Mathew Browne

I haven’t blogged in over a month - a symptom of being busy, I’m afraid.

In 5 days I leave London for the relative calm of South Wales, so my time is consumed by box-packing and wrapping up those websites I’ve got left over from the past few weeks. At perhaps the worst possible time, I decided to revamp my MB Web Design website and this one concurrently. The latest Wordpress release has largely fuelled this change, it really is fantastic by the way.

I’m starting a web design blog via MB Web Design and letting this one be my personal venting place.  A side effect of being linked to from my business site is that this blog got a pretty large pagerank very quickly, and resultantly has been a big attraction for commenters. Sifting through the hundreds of comments to moderate is rather a drain on my time, so I’m going to relax the emphasis on this site for the time being. (And also plug the Pagerank leak from the business site*)

* For the smart arses: Pagerank doesn’t mean anything, blah blah blah. Tell that to the 440 commenters in the last week or so.

My fiancee finished her final exam yesterday, with fingers crossed I say that in a month or so she will officially be a doctor. When business success goes to my head she will always be there to remind me that I just sit at a desk all day, and that no matter how much money I make, my job doesn’t save lives. (There is a rant about people not appreciating the hard work of doctors, but that can wait for another day.)

I’ll check back in a couple of days to report on the move.

I am so very happy right now.

Up yours everyone who wants to rain on our (well-deserved, hard-earned) parade.

“It’s only Wales”
- Jean-Baptiste Ellisalde

“Looks like it’ll come down to an England, Ireland Championship decider”
- Austin Healey

“So, Andy, can Scotland really beat England?”
- John Inverdale

“The sportsdesk team could expect to beat Wales at Twickenham (laughs)”
- Ian Roberston

“It is not a matter of whether England beat Wales - that is a given - but by how much”
- Paul Ackford

“Wales are just the Ospreys, and if England can’t beat a club side at Twickenham it’s a pretty poor show”
- Ian Roberston on Radio 5Live

Wales beat England at Twickenham for the first time in TWENTY years today.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Louise found out today that one of her applications for doctor’s job in Llanelli and/or Carmarthen has been successful, so in just over 5 months I’ll be back in my old manor. I’ll miss London, but I won’t miss the cramped public transport, the extortionate property prices necessitating an equally extortionate rental, the threat of randoms blowing me up on my way to work, the beggars, the general misery etched onto people’s face as they go about their daily lives.

A calmer existance and the appetising prospect of freelancing fulltime from my home office beckons.

I can’t wait.

But where exactly? Looks like I have another nervous wait…

Louise - nudged into it in no small part by myself - applied to Wales for her foundation training as a doctor, and got in. This is the good news. The bad news is that competition is fierce for jobs in South Wales; nobody wants to live in the North or West of the country.  Of course, places like Rhyl and Bangor need doctors too, but unfortunately for them, their allocation of doctors will be the ones who were unsuccessful elsewhere and were given their spot via clearing.

She has ranked 8 or the 106 courses on offer in order of preference; now we play the waiting game. On January 22nd we find out if she needs to rank another 8 posts in order of preference from those with spots remaining. In other words, if we don’t hear anything on the 22nd, then we can safely presume that one of the original choices was successful. (We find out which one on February 20.)

Having jumped through hoops just to get a place with only a guarantee of employment for 2 years, she then has the significant task of passing her finals this May. I don’t envy her one bit. This year will mark 3 years since I graduated, and if I have to sit any other exam (other than my driving test) it’ll be too soon.

And congratulations to South Africa, deserving world champions. I must say, I’m glad that they won but it’s a shame that the final went without a try being scored - not a good advert for the sport as it was rather dull. That, however, has been England’s game and it had worked well for them until tonight.

I’m now left with that deflated feeling one tends to get at the end of a party or on the night of December 25th - what am I going to do with my weekends now? I guess I only have a few months to wait until the Six Nations.

The competition really has been the story of the underdogs.

• England, after suffering a 36-0 defeat to South Africa in the pool stage, go on to reach the final.
• Argentina shock France on the opening night…
• …Then they wipe the floor with them in the 3rd place playoff
• Fiji steal a 38-34 win from Wales to knock them out of the tournament at the pool stage.
• Georgia come within a whisker of beating Ireland.
• Tonga’s amazing comeback (and near victory) against South Africa 30-25

The list goes on. It really has been quite amazing to watch, especially the better-than-expected performances by the so-called “minnows” of the rugby world cup against the established sides. I was in St. David’s Centre in Cardiff when Portugal scored against New Zealand, to an enormous, rapturous ovation by the Welsh AND Australian fans in attendance. The perceived gulf of standard between the minnows and the established nations is narrowing, but such sides really need to be in regular competition against other good teams. Once every four years simply isn’t good enough.

What happens next? Well, Wales have a friendly against the newly-crowned world champions South Africa in November. Wales, whose form has been disappointing at best, are without a coach. I am debating picking up some tickets to the game. The probability of witnessing a hiding is high, which would make this an unattractive prospect if I was a fair-weather supporter. Alas, I’m not.

In my previous post I wondered aloud if Gareth Jenkins should go or not. It appears the Welsh Rugby Union were more decisive than myself - just a few hours removed from Wales’ premature exit from the World Cup, the WRU have sacked Jenkins from his job. He had previously insisted that he would not resign. (more…)

Wales were knocked out of the Rugby World Cup yesterday by Fiji in quite the see-saw contest. I can see how it’s quite possible for sports fans to keel over and die in the midst of a match, it was that stressful. (more…)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/6940698.stm

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