Since Welsh spacecraft Cymru III crash-landed on Jupiter's frigid moon Europa, cymrunaut Dilwyn Griffiths and his (quite nasty) dog Megan have been on the ultimate fight for survival.

Luckily, the intelligent alien lifeforms they encountered there are fairly easy to catch and despite their spacey metallic taste are providing our intrepid pair with sufficient nutrition to stave off the worst of their predicament.

As if to prove that the entire mission wasn't a complete fiasco, Dilwyn retrieved the WASA space telescope from the wreckage.  And being at this ideal vantage point for observing the mysterious parent planet he realised this was an opportunity too good for science to miss.

This photo taken shortly after periapsis shows in breathtaking close-up the intense weather systems that form swirling coloured bands high in the atmosphere of this gas giant planet.  Just rotated into view slightly beneath the equatorial belt you can see the fabled Great Red Spot which shows at about 22° S latitude.

Meanwhile, the WASA mission inspectorate has given the go-ahead for a rescue mission.  Presently, our engineers are welding up all but one of the windows of an old Crosville Wales bus.  Once the gas-tight seals have been fitted, the drum 'n bass funk-engines fitted and somebody manages to find the pilot Berwyn Griffiths (Dil's brother) then we'll be off.

Del from the internet has written to us suggesting that Uncle Rhodri is winning far too much to be normal, and does he have inter-terrestrial influences?

We’re so glad you asked that question Del, because, remarkable as it may seem, Uncle Rhodri does indeed win an awful lot (of times). In fact, his system - the Uncle Rhodri System ™ guarantees a winner every single race.

Uncle Rhodri has created a small fortune*¹ from his highly lucrative*² horse betting system. And for one day only, we’re prepared to let you in on his secret. But before we do we should warn you that it is very complicated and requires intense concentration, and a good biro. And a lot of money to start with. Here goes…

By using your best skill and judgement, you should bet decreasing amounts on the horses in decreasing likelihood of winning the race.
This is easiest explained by using as an example today’s 3.15 Pedigree Chum Handicap Stakes (1m 2f) at Merthyr Tydfil :

So as you can see from the above illustration, with a total bet of £21 on the whole race, Uncle Rhodri is GUARANTEED a minimum of £13 return on his bet whichever horse wins.  And with £18.75 the most he can win, he will NEVER LOSE more than he bet. So, now you have the secret, keep it to yourself and get yourself down the bookies and just like Uncle Rhodri, ALWAYS walk away with a confused smile on your face.

*¹ he started with a much larger fortune.
*² for his bookmaker

A vacancy has opened up within our Small Hadron Collider Facility behind the Mace in Cerrigydrudion.

Applicants will be familiar with Bose-Einstein Condensates, Quark and gluon plasmas and stock-rotation methodologies.

You will also have a proven track record in technical solutions architecture especially within the fruit and vegetable sector.  A degree of self-motivation will be required as will an inherent ability to organise tins of dog food in neat rows with the labels facing outwards.

The successful applicant will also be responsible for bio-security within the complex and should exhibit an innate resourcefulness with a ground-surface-swab and bucket.

Communication skills are vital to this role and an ability to express oneself through simple grunts and the odd “dunno” would be advantageous. But preference will be given to candidates conversant with complex fiscal accumulation devices whilst displaying competence at closing high volume customer-facing transactions without looking-up from your mobile phone.

A remuneration package commensurate with the Saturday girl in the Mace will be provided as well as bonus payments of out-of-date packs of Garibaldis and dented tins with no labels.

Applications in writing, with a proper pen, here please. Deadline a fortnight last Wednesday. 

We at WASA HQ are great believers in the notion of “ignore it, and it’ll go away”.  It’s always worked briefly in the past.    But those Europan aliens are very insistent - they’ve been back on Mamgu’s telly every night lately, and always during Pobl y Cwm.   They seem to be getting nasty.  Just because our Dilwyn ate their pop star or whoever it was - it was only a flipping alien for goodness sake.  Mamgu’s had to go to Mrs Meredith’s  next door to shout at the telly now.

We can’t help feel we might get into awful trouble though, if an alien invasion turns out to be our fault.  So we’ve phoned Susan Boyle to see if she fancies a trip to Jupiter as our earthly ambassador, where she might get to meet some alien record producers.  We neglected to mention she was going to be their tea.  Anyway, she hung up after the fifth time we rang and said she was going to call the police.   We couldn’t find Cheryl Cole’s phone number and when we rung Roger Whittaker, he said that he might be interested but that he wasn’t the singing Roger Whittaker, but a machine-shop foreman from Rotherham and that the aliens might not find him such a delicacy.

We were just about to phone the Prime Minister,  David Cameraman, to warn him of earth’s imminent danger when look who turns up?  Dilwyn’s waste-of-space brother, Berwyn.  Only ever seen when his week has run out of giro or his packet out of fags.  Berwyn is stuck in June 1973 and only ever sees life through a fug of dodgy smoke and has very little idea, ever, about what is going on.  We might just have found our Subo!

So now, how to get him to the Europans’ dining table? With Uncle Rhodri’s shotgun licence now revoked we can’t use the 12-bore cartridge propulsion drive like we did for  Cymru III.  His order for 25,000 size 12 cartridges seem to have set alarms bells ringing down at Ruthin nick.

Our boffins  have been experimenting with a microwave propulsion system involving popcorn and boiled eggs, but are beginning to favour our new drum ‘n bass funk engine for this urgent mission.  Can’t say too much about it  at this stage except that it comprises a LOT of second-hand sound systems out of boy-racers’ cars.

Launch date set for the next full moon – if you can see it, you can’t hit it, that’s our motto.  We can’t call the new craft Cymru IV because we’ve already used that.  Anyway, we’ll lure Berwyn into said, as yet, unmade vehicle, with the promise of making him a giro millionaire and more of his “arthritis medicine" than he can ever smoke.  Then we’ll hit the launch button before he realises it’s photocopied dole and a heap of horse exhaust.  Cymru 6 is on the way.

At the very least, this mission will clean up the gene-pool here on earth.

And now, the main points of the news again...

They hung around a while.  And, frankly, made a mess.

Dilwyn accidentally pulled on the take-off cord and blasted them on their way to another moon near Jupiter – Europa.

They discover new moons along the way.

They crash on Europa.

They meet an important member of an alien civilisation.

They casserole him. 

The aliens get nowty* and demand we send them Susan Boyle and others to make amends otherwise they'll invade earth.

Uncle Rhodri wins £46 on the horses.

 nowty: [adj] moody, sullen and badtempered, prone to moodswings.

      he's a right nowty git that Alex Ferguson

We’d just settled down in Mamgu’s front room to watch Pobl y Cwm when a load of interference came on the telly.  Morris had just got up to give it a whack when this horrible face appeared through all the crackles and started making a noise like an octopus or something.  He looked proper upset and started banging on the inside of the screen and was clearly shouting at us. His face would have been red if Mamgu had a colour telly.  Unfortunately, none of us understands alien underwater speak so at first we were confused.  After a while though, we got the gist of what he was trying to say.  Apparently, his name is Tharg and he’s the foreign minister for the undersea ice aliens of Europa.  And it seems, our Dilwyn has eaten their equivalent of singer Susan Boyle and they’re all very upset about it.

Anyway, unless we send them our Susan Boyle to make up for their loss, pronto, or 3 Cheryl Coles and a Roger Whittaker, then they’re going to invade earth.

By this point all this shouting and waving was meithering Mamgu, so we switched over to watch the end of Emmerdale instead - we can always watch the Pobl y Cwm repeat on Sunday.