, and foreground music, and everybody sings along music.

And onto the tenth album, and the most recent. Doom Days is Bastille's third album. OK, it doesn't have Pompeii on it, but it is a really solid listen throughout and their most musically accomplished complete album. We have played it a lot recently and I can't see me growing tired of it any time soon.

So, there you go. 10 albums. 

A second "decade in review" blog post

Back in 2010 I did a summary of the preceding decade and concluded by saying “Roll on 2020!” (Oh, how that feels hilarious right now with 2020 being a terrible year in so many ways.)

Sometimes I find that when I go back to old blog posts, reading that review feels like reading the life of a different person. I've always been struck by that (possibly untrue) statistic that says all the cells in our body are replaced over an 8 year cycle, so in a way that blogpost was written by an entirely different person.  But, anyway, ten years later, I'm still here and still blogging, albeit not as frequently as I did back then. So, a decade on, I thought I may as well review what I have been up to from my early-mid-30s to my early-mid-40s. 

I’ll do this on a year by year basis and just pick a couple of things per year. Most of the links will be to my original blog posts about things.

2010

The big things happened here on 1 day in particular, the 1st April. This was the day I had a job interview to go and work in the NHS, returned back to my current employer where I was called aside and given my official redundancy notice, and then in the evening I went to the theatre and saw Dirk Benedict in a Columbo play. Dirk Benedict was Face Man in the A Team. We used to pretend we were the A-Team in the playground at school and we all wanted to be Face. I was star-struck, as you can tell in this photo.

On the 4th May (Star Wars Day) I started my NHS job and I have been proud to work in the NHS ever since. 

2011

The big thing about 2011 was becoming an uncle for the first time. Baby Joy arrived in our lives. She yawned while I was talking to her on the first day she met me and has been tired of my antics ever since.

I've subsequently accrued four more niblings (that's a real word!) during the decade. They're all cool.

The footballing highlight of the year was a trip to the Emirates to see Shrewsbury play Arsenal in the league cup. I bought my first half-and-half scarf. #NoRegrets. Shrewsbury were even winning for a bit and the fans sang that Arsene Wenger was getting sacked in the morning. He stayed on another 7 years.

2012

The big event this year was the Olympics. I remember getting up really early to see the Olympic Torch being carried through Grangetown. 

During the actual games, I went to see the Olympic football in the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, including a double header of group games and the third place play-off match.Is still think it was a swizz that they promised us a medal ceremony then decided at the last minute that the third place winners would receive their bronze medals the next night in London. It gave me an opportunity to see a rare sight, a Great Britain international team.

I also almost got eaten by a hippo in Paris, when we visited the city for my sister-in-law Abby's 40th birthday.

2013 (there's a sort of review of the year here)

The stand out thing for me was going to London with Connor to see the Tragically Hip play a gig in Trafalgar Square to celebrate Canada Day. We then went the following night to see them play a gig in Camden. 

Later in the year Cathy and I spent our fifteenth wedding anniversary building a Lego camper van.

2014

I can't really blog anything about my experience doing Jury service, but I found it hugely interesting and there was an incident during the judge's summing up which made the national newspapers. 

I also did a work placement in a health board comms team that coincided with the Daily Mail spending an entire week running stories smearing the reputation of NHS Wales. They literally dug up story after story from the preceding ten years, many of which had been resolved, and ran them as if they were all happening that week. I learned a lot about what utter scumbags some sections of the press can be in that week. The photo is from the flu vaccination campaign I was involved in.

My work placement was based in Caerleon, where I also started my MSc course in Business Psychology. That had an unexpected outcome. In the first module we did a session on motivation and burnout and my scores were a lot higher than any of my fellow students. It was a good indication that I needed to move jobs.

2015

Three big things happened to me in 2015. Firstly, I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes in January. That came as a shock and I was put on some hardcore medication because I was extremely ill.

