Equinox

Spring equinox weekend already. Nice to be reminded of this when switching on the radio and the 'phone this morning. We had our lazy extra half hour in bed before getting up for a pancake breakfast. Then I walked into town to take photos of the bus station construction site. Shops are shut with few exceptions, streets are deserted, buses come and go empty, or with one or two masked passengers. The construction site is busy nevertheless. I count half a dozen workers moving about on scaffolded decks above Wood Street, and there are sounds of machinery being operated coming from deep within the skeletal frame. 

Crossing the Wood Street bridge, I noticed a dredger at work in the river, by the the Taff Mead water-bus pier, so I crossed under the railway line and took some photos. Swans habitually gather on the river bank nearby, plus a few mallard and gulls. Today there was a Chinese goose among them, emitting a distress call loudly. A long feather hanging down out of place suggested it had a wing injury. It's almost the same size as one of the younger swans. I wondered if it was lost and had mistaken this group for its own kind, and then been expelled roughly. I heard another bystander speak on his phone to someone in an animal rescue call centre. I hope his concern was responded to in a timely way. Humans or other creatures mix with a swan's family circle at their peril.

In Canton and Pontcanna, streets are periodically busy with shoppers, or parents wheeling their infants or tugging their dogs to and from the parks. Construction continues rapidly on two neighbourhood housing developments throughout the week. Road traffic, although pretty reduced in volume seems to go in spates for no reason I can work out. Sometimes the roads are deserted, other times there are the usual long queues at traffic lights. Overall, the sound of ambulance sirens has become less frequent this past month or so, a welcome sign of a reduction in the covid infection rate.

Clare had gone out for a walk when I returned home, leaving the lunch half prepared for me to finish off, and we ate together when she returned. Later I walked down to Blackweir bridge and back. There was an organised football match going on, with a referee, linesman and teams in their colours. I'm still unsure how 'official' park team games actually are.

A third wave of coronavirus infection is growing seriously in several EU countries, dampening the hopes of foreign holidays for all but the super rich or desperately crazy. Border controls and quarantined entry and exit are likely to remain. Now that half the UK adult population has been inoculated, will Britain escape a third wave? Only if strict precautions remain for much longer than anybody wants or hopes, I'm sorry to say. I'm glad we have a short caravan break with the family in Oxwich Bay booked for the end of July. It could be within the bounds of what's going to be possible. 

Kath, Anto and Rhiannon are booked to go to Sta Pola in August, but it's impossible to know at this stage if that'll be possible. It's such a pity that the Oxford/AZ vaccination roll-put in EU countries was held up due to rare unverifiable safety issues, driven more by political egotism than concern for public health. A commentator on this week's 'BBC Question Time' programme expressed regret that the UK had left the EU on the basis that British pragmatism and enterprise would longer influence decision making and help concentrate European minds on crisis management. 

I think there's a grain of truth in that, but not enough to justify smugness by British parliamentarians. Britain didn't act quickly or strictly enough in border closures and testing once it became clear how fast contagion was spreading. The UK per capita death toll is one of the highest in the world, but now some EU countries have caught us up. It seems as if other countries have also paid the price for bouts of inattention and laxity in facing the pandemic, albeit it at different times from the UK. Much as we long for a return to normal, even a 'new normal', Europe wide, I wouldn't be surprised if that'll be another year to eighteen months away from now.

This evening I watched a foreign novie offering on BBC Four, set in Denmark 1945, about landmine clearance from the country's beaches carried out by captive young German army cadets. It was very powerful and tragic, portraying the deep hatred felt by Danes against Germans in general, not just nazis. A bitter angry Danish sergeant has a demining platoon under his charge. He is cruel and bullies them routinely to start with. Slowly as some of them are killed by their penitential labours, he starts to realise they aren't hardened soldiers but schoolboys, and learns compassion towards the survivors. In the end he defies orders by helping the remnant return to Germany, when the majority of the platoon die in an accident.

It made me think about how painful and costly reconciliation of enemies can be, or between perpetrator and victims. Very suitable for the eve of Passiontide.