Sucker punch

Footie

Portsmouth and Cardiff are in the FA Cup final. Anthony, if you are reading this you'll want to read up on these teams because this is the match you will be watching when you and Maggie come to visit. Travelling several thousand miles only to find yourself watching soccer in a pub may seem a bit silly, but this is non-negotiable.

You will be supporting Cardiff City. This is equally non-negotiable. I'm not necessarily happy about it, but supporting the home team is a matter of health and safety in this country. In the United States, it is a cheeky thing to sit in a bar in one team's town and support the other team, but this isn't the United States; people here don't think it's funny to do that. They will hurt you on principle.

For those of you playing along at home, there's this game called soccer, which is really popular over here. They like soccer so much that their leagues and divisions mesh into an incongruous mess that forces the soccer season to be approximately 78 months long.

In America we are used to having ESPN tell us which teams are good, but here they expect you to actually watch loads of matches and figure this stuff out for yourself. I can't be arsed to do that. An easy cheat is to look at who is playing in the semi-final and final matches of three major competitions: the Champions League, the FA Cup and (to a lesser extent) the UEFA Cup.

Diehard soccer fans will split hairs with me on this statement, but that is because all diehard soccer fans are bound by the International Code of Diehard Football Supporters to disagree with anything anyone else says about the game. Bylaw 234 of the code also specifically states that anything an American says about the game should automatically be questioned, even when we make inarguable points like, "Soccer is played with a ball."

Anyway, the FA Cup is kind of big. In Britain (i.e., in competitions that take place solely within Britain), it is the biggest sporting event of the year. And now the two teams representing the cities that tie me emotionally to this country are set to take on one another on May 17.

I was wearing my old Portsmouth jersey as I sat in front of the television Saturday. I kept turning around and stupidly grinning at Rachel when strains of "Play up Pompey" could be heard over the BBC announcers.

"See?!" I wanted to say. "They really do that! Just like I said they do!"

Rachel wasn't bothered, and went upstairs to read. Mentally it appears West Brom did the same thing, defeated by Portsmouth's magical ability not to outplay them but simply bore them into complacency. But as Cardiff's Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink would remark the next day: "It's not how you do it, but that you do it."

Indeed, Cardiff adopted a similar strategy Sunday of playing slightly better than Barnsley, scoring a goal early and then just sort of running about for an hour. Or, at least, that's one interpretation. It really depends on who you were listening to how the match played out.

The Cardiff-Barnsley match wasn't on television, so I followed via the wireless (FTYPAH: "radio"). I started out listening to Five Live's coverage, featuring Alan "I hate David Beckham for no good reason" Green (a). The match was so boring to him that he started commenting on things outside the play, such as what he and the other announcer would be eating during halftime. At some point he looked across the broadcasters booth and spotted a fellow announcer, Malcolm, who was "doing commentary for the Cardiff crowd."

"My goodness, he's really worked himself up, hasn't he?" observed Green.

"I think he's speaking Welsh," said Green's co-announcer.

"Is he? Well, if you speak Welsh, you might want to switch over to listen to Malcolm, because he's clearly watching a match different to the one I'm watching."

So I switched over, and indeed, it was a different match. The same teams were playing, but in this competition Cardiff were not a mid-level Championship team and Barnsley were not close to relegation (b). Instead it was The Greatest Story Ever Told. Cardiff were Cúchulainn (c) against the English horde.

For amusement, I found myself switching back and forth between Five Live and Radio Cymru.

FIVE LIVE: "I'll be honest, with the exception of that goal by Ledley, the standard of play today has been really poor."

RADIO CYMRU: "Crushed in Watford (d), whipped in Toulouse (e), Swansea and Wrexham humiliated and heartbroken, this has been The Most Black Weekend for Wales. But now our Capitol City carries the hopes of a nation. After 81 years (f), Cardiff -- Wales -- are just 10 agonizing minutes from their chance to fight Portsmouth! Their chance -- our chance -- to defeat the English and take from them their cup!"

