Ar wyliau yn yr Gogledd - Mehefin 2025

We have just had a lovely week on holiday in North Wales. We stayed in a holiday cottage near our favourite beach, Dinas Dinlle (which my Cymraeg twtor, Lynne. described as "Gothic") and had some fun revisiting some favourite places and discovering new things. 

One of those new things was climbing the hill fort at the southern end of Dinas Dinlle. 

But the main thing was just walking the length of the beach, and occasionally having a sit and being lulled by the waves. 

We weren't far from Caernarfon Airport (originally an RAF base in World War 2 and the place where the Mountain Rescue Service was founded) but it was too windy all week for us to take a sightseeing flight. Next time!

There are a couple more blog posts to follow, but in the meantime, here are some of the places we visited:

Bangor Pier is no longer Pier of the Year, but we had great views down the Menai Strait all the way over to the Great Orme.

The FAW were promoting the Women's European Championships with a giant inflatable shirt outside Caernarfon Castle, so we went along and had a photo with it. 

I was quite pleased to have a few opportunities to practice my Cymraeg. I feel hesitant sometimes, but everyone I spoke to was very supportive and encouraging. 

We went to Y Galeri in Caernarfon to watch Elio, the latest Pixar film. I went in knowing very little about the film, but enjoyed it. The central message about a little boy wanting to be anywhere but on Earth was poignant, and then when he gets his wish and meets aliens, he has to decide where he wants to be. 

We also had a couple of trips to Anglesey, including to Oriel Mon, outside Llangefni. 

I wasn't too fussed on the main exhibition, which featured work by Leonard McComb even though it included a big shiny bronze statue. 

However, the themed exhibition of Anglesey Windmills was very good, with the two paintings by Kyffin Williams really anchoring the displays. 

And I thought this political artwork made a good point.

After Oriel Mon we had a short stop in Beaumaris for ice creams. We bought them just in time for a rain squall to break over us so ended up eating them in the car as the rain battered down. That made it feel like a proper North Wales holiday!

And so, after a very lovely week, we bade farewell to Dinas Dinlle.

Barcode pebble

This pebble looks like it will scan with a barcode reader!

No price, though. We picked it up for free!

Unexpected appearance by Joe Hart

Flicking through some old games that had been donated in a charity shop, I saw several copies of FIFA football from different years. 

I didn't know - or had forgotten - that 12 years ago Joe Hart had been a FIFA cover star. 

Alongside Lionel Messi, no less.

It wasn't enough to get me to buy the game, especially as it was for a console I don't have in the crate of obsolete consoles. (Although if it had been super-cheap I might have got it just for the cover.)

You know your life has been over-medicalised when...

I saw this in a branch of The Works and my first thought was "Sharps bin!"

And if you don't know what that means, then I'm happy for you! 

In praise of the physical format

This blog post is a response to an innocent question from Connor a while back that got me thinking. Here's the Q:

Now, a bit of an odd question: Why do you still buy CDs? Do you not have any music streaming services?

And here are some reasons.

Tangible items are nice to have. I've mentioned this before when comparing cardboard baseball cards with non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and I was reminded of it recently when I bought a new box-set CD retrospective released by 90s shoegazer band Thousand Yard Stare.

The set contains four CDs and a book, all housed in a sturdy slipcase. It's a thing of beauty.

(I was one of the first people to buy it and got a free bonus 7" single as well!)

(Some) physical format items retain their value as well. We recently cashed in some old console games, which have become a bit collectible. If you just download a game, then it's not as easy to sell on. 

(I also find it frustrating when I can't just turn on a console and play a game any more. I found the PlayStation particularly bad for this. There were so many administrative steps before I could start playing, I actually gave up.  The same dynamic happens with music. I don't want to have to log in to anything to play music.)

Generally, I don't like the idea of streaming services deciding what I can access. If you rely on Disney Plus for watching Star Wars you can't see the original versions of Star Wars before they got monkeyed around with (and, in the case of Return of the Jedi, ruined!). But while you can't watch them, I can, because I still have the DVD box set released 20 years ago.

Similarly, Disney insisted on several cuts to Bluey episodes and for a long time didn't have the episode 'Dad Baby' available. This reflects the strong small-c conservative, easily offended, quick to complain American market. Which is why you can't see a male cartoon dog pretending to be pregnant or ponies at a fete do a poo like ponies do. (Seriously.)

Why should I surrender control over what I can watch to a corporation? I'm aware that my online activity is feeding the algorithm because the machines are listening. But I want to retain control over my playlist as much as possible. 

And that's before we get to the one line modern horror story: What happens if the wi-fi goes down? 

(Well, I'd have something still to watch.)

Even if the wi-fi stays on, streaming services don't hold content forever and they can drop stuff without warning. In effect, while you aren't limited to the content you own, you are limited by the content they own. We end up paying for another person's library and they decide what's in it.

