How lovely to wake up after a comfortable night's sleep in a familiar bed and bedroom once again! After a quick breakfast I walked to the GP surgery to get the appointment everyone's been nagging me about, to get my chesty cough due to chronic bronchial catarrh these past few months checked out. I'll have to wait two weeks. Either that or it's 'book on the day', queuing or phoning in to a busy surgery line at twenty past eight in the morning in competition with dozens of others who want to be seen sooner rather than later. Today was already fully booked. It's too much of an effort to compete with so many others who may or may not be sick needier or worse than I. All I know is, I'm improving very slowly, and a change of environment is already influencing the daily progress of the catarrh slightly for the better. I feel sure it was the totally different range of pollen varieties as well as dust and other urban pollutants that I was reacting to in Spain. The next few days will show if there's a sustainable difference.
On the way into town to rendezvous at the National Museum for a chat with Dr Laura Ciobanu visiting once again from Bucharest, I called into Constantinou's at Canton Cross for a hair cut, to look respectable for a driving license photo. Stavros was out of the shop when I arrived, so I was welcomed by his son Stefan who cut my hair. Dad returned before I left so I was able to greet him with 'Christos Anesti' before leaving. There was no bus in sight to catch, on what's normally a busy road, and being a little behind time, I walked in to the Museum, which was probably much quicker. It only took me fifteen minutes.
Laura was waiting for me and we spent an hour and a half chatting in the Museum entrance hall about Christian historic art and faith. It's a place she's fond of, and always makes a point of visiting the exhibition of stone Celtic crosses. She brought me a Romanian Easter loaf she'd baked, brioche, laced with chocolate and pears, also a jar of rose petal confiture, with the most delicate aroma and flavour, another Romanian speciality. It was a lovely meeting, which ended with me praying over her and giving her a blessing right there. I no longer have inhibitions about doing things like this in public, especially when I know that the faith of the other person shields them from any sense of embarrassment.
As I was leaving, Clare called to say she was in town, so we met up in Marks and Spencer and had a snack lunch together before I make my way to the main Post Office to get my driving license photo card application processed. There's now a special counter queue called 'Identity Services' where you present your form, get a digital photo taken, and a digital signature, which are then processed electonically. The DVLC then mail the license and photo card back to one's home address. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes.
Several more hours in the office followed, preparing for a meeting with new senior staff in Cardiff Council and South Wales Police in the coming weeks. And after supper, several hours more work needed to be done on the CBS company constitution, that separately defines our structures and way of working as a not for profit social enterprise. I started this task last December, and this is the first chance I've had to resume. I had almost completed it, but it needed careful going over. Nice to be fresh enough to return to this with fresh eyes after a long break. I was quite pleased with the result.
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