Music in its proper context

I set off to drive to St German's this morning at half past nine, to be sure to arrive early enough to let the RWCMD choir inro rhw hall for an hour's rehearsal before singing the Byrd four part Mass setting and Ave Verum Corpus motet at Mass. Together with the choir there were forty five in the congregation. The whole serve went off without a hitch, and the choir sang remarkably well considering how little rehearsal time they's had. It was wonderful to see their eyes sparkle with achievement when it was over. It was a festive day which everyone took great pleasure in, despite going for for twenty minutes longer than usual. This particular Byrd Mass setting and Motet I recall from Geneva days, and found it very moving to hear sung in an English Victorian Gothic church with the perfect acoustic for renaissance polyphony.

I recorded the whole service on my little digital dictating machine. It wasn't placed in the best position, and when I heard the playback I didn't think it was going to be of any use, but after editing it in 'Audacity' it was adequate for sharing with the musicians. With me learning by doing, getting the edit done took up a couple of hours in the afternoon. I'll probably have another go at it before turning it into a YouTube video.

A mother and her five year old boy were in church. They came while I was away, asking about Baptism for the boy, and came today to fix a date with me. I'm pleased that as the family group is small, they want the christening to be during the Sunday Mass rather than after it. That's a first for me at St German's, and it will be the four I've done since the summer. The little boy was very calm, attentive and well. We went and looked at the font and discussed how Baptism would be done. 

He began to talk with understanding about what was going to be done to him - he told me that Jesus was baptised and he wanted the same. He knew the basic Gospel story learned in school, but also from watching videos of the life of Jesus at home, and spoke simply about Jesus being put on a cross, dying, buried and rising again. It seemed clear that he had taken to heart what he learned and identified with the story. I was amazed by this. Clearly his knowledge was not acquired parrot fashion. This christening will be far from routine, because of the child and his parents, who have nurtured him well.

I got home for lunch a half past one, and  after editing the sound file from the service, went for a walk around the park at four. It was dark by the time I got back. The Taff is swollen and with the amont of rain we're getting, plus wind, it's likely to get higher still.

Clare made a special effort to get some sweets in for 'trick-or-treaters', and we had two visitors doing the evening, utterly charming and polite. Somehow I expected more, and we have several young families in our neighbourhood these days, with the changing demographic.

After supper, we watched a  fascinating David Attenborough wildlife programme called 'The Mating Game', then it was time to reflect and wind down after a marvellous day, moving in many ways. Ziwei Gao has finished her course, and goes home next week. This morning was her first and only opportunity for a non-concert liturgical performance of a Mass setting in the way it was intended to be used. I just wish that I'd made better preparations to record it.

Blessed normality

Pancakes for our Saturday breakfast, then a drive over to St German's to meet Ziwei Gao, the Chinese student of conducting who is leading the singing group for tomorrow's All Saints' Sunday Mass. She's from Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province of South East China, aka Canton. I explained to her that Canton in Cardiff is derived from Canna-town and that the presence of a Chinese church and Chinese shops is a coincidence! The singing group will be eight strong tomorrow. 

We went into church where Ann and Mike were doing the necessary sacristy duties, and talked through the movement of the service with her, and agreed choir positioning for books to be put out for them. The one thing I'd been unable to do was inform her of the singing of the dialogue and preface, as I don't have music and have sung it off by heart for half a century. Fortunately Ann and Mike were there on hand to assist in a live demonstration!

Then, back home for lunch, finishing off and printing tomorrow's sermon and writing a weekly reflection. I got around to recharging several back-up camera batteries which have drained and not been replenished. I'm not as good at being systematic as I think I am, and need to be. Older batteries lose capacity and drain more rapidly. Another solution would be to buy new batteries but as specialised batteries are expensive, I'm loathe to buy new so until I must.

Mthr Frances has asked me to do a funeral at St John's a week Thursday, and the midweek Eucharist this week. In the Parish WhatsApp group was a notice about St John's setting up a Parish funeral fund, aiming to help hard up families to cover the church side of funeral costs. I think that's a very nice idea.

It was a reassuring pleasure to return to an afternoon walk in Llandaff and Pontcanna Fields afterwards. Normality is resuming after our two week break from routine. I spotted four pied wagtails near the children's playground, where normally I see one, occasionally two. This must be a family group. Some of the trees have turned golden yellow, others are still green or green flecked with gold, a lovely sight, and different in appearance from the trees around Watchet, which seemed less advanced in colour change.

There was nothing worth watching on telly, so I spent the evening archiving copies of photos on a back-up drive, then recording and editing audio files ready for this week's Morning Prayer video. For once I made an effort not to take advantage of the clocks going back and stay up late, in order to benefit from the extra hour.

Back to Wales

We had to leave our holiday cottage this morning by nine thirty, earlier than would be usual, as nowadays, cleaners have to come in and sanitize the place before the next occupants arrive. We left on time and the weather was kind for the uneventful return trip. After crossing the bridge back into Wales, we called at Magor service station, and noticed that mask wearing was prevalent, though far from universal despite the difference in Welsh legislation, driven by infection rates remaining high. 

A letter was waiting for each of us at home with back to back appointments for the Pfizer booster vaccine on Bonfire Night. I had an email from Ziwei Gao a student at RWCMD  to arrange a briefing before the choir she's conducting sings for the All Saints Day Mass on Sunday. We're going to meet in St German's on Saturday morning. It's going to be an interesting challenge for me to explain the liturgical setting of William Byrd's music to someone of a different culture with no experience of Christian liturgy.

I cooked lunch while Clare organised the five loads of washing necessary after a fortnight away and then collected my medication from the pharmacy in the first of two trips to the shops. There were several batches of photos to upload via our faster more stable internet connection, although it took two reboots of the router and the computer to re-establish the connection after a fortnight's down time.

We watched a live one-off performance of 'Mrs Brown's Boys' and this week's 'Have I got news for you', also live, both rather crude and lacking subtlety. A waste of time really. Early bed would have been more beneficial.

Cleeve Abbey in the rain

I woke up early enough to post the link to my Morning Prayer video in honour of Saints Simon and Jude, and then we had a farewell breakfast with Kath before she set out. The South West was threatened with a day of heavy rain, but fortunately it held off in the morning for her return drive to Kenilworth. We went for a walk around the port before lunch, and I decided to go to Cleeve Abbey, having discovered that it was only a few miles away, on the edge of Washford, the village linked to Watchet by the old Mineral Line footpath. Clare didn't fancy making the effort to go there as she had her daily swimming hour slot at four, so I decided to go alone. 

As I arrived there the rain started in earnest, rather challenging weather for photography, and I got off to a bad start, dropping my Sony Alpha 68 DSLR from its bag as I struggled to close my top coat. Fortunately, no damage was done, except that the SD card dislodged from its slot and I didn't notice until I'd take about a dozen photos and saw the 'no card' warning message on the back screen. Once I'd re-inserted the card I had to double back and re-take the pictures I thought I'd lost.