As an example, this year Cathy and I have started watching the show Manifest. The problem was Netflix only had the first, second and fourth seasons available. The third season was on another streaming service. What to do? We opted to buy the series on DVD. (And then, after we bought the physical format that Netflix reached a deal with the other streamer. However, at this rate, we will have finished the fourth and final series before season 3 arrives on Netflix.)

I realise this sounds like a regressive rant by an irritable Gen X old man who is reluctant to surrender control and autonomy. But I don't care. I'm going to keep buying CDs and other physical format items and, in the long run, I think I'll be proven wise to do so. There's safety in being a late adopter. 

Lastly, I'm Generation X. I remember the 20th century. I lived a pre-Internet life. Nostalgia is the weapon pointed at me most often. Having the physical artefact is a reminder of back when I was more innocent and less cynical. And is that a bad thing?

New pitch, old foes (Blood Bowl match report)

This month's Blood Bowl game was played on a new pitch (it was bought second hand, but it was new for me and Bryan) and as it was a dwarf pitch design, Bryan dusted off his dwarf team. Because Bryan was going old school, I decided to use my skaven team, which has been boosted recently with some currently still unpainted additional models. 

The aesthetic of the pitch is nice and clean making it very easy to see the squares and play the game. 

I only included one of my skaven star players in my roster - Hakflem Skuttlespike. He  scored the first down of the game.

Bryan almost scored an equaliser but his dwarf runner tripped while trying to sprint an extra square meaning he dropped the ball as he crossed the line!

However, a little later, a daring pass was fumbled by the dwarf in the end zone, bounced into the crowd, was thrown back and then caught by the dwarf who fumbled it meaning he made the touchdown anyway!

The skaven still had two turns to try and grab a winner. Despite punching a hole in the dwarf defence allowing Hakflem and some gutter-runners to pour forward, a failed block attempt brought the game to a sudden close. 

Final score: 1-1. (Our second draw in a row.)

I needed the new reserve players, as a lot of rats ended up getting carried off injured. 

My extra skaven came from a team box set for the "Underworld Creepers" that was another second hand purchase.

The team is usually half skaven and half goblin, but I've split it up to provide reserves for my skaven team and the Big Pink Nightmares black orc team. Maybe they'll get an outing next month!

Football season 24-25 review - Futbology badges

It's been a decent season for Futbology badges. My biggest achievement was hitting the 600 games mark in April.

Earlier in the season I passed a milestone for the number of games I've seen at Jenner Park - which, incidentally, is now the stadium I have seen most games at.

And in my last game of the season I hit the half century at Cardiff City Stadium.

Almost half those games haven't involved Cardiff City, which is quite amusing to me.

I got a couple of smaller milestones for other teams - including Caldicot where my friend Ben plays.

And Penybont, mainly for all the Barry games I've seen against them.

I also got a ten-game badge for Cardiff Corinthians - although I only arrived at this game at half time so really it should only be a nine and a half games badge!

I decided to go to the Welsh Cup final. It was a good game and I was able to pose with the actual cup before the game. Getting a badge was a bonus.

And a couple of international games at the end of the season came with badges too.

Not a bad season haul at all!

Football season 24-25 review part 2

Last week I went to two international matches - watching Wales women lose to Italy in Swansea and Wales men winning in Cardiff - and with those two games I've brought the curtain down on my 2024-25 football season. In part 1, I wrote about the fortunes of the three clubs I follow most - which included a promotion, a relegation and a nothing-particularly- memorable. 

But now the season is finally over here's my Futbology round up of the season:

My total of 61 games is a few less than last season's 65, but is still my second highest total ever. In the four seasons since football restarted after the pandemic, I've been to 60, 57, 65 and now 61 games. It's been four years rather full of football. 

Some highlights - four cup finals, one play-off final, only one penalty shoot-out (very early on in the season). The highest scoreline I saw was an 8-2 win for Cardiff Dracs, which edged out Barry's 9-0 drubbing in a friendly at Oxford City right at the start of the season. I made it to a game in Scotland, which was also my nephew Finlay's very first football game (as mentioned in my post about my weekend in Edinburgh). That game was the most northerly of the 15 new football grounds I went to in the season. Here they all are on a handy map:

You can see from the map that most of my new grounds were in South Wales. I haven't quite got to saturation point there, but I'm close. I'm not far off totalling 150 grounds and I might need to start travelling further afield to tick them off next season. Hitting that total is one of the, admittedly modest, ambitions I have for next season. I'm not going to list them here, but I might put them in a kick off post for next season.

And so, as the curtain finally comes down on my 61 game season, I want to give a shout out to the many people who kept me company at all kinds of random grounds watching all kinds of random games. So here you go -  if your name isn't on the list and it should be, then let me know and I'll add it in! 

