Farewell & back to routine

Up early yesterday morning to celebrate the Eucharist at St Michael's and eat breakfast in College. Clare had to go work, so after our guests had breakfasted, I  drove Maria-Luisa out to Dinas Powis to have a chat with Russell, following on from her talk last Saturday. Heinz and I went down to the sea opposite Sully Island. Before we had coffee in the caravan site canteen, we sat on the beach in the sunshine, watching the tide go out and swallows swooping over the water. We collected Maria-Luisa in time to return so I could cook a paella for lunch when Clare got back from school. Late in the afternoon we walked over Llandaff Fields into Bute Park and on to the new Royal Welsh College building for tea, enjoying autumnal colours and sunshine in the view of Bute park from a table inside the atrium.

The return flight to Zurich was early afternoon, so after a leisurely cooked breakfast with our guests, we drove them to Cardiff Airport. There was a long delay at roadworks near the South Glamorgan crematorium. It didn't make us late, but it gave us the incentive to take an alternative route homewards using ancient country lane, through Penmark, across to St Hilary to the A48. It's the first time I ever recall travelling in this direction, and was delighted to discover yet another hidden gem of the Vale.

We got home in good time for me to go into town and spend an afternoon at the office investigating a couple of problematic accounts, with Julie and Ashley. My next big task will be setting up a Sage accounting package, and finding out how much of our existing database content can be imported into it. Not something I am looking forward to! It can wait until next week.

I spent the evening preparing a sermon to preach at the parish of Caerau with Ely. It's all about marriage and divorce this week, and comes at a time when the sexual antics of the late Jimmy Saville and others yet to be named at the BBC are being exposed by the press. I find it surprising it's taken this long to make the media, as I recall youth gossip about the rock 'n roll lifestyle behaviour of public figures in entertainment when I was a curate at the end of the swinging sixties. 

The revolution brought about by the invention of The Pill was trumpeted as the key to sexual liberation. It seems to me with perfect hindsight that for some men, this so called liberation was nothing more than a pretext to behave abusively towards women who had not yet learned to insist that 'No' means no. I'd like to think we live in a different world nowadays - although I none too sure about this.