Using my Wales CADW membership card, about to expire next week, allowed me to get in for free. I would have been willing to pay as the whole site is remarkable and worth a visit. It was a Cistercian house dating from the turn of the thirteenth century. The reformation saw Abbey church razed to the ground and its ground plan is marked in the grass on the north side of the site. A great deal more remains, however. It is said to be the most complete set of monastic ruins in England, with the Gate House, Chapter House, Refectory, Dormitory and Sacristy intact. The structures have been re-roofed and the 15 century Refectory windows are glazed, protecting its ancient timbers with a carved angel at the base of each rib. It must be used as a local venue for concerts, banquets and other productions.

The outer Cloister walls and ancillary rooms are still in place, although the covered inner walk way of the cloister has gone, and the ancient kitchen was remodelled and extended by the seventeenth century tenant farmer who worked the land. There's one complete tiled floor recovered from the site of a long demolished building which housed it. This is now protected by a modern building that permits visitors a close inspection. That there's so much of the ancient structure remaining is because Henry VIII sold it and the surrounding terrain to one of his nobles who saw its potential for transformation into a grand manor house, once the church's construction materials had been recycled. 

Ownership passed to the Lutterell family of Dunster Castle in the nineteenth century, and the Abbey was partly ruinous by then, but Henry Lutterell was a conservationist sympathetic to retaining it 'as found' rather than 'restoring' it or adapting it further than its 17th century tenant had. It passed to the Crown in 1950, and is looked after very well by English Heritage. As there was so much under cover, I only got wet when I went outdoors to take pictures. One of the guides confirmed that the old Mineral Line track ran up the valley to the south of the Abbey, following the river course. He pointed out the line of trees along the edge of the woodland across the field on the north side and said that the track was walkable in only a few stretches uphill nowadays.

I drove back and arrived at half past four just in time to go with Clare to the pool and watch over her while she swam, with the sound of rain pelting down on the roof of the pool, as it continued to do until gone nine, when I went out for a walk around the port during a short respite from the rain. 

Excursion to Minehead

We went to Minehead by train and bus this morning. Train as far as Dunster, then in a vintage bus to Minehead railway station, as the level crossing in Minehead town is out of use currently. One of the buses was an open topped double decker in old Bristol City green bus livery, the other was a red London Routemaster. 

We arrived on the red bus and travelled top deck on the green one back to Dunster to join the train. The London bus was a 91, on a route my sister Juneoften used to get from Wandsworth Common to get about town, so I sent her a photo by phone before getting on.

Minehead is a pleasant traditional kind of seaside resort despite having one of the few remaining Butlins holiday camps by the beach. The main street is blessed with many independent retailers and eateries with the part furthest away from the front given over to national retail chain stores and banks. It's well managed and appealing.

The harbour, contains some small fishing boats and yachts, with a lifeboat station on the quay. There's a fishermen's chapel on the quay dedicated to St Peter, with a painting behind the altar of Jesus walking on the water. The sea shore is a mix of sand and rocky shelves and much of the strip of land nearest the sea wall is devoted to wild grasses, which not only looks good, but provides an absorbent natural buffer between the sea and the wall.

We had fish and chips for lunch and walked up and down the main shopping street. There wasn't enough time to explore the back streets which extended up the east facing woided hillside. There's an ancient parish church of St Michael on the hillside as well as a Victorian church of St Andrew at the top of the main street in the town centre.

We returned on the early train and went for a walk around the port before supper and an evening of conversation an Rioja while I struggled with patience to upload my train photos over recalcitrqnt wifi.

Musical adventure

Yesterday, I had an email from Andrea Brown confirming that a group of students from the Royal Welsh College would come and sing a Byrd four part Mass and a motet at our All Saints' Sunday Mass on the weekend,  in response to a proposal I put to her recently. It's a challenge for one of their conducting students who is Chinese and unfamiliar with Christian liturgy, but keen nevertheless to experience what may normally be performed at a concert in the setting for which it was written. 

I found a suitable copy of the liturgical text and annotated it to indicate where each piece of music comes. Hopefully there'll be a chance for a face to face briefing before the pre-service rehearsal happens. Clare and Ann left me and walked east along the coast path. Later I caught up with them on the headland overlooking the harbour, and we went for a cup of tea in the East Quay arts centre below.

Kath arrived at six after spending the weekend with Owain and then driving down from Bath, where they'd spent the afternoon enjoying the spa waters. She's going to be with us until Thursday, as some film extra work she was recruited for failed to materialise for logistic reasons. The four of us had a lovely evening, eating and catching up, as Ann and Kath haven't seen each other since well before the pandemic.

After breakfast this morning, I drove Ann to Taunton Station for her 10h40 train back to Felixstowe. I was pleased to find my way there from memory without needing to consult a map, or Google.  We received a message from her just after three to say she'd arrived home. Remarkably nowadays Taunton to Paddington takes two hours, about the same as the run to Cardiff, thanks to line electrification. Liverpool Street to Felixstowe takes three hours and is half the distance. It's very much a rural stopping train service to East Anglia.

After lunch we walked west on the coast path as far as we could, to the place where a stretch of it has been closed because of a cliff collapse. It was very hilly, and good exercise. We had tea in Watchet's East Quay arts centre again, as we did yesterday with Ann before returning for another pleasant evening of catch-up with Kath. 

Sea Sunday

After breakfast we walked up to St Decuman's church for the Bible Sunday Parish Eucharist. This week it was a retired locum priest who celebrated, arriving just as we reached the church after our brisk uphill walk. He was fully vested after celebrating at another church. Instead of the organ, our hymn singing was accompanied by piano and violin, played by older members of the congregation. Everyone sang heartily. There were two dozen present, including another retired priest and his wife. She read the Epistle with great care and thoughtfulness, he assisted the celebrant by holding the chalice for dipping the host during the distribution of Communion.

We had bacon sandwiches for a light lunch as Clare and Ann were due to go swimming at three. I went for a walk and got some good photos from the promontory behind the east cliff of the last train of the day for Bishops Lydeard, passing through the cutting after the station. As I returned, the sun reached the horizon and I got some pleasing photos of the port. 

After the quick installation of a minor Windows 10 update, I found that internet speed had picked up again allowing photos to upload and not stall with the line dropping. Could an epidemic of forced Windows updates be a contributory factor in catastrophic network slowdowns, especially if several users were being updated at roughly the same time?

There was an ecumenical Sea Sunday service at the Methodist Church by the station at six tonight. I had thought of going, but lost track of time when I was taking pictures. The sea came into focus later on when we watched a documentary on BBC Four about the making of a play called 'Salt', written by a black Brummie about the impact of the experience of slavery on continuing racism and black identity. 

Artist Selina Thompson retraced the sea journeys made by enslaved Africans on the transatlantic slave trade triangle, travelling on a cargo ship, reflecting on the absolute power over the centuries of a ship's master benefiting from sustaining human trafficking. Much of her essay centred on the question 'Where are you from' depending on context and working at several levels in terms of personal identity. It highlighted the extent that western society's wealth and culture rests on foundations of violent exploitation. I found it most thoughtful and deeply challenging. 

Vital irrigation

I didn't sleep well and woke up feeling under the weather, so Clare and Ann went off to Minehead on the train without me. It was only later in the morning I realised that the last time I felt like this was when I'd not drunk enough water, and set about drinking a litre and a half before lunch. After a walk, I felt normal again. 

