Weekend wildlife

Apart from sermon preparation, a quiet uneventful Saturday gave us an opportunity to take a good long walk together around Bute Park, and then some catch-up telly watching. Today started with a walk to St John's to celebrate the eight o'clock Eucharist with half a dozen faithful, and then after breakfast, the drive to St German's to celebrate the eleven o'clock Mass. A couple arrived before we started to ask about having their second child baptised, like the first, in St German's next month. They stayed on for most of the service, letting their first-born enjoy the company of a couple of other tinies, grandchildren of a couple of our regulars, in the children's corner. It's not easy to organise yourself around church attendance when you have two pre-school age children. I hope they'll feel comfortable about coming and joining us again, apart from the next Christening.

After this, I called at the newly rebuilt Lidl store on East Tyndall Street to get a few items we needed. I was there last year, just before it closed for rebuilding, following the acquisition of a plot of land next door, for an extended car park. The new building is a third bigger than the original, and has an in-store bakery, like the ones in Europe. It's well stocked, and on a Sunday lunchtime, the enlarged car park was almost full. It's an expertly planned and realised commercial project serving the inner city district of Newtown undergoing rapid redevelopment with office blocks on industrial wasteland.

It was almost two o'clock by the time I reached home, as outgoing traffic on Cathedral Road was unusually heavy for a Sunday. Clare had already eaten, and was preparing to go to her monthly study group meeting in Bristol, so I had a quiet time on my own. I watched a repeat of a remarkable BBC nature documentary called 'Spy in the Wild' in which robot look-alikes of wild animals equipped with cameras provide extraordinary close up video footage of a variety of different animals. It's the first of five in a series. Marvellous unmissable watching.

I felt I needed a respite from routine exercise today, as recently I've had what I've come to recognise as tell tale signs of kidney stones acting up. No pain, but just feeling less sharp and clear than usual, with a muzzy head, rather than a headache. Today, my head was clear, but the distinct niggling pain in my left kidney told me the stone is on the move again. It's happened before and will happen again before it gives me big trouble.