FIVE LIVE: "...Barnsley have really only had one flash of inspiration in this whole match. Anyway, we have been given by the producers an enormous tin of biscuits, which I can't imagine anyone could possibly consume in a single sitting..."

RADIO CYMRU: "Rise up! Rise up! Now is the time! Fe godwn ni eto! (g) Wales' moment of glory is at hand! We will defeat them! Providence is on our side! The Capitol City ushers in Cymru's Golden Age!"

OK, well, perhaps I'm exaggerating a bit. But the point is, in Welsh it was a much more exciting match. As the clock ticked toward 90 minutes, Radio Cymru's announcer became more and more rapturous. He was at times incoherent. My favourite moment came when the match's four minutes of added play were announced.

"Pedair munud! O, bobl bach! Pedair munud o artaith!" he screamed ("Four minutes! Oh, Jesus Joseph and Mary! (h) Four minutes of torture!").

Cardiff, the city that so many Welsh speakers are keen to disinherit, is now in the good books. This morning on Radio Cymru, First Minister Rhodri Morgan stated that a Cardiff City win would be more important than the Welsh rugby team's recent capturing of the Six Nations Grand Slam title. And other people were eager to suggest that Cardiff's prominence would be a boon for the Welsh language, despite the fact that Cardiff City can't spell its name in Welsh.

The next few weeks should be interesting as we get closer and closer to the actual match. I will be working on suppressing any natural desire to cheer for Portsmouth. I am resigned to jump on the Cardiff City bandwagon. Indeed, today I plan to buy a Cardiff City scarf. If you're going to superficially cheer a team simply because you don't want to get beat up by its supporters, you might as well do so in style.

-----

(a) I used to listen to England matches online when I lived in the United States, and one thing that struck me was Green's strange contempt for Beckham. Occasionally he would just blurt out, apropos of nothing: "And David Beckham has done nothing!"

(b) A beauty of the British system is that if your team is shit, it gets dropped to a lower division. Imagine if, after sucking it up for a year, the Miami Dolphins were dropped down play against college teams.

(c) Cúchulainn is a Celtic folk hero: A king who once fought off an entire army on his own.

(d) Welsh rugby team Ospreys were beaten 19-10 Sunday.

(e) Welsh rugby team Cardiff Blues were beaten 41-17 Sunday.

(f) Cardiff won the FA Cup in 1927.

(g) "We shall rise again." It is the motto of the comically inept Free Wales Army, a 1960s Welsh republican movement that was headed by a man authorities described as having "a mental age of about 12 years."

(h) That's a figurative translation. Literally, "bobl bach" means "little people." It is usually shouted in moments of frustration. I have always assumed it to have a folklore connection, cursing fairies (little people) for things going wrong.

Overheard in Cardiff city centre

SON: "I'm not being funny, Dad, but when you're shagging your girlfriend, answering the phone isn't really on your mind, like."
FATHER: "Yeah, you've got a point."

The things you learn from old ladies on buses

There is a street in Cardiff's Roath (a) neighbourhood named simply The Parade. It gets its name from the days when a girls' college was located on the eastern end of the road and a boys' college on the western end. The street was a popular place for the young men and women to see and be seen.

Similarly, parallel street The Walk served as a quieter area for the students to meet, and, in the words of the old lady who told me all this, "do more than look at one another."

(a) Roath, by the way, gets its name from the Irish word "ráth" (prosperity). The area was once home to an enormous Irish population. These days it is home to a load of students. I feel as if Cardiff lost something in that change.

Yr hen ddinas

This city is only as old as the stories that are told about it.

I learned recently that Cardiff was established by the Romans 1,952 years ago. Nobody appears to have been keeping records before the Romans showed, so as far as we know Caerdydd (a) is the oldest city (b) in Wales.

You wouldn't really know that from walking around. On the surface, Cardiff often resembles St. Paul, Minn., with its relatively wide and tree-lined streets, architecture that tends not to date back more than 150 years and ample parking. It is a city that Welsh people, Welsh speakers in particular, are often eager to dismiss. This modern, always changing, historyless place; it's not the REAL Wales.