Clare and Ann returned on the first afternoon train and went for their scheduled swim,  I went out to the mineral line path to see if I could get a sequence of photos of the last train of the day crossing the railway bridge over the path, using burst mode on my HX50. This camera will take a batch of ten photos at a low or high rate, one or three seconds, then it pauses to off-load them to memory. Getting the timing of the first shot right to obtain the desired sequence is something I need more practice to perfect. 

Transferring them to Google Photos at the moment is impossible as the in-house wifi has slowed down substantially. Either others are hogging bandwidth by streaming, or there a slowdown at the infrastructure level. Simple browsing and emailing are about all that's possible.

We went out to the 'The Cat's Whiskers' again for another tapas supper. I think we've tried all the menu variables now. I'm not used to all this eating out.

Dunster drive

After breakfast we went to Dunster by car, to visit the National Trust stately home, dating back to the fourteenth century, transformed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by its wealthy landowning family into a substantial domestic country residence with landscaped gardens. The Bristol Channel is a mile or so away and the castle sits high above the coastal plain beneath the Quantocks on a fifty metre promontory. 

The house interior is largely Jacobean with handsome wooden panelling and stairs, its walls are covered with generations of family portraits. Whether or not you know anything about the people they portray, they demonstrate the way in which portrait painting evolved over three. centuries. The extensive gardens wrapped around the promontory on which the castle stands are stocked with trees and plants from far and wide, and some delightful footpaths weaving their way through tall trees bushes and plants. 

At the bottom is a winding stream with three bridges crossing it, all in different styles. Higher up a side valley the stream feeds a mill leet, leading to a working flour mill, with an overshot double waterwheel and four sets of grinding stones. It used to produce flour from cereals grown on the estate, but as this has been given up in favour of sheep farming organically grown grain is shipped in by the sackful from elsewhere. Ann came away with a bag of oats and Clare with a bag a spelt flour for bread making when we return home

In the valley on the western side is the village of Dunster. It has retained many of its mediaeval buildings and town plan. The mainly fifteenth century Parish Church of St George was once a Priory dating back to the 12-13th century and has an interesting internal layout. The chancel and sanctuary are under the central tower and there's a rood screen a couple of bays into the nave. The east end beyond the tower is furnished with an altar and seating in the form of rectangular stalls to the north south and west, as is found in some collegiate churches with a chapter within the building. The east end lancet windows are characteristic of an eleventh century foundation. None of these features are necessarily original. The nineteenth century restoration of a delapidated church was carried out by neo-gothic revival architect George Edmund Street, keen to impart to his work a sense of its history as a parish church of monastic origins.

In addition to a churchyard on the west and south sides, the land at the east end has been made into a park and garden, and there's a large mediaeval tithe barn on the north east side, renovated in recent decades and now used as a community facility. The narrow road through the village winds past the south boundary wall and in the street beyond passes a fifteenth century building called 'The Nunnery'. The Priory originally had a small number of monks whose residence has long disappeared, and a small number of nuns as well. Like the castle, a great deal of attention has been paid to the conservation of the built environment. Unlike the castle, the village remains populated and economically active with small shops and a post office.

On the way there, we had a fifteen minute traffic queue due to road works to get through the neighbouring village of Carhampton, but on the return trip thankfully, we had a clear run. Beyond Dunster on the way to Minehead are even more major road works, road closures and diversions increasing the travel delay. Fortunately, in the past week the road closure has been transferred from the day time to evenings, much to the relief of all those who go to Minehead for their shopping. At the moment, the steam train runs as far as Dunster, then there's a replacement service using an antique bus the rest of the way. Road works would add to the journey time and make it impraticable for a shopping commute. Road maintenance is vital for rural communities, so heavily car dependent, and tends to get done outside holiday season. It must be awful to live with.

I cooked supper and then we watched 'Have I got news for you' savagely satirical, followed by a romantic black comedy, sort of, coarse and in poor taste. I could have done without it. Scientific advice is openly advocating a return to the kind of minor restrictions in England which still exist in Wales, but Boris is doing his optimistic best to disregard warnings that contagion and hospitalization could again spiral out of control. This totally lacks in common sense, as if he's afraid of losing face politically, simply shrugging off growing concern. One local public health authority is making use of its powers insist on mask wearing in situations it has control of. Let's hope others will follow suit and put to shame the fool at the helm of government.

Map Happy

The local tourist information centre was open today, and our our walk around to introduce Ann to the town, we called in, to find out if they had an Ordinance Survey map. We could find no other place which sells them here, but this time we were lucky, and Clare is happy. A smartphone OS app doesn't safisfy her like the real thing.

After lunch we walked up the Mineral Line path three quarters of the way to Washford and back. Early evening we enjoyed another meal at the 'Cat's Whiskers' restaurant around the corner. We've booked again for Saturday night. The tapas menu is certainly worth revisiting, and the Portuguese house wine is quite good too.

I admit to a degree of nervousness about eating out as covid infections continue to climb again, higher in South Wales and the South West due to more than forty thousand erroneous test results a few weeks ago unleashing additional risk of contagion in the area from which the PCR samples were taken. We just have to be extra careful, as I'm sure the restauranteur is, having lost so much revenue this past eighteen months.

Taunton trip

Dire weather warnings for today plus a meteor shower tonight! Nevertheless, we had sunshine and clouds with occasional light showers right through until tea time. Then the rain started in earnest and persisted into the night.

We walked to West beach and the town museum before lunch, then set out early to drive to Taunton to collect Ann from her train at a quarter to four. We had an hour to look around the town centre, which has some ancient buildings and narrow lanes reflecting a mediaeval town plan at the heart of everything.

There's a castle in the town centre that is now a rather superior hotel. The 14the century Parish church of St James was open, and the nave organised as a vaccination centre. The building has a busy weekday social  programme which includes prayer meetings, and just one Sunday morning All Age Service. No mention of a service of Communion. The chancel and sanctuary are converted into a store for spare chairs and other junk. Sad to see. 

Despite road works, the traffic was light in both ditections. We got back to Watchet by four twenty and then Clare went for a swim while Ann settled in with a cup of tea and some cake. Rain started in earnest two hours later than predicted, so there was no chance of an evening walk along the port. With a little struggle we got the telly to work and watched the first episode of 'Shetland', a Scottish crimmie series I've not seen before. Lovely scenery.

Secrets of the gut

A damp day with drizzle and occasional showers, but mild for this time of year, eighteen degrees. We got up late, having stayed in bed listening to Jim Al-Khalili on 'The Life Scientific' interviewing Tim Spector whose pioneering research into the diversity of individual human gut biomes is revealing remarkable new insights into the reason why some people can eat whatever the want and never put on weight, while others cannot control their weight no matter what diet they try. The composition of microbes in the digestive tract is a key factor in physical and mental health. Eating more variety of fresh food, and less processed foods is essential for improving gut biome health. 

Advocates of vegan and vegetarian diets have been saying this for decades, based on practical experience. Tim Spector's scientific investigation of differences in health between pairs of twins, identical and non-identical over their life span confirms practical wisdom, but goes much further in identifying particular organisms and how they function as part of the digestive system. It's a scientific breakthrough which promises new effective treatments for some chronic ailments.

