On Friday I went with my son to his second private blood test in Cardiff to monitor his testosterone levels. He’s been on T for almost six months now, all privately, because he’s still heard absolutely nothing from NHS gender services.

Which, honestly, was exactly what I was thinking about on the train there – the dystopian hellscape business of him having to drop another £170 of his student loan just to be monitored safely, in a country with public healthcare that’s meant to be free at the point of use. You just have to pass the NHS version of Crystal Maze first, and if you have certain conditions there’s a lock-in for months, sometimes years. No Richard O’Brien with a harmonica. Apparently not cost effective.

Anyway. We try to make a good day out of appointments, so here’s the story of our mad dash to a blood test, followed by a good day looking around the shops, and cheating on our regular Starbucks.

Time is an Illusion

My son is a more precise timekeeper than me. He plans to reach destinations exactly on time – by which I mean five to ten minutes early. Me, I’m chaotic. Either I’m an hour early, or I’m running late because my brain can’t quite fathom time well enough to compute it properly. Time has been the antagonist of my story since I was very little.

However, my son could not foresee a queue of people, and a confused lady trying to buy tickets at the kiosk. By the time I finally had my ticket, we had missed the train he’d planned for us to get.

He spent the entire journey anxious – more so when the train stopped just outside Cardiff, waiting for a station to become available. We were going to be late. I wasn’t worried though. I’d get him to that appointment on time even if it ruined my post-exertional fatigue for the next few days (foreshadowing, because I’m sat here writing this in a post-exertion fog still, days later).

We took photos of our plushies, and I tried to calm my son – but when he’s that anxious, the best thing to do is not to push too hard with “it’ll be okay”. I try to make it okay instead. And when we finally reached the station, following his lead, that’s exactly what I did.

The Long Walk

The clinic is on a street just outside Cardiff city centre, so we had to race there through the city to reach the outskirts. I’ve always loved that train stations in Wales are so close to the centres – it makes going anywhere easy and walkable – but today it hindered us, forcing us to trek through a busy, Christmas-shopping-filled city centre.

We had to go through two shopping centres, and while weaving through the crowd I thought about how humans en masse behave like particles and systems. A shopping centre is like boiling water – not just because my entire sensory system reacts the way it does when I put my foot into a bath that’s too hot and instinctively recoil, but because pressure and heat force movement and separation.

My son and I, under those forces, had to break our linked-arm bonds and become separate, walking in single file, weaving urgently through the other atoms to escape the shopping centre as if there were a Bunsen burner beneath it rather than more shops.

My son interrupted my atom-thinking as he kept looking back to check I was still there, and like we were in some movie, I said, “Just go. I’m right behind you. I’ll keep up.” He later said he loves that I make noise when I walk – my many keyrings he’s bought or made me swinging on my bag, jangling loudly against all my pin badges, most of which he’s also bought me. I use all of them. I want him to know I loved all of them. He’s made me loud outside, like the biggest housecat with the biggest bell on my collar, following happily behind him.

Finally, having broken all our previous land-speed records for walking, we reached the clinic with just a few minutes to spare. The relief washed over my son, and he relaxed enough for his blood test.

Lego Welsh Pride

My son got through his blood test fine, settled into his comfy private seat with a comfy private pillow. Mostly, it was just a relief that he hadn’t missed the appointment at all. After being poked and prodded, we walked back much more slowly into the city, joints and muscles burning from the power walk there. We linked arms again, decompressing, replaying how we’d somehow managed to be on time.

He had a lecture in an hour, so once we were back in the city centre we wandered through a few shops. We passed the Lego store and stopped dead — they had a huge Lego Welsh dragon outside the store in the middle of the shopping centre. Honestly, I wanted to bring it home on the train with me. It filled me with an unreasonable amount of Welsh Lego pride. We took photos and stood there for a while, marvelling at the details. It was nice to be in the shopping centre this time, not fighting our way through it like particles under pressure.

We drifted through the smaller, cuter shops next, where my penguin immediately found a whole colony of other penguins. I thought of my best friend, and how much she would have loved to see them, so I took a photo of them all together with my little penguin – as if I was still going to show her when I got home. This one is for you.

I was feeling excited because I had a plan. I wanted to buy my son a Miffy bunny he’d wanted for Christmas. He has a collection of the smaller ones, but I knew he’d been hoping for a bigger one. After buying him some earrings in Claire’s, we went into Welcome Things and I picked out a mint green Miffy. He was genuinely delighted. I picked up a smaller brown one for myself, and he immediately turned to me and said,
“You can’t buy that – I already bought it for you for Christmas! That’s so funny. Out of all of them, you picked the one I got you.”