Of course, in fact, it is. Like the real Wales -- whatever the hell that's supposed to mean -- it's history is hidden.

European History courses in the United States would often be better named as courses in "Things The British Have Done," such is their focus. So, the facts and histories of this island are not too unfamiliar. Except when it comes to Wales. We learned nothing of Wales in the United States.

But then I learned the language of this place no one's heard of and it's slowly revealed a vast expanse of literature and history. It's like poking your head into the ground and discovering one of those enormous underground caverns that you could build an A380" in. It's an awareness that leaves me feeling a bit like Nada in "They Live," walking around knowing that all around me, practically coming up from the ground, and unseen to everyone else, is this different culture/history.

Cardiff is like that. Its soul is veiled.

There are former Roman sites dotted all throughout the city, but few are identified as such. The most amusing one for me is the Roman fort that lies opposite the Cardiff Bay Retail Park (FTYPAH: "strip mall"). Turn one way, you see Ford Escorts queuing at the McDonald's drive-through, turn the other way and you see the work of people who laid the foundation of Western civilisation.

Cardiff has the largest concentration of castles of any city in the world. But you'll only find two of them in any tourist literature, with one of those being a castle that was torn down and reconstructed according to Victorian interpretation. The others are crumbling, or paved over by housing estates.

There used to be dozens of canals through the city. Hundreds of miles of railway. Roads have names that reflect a history hardly anyone knows. The original Welsh name for City Road is Heol y Plwca, which refers to the fact that when it marked the boundary of Cardiff it was where heretics were hanged.

In contrast, this city welcomed Britain's first Muslims. It rioted to keep the Irish out. Its history is rich but almost wholly unknown by its inhabitants.

I was thinking about all this last Tuesday as I sat eating my lunch in what used to be a church graveyard but in the last year has been converted into a lovely little square with benches and trees. There is a straight, neat row of old tombstones on one side of the square. Having lived here a year ago, I know that they didn't used to be so perfectly aligned like that. Presumably the subjects of the tombstones are still in their original spots -- beneath the workers and shoppers and tourists eating pasties and pork sandwiches.

There's something about this city. It's a hell of an interesting place if you can find someone who knows about it.

(a) "Caer" means "fort," and "dydd" means "day." Calling the place Day Fort doesn't seem to make sense, so the theory is that "dydd" is a bastardised version of either "Taf" (the river that runs through the heart of Cardiff) or of "Didius" (a Roman bloke who was governor of a nearby province).

(b) I'm using "city" in the philosophical sense here, obviously. As a city, Cardiff is only 102 years old. FTYPAH, the British are anal in their use of words like "city" and "village" and "town." The words are not as interchangeable as they are in the United States; you're only what the Queen says you are.

Oh, sweet irony

Here's a fun fact about the city in which I live:

In Cardiff city centre there is an old church that not many people pay attention to called St. John the Baptist, which has been there more or less since 1110. I say "more or less" because it underwent some major reconstruction after having been sacked by Welsh national hero Owain Glyndŵr in 1404.

Directly across the pedestrian walk from the church, no more than 15 feet from the church's main entrance, is a pub called... The Owain Glyndŵr.

What Does Running So Far Prove?

My latest column is out. My dad's favourite line is: "I love me some Powerade."

Unfortunately that line is a lie. They gave us Lucozade, but I felt it would slow the pace of the column to reference Lucozade and then have to explain that is a sports drink that is apparently for people who like to eat candy while running. Cripes that stuff is sweet.

I also didn't mention my time in the column, which was around 1:54. That's a few seconds more than I ran in Fargo a few years ago, but I'm not particularly bothered because I had been suffering a pretty bad cold in the week before. At the starting line I was still coughing like someone's granddad.

The run itself was enjoyable, winding from City Centre down to the Bay and then up into Bute Park. In my column, I make a bit more of Butetown than was actually the case. The boy I referenced in the column followed up his taunt with: "All day, my old son! All day!"

My guess is that he was simply shouting things for the sake of shouting.

