my Ceredigion and my Cardigan Bay » sport

Richard Beard Has a Blog

Paul Williams — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:57:54 +0000

Richard Beard by Martyn Symons

Handsome devil isn’t he? It’s been a pleasure to re-grout Mr Richard Beard’s new web pages. While we wait for the dust to settle why not take look at www.richardbeard.info?. It’s full of excellent stuff he’s wriitten for the papers and what not as well as reviews of and introductions to his fabulous books…

Cardiff Photomarathon 2009

Paul Williams — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:13:32 +0000

I’ve been to Cardiff this weekend. I participated, with photographer Ian Willson, in the most excellent 2009 Cardiff Photomarathon.

A challenge in equal measure to spirit and flesh it was with great satisfaction that we delivered our exposed film to the friendly team of volunteers at the Wales Millennium Centre, a full 30 minutes before the 10 o’clock deadline.

Here are this year’s topics:

My Entry Number/Colourful

Contained

Roll with it

Chip

Age

Crunch

Black and White

Social Network

Spillage

Missing

Dressed to Impress

Winner

It all went quite smoothly, though I botched one frame and was annointed by a hungry seagull. As we were working with film I can’t show you any of our finished work; for that you will need to attend the Photomarathon Exhibition at the Old Library Hayes Cardiff 25th July to 9 August.

What I can show you is some of my ‘notebook’ images of ideas we pursued, developed, discarded and in some cases, submitted.

Fantasy Football: Rod Stewart and the Faces at Saint Mary’s Stadium

Paul Williams — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 22:17:01 +0000

The keen-eyed will have noticed new colours nailed to my masthead; the logo of newly relegated Southampton Football Club. Yes that’s my club. Dumped out of the Championship, in administration and starting next season with a 10 point deficit, they are on the brink of being bought out by a consortium financed by a mystery multi-millionaire. Even though we live in dark economic days there are some ready and eager to invest in that thing that is the opposite of a cash cow. Doubtless if I had the cash I’d be one of them.

Notwithstanding nearly 40 years living in Wales (and a brief narrowboat induced flirtation with Aston Villa) I can’t bring myself to support any other club. It’s a blood thing really; a large New Forest family on my mother’s side, living close enough to Southampton to be regulars at the Dell, it can’t be helped.

Anyway, today I read this story in the (Southern) Daily Echo. As with so much from the back pages it is likely to be complete tosh.

But while the identity of alleged multi-millionaire investor remains off-radar a man (of a certain age) can dream.

Of course I’d prefer it if it were Rod Stewart AND the Faces.

But I suppose Gordon Strachan will have to do.

Photos: from Nigel and Jean Fletcher’s Moonlight Lady

Paul Williams — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 11:32:00 +0000

It’s probably very bad form but I wanted to resurrect this early post; it contains a suite of favourite photographs from a very happy time. Time was when I ran with a pretty racy Badminton crowd. Among the hard core of players were (then) Stoves n Stuff supremo Nigel Fletcher and sage and mystic Mr. Rod Ellis. We three spent an awful lot of our winter weekends boating as near to Villa Park as we could.

These pictures I think capture the wintery watery atmosphere of the cold morning after the smoky fired night before.