I lost weight (over 10kgs; 4 inches off my waist; 2 t-shirt sizes) and got my blood glucose back into the healthy range. For the last year and a half I have been off diabetes medication. I haven't blogged much about having Type 2 Diabetes. There is a lot of stigma attached to it, and it's the punchline in a lot of jokes. It takes a certain amount of confidence to tell people you have it

In June I started a new job, still in the NHS, taking on a national role as a clinical network manager. I'd spent 5 years in my previous job and had reached a point where I needed to move. I took a lot of good memories with me.

Two months after I started my new job my Grandma died. She had been hospitalised after a fall, but that was just toward the end of a long decline. I gave a tribute at her funeral. This photo taken in 2014 is one of the last photos I took of her. I like it because you can see the mischief in her eyes.

2016

I turned 40 in 2016 and had a big party. The next month we went on a massive road trip in the USA and Canada. We watched the Red Sox at Fenway on Star Wars night. We went to Cooperstown, to the Baseball Hall of Fame. We went on pilgrimage to Kingston, Ontario. We fell in love with Toronto and visited Niagara Falls.

(Those pancakes were the "healthy" breakfast option. They came with fruit!)

2017

Our holiday the following year was a bit more low key. We had a day exploring Lundy, which felt like visiting the end of the world even though we didn't even really leave the Bristol Channel.

I also graduated with my MSc. It was a lovely graduation ceremony and I felt very pleased to have completed the course, given some of the difficult things that had happened in the duration. One of my favourite pieces of work was analysing the psychology of Lego's marketing. My final piece of work seemed to uncover a link between personal self-worth and a diminished opinion of your manager.

My gigs this year were a bit eclectic. Midnight Oil in London (after many year thinking I would I never get the chance to see them in concert again) and Sir Tom Jones, recording a TV show in Cardiff Bay.

2018

Shrewsbury Town went to Wembley twice, and lost both times. They are five for five in losing there now. I can't even express how incredibly frustrating the 2017-2018 season ultimately was.

Cathy and I had a better time in London a couple of months later when we went and saw The Muppets live at the O2 Arena. It was brilliant. The Electric Mayhem rock!

The second half of the year was spent in a state of flux because we had our kitchen gutted and rebuilt. It was a very stressful experience. I really love our new kitchen but I've yet to take any photos that do it justice. Or show the finished floor.

Cathy had a lot of health news in 2018, beginning with a visit to Addenbrookes in Cambridge where she was given a diagnosis of lipodystrophy. It's an ultra-rare condition, affecting fewer than 4 people per million. I always knew she was special. Then towards the end of the year she was diagnosed with cancer and had to have surgery. We literally had the kitchen and other construction work finish on the Friday and she had her surgery on the Monday. Thankfully they got it all in one go. It was a stressful way to end the year and I was glad to see the back of 2018!

2019
The last year up for review. I went out to Pizza Hut with Cathy one night and didn't take my phone. Cathy had a message on her phone from my brother asking if she knew where I was. So I rang him. We were due to go on a fishing weekend together and I thought he was calling to get me to pay my half of the costs.

He wasn't.

When I called him back, he told me my Dad had died.

I'm still getting used to not having Dad phoning me every week. In my tribute to him at the funeral I told a story about a time he was described as being "stuck on transmit". I miss those transmissions.

I miss my Dad.

Trawling through photos for this blogpost I found a few of him that I'd forgotten. I really like this one of him with my nephew in 2014.

The rest of 2019 was a bit of a blur in comparison. There was the trip to Belfast to see Barry Town play in the Europa League, and we had a lovely week in Caernarfon in the autumn. But most of the year was spent helping my Mum sort out stuff in her house and slowly coming to terms with not having Dad around.

So that's where I will close out this inordinately long post. After the optimism of the post back in 2010, I have no desire to tempt fate by saying roll on 2030! Hopefully I will still be blogging then. If not, well, this was 2010-2019. 

