After breakfast and uploading this week's Morning Prayer video to YouTube, I walked to St John's to celebrate the Eucharist with ten others. I joined the congregation for a cup of coffee afterwards, the first time I've been free to to so recently. It's great to see people relaxed and laughing at funny stories, enjoying the company. As usual on a Thursday, I cooked lunch in good time for Clare's arrival from school.
I lost an hour's sleep in the middle of the night due to waking up with a nose bleed from a deep sleep. It's not happened for the best part of a year. As ever, it's due to sleeping with my neck not properly supported to avoid constricting blood vessels and it can happen when turning over in my sleep and not realising what I've done. Unfortunately there was blood on the carpet which needed cleaning up before I could get back to sleep. After lunch I slept soundly in the chair for an hour and ten minutes, which made up for the amount of sleep lost in the night, and then felt better when I went out for a walk.
Clare ordered three replacement fitbit straps for me using her little used Amazon account. Although they are a small item, I suspect their rarity determines a mailing delivery date between 4th and 14th October. In the meanwhile my fitbit remains tied on with elastic thread. Taking it off to charge will be a challenge.
This evening I completed next week's Thursday Morning Prayer video and uploaded it to YouTube ready. Sister in Law Ann arrives tomorrow afternoon for a good long weekend and Sunday matinee opera outing. Owain comes over to join us for a meal at Stefano's tomorrow, a few days ahead of his Mum's birthday but it's the only way he can organise a visit to celebrate with us. Ann will be pleased to see her nephew too.
We watched a BBC documentary this evening about the investigation by South Wales Police into the murder of Lynette White, a Butetown sex worker thirty years ago. Five men of colour were arrested and subjected to brutal interrogations which ended up in three of them being jailed when there was no evidence against them apart from false witness statements and confessions forced under interrogation - shades of America or South Africa.
After a community campaign and a long legal battle an appeal quashed the convictions as the appeal judge ruled the evidence was unsound, and the process by which it was obtained. The men were freed after four years imprisonment. Thirteen years after the murder, a cold case review of evidence used new DNA analysis techniques that led to the arrest and conviction of the murderer, confirming what was to every one but the Police authority that the original arrests and convictions were a prime example of both corruption and the perversion of the course of justice.
An internal investigation arrested thirty policemen including 19 serving officers. Eight came to trial and the case against them could not be pursued because key documentary evidence was not available to both sides beforehand, yet turned up subsequently. It's a very disturbing tale of persistent institutional police corruption and racism which damaged scores of lives of people involved. Contemporary police leadership claims things are different now. Maybe those at the top are less inclined to turn a bline eye and keen to implement new improved policies, but does such change penetrate right down to the grass roots of the force I wonder?
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