Going up through Pontcanna was the best part, because there were people cheering us on in Welsh. My favourite supporter was a curly-haired girl who looked to be about 4 years old. She was jumping up and down and shouting, "Da iawn! Da iawn!" at the top of her lungs.

Unfortunately, the race was "organised" by retarded people, so the moments before and after the race were filled with frustration. I'll bet cash money that any one of the regular readers of this blog could have done a better job on just a day's notice than the mental midgets who apparently have been putting on this run for several years in a row.

Here's a question for you: If you had an event that some 10,000 people were attending, how many portable toilets would you have at the start line? If your answer is "more than 10" you are better qualified than the Cardiff Half Marathon fuckwits. All of the men simply pissed in the street. I saw several blokes making no effort to stand near a wall or bush or behind any sort of barrier. They were pissing in disdain.

The race ended within the walls of Cardiff Castle. There's a certain romanticism to that, but take a look at this aerial view of the castle grounds and tell me how many gates you see. That's right, two. Two gates.

So, here's another question: If you were using one of those gates to allow the thousands of people to stream into the castle grounds, that would leave you with how many exits? If one exit for 10,000 people sounds a bit silly to you, you are WAY ahead of the incompetent ass-hats that charged me £21 ($42) to take part in their clusterfuck. They were trying to use the other gate -- a space that is only about 8 feet wide -- to allow people both in and out.

Oh, but that's not all. They didn't ask the police to block off the road that runs in front of the castle. That left only the pavement as the method of dispersal. The pavement is probably 4 feet wide and on any given weekend (like this one) is usually crowded with tourists and shoppers.

Things came to a standstill inside the castle walls. Those of us who had finished the race found ourselves trapped -- exhausted, dehydrated, cold and not at all prepared to stand in a crowd for 40 fucking minutes. The child bride was close to fainting.

The organisers insist they'll learn from their mistakes, but these mistakes are so basic that they shouldn't have occurred. It's the sort of thing that may very well drive me to write a sternly worded letter to the Western Mail.

The Ghost of the Ice Cream Van

My latest column is out. Actually, it's been out since Tuesday, but I wasn't near a computer to post it. Random line from the column: "In Britain it is more acceptable to kick an old lady in the shins than design straight roads that are easy to navigate."

An open letter to Arriva Trains Wales

Dear Arriva Trains Wales,

Sometimes I feel very lonely and empty inside, and I want so very desperately to be held. I would like to thank you, therefore, for your utter incompetence when it comes to serving the needs of your customers.

Your morning- and afternoon-commute trains are so packed with people that they are physically pressed up against one another. Twice a day I can experience a level of intimacy that would usually require my buying dinner for someone, at the very least.

Even better, I often have multiple partners. Why, just the other day I found myself delighting in the warm embrace of five slightly largish women on the way from Cathays to Radyr. That kind of action would normally cost a fortune in Amsterdam, or require me to join a religious cult, but on Arriva trains it can be had for as little as £1.10. Actually, my experience was free! Your train was so crowded the conductor couldn't walk down the aisles to sell anyone a ticket.

Thanks Arriva Trains Wales. You're the best.

XOXO,
Chris Cope

The Faiwater/Danescourt peace accord falls apart

In Hemingway's A Farewell To Arms, it mentions that fighting in World War I was mostly seasonal. Once the weather got bad, the armies pretty much held up and sat still for the winter -- or at least those armies attempting to invade Italy from the Alps.

The fireworks have started up in Danescourt again. The sound of them going off in the distance and echoing against all the brick houses makes me think of the background noise when war correspondents are holed up in the hotels.

I always find it amusing to think that chavs are taking part in some sort of wild running battle for control of Cardiff. I'm pretty sure we would be safe in such a scenario because we are nowhere near the KFC.

Pontcanna Barbers

Here's my top tip for getting your hair cut in another country: just accept whatever they give you.

The fact is, over the past several decades British people have been getting haircuts that are on the whole slightly different than those that the majority of Americans have been getting. So, if you go in and be very specific in asking them to cut your hair just like they used to atGreat Clips, your instructions will be diligently ignored and you will end up with something that is almost but not entirely unlike the thing you asked for. So, your best bet is to instead focus on finding a place where you like the people who are cutting your hair in whatever fashion they please.