After breakfast, we walked down to the beach west of the port. The tide was far out and we were able to walk on the table of bedrock that extends over a hundred metres from red sandstone cliffs containing long streaks of friable grey limestone, as does the bedrock. This is one among many places where the Jurassic limestone of the Welsh coast interacts with the older sandstone of the Quantocks, turning and twisting under immense pressure due to movement in the earth's crust. It looks like a cross section of marble cake.

We bought fish and chips to take home for lunch, such generous portions that I regretted eating too much for the rest of the day. We both needed a snooze afterwards and then went for a walk along the coast path heading east from the other side of the port, as far as Helwell Bay. Here the clifftop path drops down a steep flight of steps on to the bedrock table of the beach. There's a sign that warns walkers of mud on the bedrock, and to beware of the tide cutting off the path. There doesn't seem to be an inland path diversion. As the tide had turned we turned around and headed back, but not before we saw an egret in the distance, and heard a distant oystercatcher.

We walked out on to the eastern arm of the port where the quotation from The Ancient Mariner had been painted last Saturday, and inspected the work, made by a local artist, who signs himself 'Pat'. The sound of a train whistle in the distance prompted me to dash to the station, and take photos of the arrival and departure of the last train of the day towards Bishops Lydeard.

The in-house internet wasn't working for most of the day, but we were able to alert the proprietor of this, and he went off and rebooted the system. It worked thereafter very slowly, and for three hours it was impossible to upload the photos I'd taken. I suspect dozens of other holidaymakers were attempting to catch up after the outage at the same time. I needed extra patience to complete uploading the forty nine photos I took today. And then it was time for bed again.

Industrial innovation in Watchet

Sunshine deserted us this St Luke's Day, clouds, drizzle then light rain until evening. Parliamentarians gathered in the Commons to remember Sir David Amess MP, murdered by another closet jihadi going about his constituency business two days ago. He was a practicing Catholic and it was appropriate that the sitting ended with a service in St Margaret's Westminster, Parliament's Parish Church, and not in the Abbey, as was announced on the Today programme this morning. Such factual ignorance at the heart of the BBC's newsroom is inexcusable. 

Elected representatives these days are subject to so much abuse and threats to their lives ands their families, it makes their everyday job a misery and raises huge questions about the security and freedoms we regard as our birth-right. The era of social media has fostered widespread use of intemperate and abusive language in the place of reasoned debate. It reveals to extent to which many people are ignorant of the moral value of respect for others. There was a time when even nominal adherence to Christian faith made a difference to how people speak and act. The country now pays the price for mass apostasy.

I went to the harbour this morning and for the first time noticed the island of Steepholm out in the Bristol Channel, through the port opening, north east of Watchet. Normally we view it, looking south west from the coast path at Penarth, so it's good to see it from the opposite side. It's twice as far from here as it is from Penarth.

I prepared a pasta sauce for lunch but Clare only wanted a snack as she was scheduled to swim at two, so we kept it for the evening. After her swim, we went for a walk in light rain half way up the Mineral Line footpath to Washford before turning back. Yesterday, I noticed that behind the derelict buildings of the Wansborough Paper Mill on the valley floor below St Decumen's church, the sound of an electrical hum issued from a building and there were two new stainless steel storage tanks on the site as well. 

Intrigued by this, I did some googling when we got back and was surprised to learn that a group of bio-tech entrepreneurs calling themselves 'The Onion Collective' has launched a start up project there. This aims to process bio-mass materials using the ability of mycelium, a network of fungal threads that grow underground producing mushrooms to yield other useful by-products. It can neutralise toxins and digest certain plastics, and could provide a source of new materials for manufacture. It's an industrial research and development venture whose successful presence could attract manufacturing enterprises to the site to make use of the new raw materials produced on site. It's an interesting endeavour to regenerate a site with a 250 year old industrial history in what has become a deeply rural area living mostly off tourism.

I walked down to the quay while supper was warming up, and got chatting with a visitor who had grown up in Watchet. He had observed a smallish but powerful boat moving up and down through the water of the outer harbour on the same track. Strange to say, I'd seen the same craft doing the same in the marina yesterday, and wondered what it was doing. He said it was a way of displacing sea bed sand and silt, washed in by the tide. The craft has a high pressure hose directed into the seabed to disturb sediment, as the tide ebbs. Loosened sediment washes back out to sea and thus not allowed to accumulate and require dredging by a bigger craft. Little and often is the order of the day, letting nature do the work. 

A relaxing evening, not watching telly, or listening to music just thinking quietly.

Sunday walks

After some early mist, we had a gloriously sunny and  mild day, enabling us to sit outdoors to eat and read while the sun was up. After breakfast we walked up the lane that runs up the side of the Washford Valley, overlooking the old industrial site where the paper mill and a melanine ware factory once operated to reach St Decuman's Church for the Parish Eucharist. The benefice has recently become vacant and it was the archdeacon of Taunton who was the visiting celebrant, making contact with church officers charged with making a parish profile for the job description. 

At St German's this morning, the archdeacon of Llandaff is visiting and preaching for the first time in the parish vacancy. What a coincidence! There were over thirty of us for the service, in which we were given Communion by intinction in our pews. Well, that's a first for us!

After the service we went down the lane nest to the church to visit St Decuman's Well. It's set in a nicely cultivated hillside garden, with a roof covering a wooden entrance gate - a lovely touch. St Decuman was born and bred on the banks of Milford Haven waters in the late sixth century and migrated to Somerset, it is said, on a raft with a milking cow for company and sustenance. He established a hermitage on the hillside above Watchet and practiced a Gospel healing ministry until he was murdered by a notorious local villain in 706AD. In those days the realm of Celtic chieftains embraced both sides of the Bristol Channel.

We walked back and sat in the garden reading until it was time for lunch. I'm taking advantage of having uncluttered time to finish reading 'Winter in Madrid' in Spanish. It's slow going, but worthwhile.

After lunch I walked to Washford along the footpath which now occupies the trackbed of the old mineral railway line from iron ore mines up in the Brendon Hills down to Watchet Harbour. It's a five mile round trip. Twice I got an opportunity to photograph passing steam trains, but wasn't all that successful. I should have used burst shots to benefit from my trackside viewpoint of such a huge moving object.

I arrived at the cottage in time to accompany Clare to her daily swim, twenty minutes today, double yesterday. My walking mileage is up again to nearly nine miles today. I didn't think I'd ever get this fit. My right ankle is not giving me as much trouble as it did before, for which I am most grateful. I went out again before supper to photograph the harbour at high tide, and climbed up on to the east side cliff top for a gloriou sfull sunset view. The almost full moon was sitting on the horizon in the Quantocks as it reached to top. A truly marvellous moment.

I spent much of the evening uploading photos rather slowly. The internet is adequate, but not for half a dozen devices at a time. A large dose of patience was required before I could see the results of my day's shooting.

