Caravan Notes

Cath and I ventured down to Tresaith for a long weekend at the caravan. We dropped Ava off with the grandparents in Swansea en route (oi, no French) on the way.

The weather on Saturday was wild – howling gales and horizontal rain. The caravan is very snug though, and its great to watch the white-capped waves crashing in whilst tucked in the warm.

Sunday and Monday were huge improvements though, we even had sunshine. Spent most on Sunday at the Ship Inn in Tresaith with the Sunday lunch and the Sunday papers. Peaceful. Wonderful.

It was great to have a quiet weekend away, but it was great to pick up little Ava this afternoon though.

TV Notes

After the deluge of the Olympics comes the new rugby and NFL seasons. Together with the looming baseball playoffs, there’s little time for any other TV.

Family Guy is a terrific half-hour though, a grown-up improvement on The Simpsons. And its fun to spot the similarities between Ava and Family Guy’s Stewie Griffin.

Re-runs of The West Wing and Armstrong & Miller are pretty much the ony other things worth watching.

Rugby Notes

Ebbw Vale opened the season with a 6-6 draw with Bedwas. As I wasn’t there I’ll leave the report up to RS on the Ebbw Vale RFC website.

There are video clips on YouTube, courtesy of EyeJay.

There were a few new faces on show. To the best of my knowledge, there were three debutants in the XV: full back Andrew Williams, and centres Peter Smith and Shaun Powell.

Scorers: One penalty apiece for Dai Langdon and Andrew Williams.

Team: Andrew Williams, Andrew Bevan, Peter Smith, Shaun Powell, James Lewis, David Langdon, Llyr Lane (captain); Aaron Coundley, Richard Wilkes, Anthony Lott, Will Jones, Will Thomas, James Thomas, Rhys Williams, Rhys Jenkins.

Next Saturday Ebbw Vale play at Bridgend, 2:30 kick off.

Weather Notes

Its been raining again today. Makes a change. Good for the gardens. Etc, etc.

The rain in Pontypridd ends up mostly in the Taff. Which is rising rapidly and looks almost certain to break its banks in Trefforest. The roads all look like rivers and driving causes a bow wave.

The 10 mile trip back from Blackwood to Ponty took over an hour this afternoon, with the A470 down to one lane and several roads closed due either to flooding or retaining walls being washed away.

Houses nearby, tucked underneath the Common in Pontypridd, have water going in the back door and coming out of the front.

Here’s the latest from the BBC. The forecast is for more of the same. From now until doomsday.

Groundwork Notes

In my spare time I’m a trustee (board member) of Groundwork Caerphilly.

Groundwork uses the labels People, Places and Prosperity to structure their work:

• People is about creating opportunities for more people to learn about and become committed to taking action for the environment whilst, at the same time, realising their personal potential and building strong local neighbourhoods.
• Places is about creating better, safer, healthier and more environmentally sustainable neighbourhoods for people to live and work in.
• Prosperity is about training for work, stimulating local social enterprise, and working with the local business community to integrate business competitiveness and environmental responsibility.

And yesterday evening was the chance to visit some of the work that Groundwork Caerphilly is currently doing. We visited:

• A sensory garden at Markham’s Adult Resource Centre
• A community spaces project at St Sannan’s Church in Bedwelty
• Canal improvements and Penniless Corner redevelopment in Cross Keys and
• Waunfawr Park.

We also held launched a horticultural volunteering programme on a site on top of the mountain above Cwmfelinfach. In the rain. Still, the views across the valley were amazing, and we will all go back in 12 months time to see the progress. Good luck to Matt and everyone involved.

Weather Notes

OK, since it looks like it’ll keep on raining forever, these instructions may come in handy…

Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.

And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.

A cubit is roughly 18 inches, so you're looking at a ship about 450 feet long by 75 feet wide, and about 45 feet high.

And, no, I don't know what "gopher wood" is.

Rugby Notes

It’s the start of the season on Saturday, and its Ebbw Vale at home to Bedwas. I’ve gone and bought my season ticket (VP, natch), but I won’t be there. It’s the last chance for a long weekend at the caravan down in Tresaith.

As always, team news, previews and reviews and the peerless REL can all be found on the Ebbw Vale RFC website.

Good luck for Saturday to Kristian and the boys. In my absence I hope someone on the bank will pick up the traditional call to be made at the first blow of the whistle of the first game of the year: “All the time, ref!”

This week's sign of the apocalypse

You woudn't have thought it would be too difficult to get a guy from npower to come and service our boiler. After all, its what they do.

Yet today marked the second time they they have failed to do so. The first time the guy failed to find the house. So I wasn't full of hope today.

The engineer rang to confirm this morning. I gave him instructions on how to find the house, and he said he'd be here between 1 and 3. So I set off to work whilst Janesey is poised to meet the guy at the appointed hour.

3 o'clock rolls around & no sign. So I ring npower. They'll look into it and ring back. They don't. At 3.40 I ring again. The call centre guy gets in touch with the engineer and reports back "he's been outside your house for 30 minutes".

Whilst I am trying to persuade the call centre guy that its unlikey, even by npower standards, that the engineer would have stood outside the door for 30 minutes without thinking to knock the door (the traditional method of announcing yourself), the engineer rings my mobile phone to tell me that he's arrived!

npower rumbled. By this time I have to break the news thats all too late since Cath has to go and pick up Ava from creche. And so we have to start again another day. My heart sinks.