In memorium: Malcolm Griffiths (1950-2020)

It would have been my Uncle Malcolm's 70th birthday today and so I am posting a brief memorium piece. Malcolm died on the 1st April this year in hospital. In 2014 he suffered a damaging stroke which meant he had been in nursing care for the past six years. 

His health had declined more in the past few months, and unfortunately his hospitalisation coincided with the coronavirus pandemic meaning no one was allowed in to visit him for the final days of his life. It also meant that we couldn't attend the funeral service. My cousins asked if I would send a few words for the graveside eulogy, which I did. I thought it would be nice to record them here as well. I've added a couple of other notes as well.

When my Mum and Dad organised various birthdays and other celebrations at our house, Uncle Malcolm would usually be found pouring drinks for people or doing the washing up. He liked to be useful and out of the limelight. (Here's a picture of him at my Mum's kitchen sink, armed and ready for battle!)

He used to drive my grandparents over to Shrewsbury at Christmastime. At some point in the evening, Malcolm would suddenly notice my Grandad was standing by the door in his coat. Malcolm would laugh and say ‘Oh, Dad’s ready to go. Guess I’ll be seeing you then.’ And with a cheerful smile, that would be the end of whatever conversation we were having. (It was usually about cars or sports, and often motorsports.)

Malcolm moved in with my Grandparents about 20 years ago. As time progressed he took more of a carer role for my Grandma, especially after Grandad died, and was the teamaker when we used to visit. He enjoyed baking and his scones were some of the best home made scones around. He also used to love taking photos, and showing you recent ones he had printed. Again, those were 'background roles' - getting the tea, taking the photos. The important things while everyone else chatters away. The man who facilitates the moments, and captures them on film.

His stroke was an awful shock to the family. My Grandma found him and called the ambulance. In those early days we did not know quite how severe it was. As it turned out the stroke robbed him of almost all movement and practically all his speech. He could give a thumbs up, and say 'Yeah' and 'Weeeellll', but that was it. And yet he still managed to communicate even though he only had two words he could use. 

It may sound strange, but I feel that visiting Malcolm in the care home was when I first got to spend time with just him. There were no dishes to be done or other people to chauffeur. I bought him some little Lego kits and we would build them together. 

I was fortunate that I got a job that included regular trips to North Wales. I could call in and say hello when I was driving past Wrexham. I don't think he necessarily saw me at my best, tired after a long day of driving and meetings, but he always seemed sad when I apologetically said it was time to leave. Obviously I had to do all the talking while I was there, and I talked to him about work, and football, my MSc course, and all the other things going on in life. 

I could talk about how my dad was driving me crazy. He understood, because he knew my dad well and knew just how crazy he could drive the people who loved him. Then one day I had to go and tell him that my dad had passed away, and he just held my hand as I cried. He couldn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. It was all he could do; it was a kindness I will never forget. 

Star Wars Day 2020 - a long review of The Mandalorian

As it’s Star Wars Day I feel this is as good a day as any to review The Mandalorian, the newish series set in the Star Wars universe. 

THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS so I'm posting a picture of my lockdown workstation buddies to break up the text. Read on at your own risk!

Yep, they're Lego!

The Mandalorian is the flagship series on the new Disney Plus streaming service. I’m not saying it’s the only reason we bothered buying Disney Plus, but the way the service launch coincided with the lockdown combined with this series that it feels like half of the geekier end of the Internet has been raving about, made the purchase almost inevitable.

(A sidebar on Disney Plus. Is it worth the money? Kind of. Except we already own most Disney and Pixar films on other formats, along with Star Wars and the better Marvel movies. The rest of the programming isn’t hugely exciting. The Star Wars animated series Clone Wars and Rebels are probably next on my watch list. Despite them saying its all of Disney’s back catalogue there are a couple of omissions – the film ‘Song of the South’, which has a fairly relaxed attitude to slave plantations implying how life as a slave was okay really, isn’t on there. Neither is that famous nature documentary where off-scene riggers literally threw lemmings off a cliff. Maybe that’s for the best.)