When I lived in Portsmouth, I always went to a barbershop that was located in the train station. The two guys running the place had thick Mancunian ("from Manchester," FTYPAH*) accents, so I generally never understood a word of what they were saying. But they were friendly enough and they seemed to think I was a comedy genius for once having made fun of Thunder and they only charged £5.

In Cardiff, my place of choice is Pontcanna Barbers on Cathedral Road. Every time I go there, I feel good for the rest of the day.

It's your basic old-school single-room barber shop, with four black and shiny silver barber chairs on one side of the room and a row of wooden seats for waiting customers on the other side. Scattered on the seats are always the day's tabloids, all opened to the sports section. It would simply be some sort of weird throwback but for the all-female staff. Dressed in all black, they give the whole thing that sort of hip feel that Gen-Xers are so desperate to achieve in everything they do. Except that here it feels authentic.

I don't know if anyone in Wales uses the phrase Gen-Xers, and of those who know what it means, I'd wager that very few of them give a toss (FTYPAH: "very few care"). A good thing about Britain is that once you move beyond university level age differences and the application of generational titles tend to fade away.

The barbers use straight-edge razors, rather than clippers, to trim edges, which strikes me as particularly hardcore. And they use talcum powder! They use a little horsehair brush to put talcum powder on your neck when they're done cutting your hair. I don't think I've been to a barbershop that does that since I was 5 years old and got dragged to my grandfather's barber shop. I keep waiting for them to give me a piece of Dubble Bubble gum.

What really sells it, though, is the fact that they act totally surprised when you give them a tip and they always say goodbye. I'm a simple and sappy man, I know, but having them all chime "bye, love, take care," as I'm leaving is the ego equivalent of suddenly stepping into brilliant sunshine**.

*Bryan suggested I shorten the phrase "for those of you playing along at home" to an acronym. I think this one works best because it can be pronounced: "fitty-pah."

**In an effort to sound all intellectual and stuff, I was going to reference Robert Frost's "Dust of Snow." I had always interpreted it to be a poem about how tiny things that can shake you out of extreme misery, but I am shit with poetry, so I could be way off.

The happiest chav

Every once in a while in my daily travels of this fine city I run into a bloke with an Eminem-style haircut who's missing a front tooth. He is most often to be seen wearing a dark blue shell suit ("track suit" for those of you playing along at home) and talking on one of two mobile phones that he carries everywhere. Most of the time he's having a conversation with someone who doesn't understand a word he's saying: "No, right, I gottih inuh pos. Wha? I say I gottit in nuh pos. In the post. The package I got. No, I got it in the post. No, mate. I got the package IN THE POST."

The way he speaks, stands, smokes, walks and dresses, he is as chav as the pope is Catholic. But here's the thing: he's a really friendly fellow. He is the happiest, friendliest chav that ever there was.

Usually I see him on the train or bus and he will say hello and have a quick chat with me about the weather. Then he will talk to old people about what they're doing that day, then the bus driver about sport. It always baffles me how congenial and strangely likeable he is.

I have decided, in fact, that he is the chav Jesus.

On the train this morning, some ass-hat came charging onto the train at Ninian Park in that "I'm really angry and I want everyone to know because somehow that makes me a man" way, and sat down across from the Chavenly Host.

"Rugby weather, innt?" said the chav, attempting to strike up a conversation.
"Fuck you. Where the fuck are you from?" said angry man.
"'Ere."
"Here? Where's fuckin' 'ere?"
"Cardiff."
"You're fucking (wearing a Manchester United Football Club logo on your shell suit)."
"Me mum's from Manchester."
"You're not from fucking Manchester, then."
"Me mum is."
"Where?"
"Dunno."
"YOU'RE NOT FROM FUCKING MANCHESTER! YOU'RE FROM FUCKING CARDIFF!"

