A welcome return to blue sky and sunshine today, though the air has yet to warm up to expected summer temperatures. It took me a while to get going as physical tiredness from yesterday's trip to Bristol caught up with me, so it was a day of rest and inactivity apart from daily exercise. It was good for walking and good to see hundreds of people sitting out in the parks. Counting couples, over fifty groups of between two and fifteen gathered to socialise, drink together and eat barbecue food or picnic snacks . Three to four hundred people in all, I think. It's been like this every weekend for a while, says Clare. Few were wearing masks and not all were socially distancing. Far fewer people are going abroad for holidays this year, and hopefully rediscovering the pleasures of home turf.
No doubt pub and restaurant closures have led to a big increase in the use of our city parks. As for beaches, I don't know, and we've yet to take advantage of the restriction of the five mile travel limit to visit the coast and look. Cafe Castan had a long queue of people outside for take away drinks and snacks, and Pontcanna Street Co-op had a queue outside as well, as it's closest to the park. No queues outside the deli 200m away at the bottom of the street, nor the other Co-op in King's Road.
It's nice to see the parks so well used, except for the bags of rubbish around overflowing bins, if not discarded in situ. When the wind picks up unsecured emptied plastic shopping bags take to the air and roll over the greensward like tumbleweed until caught by bushes or some vigilant passer-by. In clearings along the river bank on the Bute Park, side groups of people occupy space and dip their feet in the water if it isn't running too fast. You can tell when it's rained in the Brecon Beacons, as next day the full length of the weir has turbid water running over it. Kids who on a normal summer's day would be up on Blackweir Bridge daring to jump off into the pool below, congregate at the side by the fish ladder and splash about in the water when the mood takes them.
In the evening I watched what I thought was the last episode of Non Uccidere. I thought ti was anti-climactic and slightly open ended, suggesting it will stretch to a third series. When I checked the IMDB website the second series was rated with twenty four episodes with the twelfth being screened last week. So it seems another dozen are yet to come, but not yet revealed on the 'Walter Presents' page. At this length it resembles a soap opera with one dominant lead character, backed by a credible hard working team that gets results, but we never really get to learn enough about them and their backgrounds.
The stories cover a range of complex sordid crimes with family issues running through two thirds of them relating to contemporary social issues touching on poor and rich families alike. One third of the episodes feature crime connected to a closed community - a convent and a monastery, both with rehabilitation as their mission, a new-age sect, and a military unit readying for deployment. An interesting set of observations on what goes wrong with close knit relationships in today's world.
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