Disney have been adding a new episode of The Mandalorian every Friday for the past six weeks, with two available straight away. The eight episode run is now concluded. It was ace. I have to say that right from the start. It had humour. It had believable characters. It kept me hooked week to week.

It’s not a kid’s TV series. That’s not to say it’s hugely gritty or anything. Characters aren't using the f-word and nobody’s injecting narcotics into their eyeballs. There’s no nudity, or even hints at sex. But there is violence and even blood, which you don’t get a lot of in the Star Wars universe. Bad guys die some pretty horrible deaths, including getting tipped headfirst into a smelter, although they do tend to die their horrible deaths mercifully quickly.

The series is set in the aftermath of the Empire’s collapse. There are traces all around. Some Imperial generals have set up as warlords. Some high-calibre weaponry has got into the hands of thugs and thieves. It all feels quite believable – the power vacuum when the dictatorship collapses is something we’ve seen a few times. Ordinary people are trapped by it. The new regime doesn’t really care, or have the means to sort the problem out. There are New Republic X-Wings in one episode. They turn up for their plot point and then disappear. One character is a disillusioned former Rebel Alliance soldier. Even the good guys get jaded.

We learn more about the Mandalorian Warriors. The Clone Wars cartoon series has filled in quite a bit of back story, and this series adds to it. I liked the way it was considered as a creed rather than a race, with its own lore, and honour code. Most of all the Mandalorians were recast as ambiguous, neither good, nor evil, but following their rules. “This is the way,” being their affirmation of a course of action, and signalling agreement with it. The Armourer, who is sort of the sect leader, is a combination of smith and priest, and had some real gravitas.

The lead protagonist is the Mandalorian, a bounty hunter. Other members of the bounty hunter Guild just call him "Mando". We learn a bit about his back story as the series progresses, and his real name in the last episode. But overall he manages to remain a mystery man. He is the character the story follows without the story ever really being about him. I appreciated that. Too many shows rely on character exposition rather than letting you learn about them through observation. 

The main other character is “Baby Yoda”, although that is the name ascribed to the creature by fans rather than in the show. In the script the creature is just ‘the child’ and its origins, race and purpose are a mystery to everyone, except, presumably, the Imperials who are hunting it. I knew about Baby Yoda before watching the show because, like I said, the Internet went nuts about it. I didn’t realise Baby Yoda was going to provide the main story arc of the show. I’m not complaining at all. I love a good mystery, and maybe we will learn something about Yoda along the way.

Other characters are good too. I liked Kuiil (pronounced Queel) the Ugnaught. His way of ending arguments by just saying “I have spoken” has already passed into our household vernacular. They managed to give him a backstory – enslavement by the Empire and earning his freedom – in a few short lines that made him real.

Cara Dune, the jaded former rebel soldier, was a bit less three-dimensional. There’s definitely more in her back story that could be explored, and I’d like to know more about her. IG-11, the assassin droid hunting Baby Yoda, was a character in its own right by the end of the show. I’ve noticed that Droids tend to be expendable in Star Wars spin offs now (Rogue One and Solo spring to mind). Sadly, The Mandalorian continues this theme. 

The Imperial generals are a bit cookie-cutter villains, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing – often a villain trades menace for screen time. It’s the Jaws effect – the less you see of the shark the scarier it is.

There a lot of little background details that probably need several rewatches to get. I thought it as funny seeing the Salacious Crumb creatures being sold for food in the street market. And if you ever wondered what the Cloud City refugee carrying what looked like an ice cream maker was actually carrying, then that was resolved as well. But those details are for the fans and aren’t obtrusive. 

The only thing it would be helpful to know is that the robots in a flashback scene are Super Battle Droids from the Separatist Army in the Clone Wars. But you don’t really need to know that to get what is happening, or why the titular Mandalorian became a Mandalorian Warrior. I also really liked seeing Mos Eisley again.