At about this point I thought: "Oh, this is one of those moral tests to see whether I will pitch in or whether I will sit back and do nothing, thus allowing society to spiral further out of control until Britain becomes some kind of rainy Darfur."

So, I decided that if angry man attempted to physically attack the happiest chav, I would do the right and decent thing and drive my keys into his face as hard as I could.

And where was Craigy Bach?! The Conservatives talk tough, but when it comes to defending good-natured chavs on trains they're happy to leave the dirty work to the Americans. As usual.

Although, I have to admit that I was able to come to my decision so easily in part because the happiest chav is quite large -- about 6-foot-7. It's a good bet that if angry man had attempted to start a fight, he would have been unconscious before I arrived with my handful of keys.

This is a fact that may have occurred to angry man, as well, because in the time it took me to decide on what to do he had mellowed almost completely; he and the happiest chav were chatting amiably about their predictions for the Manchester United - Reading replay match. The happiest chav hadn't raised his voice, he had just carried on being amiable and had managed to defuse the situation. It was a moment of magic.

Dydd Mercher

Thanks to everyone for the encouragement, in relation to my whinging post from Monday. I am always making vows to myself that I am going to stop complaining, but I'm apparently not very good at keeping promises.

It was a brilliant day here in Europe's youngest capital city* -- the sun was shining and I threw open the windows as soon as I got home -- so my mood was a little better than it has been over the past few weeks. I remain in over my head in university and my feelings about that manifest themselves in numerous ways. But today felt alright.

My Spanish courses are usually an ego boost because I have that inherent understanding of the language that comes from so many years of thinking all kinds of naughty things about Daisy Fuentes. My translation teacher inadvertently provided me with a good name for a band: The False Friends. Alternately, of course, one could go with Los Amigos Falsos.

Without any Welsh courses to cripple my good spirits, I was free for the day by 1 p.m. I walked from campus down Museum Avenue along Cathays Park and past City Hall on my way to City Centre. I decided I will probably take my parents down the same route when they come to visit in early April. It runs past some of Cardiff's nicer buildings and then takes the most posh route possible into City Centre -- the one that goes past the Cardiff Hilton and Slug and Lettuce pub (that's right, bitches -- we've got a Hilton and a Slug and Lettuce).

I bought a pasty from Cornish Bakehouse (the pasties there are so good that they're almost worth the trip to Cardiff in and of themselves [depending on where you're coming from, obviously]) and walked down to the temporary location of the Central Library to return a Mihangel Morgan novel that I had only managed to read 22 pages of.

As I was walking, I thought about what I had expected of Cardiff before coming here. For some reason, I had expected it would be a lot like Dublin, which is a city that is also not what I had expected.

In another classic example of my sheltered American upbringing causing me to have hilarious misconceptions about places, subconsciously some part of me was expecting Dublin to be a gritty Hogarthian London where all the blokes wore leather jackets, like Brad Pitt in "The Devil's Own," and I would run the risk of getting punched in the face for being a Methodist.

Dublin is gritty; the River Liffey, which runs through the city, is charcoal black. Along its banks there are several posts with life preservers that one could toss to a poor soul that has fallen in; I think those life preservers should be replaced with sniper rifles. Because if someone's fallen into the Liffey, the best thing you can do for them is just put them out of their misery. But the feel of the city is actually very European and cosmopolitan.

It's got its fair share of chavs ("skangers" in Dublin terminology, I think), but it's got some really nice bits, as well. On the night that the child bride and I met up with Donal, Elisa, Isobel, Linus, and others, I was struck by the fact that as we walked through the city centre there were loads of buskers ("street musicians" for those of you playing along at home) about. There were enough people wandering around at 11 p.m., and enough of them weren't drunken assclowns, that it was actually viable for people to sit there and sing James Morrison tunes to passers-by.

Some part of me decided then that Cardiff, Europe's Youngest Capital City, would be similar. But not so much. It's a little cleaner and brighter than Dublin, but unless fully intoxicated chavs from Pontypridd are your idea of European culture, it lacks somewhat. That doesn't stop it from trying, though. It's got its Cafe Quarter and Bay, and all throughout City Centre there are statues reminiscent of those in Dublin. But whereas Dublin gets a statue of a woman with an amazing rack, we get a bloke with fucking huge fists**.