The writing's on the harbour wall

Our holiday cottage is in a back street three hundred down the hill from the West Somerset heritage steam railway line. It's like being transported back sixty years to hear the train whistle blow as it enters or leaves Watchet station, and then the perennial chuff-chuff sound as it makes builds up a head of steam to climb up the gradient on the side of Cleeve hill overlooking the sea. We heard but didn't see any trains yesterday, but today were in the vicinity of the station at the right time, first at noon to see a big diesel locomotive pulling a mix of half a dozen different style carriages towards Minehead, and then to see the last train of the day, being hauled by a big steam locomotive to Bishop's Lydeard. 

The sound of old style carriage doors being shut with a satisfying clunk also took me back to my Grammar school days, when I travelled to Lewis School Pengam by steam train for everal years, until these were scrapped in favour of smelly new diesel railcars. It was marvellous when the trains were in the station to gaze through the windows of carriages some of which had corridors alongside their compartments, others of which didn't, or had open plan seating. A rolling exhibition of post war carriage design, fascinating to recall, having lived through that era.

I walked after breakfast to the port and photographed the west side which we'd only seen last night in the dark. The tide was still far out. On return in the afternoon the harbour was beginning to fill with water and the smaller boats starting float again. There was something different about the east side port wall, which I had not noticed yesterday afternoon - an inscription painted neatly in letters large enough to read across the marina. It's a quote from Coleridge's Ryme of the Ancient Mariner, who wrote this poem when living locally.

I overheard a conversation remarking on the fact that it had appeared since this morning. Later, when I looked at yesterday's photos I could confirm that it was true. A remarkable coincidence that we should be here now.

We walked up a long wooded lane parallel to the coast road, hearing the occasional sound of a pheasant croaking in the undergrowth, and at one stage a bird flew up and over us into a field which it ran across for cover. Quite a surprise. The path emerged on to the road where I suspected it would, just opposite the gate of Watchet's fine 13-15th century Parish church dedicated to St Decuman. He was a seventh century Celt who sailed over from Pembrokeshire and was martyred here. There's a holy well nearby bearing his name but we couldn't find it. The church and churchyard are beautiful and in excellent condition. Much to our delight we found the building was open. We'll be back there for tomorrows ten thirty service. 

We went out for supper this evening at a small restaurant called 'The Cat's Whisker' just a few minutes walk from our cottage. We had a selection of half a dozen delicious tapas dishes to share between us, and ethos of the small room in which we sat was decidedly Spanish with a nice looking classical guitar on a shelf about our table and the music of Buena Vista Social Club playing quietly in the background while we ate. It was an enjoyable experience, and I think we'll be taking Ann there when she comes next week.

As I relaxed full this afternoon, I started to feel terribly weary, but didn't sleep for long. By the end of the day I found that I'd walked thirteen kilometres, a quarter more than normal, and feeling no worse for wear. Early bed in any case tonight.

Watchet bound

A good night's sleep, then a trip to Tesco Extra filling station to refuel for our two hour journey to the North Somerset coast. Then bag packing and loading the car while Clare cooked lunch. I did my Duo Lingo drill while Clare had a siesta, then at two thirty we set out.

The M5 going south west was busy, and there were a few slowdowns. Progress was much slower once we left the motorway for the last stretch of the journey around Bridgewater and onward on the winding undulating A39 to Minehead. Even so, it was an enjoyable drive on a country road which looks much the same now as fifty odd years ago when we last came this way. As we travelled we realised that we both were remembering the same student chaplaincy charabanc outing, a guided tour of the region with Dr Basil Cottle, an academic linguist enthusiastically decoding place names and recalling the history of the region.

Andrew, our holiday home host met us as we drew into the courtyard in front of our holiday cottage. He handed over the keys and briefed us before we unloaded the car. The cottage is well appointed, comfortable with all mod cons. We even have our own small garden, neatly kept.

After unpacking we went out to explore the town. We found a Coop grocery store five minutes away and bought the few things we'd forgotten to pack. We walked down to inspect the harbour, with its modern marina and promenade before returning for supper. Everywhere we walked gave an impression of a well cared for harmonious environment. No graffiti, no rubbish, no tasteless signage. A visual holiday in its own right. 

After supper, we went out again in the dark, guided by low intensity street lights and the light emanating from hostelries and restaurants still busy with customers. The moon was still hiding among clouds. What an enchanting stroll we had, down to the harbour wall and back! A great start to our fortnight stay.

A victim but also victor in faith

I forgot to post the link to today's Morning Prayer and reflection until after breakfast. I was distracted by some fresh ideas about a speech I started composing last night as part of the play I'm writing in fits and starts about episodes in the life of St German. I worked on that for twenty minutes before going down for breakfast. Then I realized I may run out of medication while on holiday, but when I checked, I found there was enough to last until the day after our return. It's a matter of getting the prescription renewal form processed while we're away, and collecting it immediately we arrive. 

It's cloudy, almost overcast today, but still warm enough not to need a top coat. I went to the Eucharist at St John's. There were eleven of us. Mthr Frances talked about Esther John, a Pakistani Christian convert who was murdered, probably in an honour killing because she ran away from home rather than succumb to an arranged marriage to a muslim. She trained and worked as a nurse in Christian institutions, and then trained as a catechist and evangelist, and had only been working a year before her death. I have noticed that she's thought of first as a Christian nurse, and less straightforwardly regarded as a martyr. 

The word 'martyr' has quite different overtones for Islam, denoting anyone who fights to the death for their faith, no matter how many lives they may take in the process. For Christians a martyr means simply one who witnesses to faith in Christ and loses their life because of this. Esther John is a key modern exemplar. She wasn't merely a murder victim. Frances told the story of the police investigation into her death in 1960. She kept a journal starting from her youthful encounter with scripture leading to her conversion until her death. This was read from cover to cover searching for any reference to a lover to suspect of her death, but the investigating officer concluded. "The only man she was ever in love with was your Christ." That was why she left home and converted, and was subject to the vengeful hatred of others. Nobody was ever charged with killing her. Although that is a scandal, the lack of justice doesn't detract from the truth that she is a true martyr, and should be celebrated as such.

I dropped off my prescription renewal form at Boots the Chemist on my way home from church, and then cooked pasta for lunch, using one of a bag of chillies Clare had been given. It tasted sweet and quite mild, so I used an entire one. The result was hotter than expected, though not so hot as to make the dish uneatable. It would have been better to use half a chilli. Better luck next time!

I sat down to do my daily Duo Lingo drill after lunch and fell asleep half way through. Lately I've needed a siesta much less often, but I have been tireder than usual this past few days, perhaps due to increased activity, both mental and physical. Afterwards I took  a collapsible plastic crate around to St Catherine's, suitably labelled as a receptacle for Food Bank offerings, and took our contribution with me, as I'd forgotten to take it to St John's earlier in the day. Before going home, I walked around Thompson's Park, taking more photos of changing colours in the trees. The change is slower there than across the road in Llandaff Fields. 

With nothing better to do, I spent a few hours in front of the telly after supper watching NCIS and 'All Creatures Great and Small', and then turned in early. We drive over to Watchet tomorrow afternoon, and I don't want to be in need of a siesta while on the road.

