Star Wars Day 2022 – reviewing The Book of Boba Fett

I’ve held off writing a review of The Book of Boba Fett because when the series ended I wasn’t really sure what to make of it. I wanted to have a think about it. And then other stuff happened. But as its Star Wars Day, this feels like a suitable point for a late review.

We don't talk about Fett Club

As a long-time fan of the Star Wars universe, and a collector of Boba Fett action figures (my ‘Fett Club’) I was looking forward to seeing what they did in the series. Particularly as we were going to find out what happened between Boba’s fall into the Sarlacc Pit and his encounters with the Mandalorian who had come into possession of Fett’s armour.

In The Mandalorian TV show Boba didn’t seem so villainous. He was no longer working for the Empire, but was on his own mission, giving service based on honour rather than for money. He had become more than a bounty hunter, in the same way that the Mandalorian was rising above his profession to become the protector of Grogu.

The Book of Boba Fett promised to tell us how that redemptive path had opened up for Boba. And it started really well, Boba dramatically thrusting his way upwards through the sands after he had burned and torn his way through the flesh of the Sarlacc. That made the first episode, with his subsequent capture by Tusken Raiders set up the notion of a man finding his true identity when he had been stripped of everything else.

However, the problem wasn’t in the flashbacks that showed Boba grow into an understanding of loyalty and belonging. The problem the show had was the contemporary setting – Boba’s conflicts ‘now’. Having taken control of Jabba the Hutt’s crime syndicate, he just seemed unable to actually do anything with it.

I have seen that described as the ultimate case of a low-ranking employee thinking they can run the company, only to discover that, in fact, they do not have the skills to do so when they finally get their break. Boba is not a leader, and his desire to rule fuels his failure to gain the respect and status that he covets.

The series itself didn’t help deliver the story. I agree with the comments that the story could have been told in chronological order and it wouldn’t have affected the telling that much. The whole “Dances with Tuskens” storyline of Boba’s spiritual awakening never really chimed with the contemporary action as he established himself as Jabba’s replacement. The murder of his adopted tribe could have been a pivotal turning point in the story, pushing him towards a vengeful streak that culminated in his violent takeover of Jabba’s palace and schemes.

The series set up numerous feints as who Boba’s main opponents were going to be, starting with Jabba’s cousins, who then exited rapidly from the series. They were replaced by the Pyke Syndicate, which was introduced in the film Solo as the operation in charge of the spice mines on Kessel. But they weren’t a particularly exciting opponent even if they did have military grade death robots at their disposal. 

And then there was the peculiar suspension of the storyline to have two episodes almost entirely centred on the Mandalorian and Grogu. This included a sequence of Jedi training for Grogu with Luke Skywalker no less, delving more into the lore of Mandalore and the Darksaber, the Mandalorian getting cast out of his hardcore religious cult as an apostate, and a cameo for Ahsoka Tano where she referenced knowing Luke’s dad. The two episodes were almost standalone and completely derailed what little momentum The Book of Boba Fett had built up.

We also had to sit through egregious levels of fan service. At one point the action was literally The Mandalorian driving a Naboo Starfighter around Beggar’s Canyon on Tatooine, which really felt like the kind of fever dream fan-fic that would be written by an excitable teenager. I didn’t mind Max Rebo turning up having somehow survived Jabba’s sail barge exploding next to the Sarlacc pit. I enjoyed Boba Fett learning to ride a rancor. But some of the nods and references within the show were parachuted in just because the writers could. It gave off a vibe of desperation – as if the show’s writers were running out of ideas and content.

Two big characters making their live action debuts were the Wookiee bounty hunter Krrsantin, who had appeared in various comic books, and Cad Bane, who featured in several storylines in The Clone Wars cartoon series. Neither character was developed much beyond what we already knew. Cad Bane’s late appearance in the series meant the duel with Boba Fett lacked any weight at all. In The Clone Wars, Cad Bane was the protector of the orphaned Boba, and his mentor as Boba grew up. The shoot-out between them should have been a proper cinematic moment instead of something thrown in to pad out the final episode.

And that need for padding, ultimately, is where I feel The Book of Boba Fett really faltered. There was no core drive at the heart of the story. Boba had seized control and the story was what he did next…. except he didn’t really do anything next. There were moments along the way when it looked like things were about to start happening, but then the action stalled.

