Snack of the Month - Choco Boy

We are almost at the end of March, so here is a late 'Snack of the Month' post. It's a sweet snack for a change this month. I bought these in the foreign food aisle in Sainsbury's. I think they are from Korea. I must admit I picked this partly because of the cartoon character on the front.

Inside the box is a small plastic packet with several of these tiny mushrooms in, which I presume are the Choco Boys. The biscuit stalks taste a lot like the biscuit sticks found in old school KP Chocolate Dips. The chocolate is sweet and milky.

There aren't many Choco Boys in the packet so they got polished off quite quickly. I liked them, but they weren't so amazing I would look them out again. I also felt it could have come with a sticker of the Choco Boy character, or something, because the actual biscuits were a bit dull compared to the happy little chap dancing on the front of the box. (Even though, thinking about it, he look like a Choco Boy and he looks like he's about to eat a tiny version of himself.)

Jabbed

I'm on annual leave until after Easter now. My first day of annual leave was Thursday, and included a trip to the brand new mass vaccination facility in Cardiff Bay. It used to be Toys'R'Us, so it was a little bit odd going back into an environment I used to know quite well.

It was the first day the centre was open, which I didn't realise when I took the appointment. I walked in and immediately met my colleague Nick, who works for the Service Improvement Team in the health board and is an expert in systems design in healthcare. He was tracking how long it took people to go through the process. It took me 7 minutes, and that included a comprehensive discussion with the nurse about the relative risks.

The streamlined efficiency illustrates something I have long believed about healthcare - if people who know how to organise healthcare processes are given the opportunity to design them from scratch then they will work really well. Most healthcare processes have accreted organically over time and reflect the needs of healthcare providers rather than focusing on the overall strategic aim. In this case, the aim is to get as many needles into as many arms as possible in a safe environment, and it worked really well.

I had the Oxford Astra-Zeneca jab and had heard from a number of people that the side effects could be rough. I was fine until the early evening when a headache started to develop. Within a couple of hours I had a temperature and was shivering. I felt very poorly - so rough that Cathy had to help me get changed for bed - and had a bad night's sleep as a result. 

Yesterday I felt fragile first thing and stayed in bed late, but started feeling stronger by lunchtime. A good shower helped. Today I have felt even better again, in fact, I've felt better than I have done for a while, and was able to take advantage of the release in Lockdown rules to go and sit in the back garden of my friends' new house. 

The side effects to the vaccine are apparently a sign that the body is producing antibodies to the nasty Covid-19 virus. Hopefully my rough few hours mean that I am now chock-full of antibodies and immune to the bug that has stopped the world. I'm looking forward to things starting to open up again, especially now I'm fully vaccinated. 

#Cymrutopia - welcome to the future Wales

Last year I joined Yes Cymru, the independent movement for Welsh Independence. I outlined some of my reasons in my first blog post of 2020.

Since then, the support for independence keeps rising. Last week, a record 39% of people polled said they would vote for independence (qualifier - if you exclude the people who said 'Don't know'). When I joined Yes Cymru my membership number was 2,920. Their current membership has rocketed to over 17,000.

My Yes Cymru membership pack

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about what an independent Wales could look like if an independent Welsh Government could make decisions on things that matter to Wales. And the possibilities for progressive changes in culture, infrastructure and society. For example, on St David's Day I mentioned what a national holiday could look like.

Today I jokingly referred to this as Cymrutopia. And the moment I said that, I liked the sound of it. Cymrutopia - the ideal Wales that could yet be. The hiraeth home we both mourn and search for. 

My plan is to blog a few ideas here in among the usual posts about science fiction shows, football and my Snack of the Month. This post is both a warning and chance to lay claim to the word Cymrutopia. Although I don't mind if other people start posting their own ideas of what an independent Wales could look like. We need to build an array of hopeful options for the future republic.

Grangetown's Lost Footballs

A few years back I discovered the Twitter account @LostFootballs, which was an ideal harmony of poignancy and humour. The account is still going although less active than it used to be in its heyday, back when Twitter was fun and not full of angry people abusing each other. 

Over the years I'd tweeted a few photos to them and had them retweeted. However, recently I've been saving photos of lost footballs for my blog. These are a few I've spotted on my walks around Grangetown and Cardiff Bay.

Let's start with a ball behind the railings of a locked schoolyard during lockdown.

Grangetown's alleys have been gated off.  The gates are easy to lose footballs behind!

A close-up of the ball shows the Euro 2020 logo. It feels kind of apt that a lost tournament adorns the side of a lost football.

There is honestly no filter on this next photo. It was a very blue sky reflected in the water as I walked alongside the mouth of the Taff. The ball's remaining patches are green.

On a walk around Cardiff Bay, I saw this ball behind a fence near the BBC complex.

A close-up shows off the Nike Swoosh. 

And very close to home, I saw this torn and battered 'casey' in the gutter at the closed-off end of my street.

It had seen better days.

With going to football matches something I have lost during the pandemic, all these reminders have taken on a new level of meaning. The most likely way to lose a football is by playing with it. With all the restrictions we have endured, these reminders that kids still play football are bittersweet.

