Alternative Olympics

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics might well be postponed, but for sports lovers suffering through the corona crisis lockdown there is good news… the Bin Store Roof Games have still managed to take place, and here is a highlight from the blue riband 3 metre sprint competition.

Squirrell [2]

Until we speak again, the competitors are lining up for the 6 metre breast stroke swimming competition…

Ducks at 14 [2]

 

Premier League unplugged [19]

Take a picture of this… it’s August 2018, and most football pundits have Cardiff City FC as favourites to finish bottom of the Premier League come May 2019, well adrift of all other teams. Wind forward to today (May 2019), and Cardiff are in 18th position, with both Hudderfield Town and Fulham well adrift below them.

Two matches to go, and the mighty Bluebirds need a maximum 6 points from winning both if they are to retain a desire to remain in the Premier League for next season.

Until we speak again, it was fun while it lasted, but the final score is Cardiff City 2 Crystal Palace 3, with the inevitable outcome…

Down the pan

Premier League unplugged [14]

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Well, she could have waited until after we played Watford FC (aka The Hornets)!

Here were the mighty Bluebirds, on the back of a two consecutive Premier League wins and a two week rest. Now ready to take on a good Watford FC team, but one that we need to be winning or at least drawing against, if that is, we have aspirations to be playing them again next season in the Premier League.

Until we speak again, all self-respecting Bluebirds fans should look away now… final score: Cardiff City 1 Watford 5 (yes… FIVE). I can still hear Juno purring with laughter at the thought of a bunch of birds being tormented and played with by a bunch of hornets.

Premier League unplugged [12]

“It’s a funny old game…” is probably one of the most used cliches about football. So, here we are, it’s January, and the two teams that have been odds on favourites to be relegated from the Premier League from before the season started meet at the Cardiff City Stadium, in what most pundits believe will be a game from the…

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Not much to laugh about when Cardiff City and Huddersfield Town met in Yorkshire back in August… and two teams firing plenty of blanks so far suggests a repeat result of…

th

Until we speak again, funnier things have certainly happened, and surprise surprise as it ends Bluebirds 0 Marker Pens 0!

Premier League unplugged [10]

It’s the return of the…

RoostersBFA

 

As Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, a former Cardiff City manager and Manchester United player returns to the Cardiff City Stadium as the temporary Manchester United manager. Most of the locals probably wished he had stayed in a Norwegian fjord for a week longer…

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Until we speak again, this Christmas will be enjoyed more by the baby-faced assassin than the cadavers of Cardiff! The less said about the final score the better [1-5].

[Acknowledgements to ‘the beer boy blogspot’ for the can image, and whatsnew2day.com for the Ole Gunnar Solskjaer photo].

Premier League unplugged [6]

Enough said in the press across the previous week, so what can possibly be added to the tributes and out-pouring of feelings for five tragic deaths? Well… Bluebirds were out-foxed in the game of grief (i.e. personal loss for the away team, and skill loss for the home team!).

Leicester pre match

Until we speak again, apparently Cardiff City FC were reported to be a class act across the previous week in their approach to this emotionally difficult game. Shame that wasn’t converting to the on-pitch performances! For the record the home club were very generous to their grieving competitors bequeathing them a 0-1 win.

Messing about in boats

News reports of Bank Holiday traffic chaos are simply music to my ears. No, I really don’t care. There are too many cars clogging up and polluting our planet, with most car drivers firmly of the belief that they own the road and have exclusive rights to travel and park wherever they want whenever they want. Audacity reigns as a response to the merest slight against their pre-eminence.

Combust all thee engines; and may your occupants become gasket-challenged! I personally have my own advantage in this scramble for serene holiday bliss. A whole 15 minutes of walking brings me to a place of tranquility…

2017 [2]

As the Cardiff leg of the International Extreme Sailing Championship takes place right on my doorstep on the August Bank Holiday…

2017 [1]

2017 [3]

So, for those of you recovering from the experience of boiling over with the raging curses of the tarmac, here is a peaceful few minutes to contemplate the rush of the breeze, the chop of the water, and an elegance of movement…

Until we speak again, chill out people!

Don’t mess with Valleys Girls!

So, there I was, a bedraggled and tired travelling cat arriving home from a fabulous trip to the USA. When all of a sudden I am metaphorically arrested by a sight that would send so many Americans into rapturous delight…

Police woman with gun

Why, in American culture there are those who believe in the right that this is what every city street should look like. As for me, in my addled brain, all I could muster as a fleeting thought was an old mantra for self-respecting city cats, Don’t mess with Valleys Girls!”