So, ultimately, this was a really frustrating series. It got hijacked as the staging point for the third series of The Mandalorian, which will now feature the Mandalorian and Grogu together again after they parted at the end of the second season. Personally, I think Boba Fett deserved more of the spotlight from the series that was ostensibly telling his story.

A decamonth of football (April 2022)

"Decamonth" is the new term I've coined for a month where I have been to ten football matches. The ten matches included two "twofers" - days where I get to two games in a day. On one of the twofers I saw two teams who were on course to pass each other due to promotion and relegation. I saw Barry Town play at home three times in eight days. And I even got to watch a football match on my birthday!

The first game in April was my birthday game. Barry struggled to beat Cefn Druids who were adrift at the foot of the table, finally scoring the single goal that won the game through a moment of brilliance by Rhys Abbruzzese. Rhys's emergence into the first team has been about the only bright spot in a dismal season for Barry. 

From an unappealing fixture, here's a photo of several Barry players appealing for a throw in.

That was the Saturday. On the Tuesday it was back to Jenner Park for Barry's sixth and final meeting of the season with Cardiff  Met. Barry beat them for the first time this season. It was 1-0 to Barry again, this time thanks to a penalty, and suddenly Barry's Cymru Premier status didn't seem quite so tenuous.

The next Saturday, Barry's game was moved to a 5.15 kick off as S4C decided it would be the most interesting game of the weekend and wanted to show it on TV. That meant I could turn it into a twofer and so I went to Pontyclun FC v Treharris Athletic Western before the Barry game. A friend from work was there watching his son who plays for Treharris, so I spent a very enjoyable almost two hours chatting to him during the game.

Treharris (in red) take an interesting approach at kick off, possibly borrowed from rugby.

I was impressed by the set up in Pontyclun. There is a lovely new clubhouse. The pitch was very well-maintained. And, like to many places in Wales, if the game wasn't capturing the imagination, there were some nice hills to look at.

Although Treharris took the lead, Pontyclun came back and won 3-1. After the final whistle I bombed it down to Barry to watch their game against the Connah's Quay Nomads. 

Things seemed to be going well for Barry when the Nomads conceded a first half penalty and had a man sent off. Barry were winning at half time, but really needed all three points. However, their efforts in the second half against ten men were extremely frustrating to watch. The Nomads scored from their one attack and then were satisfied to defend in depth to take an away point. Barry, as so often happened this season, could not break through and score, so it finished 1-1. 

I dropped a couple of levels for my next game, which was at a ground I had not visited before: the Riverside Ground in Radyr in Cardiff, home of the Cardiff Corinthians. They were playing Llanrumney United in the South Wales Alliance Premier Division, which is the fourth tier of Welsh football.

It was an evening game. The Riverside ground is surrounded by trees and with the low sun, so the game was played in a lovely dappled shade across the pitch.

The Corries, as they're known, had their half time team talk out on the pitch. I took a photo as I walked past them on my way to the bar for a cuppa at half time. 

The points were shared at the end of the game, with the 1-1 scoreline a fair result. The Llanrumney coaches were quite vocal and, although it's probably not really acceptable behaviour for an official, I can't criticise the referee for shouting "Oh, f**k off!" after a loud ridiculous appeal for a free kick. He had my sympathies really, because everyone was gobby. 

By the time Easter Monday had rolled around, Barry's situation had deteriorated following a defeat away at Haverfordwest on Good Friday that left them in a relegation spot. The last home game of the season at Jenner Park was against Aberystwyth Town, the only team left within reach of Barry. Again, S4C decided this was the game most worthwhile of broadcasting so it got moved to a 5.15pm kick off. Which meant I could do a twofer again.

I opted to go to Pontypridd Town v Cambrian & Clydach BGC in the Cymru South, mainly because Ponty were the team most likely to finish second in division and therefore be eligible for promotion...if the club got its licence to play at the top level. The chaps on the gate were very friendly and told me where I could park for free, and then told me they thought the licence would be denied because the authorities wanted to keep Barry in the Cymru Premier. I felt that was highly unlikely. But it just proves my point that every club feels the world is biased against them.

Before kick off I spotted a lone paraglider high above the hills opposite.

Ponty play in the University of South Wales sports park right next to the A470. I somehow ended up sat surrounded by the junior team who were mascots for the day. That was quite fun and one of the kids in particular was excited about everything that happened in the game! Everything! "Look mum, my player got kicked!" "Wow! The ball went right up in the air!" And so on. It did make me consider at what point fans become so jaded we lose the wonder. 

