Pastoral policing

Just another routine day yesterday, except that I walked over to Victoria Park for a change, after a circuit of Thompson's Park for a change, and completed my daily mileage walking in the dark around Llandaff Fields before turning in. Covid numbers continue to rise, and now an all-Wales short lock-down is being talked about in coming weeks. The idea is to curb infection rates and avoid overwhelming hospitals with critical care patients, long enough to get the test, track and trace system running more efficiently, as it's still failing to do its job in slowing infection rates and containing the epidemic.

In this morning's post I received a thick envelope with brochures and a letter from The Spire hospital confirming my surgical appointment on 10th November, and informing me that it would take place in the afternoon and not the morning. I'm delighted about this at it eliminates the prospect of a very early morning start to get there by seven. Now it's a twelve fifteen check-in, far less of a worry! Naturally I'm bound to keep hoping this will happen, but realistically, I can foresee another postponement unless there is a significant measure of success in containment. The Spire       

Clare cooked pancakes for breakfast again today after a lie-in, then set about making three Christmas puddings and putting them on to steam. It left us with the logistical challenge of cooking lunch with one ring and one suitable pan to work with, and both of us wanting to cook different things. Somehow we did this without giving each other too much grief or cross words.

After lunch, I finally got around to doing my tax return on-line and submitting it. Having done a little advance preparation, collecting necessary figures together on one sheet of paper, this took just over an hour. The web interface keeps evolving in a good way, clearer and easier to use once you understand all the technical jargon relevant to your own set of income streams. I don't have many fortunately.

Then we walked around the park and down to Blackweir Bridge. For most of the day until after sunset the sky remained overcast. More and more leaves are falling, creating pools of gold, orange or brown colour on the grass, photos, no matter how well tweaked in processing afterwards never quite succeed in capturing what the eye sees.

The second new episode of Inspector Montalbano was on BBC Four tonight. Superb again and several different stories to be told, no major crimes, but several narratives, you might think of as pastoral, all of which would be part of a Chief Inspector's job in a rural fishing community. One involved a Swedish film crew and Salvo's deputy Mimi misbehaving with a film star, another was about bullying the classroom tech geek in a local school, and another was a curious cold case involving mysterious super eight movie clips, leading to the discovery that a past suicide had been a covered up murder, in tragic unusual circumstances. In this latter scenario Salvo ends up listening to a dying man unburdening his conscience, underlining the pastoral role police officers often take when they're not playing cops and robbers, all part of keeping the peace. The perennial stars of this twenty year old series now look more middle aged, but none the worse for that. I'll be sad when there are no more of Andrea Camillieri's stories to tell.