Beanfeast

A long night's sleep, made extra comfortable by not needing any kind of dressing for the first time in three years, a real sign of healing progress to rejoice in. After our usual pancake breakfast, Clare harvested three quarters of a kilo of French beans, and set about preparing them for freezing to eat when we return from our trip to Felixstowe. The plants have given us fresh beans daily for the past couple of weeks, a summer pleasure. I cooked a lentil dish for lunch, then walked up to Llandaff Weir and back. 

I passed through the huge cemetery at the south side of the Cathedral, much of it now overgrown with hidden paths and gravestones, some modest others monumental, peeping out of dense undergrowth. In a couple of secluded places beneath trees, groups of teenagers hung out and chatted, not up to mischief, just being themselves, socialising, as they also do in similar overgrown places at the edge of Llandaff Fields.

When I got back, I started packing for our trip to Felixstowe, finished and printed tomorrow's sermon, then watched an Italian crimme on BBC Four called 'Piranhas'. It was set in the old town part of Naples portraying a gang of feral fifteen year olds getting involved in local protection rackets, adolescent kids with all the desires and fantasies of their age, groomed for low level crime by older Mafiosi. The acting is superb and the filming brilliant. It's based on real life incidents involving the firearms by youngsters in the city. The one appearance by police throughout the story is in making arrests of mafia dons at a wedding. They are notably absent from street scenes in which poor traders are being abused and extorted, or drugs are openly sold to students outside the University. It made me think about 'county lines' drug trafficking in Britain, which exploits kids of a similar age.