Pontypridd won the game 2-1. They dominated the first half. Cambrian came back into it second half and pulled a goal back. Both sides looked well organised and confident when they attacked. A marked difference to the second game I watched that day.

Barry went into the "must win" game and were a goal down after less than 5 minutes. And despite huffing and puffing and trying all sorts of desperate ways to get back into the game, that's how the scoreline stayed. (And by desperate, I mean, the captain got sent off for diving to try and win a free kick on the edge of the area.) I mentioned the half-time controversy involving song choices in my blog post about relegation. That about sums up the event. 

That result meant Barry were relegated, except they weren't until Pontypridd's appeal for the top level licence was heard three days later. I've described this as the VAR version of relegation. With VAR, you celebrate a goal then wait several minutes for the video assistant referee to give the nod that the goal should be awarded. This was similar. The club were relegated but had to wait three days for it to be confirmed. 

I'd watched the game from the east stand, which is normally in all my pictures at Barry games. This time I got a picture of the 'famous arches of the west stand' and the houses on Gladstone Road. 

The following weekend I was in Shrewsbury staying with my Mum. That made it easy to get across to Cefn Mawr near Wrexham for the 12.45 kick off in Barry's last Cymru Premier game for at least a season. I took my nephew Zac with me and we borrowed my Mum's Barry scarf for him to wear. 

As a spectacle it looked exactly like the two worst teams in the Cymru Premier playing each other. Cefn had a lot of chances in the second half that somehow they didn't score. Eventually, on 88 minutes, the Druids got the only goal of the game, which typically had to be an own goal following a scrappy scramble in the box.

Zac's verdict was that both teams were rubbish. It was hard to argue with that. He enjoyed being sat near the Barry drum and thought it very amusing when the drum skin broke and one of the fans started wearing the drum carcass around his waist. He said he would like to come with me to more football games... "but maybe not Barry again." He might not have much of a choice there. 

So, Barry's season was over, but my decamonth was not. I went to a midweek game at Cardiff Draconians who were battling against Ynyshir Albions for a play off spot in their league. Ynyshir wore a garish neon orange kit, which really came into its own when the sun went down.

Ynyshir took an early lead, but the Dracs won and converted a penalty. It was the 150th goal I'd seen this season. Almost immediately after equalising, the Dracs conceded again and it finished 2-1 to the visitors. That was mainly due to the young goalkeeper playing for the Dracs who pulled off two outstanding saves to keep the scoreline down. 

Then on the final Saturday in April, I drove almost to the Severn Bridge to watch Caldicot Town play Treowen Stars. My friend Ben has been playing for Caldicot all season and I wanted to go and see him play. However, he had picked up an injury so I was able to sit next to him in the stands and catch up with him. It's the first time I had seen him since way before lockdown, so that made the day even more enjoyable.

We arrived early and went into the clubhouse and watched the Premier League game that was on. I also admired the decor - I find clubhouse walls fascinating. The display of old programmes caught my attention.  

The programmes show quite a mix of games and competitions. History in a frame!

The match itself was quite competitive with a goal apiece in the first half. Caldicot scored early in the second half and ended up 2-1 winners. Treowen had a very striking red and white kit so were the sartorial winners.

And that was the last game in my decamonth. Over the ten games I saw 21 goals. I went to seven different grounds, including three I had not been to before. I watched football at each level of the top four tiers in Welsh football. I saw two teams destined to pass each other in the league structure play on the same day. And I had my first footballing away day with sole responsibility for my nephew. All in all, a cracking month.  

April 2022 - a month of endings

April felt like a very busy month, marked by the end of two personally significant eras. I was working my notice in my job ahead of a move into a new role in May. I also spent a weekend in Shrewsbury so I could attend the closing service of the church that my mum and dad joined as founder members about 20 years ago.

It was also a month where I had a birthday, we had visitors at Easter and I went to ten football matches. I will be doing a second post reviewing the games otherwise this post will be too long. I've already posted about Barry Town getting relegated. After the relegation I went to their last game of the season up at Cefn Druids. I took my nephew Zac along for the first time to a game as just the two of us. We stopped at Mcdonald's on the way, which made his day.

At Easter we had visitors. My sister Sarah brought her three kids to see us on Good Friday. We went into the city centre and that meant we got to see some of the Dog's Trail statues of Snoopy. Here's Cathy with her two nieces and Snoopy.

