Museum triumph

Days, just slip by, held together by routine daily walks, Daily Office Duo Lingo Spanish practice, a few pages of Poveda's 'El Maestro' (as much as I can manage at a time) and occasional binge watch of crimmies on iPlayer and More Four. Nights are still punctuated with wound management. It's more of a problem at night, as I fall asleep easily and deeply, only to be awakened, not by nasty pain but by nagging discomfort, which needs dealing with. If my lie-in is long enough or I take a siesta, fatigue can be avoided, and I have plenty of energy for walking.

Wednesday, I celebrated the Eucharist at St Catherine's and Thursday at St John's as usual. In order not to repeat my operation day fiasco last week, Emma will celebrate at St John's next Thursday, and as Clare is now back in school on Thursdays, Emma will take me to Llandough Hospital afterwards. I suspect I will get teased again about 'nil by mouth' !

Thursday evening we went to a concert at the Reardon Smith Lecture Theatre, adjoining the National Museum, which is currently shrouded in a protective canopy while work is done on the roof. Singer Rebecca Evans, and harpist Catrin Ffinch performed wonderfully in front of about 150 people in an event to launch the National Museum of Wales' development fund. We learned that surprisingly the National Museum's seven sites across the Principality are sustained by a charitable foundation. While it's 85% funded by the Welsh Assembly Government, the trust's 15% equals seven million pounds of the budget, simply to maintain the status quo. 

The development fund will not only aid maintenance of assets long term, but enable new educational projects. One is planned for Llanberis Slate Museum in North Wales in the near future. Two years worth of development work on St Fagan's Museum of Welsh Life has certainly paid off with the recent awarding of the UK title 'Best Museum'. And visitor numbers, especially from school children, keep on rising. It's marvellous. 

Friday afternoon I walked down to the nature reserve down the bay, and photographed some Brent Geese on a floating platform, and a couple of moorhens squatting in an old swans' nest at the edge of the water in open view. Generally they prefer to hide in the reed beds. I thought this was unusual, but I guess it means they felt safe there, about seven metres away from the viewing platform. On the way back, I met Clare in John Lewis' for a cuppa, after her gym session, and then we rode home on the bus together.

Walking out around Pontcanna Fields on Saturday, I spotted our local bird man out feeding a large wake of crows. It's the first time I've seen him in several months. The penultimate double of the latest Danish crimmie 'Darkness' was dismal indeed, over-focussed on a couple of murderous sadists, with a slight secondary relationship plot. It's neither educational nor entertaining. What does make me sit up and take notice however is the way different crime series UK and Euro seem to take it in turns to address current social issues, with greater or less effectiveness. 

Islamist extremist plots have turned up in at least five series I've watched in the past few months. Variations on domestic violence, money and drugs laundering, and psycho-terrorism serial killer themes are also widely distributed. British series showcased gory pathology and cold case investigations for the past twenty years. Occasionally now, others in the Euro zone are making crimmies with authentic historical flashbacks in the storyline. Quite entertaining in its way. 

I wonder how brexit is going to feature in future explorations of human wickedness and transgression? Meanwhile we wait to see how the Law Lords will rule on the transgressions of this crazy fanatical right wing prime minister and his government, causing offence wherever he goes, promising everything, threatening to deliver nothing and blame the EC for his own failures.