So, thank you for your company Steve, Paul and Val, Paul (Podge), Dave, Joy, Zac, Dan, Finlay, Ella, Scott, Sara and Leanne (and Cadi and Payton), Tom, Matt, Jim and Nik, Dan R and Emma, Jon D, and the Barry hoppers: Tim, Ian, Joe, John, Nick. I'm looking forward to seeing you all again next season!

Book of the Month: The List of Suspicious Things

An early 'book of the month' this month because I had already finished reading this by the end of last month for one very simple reason: it was that good I tore through it on one of my return train trips to London, starting it somewhere just outside Cardiff on the way there and finishing it somewhere between Newport and Cardiff on the way back!

And also a shout out to whoever designed this book cover because this delightful scruffy crow on the cover, pilfering milk from a doorstep delivery caught my eye while on a wander in Griffin Books in Penarth. So I picked it up, read the back cover summary and thought 'hmmm'. Although - spoiler alert - crows don't feature much in the book. 

This is a fictionalised semi-memoir that carries a ring of authenticity heavily swirled in nostalgia. It is loosely based on Jennie Godfrey's own experience of growing up in Yorkshire during the early 1980s when Peter Sutcliffe, who was branded the Yorkshire Ripper by the press, murdered multiple young women. 

The two best friends in the story - Miv (Mavis) and Sharon - are drawn to the horror that starts overshadowing everyday life and follow the police's advice to look out for suspicious things. They start to create a list of things - and men - they think are suspicious. And along the way their investigations uncover a whole heap of other secrets in the lives of the adults around them.

It's a very engaging story and remains believable right up to the very end. I was worried that the story might turn silly with Miv and Sharon catching, or just encountering, the Ripper. But that doesn't happen. There is enough drama going on without fabricating that. Although it turns out there is a connection between Miv and the Ripper, based on the author's own childhood connection which meant she was just one step removed from the Ripper in real life. 

I have one very minor criticism: there are some slightly heavy-handed nostalgia drops into the text. As someone roughly the same age as the author I recognised the descriptions of certain fads and fashions and how particular brands were the must have thing among teenagers but the name checks amused me. I also recognised the freedom I had as a child, as Miv and Sharon head out after school on adventures with no phones, just an understanding they would be back for tea. 

Many of the secrets that Miv and Sharon uncover have very deep themes - loss, betrayal, unhappy marriages, child abuse, mental illness and racism. The girls grow up as they learn more about the people living around them, and while most of the characters have a happyish ending, several do not. There's a real emotional punch to the conclusion to the story, which shows how much it drew me in.

It's to the author's credit that there are no absolute villains, just hurt and broken people hurting and breaking other people. There's a deep underlying sadness for communities that are shifting sideways as the manufacturing industries abruptly shut down and despair kicks in, with some people kicking out in response and wounding others in the process. It's as much a nostalgic tribute to those disappearing mill towns as to the author's own family and childhood. 

This is the first book I've read this year that I would whole-heartedly recommend. I'm very glad the eye-catching rascal of a crow on the cover made me pick it up!

May 2025 round up

Every month I'm saying it's been a busy month... guess what! It's been a busy month!

It included a trip to Europhilex, a big stamp show at the NEC. I went on from there to Shrewsbury for the weekend. It was nice to spend time with my mum and the rest of the family on a 'normal weekend'. On the Sunday morning I went to watch Zac play in his final game of the season. He scored the opening goal in a 9-1 win and created several other goals for his team-mates!

I've been travelling quite a bit for work, including two trips to London. I had a brief interlude as a tourist and walked from the London office to Tower Bridge and then along the river. I blogged some photos from my London wandrin!

Another work trip was to Exeter to visit some laboratories where incredible work is being done to try and find a cure for type 1 diabetes. We took some young people involved in our programme and we all got to wear lab coats and have a go at science stuff. 

With my colleague Sophie

My football schedule was also hectic, with three cup finals, a promotion play-off, and seeing Cardiff Draconians clinch their league title. (Read about the Dracs in the first instalment of my review of the season.)

At the Welsh Cup final, Paul and I got a chance to pose with the cup itself - I think this may be the oldest original cup still presented because the FA Cup has been replaced a couple of times.

The cup final was a good game, with Connahs Quay Nomads pushing TNS all the way. However TNS won to make it a domestic treble in Wales. 

My second cup final of the month was an under-17s game, with Shrewsbury's side playing Cardiff City at the Cardiff City Stadium. As it was within walking distance, I had to go - and the Salop juniors won 2-0! 

The third cup final was the Ardal Southern Cup final, played between Cardiff Corinthians and Chepstow Town on Taff's Well's famous sloping pitch. It finished 5-2 to the Corries but, true to form, all seven goals were scored up the slope!

A week later I saw Chepstow play again, this time in the Ardal South promotion play off against Ynyshir Albions. It was a bad end to the season for Chepstow as they lost 2-0 and missed out on promotion. It was a bad week for them!

Those matches took me up to 59 games for the season - and it's not over just yet! Almost, but not quite.