Then in the week after Easter, we saw my sister-in-law ahead of a big birthday for her. We had a family meal out in Gloucester and Cathy and I got to wander around Gloucester Docks which is all done up and fancy now. We met a random egg dude outside the military museum.

There was also a dock crane looking all industrial and cool. I always like seeing cranes.

The final Sunday at Hope Church in Shrewsbury was handled well by the leadership team. It could have easily been a sad occasion. Instead, after a short service, there was a meal out for the people who attended. It felt celebratory with a positive atmosphere in the room. I sat next to my friend Clive, who I spent many church youth group evenings with back in the day, and we talked about fun times we had 30 years ago.

The church's decline seemed to happen quickly. Last summer I went to services with about 50 people present, but there was a domino effect of people leaving and a couple of months back the trustees met and decided the church had reached a point where it was no longer viable. I wanted to go up for the last service because it had been really important to my dad - he expended a lot of emotional energy over the years there, and he had talked to me about it (a lot!) during long phone conversations.

I know it may sound silly, but I think my dad would have wanted me there to represent him at such a historic moment. Just as he was present at the birth of the venture, I was there to see it close.

The other personally significant closing of an era was working the final weeks of my notice as the manager of the paediatric diabetes clinical network - a job I had been doing for almost 7 years. I did my best to finish well and get everything cleared off my desk or handed over to people who can continue various projects. It's stressful trying to document as much head knowledge as possible in a way that will make some sort of sense to the person following after. I doubt I captured everything, but as I have said to lots of colleagues, I'm not going far and they will be able to track me down easily enough if they want. 

At my leaving meal on the last Friday in April, I was presented with a cartoon of myself with various aspects of my work and interests represented. 

The umbrella is from the logo on the network, and the mammoth character in the background is from a book that started as a leftfield dicussion in the kitchen of my colleague Rose and is now a published resource for children with diabetes. The cartoon was drawn by Rich, who I used to work with 15 years ago and who illustrated the book about mammoths. He drew me a bit jowly, but I forgive him. 

So, it was a crazy busy month, but a good one. I even hit a milestone on my baseball card blog, publishing a post with the 1000th card in my collection, in my 500th blog post. That blog then took a back seat for the rest of the month as I was trying to keep on top of  everything else.

In Porthcawl even the bins are dapper

I spotted this in Porthcawl while on the hunt for Snoopy statues as part of the Dog's Trail created for the Dogs Trust. Someone had lost a hat and a helpful passer-by had put it somewhere noticeable. Mr Bin looks very dapper now!

There will be some photos of the Snoopy statues on a future blogpost. In the meantime, here's a picture of us with the Snoopy statue situated outside the surf shack in Rest Bay. It was a sunny Easter Sunday when we visited this one.

Relegation reflections

This season I watched 25 Barry Town games, including most of their home games in the Cymru Premier and several away matches as well. It hasn't been a great season, compared to a few years ago when I followed them on a European competition to Belfast. On Easter Monday I watched them lose a home game that was deemed a "must win" against Aberystwyth Town. The defeat meant that Barry were left stranded in the relegation zone, although not yet technically relegated. 

Optimism in Aberystwyth in August

The two teams eligible for promotion from the league below had been denied the right level of licence to play in the top league and were appealing against that decision. So, Barry had to wait until Thursday to find out if they had been relegated or had sneaked a reprieve. One of the teams was awarded their licence and relegation was confirmed for Barry.

Relegations are always strange. I've seen a few over the years following Shrewsbury. The signs are there, often quite early on in the season. A sudden heavy defeat against a fairly average team. A game where carbon copy goals are conceded. Struggling to dominate a team lower down in the table. Failing to kill off games and conceding late goals to drop points.

There are other things that add to the sense of inevitability. A regular first teamer leaves the club suddenly - with a rumour on the terraces that there was more to the story. The discipline appears to drift, with yellow cards for dissent becoming more frequent. Players become visibly annoyed with team-mates during games, and shout at each other.

One problem Barry struggled with all year was a general lack of pace, leaving them vulnerable to attacks on the break. As one of the people I sit near said, "We seem most vulnerable when we are attacking a corner." In the Cymru Premier, the second half of the season is ten games against teams that you played against twice already - everyone has a chance to see how everyone else plays, and work out their strengths and weaknesses. The speed deficit was a definite weakness and it got exploited regularly. 

"Beneath the famous arches of the west stand..."

