Internal refugee story

I posted the YouTube Morning Prayer video link just after Thought for the Day this morning, after long but disrupted night's sleep. I didn't feel ready to drive myself to 'the Res' for my funeral planning meeting so I walked to Cowbridge Road to get a number 18 bus. I had a much longer wait than expected, and only just arrived in time. The bereaved children told an extraordinary story of how their mother had been born in Lewisham just before war broke out, and that her mother had walked from there with her as a babe in arms to a farm near Pembroke where her early childhood years were spent before moving to Cardiff. 

I'm not sure how much more detail they had of her beginnings. When I checked later, I found Lewisham had been one of the first South East London boroughs to be hit by the blitz, a later by V1 and V2 rockets. In the first month of attack the response to those made homeless by bombing was chaotic, evacuation was still at an early stage, so those who could, fled the capital one way or another, and if you couldn't afford a train ticket you walked and begged lifts. And that's only part of the remarkable story I'll be telling in her funeral eulogy.

By the time I arrived home Clare had already arrived from school and lunch was on the table. Her story session in kindergarten Mark accompanying on violin was a delight and a success with the little ones. He truly fits the pied piper role. After a restorative siesta, a walk around Llandaff and Pontcanna Fields. I took several good bird photos with my new Olympus telephoto lens, missel thrush, pied wagtail and a wren out of the trees for once, singing from its perch atop the fence around the tennis courts.

In the evening I watched an episode of a Canadian series on More Four called 'Coroner' set in Toronto. It's already been running five weeks. It's a courtroom drama with domestic, forensic and police elements. This episode was about the white police killing of an innocent black man, slowly revealed to be a cover-up job, a perennial a issue in Canada, as in the USA. I have another five episodes to catch up on, next time there's a rainy day and nothing better to do