So, what was going on here? I like the implied message, but couldn’t see how it was meant to be a homecoming for me…

Welcome banner

However, the image did bring to mind the old saying: “lift up any pony tail, and what you’ll find beneath is a horses ass!”, Best be careful who you aim that description at; after all, “Don’t mess with Valleys Girls!”

In the meantime, it seems like all roads home are blocked off…

Tyndall Street

Lloyd George Avenue

Could it be preparations for the stilettoed hordes descending on the city for a long weekend of perma-tanned indiscretion? If so, then the advancing mob above are surely unwittingly walking into a psychodrama beyond their wildest imaginations. After all, “Don’t mess with Valleys Girls!”

It seems that the ‘lionesses of liquor’ have already set up a roll-call of their preferred end of night play-things, with the castle walls providing a historic backdrop for contemporary fantasies. If you don’t want to end up strung up on the battlements, “Don’t mess with Valleys Girls!”

Castle

As it turns out, there was a simple explanation for all this metropolitan malarkey… it was the small matter of the biggest sporting event on the planet this year happening just around the corner from home. As much as I have fantasised about Cardiff City FC going to the Champions League Final, it could be a long wait; so the Champions League Final had come to Cardiff City! For the victors, the spoils, and the opportunity to kiss ‘old big ears’ (affectionate name for the trophy, not one of the belles of bedlam).

Modric jubilant

Until we speak again, all I can advise Luca Modric in the image above, is kiss the metal by all means fella, but “Don’t mess with Valleys Girls!”

Mugwump logic

I thought a mugwump was somebody independent of politics, or if you look at US literature it’s a Native American reference to a leader. So, thanks to the peroxide poser in the Foreign Office, the fashion for political soundbites leaves us with more heat than light.

White cat blue eyes

Careful who you’re calling a peroxide poser! I’ve got your bluebirds in my sight.

The current reference is prefaced with ‘mutton-headed’ and directed at the so-called leadership of the Labour Party. And, on the back of such confidence, the leader of the expected all-conquering English Tories heads into the Labour heartlands of Wales, gunning to take a Tory victory for the first time in 100 years or more. Political skies are looking grey wherever Labour supporters look…

Gloomy skies

But, surely the king mugwump isn’t going to lose one of his few remaining heartlands? This is Wales we are talking about. They don’t play Men of Harlech before each home match at the Cardiff City Stadium for nothing… with it’s line of ‘Welshmen never yield’ there is a strong message to any English insurgents.

Which brings me to the last home match of the season, as the marauding Geordies of Newcastle bring the largest away contingent… Magpies nesting at the home of the Bluebirds! Talking of peroxide posers… Newcastle United playing in anything other than their famous black and white stripes is unbelievable; but surely any mugwumps in blue are ready to repel the English confidence…

City v Newcastle

They might have already been promoted to the Premier League, but a Newcastle contingent in a mood to party were hardly going to obey the script of defiance writ large in the Welsh heartlands, were they? Well if you’re Jeremy Corbyn, or any of the faceless Labour wonders in Cardiff Bay, don’t look at the final score [Cardiff City 0 Newcastle United 2].

Until we speak again, if this match was prescient, then Juno exemplifies what the Welsh Labour stronghold has to offer in the coming General Election.

Playing dead

Leadership cats

It’s been a week where cats in leadership roles have again stirred very different emotions, and focused attention on the meaning of ‘doing a number 2’!

Litter trays at the ready… as Donald Trump talked in the USA of planning for a second term, though his penchant for Twitter should excite many cats to assume a pose ready to pounce. Then our very own Jeremy Corbyn in the UK showed us what walking away from leadership looks like when he denied any responsibility for a catastrophic outcome in one, and a lacklustre outcome in a second political by-election.

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So, not for the first time, I find myself reflecting that when the despondency of current politics deals you a couple of blows, there is always the surreal nature of football to provide that pick-me-up. No, not the double-quick time of Claudio Ranieri’s despicable departure at Leicester City. I’m talking our very own leader, the mighty Neil Warnock talking about his intentions for a second season at the Cardiff City Stadium.

The white-shirted interloper cats from London, in the form of Fulham FC, arrived with claws poised ready to deal with any bluebirds in their line of sight.

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But, with the home team led at the front with two goals from our striker, Kenneth Zohore, an entertaining and uplifting match ended Desmond (Tutu)

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Until we speak again, I fondly remember Juno and Bella as two cats that exhibited particularly feline leadership traits of sleeping, eating and often looking at me with a general air of disdain.