Today's my eldest sister Pauline's birthday, she's eighty eight, and still living independently on her own the house Bleadon Hill house which has been the family home for over forty years. I rang to sing her a Happy Birthday greeting. She once told me that when I rang last year and she was away, she'd kept the recording of me singing to her on the answering machine since then. How lovely. Just before I called, she'd opened the front door to discover her daughter Nicky and family, together with her son Julian, just arrived from Abu Dhabi where he lives. A complete surprise to her. I'd loved to have seen her face.
In the afternoon, I took a walk with my camera around Thompson's Park to take some pictures of the crocuses narcissi and different kinds of daffodils, some yet to burst into bud, others flourishing, some starting to wane. I've even seen a few primroses. A few early flowering varieties of cherry tree are out already, but no leaves yet. There'll be more blossom soon, but for now, everywhere there's grass, there are daffodils to be seen. In recent decades, all over Wales it seems, even along the motorway flanks, vast numbers of daffodils have been planted and proliferated, so the countryside seems to me even more colourful now in late winter, early spring, than I recall when I was growing up. Thompson's park was rubbish free, but walking the streets to shop at the Co-op later, I picked up a dozen separate items, unnoticed or dropped since I last passed that way a few days ago.
This evening BBC Four screened the first couple of episodes of a second series of 'Follow the Money', about the Danish finance industry and the police fraud squad. It's beautifully acted and filmed, and full of surprise twists and turns, despite the relatively slow pace, making for a sustained feeling of tension. After several months of repeats in the popular Saturday evening prime time foreign crime series slot, it's a relief to have a new must-watch series to look forward to.
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