There wasn’t much I didn’t like about the series. One episode was a bit duff, when the Mandalorian is forced to track down a wild beast. But even that episode has a very important plot point regarding Baby Yoda. The writers have run through a number of tropes though. We’ve had the ‘village in peril needs a gunslinger’ episode, the prison break episode, the ‘blackmailed into a feat of derring do’ episode, and the ‘helping a rookie’ episode. It feels like every science fiction series has the same stock story elements for episodes.

Overall though, despite being set in a well-known and well-worn fictional universe, I felt The Mandalorian had enough new elements and introduced plenty of innovative concepts to seem like it was breaking new ground, rather than rehashing the same old thing. That contrasted a lot with Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, which I saw around Christmas, which really didn’t offer anything new at all and felt totally bound by the conventions of Star Wars script-writing. (After The Last Jedi had controversially ripped up the blueprint for a Star Wars movie, Episode IX felt like a real let down.)

I feel The Mandalorian benefitted from not revisiting the same old scenes and from showing us something new, or showing us those things in a new way. (Mos Eisley is a big enough place to go back to.) The callbacks to the massive Star Wars back catalogue were subtle and evidence of the care shown by the creative team, but they weren’t included by people trying to show off their fanboy credentials. Blink and you’ll miss them. Those knowing nods are much more satisfying than in some of the cinematic releases, where it often feels they are trying a bit too hard.

So, overall, I really enjoyed The Mandalorian. And I’m a hard guy to please when it comes to modern Star Wars stuff. I know it’s entitlement, but I have been into Star Wars since 1983 so I have high expectations. The Mandalorian met those expectations, and I would say it’s probably worth signing up to Disney Plus even if that’s the only thing you watch on it.

Lockdown projects

Have people been blogging about the way life has changed because the world is in the middle of a pandemic? I feel I ought to mark it somehow on my blog given that it's so important at the moment and it has been going on so long.

The last football match I went to before lockdown was a painful 2-3 home defeat for Shrewsbury against Oxford United, Shrewsbury were cruising 2-0 up in the first 25 minutes until the referee intervened and decided to send a Shrewsbury player off when he was the player who was fouled. Oxford eventually won it a couple of minutes before full time. It was a nonsense decision that ruined my afternoon. If I'd known it would be my last football match for two months, and possibly the season, maybe I would have savoured it more.

That was also the last weekend I was in Shrewsbury. I haven't seen my Mum since then. It's felt weird because we spent a lot of time with her in the autumn and spring trying to help her get the house sorted and ready to sell. And then suddenly, two months of not travelling up to Shrewsbury at all. 

So, stuck in the house. There's lots to do. I'd like to say the house is spick and span now, but it's not. I saw a funny meme with a person saying "I always said I didn't have enough time to do the housework. Now I know that's not true." Yep, that resonated.

So, what have I been doing? Well. Quite a bit actually.

Painting my Blood Bowl teams. 

I bought the Blood Bowl game in 2017. Three years later I've finally got round to painting some of the figures. It only took a global pandemic. These are the skaven team of man-sized rats (plus an ogre). (And, yes, they are wearing blue and yellow.)

Buying more baseball cards. 

Not really essential purchases but people in the collecting Facebook groups I belong to have been having clear outs. And eBay is still going strong. I'm scanning my Tony Gwynn cards for a standalone blog project that I've wanted to do for ages. Now I have time...

Tinkering with a Lego train station.

This is just a slightly modified set that I bought in a Tesco sale after Christmas. It's going to be the frontage of a station. I needed to rebuild the set to take out the 'play functions' and make it more robust. The front is now reasonable. Just the booking office, waiting rooms, concession stands, platforms and track to go... as you can see from this view of the back!

Collecting Rainbows.

This is a big thing at the moment. People are drawing rainbows and putting them in their windows. On my daily exercise (which is more like every other day) I have been walking around Grangetown taking photos of the rainbows in people's windows. I've been tweeting them too, and the Grangetown Community Blog has featured some of them. I keep finding new creative expressions and it really brings me joy when I go out walking.