(And thanks to Cathy, Tom and Bryan who have patiently waited while I have taken photos of forlorn footballs.)

Delightful branding

I look at marketing materials that get pushed through my door, as I carry them to the recycling bin. This gem of a product name from a takeaway pizza leaflet made me chuckle.

"Sausage Delight" sounds a bit saucy to me. (Dirty minds and all that.) 

February 2021 End of Month Review

February seemed to go by quickly. We are now one sixth the way through 2021. Even in lockdown stuff happens, so I thought I would do another monthly round up.

I joined up with some friends via Zoom to watch the Superbowl. It was especially important this year because the team my friend Bryan supports, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, were in the Superbowl. He was a lot more nervous about the game than the rest of us. But the Bucs won comfortably. 

We had some extremely cold weather and even a bit of snow. That made staying indoors to observe the lockdown rules a bit easier - nobody wanted to be out in the bitter cold. 

At the beginning of the month, I had a surprise. A cuddly bat arrived in the post. 

Cathy had arranged an animal sponsorship with the Cuan Wildlife Rescue Centre in Shropshire. Several years ago we took a poorly hedgehog that we found in my brother's back garden to their centre and I have followed them on social media ever since. They do fantastic work caring for injured wild animals and successfully release most of them after nursing them back to health. 

This year for Valentines Day we decided to buy ourselves a big Lego set and build it together. We both wanted to build the Medieval Blacksmith set, so spent most of the day doing that. It was great fun. The finished article now has pride of place in our dining room. 

The build is full of quirky little details. One of my favourite bits was the brick-built bearskin rug.

I had a week off work, which was every inch the staycation. I had a steroid injection in my frozen shoulder so I had to stay indoors for three days. I used the time productively and caught up on several movies from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). I watched the three Thor movies in quick succession. One thing I like about the MCU are the little cameos between the films. There is a funny Captain America cameo in the second Thor film, and a great scene with Doctor Strange in the third one. 

Now that the Mandalorian has finished, Disney Plus have been releasing a replacement marquee television series in WandaVision, which is set in the MCU. We have been tuning in every week. Having the time to watch all the films again has been really useful for me to understand the TV series a bit better. I blogged about how it offered a surprisngly mature viewpoint on grief in one of the later episodes.

In terms of other achievements, I read a book for the first time in months.

It was more like a pamphlet really, but it made me think, so that was good. I blogged about it here.

On my baseball card blog, I reached the milestone of my 600th card featuring Tony Gwynn and also received my first Tony Gwynn card released in 2021. My collection was also featured in a guest post on the blog Baseball Fans Only. In another milestone, Twitter reminded me that it was my tenth Twitterversary this month.

And in exciting consumer news, we finally found the newly-launched McVities cherry Jaffa Cakes on sale. They have been sampled!

St Davids Day 2021

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus i chi! Happy St David's Day to you. Here are some cheery daffs that I found in Bute Park at the weekend. I liked how they were backlit by sunshine.

I have been thinking recently about some of the things that would be possible in an independent Wales, and one of them would be to have a national holiday on St David's Day. (I recently found out this was agreed on in the first sitting of the Welsh Assembly after it was convened, and was subsequently rejected by the UK Government.)

However, just having a day off work is fairly meaningless. There are no doubt lots of old traditions that could be revived. But what if we took this opportunity to start new traditions?

I've always liked the story of St David's final words to his followers. As he lay dying he apparently told them to "Do the little things that you have seen me do and heard about." This is sometimes summarised as a call to "Be faithful in the little things." 

Because little things matter, whether for good or ill. A smile can lift a person's spirits. A random act of kindness can save a life. A little lie can poison a relationship. A broken promise can break a person.

I would really love to see a day given over to the 'little things'. That could be joining in a community event like a litter-pick, or it could be doing something little that you've been meaning to do for a while. Visiting an elderly relative. Helping your neighbour tidy their garden. Sorting through the wardrobe and taking clothes to a charity shop. Making time for family, friends, and people in your community who often go unthanked for the work they do.

I feel it would be a wonderful statement about the kind of society we want in Wales, if we chose to make the national holiday an opportunity to live out the instruction of our patron saint.

WandaVision provides a beautiful perspective on grief

Warning: Mild Spoilers below the picture of Vision

We have been watching WandaVision, the new Marvel series extending the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) that is exclusive to Disney Plus. The series is trying to unravel a mystery concerning Wanda Maximoff who was introduced to the MCU in the film Avengers: Age of Ultron and the sentient humanoid machine Vision, who was also introduced in Age of Ultron and was killed by Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War. 

Wanda and Vision had developed a relationship in those movies. In this TV series, Wanda and Vision are back together, recreating family life in various sitcom scenarios set in classic templates from sitcoms in various decades. The mystery is how this could have happened as Vision was dead, and Wanda had been absent for five years after the events of Avengers: Infinity War.

It's a very well-made series and I've been able to follow it despite not really knowing anything about the characters from their long-established histories in comics. However, I have been catching up on the MCU since starting to watch WandaVision. I had a week off work in February and watched Age of Ultron and the 3 Thor movies. Since then I have also watched Captain America:Civil War, Black Panther and Avengers:Infinity War.