Through it all, though, the support has generally been very positive for the club and the management team. At the final game of the season, which was a 1-0 defeat away at Cefn Druids - the other club relegated from the Cymru Premier - the fans were still singing the manager's name. A Cefn fan told me in the car park that the support was fantastic, considering. 

Although there was a controversial choice of song broadcast over the Jenner Park PA at half-time during the "must win" game against Aberystwyth. With Barry losing 1-0 at the end of the first half, "Down, Down" by Status Quo was played. I was heading into the clubhouse for a cup of tea thinking that it was a bit of an on the nose choice. It turned out other people felt the same and words were exchanged. There were no announcements during the second half.

The night the moon got stuck on the stand

However, it seems most Barry fans commenting on social media are sanguine about relegation. Most of the people I have got to know among the regulars are seasoned football watchers. They saw the possibility of relegation while it was still some way off. Quite a few claim to be looking forward to some different grounds and clubs next year in the 16-team Cymru South league, particularly a full season schedule where you only play each opponent twice! 

I am definitely in that camp. The Cymru Premier is moribund, with its two phases meaning everyone gets sick of the sight of each other. Throw in the possibility of cup meetings and there's a situation like Barry and Cardiff Metropolitan had this season where they played each other six times. 

The Premier is also difficult for away trips. It's a long way to some of the Northern clubs (and they probably feel the same way about the Southern clubs) with horrible roads and poor rail links. I did get to some games in North Wales this year, including Barry's defeat at Flint, but away games will generally be more manageable next season. 

The hope, bordering on expectation, is that Barry will bounce back quickly. They were convincing winners this season in cup competitions against teams from the Cymru South, including putting seven goals past Pontypridd Town, the team that have now taken Barry's place in the Cymru Premier. (Annoyingly, that is one of the few games I missed due to a prior commitment - my typical luck!) But there are a lot of things that need to align for success on the pitch and they will be facing some good teams next year. 

So while it's always disappointing to see the team you support relegated, at least with a different scheduling set-up in the league below it feels like there could be some silver linings. 

Snack of the Month - scary cereal

These are "snack packs" of cereal that Cathy bought for me. Last year, the Snack of the Month in July was American Cereal and there was so much I needed a second post to rate it all. This month there are only three flavors [sic] to talk about so we should be OK for space!

The "Monster Cereals" are Count Chocula, Fankenberry and Booberry. Of the three monsters, Frankenberry looks like he's been on the lash, Chocula has one fang, but Booberry is well dapper with a bright red bow tie. He also looks like Cookie Monster's long-lost cousin.

The Booberry cereal is a faintly blueberryish flavour, an almost purple colour, and in this packet came with just the one 'mallow' piece. In American cereals, the mallow pieces are basically crunchy sugary bits. No UK equivalent comes to mind in terms of sweets. 

The Count Chocula cereal is similarly stingy on the mallow pieces. I think the one piece in this packet is meant to be a bat. The cereal's flavour is vaguely reminiscent of chocolate. The cereal is the same shape as the Booberry cereal rather than particularly vampiric. 

Finally, Frankenberry, and the mother lode of multiple mallow shapes. Maybe Frankenberry was still a bit drunk when he was dishing the mallows out. This cereal is an undefinable "fruit" flavor that could be a berry, I suppose. The bright colour of the cereal wouldn't be allowed in European breakfast cereals aimed at children and reminded me of one of the ghosts out of PacMan.

The packs are quite small as they are made for snacking rather than breakfasting. I haven't tried the cereal with milk yet. Overall, they are a good reminder of how processed American food is, and how divorced these foodstuffs are from anything natural. 

But they taste alright and are a fun alternative snack to have in. 

My mounting Blood Bowl "pile of shame"

My dad used to say that the problem with buying books is that you think you are buying the time to read the book as well! Despite knowing this, he still bought books. (Lots and lots of books!)

I am heading down a similar path with Blood Bowl teams. I recently heard of a website called Pile of Shame, which invites people to list their unbuilt kits and unpainted armies with the aim of 'encouraging' people to get on and build and paint stuff. It's sounds like self-inflicted nagging to me. But maybe I need it.

This is my current inventory...

A few years ago, as a reward for handing in my MSc dissertation, I bought the Blood Bowl starter set - this came with two teams and various equipment bits like measuring rulers. The teams were humans and orcs. I've built both teams aand they are partially painted.