Coping with complexity

After breakfast I drove to St German's to celebrate Mass with half a dozen regulars, returned home and continued editing together the audio pieces I recorded late last night. The less mistakes I make the easier the editing becomes, though occasionally the sound quality is poorer than usual, and I've yet to work out why, so editing takes longer. I took a break to collect this week's veggie bag and help Clare cook lunch, then continued work after going for an early afternoon walk. By supper time I had completed both weeks' videos and uploaded them ready for posting on the right date. Apart from that small task, my fortnight's holiday is care free!

Clare received a call from the holiday cottage owner to brief her about the facilities and check when we'll arrive. She was expecting to receive a key safe code to access the keys we need, but it seems the owner prefers to welcome visitors personally, hand over the keys and show them around, which is very pleasing.

Sister in law Ann is coming to join us for six days in the middle of our first week. It was meant to have been seven days, but for some inexplicable reason the seventh day return fare was four times the outbound fare, despite cross-checking by the station booking clerk. Perhaps it's due to a surge in ticket demand on the return day, who knows? 

She also had a frustrating and distressing experience acquiring a new Oppo phone from BT with whom she has a contract. Although it's meant to be an Android phone, it didn't prove possible to transfer all the data from her defunct Nokia to the Oppo, so she sent it back, opted to go SIM free and got a new Samsung phone from Argos instead. Why BT are pushing Chinese phones on to their customers when government is openly concerned about security risks relating to Chinese electronic hardware, heaven only knows. BT sent her a new SIM card to fit in the Android, which took a week to arrive, but instead of taking up to three hours to attach to the network, as she was assured it would, it took twelve.

I wondered why this was the case, until I thought about it. If BT had sold her one of their Samsung phones their network would have immediate access to the hardware database of their batch of phones, so checking the hardware identity would state there and take up to three hours. The hardware identity of a phone from Argos would be on a different database section, and the automated system would have to trawl through the bigger database to find it. Given that such phones are made in their tens if not hundreds of millions, this is going to take that much longer. The systems on which we rely for everyday communication are far vaster and more complex than we tend to think. This much I learned from working with Cardiff Business Safe.

After supper we watched 'The Repair Shop' again in which the stories behind the items skilfully restored were all of historical interest as well as personal value to the contributors. More marvellous craftsmanship to wonder at. A lovely show. Then a tough BBC Wales documentary on the impact of the Foot and Mouth epidemic on Wales 20 years ago. Especially interesting was the presence of Professor Neil Ferguson, who as a young research student was developing innovative statistical modelling tools to monitor outbreaks of contagious disease, recently applied to understanding the covid pandemic spread, bringing his name to public attention again. Mistakes were made in managing the foot and mouth outbreak, perhaps because it spread more rapidly than people realised, so that rapid containment was impossible. Learning comes sometimes, not from due diligence but from bitter experience.

Student legal enterprise

I woke up early after another good night's sleep and after breakfast busied myself with recording and sound editing in preparation for uploads on the two Thursdays I'm on holiday. I was interrupted twice, once by Brian the organist at St German's, who came by to drop off some magazines about the steam railway line that runs through Watchet where we'll be holidaying. How kind of him to do this! Then a young man called on a fundraising mission, promoting an initiative called the Community Law Project.

This is a Law student driven initiative which originated in Cardiff, eighteen months ago. It was going to start locally with a physical office in Canton. Then came the pandemic, and immediately an on-line help service run by student volunteers was devised, and went viral in Law faculties around the UK. From two dozen Law students at the outset it has now risen to 250+ giving them practical experience of advocacy, litigation and negotiation, working and learning together using on-line tools and contact by telephone. It's currently is dealing with fifty five cases, and needs funding for its infrastructure and management costs.

It wounds like the kind of thing I'd like to support, but my first thought was how to introduce this project to the parish social network, not simply as a beneficiary of donations, but to advertise the website and the free legal advice it offers. There may be parishioners who would benefit from this.

I cooked lunch in time for Clare's return from her study group, then completed the sound editing begun in the morning. I walked to the bank to deposit several cheques, and then walked on into Bute Park and up the river bank to Blackweir Bridge before turning for home. The carpet of golden brown leaves under the trees is still fairly thin, the tree canopy is still mostly olive green and thick, thanks to mild weather and not much wind.

With nothing of interest worth watching on telly after supper, I want back to preparing the rest of the prayer material I needed, then recorded it. Editing can wait until tomorrow. Time for early bed.

High speed return

I slept quite well in a strange bed, and only woke up once during the night, after five hours asleep. That's a welcome improvement. I did some more computer trouble shooting, to minimise annoying pop-ups that Windows 10 presumes are helpful to users when they are no more than a distraction. It took quite a while to disable the desktop news feed, one problem being as it's not evident what the function is called in order to target it, for instance.

I walked to Sainsbury's at the far end of the row of shops on Bellevue Road, facing Wandsworth Common. The store used to house a branch of NatWest bank and the architecture still advertises its history. It's rather cramped, but quite well stocked. I had to use the self-checkout till, as only one staff member was on till duty, dealing with tobacco and lottery ticket sales, and overseeing the tills at a distance. Unfortunately for him I needed help as I picked up several loose bananas and couldn't work out how to add them to the bill. It was a matter of counting and paying for them at a fixed price for each. When it came to paying, I had trouble using the card's contactless device, I think because of a latency issue with the payment network. Inserting the card led to a read error calling for a second human intervention to reset the payment routine. No matter how cleverly designed they are, I still hate auto-checkouts!

After lunch, June's weekly on-line grocery order from Tesco's was delivered, four bag-fulls, deposited at the door of her flat. It normally takes her an age to unload and carry the content indoors, but as I was there, I carried them in sorted the content and stocked most of them in the fridge, or in her store. Then the doorbell rang again for another delivery of an on-line order. Neither of us were sure that the courier had heard and was responding to the answerphone button, or if it was working - it's temperamental - so I ran downstairs and found the courier putting the parcel into June's dustbin enclosure. Confusion avoided.

I made some hummous sandwiches for the journey home, and parted company with June about six, to take the train back to Victoria and the Circle Line underground to Paddington. At seven I stepped on to the 19.18 train for Cardiff, and ate my sandwiches while I waited for departure. With four stops, the journey to Cardiff took one hour and fifty nine minutes. Non-stop, if would take one hour forty five. The upgrade of Brunel's GWR line to new Hitachi electric trains is most welcome. It reminded me of train travel in France and Switzerland, and in a way compensates for not being able to travel freely in Europe at the moment.

Thankfully the weather was fine, so I walked home from the station savouring the experience, and the peace and quiet of late evening streets. June worries about me getting mugged in the dark. It happens here in Cardiff too, but less often than in the metropolis, so it's not a common anxiety. What a blessing to live a quiet and safe provincial life. 

Reunion

An easy drive across town to St Germans's to celebrate the Harvest Festival Mass this morning in a church bathed in autumnal sunshine, a lovely experience. Then a speedy return home for lunch, followed by a walk back to Cardiff Central Station to catch the 14.20 train to London to visit my sister. The journey was half an hour longer than the usual two hours as the Severn tunnel is closed on Sundays for maintenance. Instead the train goes through Chepstow up the Estuary to Gloucester, down to Stonehouse, and then through to Cotswolds to rejoin the main line at Swindon. The weather all the way was sunny with a few clouds, and the journey through less familiar landscape on the first half of the trip was delightful. I didn't doze, nor did I read. I did a big batch of Duo Lingo exercises for part of the way, and stared out of the window, enjoying the landscape for the rest of the time.