Connection, via Miffy bunnies.

Then it was time for his lecture. He headed off, and I went to sit in Starbucks outside the university to wait for him so we could go home together. I was very, very ready for a sit down.

People Watching at Starbucks

I walked into Starbucks thinking about how I was cheating on our regular Starbucks, and how I’d finally gone somewhere different – only to still end up writing about Starbucks on my blog. I laughed to myself about it. There I was, somewhere new, and still in Starbucks. Some things never change.

I ordered a Blonde Roast Americano and chose a seat by the window. Our local Starbucks doesn’t really have much space for people watching, so I was looking forward to it.

This one was near the train station, so I watched people arriving in Cardiff, looking excited in that way people in Wales always do, and people leaving with their Christmas shopping, smiling like they’d finally got it all done. I caught eyes with a few of them and smiled back.

Across the way, an older man was feeding pigeons. He spoke to them gently, making sure each one got some food. I thought about how caring that is. Pigeons are so often neglected – or worse, treated as pests – but to me, a city without them would feel empty.

There was also a Greggs opposite, with a small army of seagulls circling above it, waiting patiently for scraps. No Greggs is complete without its seagull contingent, ready to steal an unsuspecting person’s sausage roll. It’s clearly their favourite establishment. A Greggs pasta salad had been abandoned, and I watched a seagull happily scoff it.

It felt good to drop back into people-watching mode. I like to think of passers-by as protagonists in their own stories rather than background characters in mine, so I imagine what their lives might be like. The caring pigeon feeder. The Christmas shopper buying presents while her kids are at school, smiling because she knows how happy she’s going to make them.

The fifty minutes I was waiting for my son flew by without me even needing to look at my phone – aside from taking a few plushie photos and marvelling at how good the lighting was in this Starbucks compared to ours.

Then, still watching out of the window, I saw my son approaching. I waved at him like I hadn’t seen him in days rather than minutes. He waved back, and once inside told me how much he’d missed me, and how he wished I could have come to his lecture with him. I told him I’d thought the same thing – that it would have been so cool to see how it all worked – but his university is the kind of building you can’t even enter without a pass.

I ordered him a white chocolate mocha and a sausage bap, and decided to risk food myself. We’d planned to go back to the shops, but we were both exhausted, and with a twenty-minute train ride ahead of us I figured I’d be safe enough. I had a festive pigs-in-blankets bap, which was absolutely delicious and very much needed. It was the first thing I’d eaten that day.***

We talked about what a great day it had been – how much we loved the shops, how happy he was with his bunny and his earrings. It’s funny how we manage to turn chores into something fun, even with the quiet rage bubbling underneath about him having to go private despite us both being skint. At least we had a Miffy bunny and some earrings to show for it.

Then all that was left to do was go home.

Does unman fel cartref – There’s No Place Like Home

I love Cardiff so much – it’s a home from home. It’s where you go when you want to feel even more Welsh than usual. It is the capital, after all, with dragons and flags everywhere, even outside the Lego store. But still, nothing quite compares to coming home: crossing the river on the train, emerging from the tunnel, and seeing my city appear in the window.

Both my son and I let out that same little sigh of home every time, smiling, even when the place we’ve just been is objectively “better”. I wouldn’t choose to live anywhere else. I’ve tried — and I always get called back. We walked home still buoyed by the day, ate, and settled in for the evening… or, more accurately, crashed completely and didn’t move much at all.

I wanted to write about Cardiff straight away – it all happened on Thursday – but it’s taken me until Sunday to get here. We’re both still dealing with post-COVID symptoms, and the ongoing mould issues haven’t helped. The days after were foggy and heavy: breathlessness, pain, deep fatigue, the kind where eating makes you want to fall asleep again straight afterwards. It’s frustrating that good days come with a cost – but they’re still worth it.

So we recovered the only way we know how: staying in, watching TV and new Netflix shows, bunnies close by, already half-planning to do it again sometime soon. Next time a little slower, a little less panicked – Christmas shopping without blood tests or lectures attached. Knowing we’ll probably pay for it again… and knowing we’ll probably still go.

Because really – does unman fel cartref.

For the song, it has to be this one. I was also thinking about it trying to get through the crowd like the airport scene in Home Alone.

***I have exercise intolerance, so eating before walking or standing for long periods can cause food-poisoning-like symptoms. I have to do activity fasted and make up the energy later.