Why does it have to be this difficult?

Travel Notes

I've had a parking space at work for the summer, but now I'm back on the train every day. Frankly, the parking space isn't the issue; its the traffic. The A470 and Cardiff city centre are back to the post-summer-hols chaos. And its only going to get worse on the run up to Crimbo.

(As an aside, my mate Robbo has got a Cristmas countdown clock on his blog. OMG.)

So I'm back on the trains. Its been interesting working out a new plan in the mornings now that I drop Ava at the creche in Rhydyfelin in the mornings. At the moment I use Trefforest station, but when the students come back they'll nick all the parking spaces.

£4.10 return is pretty reasonable for the train when compared to £3 (at least) to park in Cardiff plus the petrol and aggro involved in getting there.

Olympic Notes

Watched more of these Olympics than most. I guess being up at the crack with little A has meant breakfast Olympics on the Beeb has been the daily routine.

High spots –
1. Michael Phelps and his eight gold medals from week 1.
2. Usain Bolt and his three gold medals from week 2.
3. Some fantastic swearing from the sailors – well, what do you expect them to say straight after winning a gold medal. “I’m f***ing happy” sums it up pretty well.
4. Adrian Chiles, who didn’t know much about most of the sports, but didn’t profess to, unlike the other ‘commentators’.
5. Steve Ovett, one of the very few analysts who gave realistic assessments of the British athletes’ chances.
6. Handball. What a cool sport. A cross between basketball, soccer and mugging.
7. The great women’s high jump competition.
8. The Aussies’ view of the British success - we won our medals in sports that involve sitting down (sailing, rowing, cycling).

Low spots –
1. British athletics. Phillips Idowu and others were highly touted but failed to deliver. And learn to pass the baton, people.
2. Andy Murray. Again.
3. Paula Radcliffe. Not fit enough to compete. The world breathed a sigh of relief when she went over to the barrier and only needed to stretch.
4. The dismal coverage of the tennis, basketball, or indeed any sport that didn’t feature a Brit doing well.
5. Inane interviews with athletes just as they finish the race. You are not going to get any great comments there, are you?
6. A Chinese bias in the judges’ scoring in too many sports.
7. The endless opening and closing ceremonies. Why?

Overall, great fun. I might even try to get tickets for the 2012 games in London.

Train Notes

Here is another story of how common sense and long-term planning appear not to exist.

In re-opening the Ebbw Vale train line, someone did an estimate of passenger numbers, almost certainly without asking the likely users of such a service. And then they built a service which could just about manage to serve their guestimate of 22,000 passengers - a decision was made to provide just three miles of double track instead of nine. That’s enough for an hourly service but with no possibility to add services without further substantial investment.

So now we have a situation where double that number of people is using the train, and they can’t run extra trains because they didn’t put enough dual track to allow any more trains to use the line.

Genius.

Eisteddfod Notes

So the 2010 National Eisteddfod is to be hosted by Blaenau gwent, and held at the old steelworks site in Ebbw Vale. Good news for the area. All they need to do now is actually find some Welsh speaking locals. My count of Welsh-speaking locals runs to 2, RS and Ray.

Lego Notes

Some people clearly have too much time on their hands. This Lego verion of the Beatles album is just one of a whole bunch of LP covers here.

There’s also the fight scene from The Bourne Ultimatum recreated in Lego here. Wonderful, and what tinternet is really for.

Ava's Diary

Me in my new high chair. Very comfy too.

Ava's Diary

Where to start? It’s been ages since my last update. There’s simply been so much going on that I haven’t had time to post here on my dad’s blog.

Anyway, a few highlights from the last few weeks:

I’ve had a cold this week, so that meant having a day off crèche with a bit of a temperature. I’m going to crèche three days a week now, Wednesday to Friday. Its good fun too: I get to play with lots of other babies and toddlers and the staff take good care of me. Dad usually drops me off on the way to work and mum picks me up.

My cold has meant that I haven’t been sleeping very well at night, so mum and dad are knackered. They reckon I’m starting teething too – I don’t know about that, I just like drooling!

We all went for a picnic last Saturday down in Ponty Park. We sat under a big willow tree by the bandstand and chilled out for the afternoon. Then last Sunday we went to Nanna Ena’s and had lunch in the garden. Then I watched while everyone did some gardening. Mum says I’ll be able to help out with the gardening soon.

A fortnight ago we all went to stay with Aunty Lou & Uncle Dave (Aunty Lou is an old college friend of mum’s, so not an aunt at all) and Emily & Tess Egg. Oh, and their four pet rats, which were cuter than rats really should be. Karen and Ray stayed too so the house was very full. I was the centre of attention. Uncle Dave did a barbeque and everyone drunk too much.

I gave everyone a scare a few weeks ago. I vomited and went very pale. Mum and dad took me to the ‘out of hours’ clinic at the Royal Glamorgan hospital, where I proceeded to throw up in the waiting room. That seemed to shift it because by the time a doctor saw me I was fine & gave him a big smile.

I went down to the doctor’s surgery for a check up and to be weighed last week. I’m now 14lbs 10oz. Which they say is bang on target for a growing baby almost 7 months old.

Oh, and I’ve finally started growing some hair. Phew! I was worried I was going to be like Grandpa!

I'm looking forward to seeing my cousins Robert and Emma from the USA. They're flying in next week to see me for the first time, along with their parents Uncle Tony and Aunty Heather.