A new Cardiff Central Library is being built at the moment, so it temporarily exists in a load of white worksite buildings. Never having gone to the old Central Library, I can't say for sure, but this temporary site seems to only contain a "best of" from the library's collection. As a result, I was unable to find any history or criticism of Académie française, which I need to form the crux of a paper I'm writing in Welsh -- the outline of which is due on Monday. Sadly, the university libraries are just as useless (or, perhaps there search engines are just as useless). After paying 48p for the pleasure of having held on to Morgan's Dirgel Ddyn for too long, I headed to Cardiff Central train station.

Platform 7 faces the afternoon sun, so I took a certain joy in having to wait 20 minutes for the train to Danescourt. I just sat on a bench and stared out across the Brains brewery and tried to forget about all the things that are frustrating me these days. I thought about summer and how Platform 7 is packed on hot days -- full of charming British youth heading off to Barry Island to drink cider and swear unnecessarily and serve as the living defeat of any argument that Britons are more cultured than anyone. Summer seems like it will be a long time; almost four months of my not being required to do anything. I am planning to write a book in that time, but I may just spend four months weeping -- this semester is challenging and I know things are only going to get more difficult.

Of course, I do myself no favours by taking a several hours to write really long blog posts...

*Like Americans, the Welsh enjoy coming up with ridiculous phrases that are supposed to sound impressive, but aren't really. The way that Minnesota is "the Land of 10,000 Lakes," Cardiff is "Europe's Youngest Capital City." In both cases, the statements are blatantly untrue. Minnesota has more than 10,000 lakes and Cardiff's becoming a capital city in 1955 easily predates the capital cities created by the break up of the Soviet Union.

**We love fists.

Snow days

If you read pretty much any blog based in the UK you'll know by now that we got snow this week. Those of you playing along at home are thinking: "OK, and?"

That's it. We got snow. Dear Lord, we got snow. In Minnesota, this would have been the type of snow one could knock off a windshield ("windscreen" for those of you playing along over here) with one hand; most people wouldn't even bother to put on their gloves. Here, though, snow is a big thing that means locking all the doors and refusing to go to work. On Thursday and Friday, Rachel was told to stay home from work*, allowing plenty of time for reading and Yahtzee. I foolishly wasted my time by attempting to go to classes.

The train tracks run just a few yards from the house and I'm able to hear the trains when they shuffle by. On Thursday, much to my surprise, they were running on time (when I say "on time" what I mean, of course, is "not more than 20 minutes late"), so I thought perhaps that the rest of Cardiff would be up and running and headed off to classes.

The snow made for an unusually jubilant mood amongst the Arriva's regular sufferers passengers. In the picture above, the Danescourt platform looks abandoned, but there are, in fact, 6-8 people squeezed into the shelter on the right -- all of them laughing and chatting, in contrast to the usual mode of staring bleakly at the tracks.

Of the four lectures I had on Thursday, three were cancelled. On campus the kids were walking as if gravity could no longer be trusted -- holding onto railings, walls, trees, and just about anything else in an effort to stay put. Walking by them made me feel as if I was in that Monty Python sketch where they attempt to ascend the high street ("main street" for those of you playing along at home).

And I am apparently one of less than a dozen Cardiff University students who have managed to figure out that when it's cold, you should put on a coat. There were a shockingly large number of boneheaded fellas attempting to walk around in their pansy pastel polo shirts (it is fashionable at the moment for guys to wear light yellow, light blue and pink shirts -- I'm not buying. It is also stupidly popular to wear clothing with Americana things written on it, e.g., "Joe's Cafe." The other day, I really did see a bloke wearing a shirt that said simply: "CENTERFIELDER"), their hands shoved in their pockets, desperately trying to pretend to one another that the first stages of frostbite weren't setting in.

*Remember kids, you want to study extra hard so that one day you can grow up to work for the National Public Health Service; they treat their employees rather well.