I already had a team of skaven players (skaven are giant man-sized rats), which had been a Christmas present from my friend Bryan. I then bought an ogre player. All the skaven and the ogre are built and painted. 

The ogre was an essential addition because the skaven got heavily stomped on by their opponents in the few games I'd played.

Then in the middle of last year I bought the Blood Bowl Second Season set, which came with loads of stuff. There were two teams that were different to the ones in the other starter set, two 'star players', an ogre and a troll, and two referees. All of this is still unbuilt and unpainted. (The guilt starts!)

Through gifts and trips to the hobby shop, I've acquired a team of lizardmen (pictures here), a team of wood elves, a team of "necromantic horrors" like werewolves and ghouls, and a "treeman" player to bolster the ranks of the wood elves. I've built half of the lizardmen and necromantic horror teams. The rest of them are still sitting there pristine, waiting to be snapped off their sprues and stuck together.

Just after Christmas I impulse bought a Dungeon Bowl set. This is an evolution of the standard Blood Bowl game, set in a dungeon, where first your teams have to find the ball hidden in a treasure chest, and then carry it to the other end of the dungeon to score. The back of the box sort of explains it. 

Again, the starter set comes with two teams and various other bits, like the treasure chests, to build and paint. I haven't made any progress with that at all yet, let alone played the game. 

And the pile of shame keeps growing! For my birthday, just gone, I received a kroxigor figure - this is a super-strong reptilian player to add some bulk to the generally lightweight and pacey lizardmen Blood Bowl team. I was super excited when I opened the present, then felt the twinges of "unbuilt guilt" about the other teams I have that I need to get on and sort. 

I do enjoy building the figures, and painting them in various coloured uniforms. I also enjoy playing the game. Those things take time though, whereas purchasing new additions to the pile of shame is much less time-consuming. The trade off between fun and work is much less. 

And Games Workshop, the company that makes Blood Bowl, keeps on releasing new teams. The most recent team is a "Norse" themed team of players that look like Vikings. This team comes with "Beer Boars" that bring the player much needed revitalising refreshment during the game.

 

I really don't need any more Blood Bowl teams. But... beer boars! 

I already know I will be buying this team. I just wish I could buy the time to build and paint it.

March 2022 - end of month review

March was a very busy month. The holiday we went on at the start of the month (blogged about here!) felt like a long time ago by time March ended!

Currently, in our little part of Grangetown, the state of the world is measured by crocheted post box covers. St David's Day was celebrated, as it should be.

Shortly after St David's Day, the dragon was replaced by an expression of solidarity with the people of Ukraine.

In the middle of the month, I went to a football match on the third anniversary of my Dad's death. He would have approved at the randomness - I went with my friend Paul to watch Treharris Athletic Western in the third tier of the Welsh football pyramid. It was a baking hot day. 

I wore my Dad's cap, which was just as well or I would have got sunstroke. In addition to being hot enough to melt football fans, it was the day when Wales lost to Italy in the Six Nations. The result was met with slight disbelief in the small stand we were sitting in. I only found out later that a work colleague, Scott, was also at the game, watching his son who plays for Treharris. We can't work out how we didn't see each other!

The big news of the month is that I told the people I work with that I have been offered a new job. I will be moving to another NHS organisation based just outside Cardiff. I have been up to the offices to meet some of the team I will be working with. 

That also meant that the first post-pandemic "hybrid" meeting arranged for the clinical network I currently manage was my last network meeting. It worked out nicely because I talked to several people from teams around Wales and said a few goodbyes. I am staying in my current role until the end of April and have got a lot of things to sort out!

The final Sunday of March was Mother's Day. I went up to Shrewsbury for the weekend and went to see Shrewsbury play Lincoln City with my mum, my brother, and his two eldest kids. My mum and the two kids are on the Shrewsbury "Wall of Thanks" for all the season ticket holders who let the club keep the credit on their season tickets in the abandoned 2020 season. We had to get a photo with their names.

We were sitting in the Family Stand, and one of the perks of sitting there is that the players will come over and sign autographs and pose for photos before the game. My nephew Zac was thrilled to get a photo with one of his favourite players, striker Daniel Udoh, before the game. 

Daniel went on and scored the winning goal as Shrewsbury notched up a 1-0 victory. It has consolidated their position in the lower mid-table and it looks very likely that they will be staying up this year after being close to the relegation zone earlier in the season. 

