Harvest festival weekend

Another rainy morning, enough to make me feel very grumpy arriving at St Catherine's for the Eucharist dripping wet. It was our parish Harvest Festival Celebration, with all the offerings being of foodstuffs that will be of use to the local food-bank. We were about four dozen, including over half a dozen children. A good number considering both the weather and the covid secure restriction, which still un-nerve some of the regulars. I was most touched afterwards to be offered by Hilary from this week's fresh produce for sale from the church garden a jar of crab apple jelly she made from the fruit of a tree planted there last year. The church tree is a little ahead of the ones we hope to harvest in the park, but there seem to be different varieties growing and coming to fruit at different times in different terrains. Marvellous!

By the time we had lunch, the rain had stopped, so I went straight out and walked up to Llandaff Weir via the Cathedral again. It gives me a chance to enter and offer a few prayers in the spot where I was ordained. With my cold almost gone, I feel I no longer need to self-isolate, just wear a mask in enclosed spaces as usual. From Tuesday, I'll have to be stricter, no visiting enclosed spaces, avoiding going near anyone when I'm out walking. It's not so difficult if you pick the right time of day, there's plenty of space in the parks most of the time. Trees are turning colour and shedding leaves day by day now, so each day I take photos of a select few, to record the changes. A small autumnal aesthetic pleasure.

We watched another three episodes of 'The Shtisels'. It's a series that really draws you in, as the characters are believable and you start caring about them and what happens in their lives. After supper we watched the Vienna Philharmonic concert recorded a few days ago in the Schoenbrunn Palace gardens in Vienna. Neither the orchestra nor the audience of several hundred were socially distanced, and only a handful of the audience wore masks. Pre-pandemic this concert would attract an audience of tens of thousands. The audience size limitation seems to have been the main concession to covid-19. I believe that there's a virus testing and tracing regime and other social policies which made the concert possible in this form. In some other European countries concerts and opera performances have resumed under controlled conditions. In a way, all these projects are experimental, an opportunity to find out what works safely and what doesn't. The UK hasn't yet been so bold, not surprisingly, given the difficulties the government has encountered in managing the crisis and retaining public confidence.