I celebrated the nine o'clock Eucharist at St Dyfrig and St Samson's again with the usual congregation of twenty this morning. On my way home, I saw Clare walking down Llandaff Road and wondered why she wasn't heading for St Catherine's. I had quite forgotten that the last Sunday of the year is one of the quarterly United Benefice services, this time at St John's. Clare had forgotten too and was walking there from St Catherine's late!
The weather was perfect for a winter walk after lunch, blue skies and sun. I saw a heron and a couple of cormorants flying up the Taff. It's the first time I've seen either of them due to several weeks of bad weather. I went out earlier than usual, as we expected a special guest to arrive for an overnight stay.
Katie Roberts is the younger daughter of Jan and Jill Roberts, whom we got to know when I was training for ministry at St Mike's. After a few years of living in Britain, they moved to Melbourne in Australia where the girls were born. They returned to UK when I was working in St Paul's over forty years ago, and rented an empty curate's house in the Parish for a year. Their small girls were the same age as ours, and attended the same nursery school. Katie is a talented artist, who publishes photos of her work, often work in progress interestingly, on Instagram, so we've been able to take an interest in the development of her work in recent years - an added dimension to emailed correspondence!
It's nearly ten years since she last visited us, so there was a lot to catch up on. Jan died almost four years ago and Katie came over then, but wasn't able to visit. It was good to be able to talk about Jan's extraordinary life, and about their childhood sojourn in St Paul's back in 1979. While we chatted after supper she showed us photos of her son Kirra a trained circus artist, her mother Jill, and her home in Melbourne. Then she took out pencils, colours and sketchbook, and drew us both while we sat there. That was a surprise. Nobody has ever done that before!
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