Watching those films together really helps with the wider picture. I didn't remember how much Wanda and Vision featured in Captain America:Civil War, or how that film also operated as a prequel for Black Panther. Seeing the Wanda and Vision story arc across Age of Ultron - Civil War - Infinity War has really added to my enjoyment of the show. 

But the reason I'm writing about it is because of a line in the most recent episode, which was released on Friday - Episode 8.

In Episode 8 there is a flashback scene where Vision talks to Wanda about the loss of her brother. He is trying to understand the emotions she is feeling. 

Wanda explains that is feels like wave after wave comes crashing over her and she doesn't know if she can keep standing while they hit. Vision says that she will and then explained why with one of the most lovely descriptions of grief I've ever heard. He says

"But what is grief, if not love, persevering?"

That was one of those pieces of dialogue that really struck home with me. The Marvel writers have form for this. Eric Killmonger's defiant dying words in Black Panther is another such moment, and I have blogged before about the underlying theological implications of the depiction of deicide in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. 

This line took me unawares because in the last few weeks I have really been missing my Dad. I have been sorting out my stamp collection ahead of a presentation I am doing in a few weeks time and as I went through a small box of material that needs sorting I found a little trove of stuff that Dad gave me, complete with a data-packed note of where he had acquired the items 

There are no hard and fast rules about what triggers a little wave of grief and a renewed sense of loss. But it is comforting to think that those feelings are rooted in love more than anything else. Dad wrote those notes to accompany the things he gave me because he loved me. And I feel the way I do when I read them because I still love him. That is one of the hallmarks of love - that it perseveres. It is "stronger than death" as Song of Songs puts it. 

And my grief is love, persevering.

Missing football

Shrewsbury Town played away at Bristol Rovers today. It feels like they always play this game in February. I was at this fixture the past four seasons, but this year the travel restrictions due to the pandemic broke my attendance run.

Back in 2017, I went to this with my friends Steve and Sara. We met my Dad and my brother, Dave, at the ground. We all sat in the rickety temporary stand at one end of the ground protected from the elements by tarpaulin.

This was the game when beforehand a Bristol Rovers fan hilariously described Dad as being "stuck on transmit" - a story I told to open my tribute to dad at his funeral. (And it's still one of the best descriptions of him.)

In 2018 I drove over to the game on my own, and met Dad who had come down on the supporter's coach. I think that was the last league away game I went to with him. It was the season when Paul Hurst took Shrewsbury to the League One play-off final. Shrewsbury won at the Memorial ground for the first time in almost 50 years.

In 2019 the match was on Valentine's Day. My friend Stewart was my football sweetheart in Bristol. Stewart is the guy who succinctly summed up the Memorial Ground as looking like it had been built out of leftover bits of other sports stadia.

After the match in Bristol I drove straight to Barry for the evening kick off game there. I was very excited about achieving my first "twofer" - two games on the same day. But then the Jenner Park floodlights blew up, so it ended up being a "not-quite-twofer". I blogged about the frustration! 

And then last year the game was on Leap Day. It was the fifth Saturday game in my quest to see five Saturday games in February. I saw two more games that season before the pandemic hit and stopped me from attending any football matches since. I drove over with John, another Shrewsbury fan who lives in Cardiff.

Thinking about all these games I realised that although I miss watching football, what I really miss is going with people. I have shared a Memorial Stadium outing with several friends and family members over the past few years and those memories are all good ones, even if the results haven't been. In fact, the football is secondary to the memory-making.

Watching football gives opportunities to connect. It was something I shared with my dad. It's something I still share with my brother. Friends who don't normally support Shrewsbury have sat in the perilously creaky away stand in Bristol while the wind bit through us, for no other reason than that I would do it for them if they invited me to watch their team (and I have braved a few away ends with them).

The photos I picked to illustrate this blog post show my point. I have some photos of the game and the ground. But I prefer the photos of us. They capture what really matters about being at those games.

Bookblogging – introducing smupidity

In his very small book Machines Will Make Better Choices Than Humans, Douglas Coupland coins the word “smupidity”.  It’s a combination of smart and stupid.

He describes it thus:

“...people are generally far more aware than they ever were of all the information they don’t know. The weight of this fact overshadows huge advances made in knowledge accumulation and pattern-recognition skills honed by online searching.”

I have found that helpful when considering how people seem to leap into misinformation and obviously bogus conspiracy theories so readily. What the hard right misinformation channels and conspiracists offer is often a bizarrely simplistic world view underneath the complicated layers of untruth. 

At their heart conspiracy theories divide the world into goodies and baddies and claim the random unpredictable chaos of life is not random unpredictable chaos; it’s all planned. It’s similar to the comfort that people find in religion, which may be why religion has proved such fertile ground for conspiracy theories recently. There's congruence.

When people try and assign conspiratorial meaning into something unknown and frightening, like a worldwide pandemic, it’s their way of trying to assert control over a situation. 'Alternative facts' give the illusion of power. It’s smupidity, but it helps alleviate the weight of the unknown.