Perspectives

An early visit to St Michael's this morning to preside at the Eucharist. While the ancient churches of both East and West celebrate the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary on this day, the Church in Wales commemorates St Cynidr, one of our sixth century Celtic Bishops of the southern borderlands of Wales about whom little is known. In the old County of Brecknock, there are five churches bearing his name, and two places in neighbouring Herefordshire also with associations, plus his own stretch of mountain moorland - Mynydd Llangynidr - at the top eastern end of the South Wales coalfield, overlooking the Usk valley and Llangors Lake - a favourite place of ours. So, it seemed right to remember both universal and local names cherished by our faith.

 Mynydd Llangynidr, looking north towards Llangors Lake

After lunch, I joined a meeting at the Diverse Cymru HQ of their Equality Assessment Group in conversation with two Forestry Commission Wales staff members about the development of their marketing strategy to promote mountain biking and the use of forest trails on both public and private land. Our preparatory task was to consider the draft policy from the perspective of the new single Equalities Act. Diverse Cymru has done a lot of excellent work in recent years to develop a way of evaluating the impact  of the plans and proposals put forward by public bodies. It leads to some interesting conversations about the values and priorities of the business organisations do. The impact assessment leads to a valuable broadening of perspective, puts assumptions to the test and leads, hopefully to an improved outcome for those involved.

While we talked away in the fifth floor top floor office, the wind buffeted the building and rain lashed the windows quite dramatically. Thankfully it was much calmer for the short walk home, and I had plenty of time to cook a paella for an early supper before we both went out for the evening - Clare to her study group and me to Tai Chi. It's lovely to have a life with so much variety in it.