She's lying

The other day, for reasons unexplained, the following announcement got stuck on repeat in the train from Danescourt to Queen Street:

"An out-seat service of light refreshment is available on this train, serving a selection of hot and cold drinks and snacks. A steward will be passing through the train shortly."

This was repeated nonstop for approximately eight minutes. This was accompanied first by the conductor shouting out from the back, "She's lying! Pay no mind to that," and then several minutes of banging noises as he tried to figure out how to shut off the tannoy ("public address system"" for those of you playing along at home).

I found it amusing that the train was even equipped with that announcement. You're lucky to get doors that shut properly on most Arriva trains, let alone some bloke shilling hot chocolate and crisps.

A post that was supposed to be a year-in-review thing but sidetracked to music and the wealthy Indian family across the tracks

Young Amy Winehouse is an odd duck, isn't she?

The child bride and I spent a quiet evening in Sunday. I realise it's not very sexy to spend New Year's Eve watching television but it was actually a much more enjoyable experience than you might think.

For one thing, it had been an exhausting year. In 2006 we lived in three different homes, three different cities, and two different countries; and at least since May we have been in an almost constant state of movement and stress. We are immersed in debt. The depression that gripped me in October/November/December was arguably one of the worst I've had in my life. A New Year's Eve spent keeping our heads down was actually very appealing.

Also, God seemed relatively against the idea of our going out. Weather forced cancellations of New Year's celebrations in Liverpool, Newcastle, Belfast, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. Calennig went on as planned in Cardiff but in some pretty shit weather. It rained all day Sunday, with strong winds generally convincing Rachel and me that our house was lovely, thank you. We felt vindicated when it started hailing at midnight.

And we would have had to get to and from city centre on foot because none of the buses that run anywhere near the Cope Estate (25, 33, 62, 122) were running on the holiday. It's not too awful a walk -- about two miles -- but the bit about walking in a gale made me tired just to think about.

Underline all this with the fact that I figured out on Saturday how to dramatically improve the reception to our television (I finally connected it to the aerial).

So, we watched Jools Holland's Hootenanny. For those of you playing along at home, Jools is some random bloke who looks a lot like Kevin Wicks off EastEnders and appears to have restless leg syndrome. He is shit at interviewing people but had several good guests, among them the aforementioned Ms. Winehouse.

The U.S. version of iTunes doesn't sell Amy Winehouse, so it's possible that you haven't heard of her. She's your archetypal talented person who has managed to trainwreck her life before hitting her mid-20s. Congratulations, Amy, you're shite at living. American journalists would refer to her as the live-fast-die-young-leave-a-good-looking-corpse type, but her anorexia means she's already missed the bus on that last bit. The end result is that she's a tremendous singer, but you have to keep your eyes shut if she's on telly.

Staying with the odd-duck-singers-who-don't-look-like-they-sound theme, Madeleine Peyroux was also on the show. If you don't know who she is, you are letting the terrorists win. The interesting thing about her is that she looks like somebody's sister. She may very well be someone's sister, but I mean that she's got the look of someone who's singing exposure would normally consist of performing her sister's wedding: "I know you don't want to stand for a long time, but, I was thinking we could ask Madeleine to sing 'Our Love Crosses the Ocean' at the service."

Another highlight of the evening was my wife suggesting that Ray LaMontagne is, in fact, me in a parallel universe.

"A parallel universe where I have talent?" I asked.

"No. One where you can grow a beard."

In addition to the hail at midnight, we were also treated to a massive 15-minute fireworks display by the crazy wealthy Indian family that live across the train tracks. I'm not sure if I've mentioned them before. In the summer, they once had a live bhangra band playing in their garden until 3 a.m.

Here's a satellite view of my neighbourhood. Just to the left of the green arrow, you'll see a fucking great house that is right next to the tracks. Its garden ("back yard" for those of you playing along at home) would fit both my house and garden eight times over.

Admittedly there is something particularly amusing about a family that flaunts its wealth with live bhangra bands and full-on fireworks displays. Perhaps I will write them into a Penhill and Sneaveweedle story.