Bright St Agnes day

A couple of clear bright sunny days to start the week, perfect for walking, whether going out to do the weekly shopping, or enjoying the parks. Fr Rhys came on Monday evening to certify my passport photocopy ready for the Spanish police check application. I downloaded the Form 790 from the web, but found it worryingly different from a UK equivalent because of its legal terminology and structure that I'm not sure I'd be able to fill it in correctly to obtain a result. I think I need help with this.

St Agnes' day today, a fiesta with happy memories from my days working in St. Paul's Bristol, as Vicar of St Agnes Parish Church. It's the only one of the four parish churches in the area still open and active today, very much adapted to different circumstances in the forty years since I moved on.

This morning I did an hour long CofE on-line safeguarding training module, part of what diocese in Europe requires for renewing my PTO. It reminded me to enquire of the Bishop's Chaplain about the same for the diocese of Llandaff. It seems there are several in the pipeline. I hope they happen before I go away or after my return.

This afternoon, I was out just at the right time to catch a family of six red-wings out foraging in the avenue near the riding school, in exactly the same location where I saw them several years ago. Several families of long tail tits, plus a couple of coal tits were in the branches of the avenue of trees leading down to the Taff. There was a solitary missel thrush out in the middle of the football pitch to the north of the path, again where I've seen one several times before. 

The most wonderful sight was, however, several hundred starlings feeding closely together in the same area of grass in the middle of the same pitch. There were dog walkers circulating around the edge of the field, and every now and then the movement or sound of the dogs caused all the birds to rise into the air, travel a short distance and then settle again to feed in another densely packed area of grass. Once or twice, when the alignment of the flock was right, I heard the brief low hum of all those wings, a hundred and fifty years away. Exquisite!