From Paddington to Wandsworth Common is a journey I have done many times, but not for the best part of ten years, maybe longer. Essentially little has changed, but superficially the signage has changed and as a result of covid it's not always easy to register familiar routes as things look different, and I missed the correct underground entrance first time and almost went in the wrong direction around the, which cost me ten minutes, but once I recovered, the journey was straightforward, and an hour later I was knocking on June's apartment door - again someone had left the front door open, a nightmare issue in this property.

It's more than three years since i was last with my sister in person, although we have spent many hours on the phone. I have given her a Linux HP laptop which is set up as identically as possible to resemble her existing machine, so that she has a backup device if the other one decides to give up the ghost. She relies on a computer for being able to order food as well as communicate with others, so I am comforted to know she has a fallback which I am confident won't give her much trouble, or a learning curve. But more than anything else it was good to see her face to face again, and see how well she's coping at eighty six.

Autumn Fayre at St Catherine's

A Saturday lie-in and pancake breakfast, final editing and printout of tomorrow's sermon, then cooking the lunch, and then it was time to take some jars of home made jam to the Parish Fayre in the grounds of St Catherine's. There was a super turn out of stalls and we came away with jars of chutney, a marrow and half a dozen big green apples which may or many not be cookers. I also found a new looking case for a DSLR camera on the bric a brac stall and bought it, just what I need for my Olympus which has been in a cramped case in which the HX300 usually lives since purchase.

As we walked home laden with stuff, crowds of people, mainly young families it seemed, were heading down King's Road to the church. It's the first outdoor church event of its kind since before lock-down and the attraction of something different yet familiar wasn't being taken for granted. I suspect we'll do well.

I went for an hour's walk in the park, and tried editing a video I'd made with no success, perhaps because I had disposed of some temporary files during a system clean up without realising. Backup of video editing files to One Drive stopped working officially last year. It's now necessary to make a backup on the device, or you won't be able to return to a recent video composition and change it. To effect the change I needed to make, I had to load the already rendered MP4 video into an old version of Movie Maker on my desktop workstation, and then remember how to make a one second cut in the audio and video stream to remove a tiny but noticeable error. It was tricky, but it worked eventually. I started the job before supper and went on with it for an hour afterwards. Then I checked out the substitute laptop I'm taking to my sister when I go to see her tomorrow, and watched another old episode of 'The Repair Shop' with Clare before heading for bed.

Valleys visit

Last week, I set myself the task of preparing all the material needed for the next three Thursday Morning Prayer and Reflection videos before we leave for our fortnight's holiday in Watchet a week today. After breakfast this morning, I recorded and edited the audio for next Thursday's video, and then had to rush to get myself out of the house in time to reach Cardiff Central station, and buy tickets for a trip to Crosskeys to spend the afternoon with Rufus. 

I also wanted to buy advance tickets for a trip to London to visit my sister for the first time in three years, as I have Monday and Tuesday free, and feel confident about making the journey, after such a long time needing to plan every step with medical needs at the forefront of my thinking. I'm looking forward to this.

Fortunately, I gave myself time to do both, and was pleased to find that advance booking of off-peak fares gave me a reasonably priced ride to London on Sunday afternoon with return ticket I can use any time off-peak within the next month. I can stay for one or two nights and choose when I head for home, as long as it's later in the day, which suits me anyway. Electrification of the line has reduced journey time now to two hours. It costs three times more than by bus, but the travel time and convenience make it worthwhile.

Crosskeys is on the Ebbw Vale line north of Newport. The line heads inland, rising from the coastal plain  through suburbia and a then wooded valley where the line runs above the villages. It made me think of places I'd visited in Switzerland, a memory enhanced by the appearance of a young fair haired train conductor with a local accent, enjoying her job on the train. She reminded me of her equivalent on Swiss railways, sometimes, an apprenti, accompanied by an older railwayman. It's funny how memory surprises you like that.

Rufus and Daria are re-settling happily in their family home of twenty eight years, after ten years elsewhere in ministry. They live in a part of the village where four terraces of neat well kept houses, typical of the mining Valleys enclose a garden with the village war memorial at the centre. The back of their house overlooks a wooded valley, and the terrace is dug into the steep slope. They have converted the loft, and below the ground floor is a day room overlooking the garden below, and the valley. Over the years, Rufus has done all the work himself. Craftsmanship of all kinds is his hobby. I often heard him talk of this when I was his College tutor. This was the first time for me to see what he'd done with the house, and I was most impressed.

We had a good three hours of conversation before I took the return journey at five. It was good to see him at home, relaxing and pondering on how his next period in ministry might develop, now that he's officially a pensioner, and free to accept or reject whatever invitations come his way. The church is more than ever reliant on clergy with means of their own to sustain its offer of ministry in this time when the slide into bankruptcy is a grim reality. Retired clerics are not seen as stakeholders but beneficiaries of the church excluded from participating in its decision making processes. It makes no sense. I wonder how desperate the hierarchy needs to get before acknowledging that a radical change is needed towards voluntary clergy, who see themselves as stakeholders in the church's mission notwithstanding?

After supper, I walked to St Catherine's to deliver stuff for tomorrow's Autumn Fayre, then continued work I started earlier in the day. There was nothing worth watching on telly anyway.

Chopin co-incidence

A day without rain, even if if was cloudy and then overcast for much of the time. I went to the Eucharist at St John's after breakfast, there were a dozen of us there with Mthr Frances celebrating. A quick visit to Tesco's to buy some drinks for the bottle stall at Saturday's Parish Fayre, then back home to cook a curry in time for Clare's return from school. 

After lunch a drive to Thornhill Crematorium for a funeral at three. A small family congregation for a single man cut off from social life in later years by infirmity and illness. On the return journey I listened to a piano concerto on Radio Three which I hadn't heard before, although it seemed familiar. It turned out to be Chopin's first piano concerto.  

After an early supper we walked across Bute Park to the Royal Welsh College for first public recital since it re-opened for public events. Co-incidentally the programme was all works by Chopin. Llyr Williams played a well chosen selection of his piano Etudes from opus 10 and opus 25. He was joined by 'cellist Nathalie Clein, who opened with his Poloniase Brillante, and closed with his 'cello concerto, both of them virtuoso pieces for both instruments. Llyr is a renowned accompanist as well as solo recitalist. They two of them exchanged excited glances several times when they came to the end of movements. Only when they returned for an encore did Nathalie mention that they'd only met the previous day for the first time, and so had never before played together!

The concert was live streamed on the College website. On stage there was a large BBC Radio 3 banner next to the piano. It made me wonder if was also going to be recorded for broadcast by the been sometime later. I'd love to listen again if it is.

It was an uplifting and inspiring programme of music, little of which I knew, just number three 'Lento ma non troppo' and the famous Revolutionary Etude, which Llyr played immaculately and passionately at a furious pace which truly conveyed its tumultuous energy. He has a mastery of the piano that enables him to make it sound like different instruments, when it comes to expressing different emotions. Nathalie is a fine 'cellist who plays passionately, and this shows in her movement as she performs. What a feast!