It was my third Shrewsbury game of the season, and I don't think I will be getting to another one. My record is pretty good as those three games have been a win and two draws. I can't remember the last season Shrewsbury were unbeaten in the games I attended. On that happy note, roll on April!

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 1962 film verson of The Day of the Triffids

During our holiday week, we watched a number of DVDs that we had picked up cheaply in a charity shop. One of them was the film version of The Day of the Triffids released in 1962. In this review I am going to include some spoilers for both the film and the book version of The Day of the Triffids, so if you haven't seen this or read the book and you want to, then stop reading now!

The DVD cover

I am a big fan of John Wyndham's writing and have re-read The Day of the Triffids a few times. He was an elegant writer with a very lean approach to storytelling. There was no unnecessary descriptive text in his work. He got on with the action. When there is exposition in his books, he handles it all very matter-of-fact and tells the reader what the reader needs to know at that point. Sometimes there are hints of the darkness ahead - because there is always darkness ahead - but he doesn't overdo it.

This film was produced about ten years after The Day of the Triffids was first published. And they butchered the book as they turned it into a screenplay. That would be my biggest gripe about it.

I don't really expect much from a 1960s monster movie. The direction was very stagey and unnatural. Sometimes that doesn't matter in a film, but this was clunky. The script was poor. Characters would say things then other characters would say things and what they said didn't necessarily seem to follow on. There was one actress who seemed to only be in the film to scream theatrically when she saw a triffid. (That annoyed me particularly because John Wyndham didn't write his female characters like that - in his books women were usually resourceful, brave, clever and funny. They didn't just stand there screaming.)

The film did some scenes well, particularly cutaway scenes on a cruise liner with everyone struck blind, passengers and crew, and the same with a passenger airplane that was doomed to crash. Those bits were suitably chilling. The rest, not so much. 

It's possible to do an adaptation that sticks to the story. The BBC version from 2009 (which I blogged about here but haven't seen since it was broadcast) was much closer to the book. This film felt like it had been adapted by someone who hadn't really read or understood the book, been given a list of principal characters and told to get on with it. 

The only part that was really close to the book was the opening scenes that established the lead character, Bill, in a hospital bed with his eyes bandaged while everyone else looks at the "meteor" lightshow, and then the following morning when he removes his dressings and discovers everyone else has gone blind. 

The triffids themselves were only mildly menacing monsters in this film. But they are meant to be only mildly menacing because they're plants. They don't run after you even though they can move. It's the ones lurking, hidden in the bushes that get you with their deadly stings. In the first third of the film, the director made good use of not showing the entire monster, just a slimy root on a stair, or a flower betraying the presence of a triffid hiding in with other greenery. But then they became slowly-advancing rubbery aggressors and it was hard to take them seriously. 

There is a great visual sequence where Bill rigs up a flame thrower and torches massed ranks of triffids being held at bay by an electric fence, which is an event that was sort of lifted from the book. It's surprisingly violent, watching the triffids burn. But the action had been so staccato up to that point that the big set piece didn't have any tension to it. The final denouement - with the discovery that seawater could be used to turn triffids into puddles of oozing slime - wasn't part of the book at all. 

Where this film really went wrong was making the triffids space aliens carried on meteors. That's not in the book. Triffids are discovered in an African rainforest and then deliberately farmed for their highly versatile oil. In fact, that's why Bill ends up in hospital having eye surgery in the book - on a visit to a triffid farm one of the plants tries to sting him and some of the venom ends up in his eyes. 

So, the triffids don't arrive on meteors. And, as a further twist, the lights in the sky aren't actually meteors at all! What's revealed in the book is that a satellite had been launched that was a weapon designed to cause blindness, and it had malfunctioned. 

The idea of space-borne weaponry was incredibly forward-thinking in 1951. It was a few years before the first orbiting satellites were launched. It's probably the scariest part of the story - and it's the bit that gets left out of adaptations!

Because the point of The Day of the Triffids is that humans are prone to exploiting very dangerous natural resources, and are very resourceful at thinking up ways to kill other humans, and if something went wrong it could get very nasty. Basically, John Wyndham's message is that we don't need an alien invasion to doom us. Humans are very capable of dooming ourselves. 

John Wyndham did write an alien invasion novel a couple of years later. The Kraken Wakes is an equally vivid story, and possibly edges The Day of the Triffids in both concept and delivery. It hasn't ever been made into a film, but given how film-makers missed the point of the triffids, maybe that's a blessing.