Today I said goodbye to an old friend, who’s supported me and been around me for the past 31 years. He never did get me into the Welsh football squad but even so I hadn’t planned for our parting to be so sudden. Sometimes, though, life takes an unexpected course.

Stuart Hughes doesn't have a lot of snarky links about pop culture in his blog, Northern Iraq Weblog.. The BBC producer, who was injured by a landmine explosion in northern Iraq which killed cameraman Kaveh Golestan, writes instead about the dangers of reporting from the Kurdish front, other reporters who have been killed, and about losing his foot.