We walked into town and caught a bus along Cowbridge Road East to Canton Cross and walked the rest of the way home, to save time. 

Prayers from the Pacific

Getting out of Canton to reach Adamsdown and St German's on a weekday isn't a comfortable experience. The length of traffic queues varies, until I get to Grangetown beyond the main railway line, and then it's not so variable, but I can never rush because of speed limits and speed bumps. I must leave the house early enough to arrive a comfortable ten minutes before Mass. 

It's not always easy as I can lose concentration on my departure time. This morning my timing was a bit tight, and I wasn't pleased with myself. We were five to commemorate William Tyndall, 16th century martyred Bible translator, to whom, Shakespeare and the King James Bible owe a huge linguistic debt. So many English scriptural phrases and imagery which are part of our way of speaking originate with him. A great poetic mind sacrificed on the altar of British reformation politics. 

St German's nave at the moment is clear of its usual seating and set up with music stands for an orchestral rehearsals as the Royal Welsh College has started using the place on working weekdays. Quite a sight!

I returned home, collected the week's veggie bag, then cooked lunch early. I sat down to listen to the one o'clock news and fell asleep until my phone woke me up with a notification at ten to two for a World Day of Prayer service at St John's.  I got there just after the service started. There were about twenty people there from local churches.

Last year's WDP service was cancelled due to pandemic restrictions, but re-arranged for today. The hosts were women of the Pacific Vanuatu islands, celebrating the beauty of nature, touching on environmental pollution. The biblical parable about building a house on sand or rock was used for meditation, and puzzlingly to my mind made no reference to global warming or the inevitable rise in sea levels which will make many islands uninhabitable as they are no more than a metre above sea level now. Vanuatuans could be among the first generation of climate change refugees. They must fear for their future.

After the service I went for a walk around Pontcanna Fields, and before supper watched the second episode of this week's 'Silent Witness' on BBC iPlayer. After supper we watched this week's 'The Repair Shop', and then I settled down to write for an hour or so before bed.

From daft fiction to weird fact

More bad weather warnings issued for today, but they don't seem to have applied to South Wales, except that overnight there was heavy rain. The wind blew away early showers, so we had sunshine for much of the day. This was a relief, as I had a funeral at Pidgeon's Chapel followed by burial at Western Cemetery at the end of the morning. When I got back I cooked lunch in time for Clare's return from study group and then walked for an hour. The Taff at Blackweir was running higher than yesterday, but the water was not yet covering the top of the fish ladder, as it does several times each winter.

On my return, I drafted next Sunday's Harvest sermon, full of sombre thoughts in the light of the crisis in agriculture, with crops rotting in the fields, animals culled and destroyed instead of slaughtered for meat, all due to lack of pickers, slaughterers and butchers, and drivers to transport food to market. It's symptomatic of the UK government's inability to envisage the whole picture or plan adequately for the future. The lack of coherent action to address these crisis needs is pushing food prices up and is likely to lead to food shortages. Those who will suffer most are those who are poor and just about managing. I see a real possibility of social unrest as a consequence.

This evening on Sky Arts there was a two hour long documentary about the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican., mischievously entitled 'The Michaelangelo Code' parodying Dan Brown's ridiculous pulp fiction thrillers. It investigated the significance of the frescoes which are Michaelangelo's masterpiece and how they can be interpreted in the light of the Franciscan era in Renaissance history. Pope Sixtus and his nephew successor Pope Julius were both Friars. Sixtus built the chapel, modelled on the biblical proportions of the second Temple in Jerusalem. Julius commissioned Michaelangelo for the fresco painting, imposing an esoteric understanding of prophetic scripture upon a work. designed to reveal the end time of creation before Judgement Day. 

It was esoteric in the sense that some of the symbolism and the depiction of certain prophets, underpinned their belief that they personally were destined to prepare the way for the Second Coming. A good enough justification for they way they exercised Papal power. Julius believed he was to build the new Jerusalem on earth, but this time in Rome. He had the thousand year old basilica of St Peter demolished and commissioned the construction of the present basilica. The dome was of Michaelangelo's design, though the building took another 200 years to complete. That's quite a vanity project!

It was a long and complex story vividly told by art historian Waldemar Januszczak, filmed on location in Rome, Jerusalem and Portugal. It was introduced and closed by sections on the Waco massacre in 1993 of members of the Branch Davidian sect, which bases its belief in the imminence of the end of the world on much the same texts used underpin the power of the two Franciscan Popes. Given our crisis ridden times, it's worth reflecting on how people with a sense of their own self importance and unique destiny can abuse power and authority for their own ends, and employ scripture as their justification. 

Analysing sleep

Periods of heavy rain were again forecasted throughout the day, though it started with the sun appearing through breaks in the big cumulus cloud, so I went out and walked while I could before the downpours started. Then I completed this week's Thursday prayer video and uploaded it. I walked again during an afternoon gap between downpours, and didn't get wet either time. 

With two funerals this week, there were orders of service to prepare and eulogies to look at, and this I did after supper. As we're on holiday in two weeks time, I also have to prepare material in advance, ready to upload while I'm away, rather than let work take up relaxation time. I enjoy doing these things if I'm not busy, especially the biblical reflections.

I found time to listen to last week's Radio 4 'The Life Scientific' podcast with Jim al Khalili interviewing a sleep researcher, Dirk Jan Dijk about a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding how sleep is related to health and performance effectiveness. It seems that too little or too much sleep can impact on the brain and may even contribute to to development of dementia. It doesn't have to be continuous for six to eight hours either. It's the overall quality of sleep that matters, even if it's broken and spread out. Significantly the universal habit over the past century and a half of artificial lighting, turning night into day, affects the circadian rhythm in some way. 

Common knowledge that people sleep poorly if they spend too much time before phone, computer and television screens has led to the incorporation of software that reduces blue screen light glare in the evenings, and this helps mitigate the effect. It's better to switch off much earlier, which I admit I rarely do. I only find it hard to get to sleep if I'm travelling next day. That's excitement at the thought of doing something different.

Stinging in the rain

Another day of prolonged heavy rain showers, and when I started out for St German's I found there were traffic lights at the T-junction of Llanfair and Llandaff roads, just around the corner from home. Later I learned that trench was being dug across Llandaff Road to lay a new gas main extension into the housing development on the the Sussex house site on the other side. Not knowing what measure of congestion and queuing lay just out of sight, I turned the car in the opposite direction, to reach Penhill and Cardiff Road in order to get to St German's via Western Avenue and North Road. There was a quarter of a mile build up of Sunday traffic back from where the road was being dug up, but in the direction I was headed it flowed free and I got to St German's in fifteen instead of the usual twenty minutes.

Father Geraint John curate of Llangynwyd with Maesteg came to church for his Sunday off. He celebrated and I preached in honour of St German on his feast day. Geraint spent three years at St German's for his training placement. He was made deacon and ordained priest while pandemic restrictions were in force, so he left the Parish without a proper farewell. Today was finally an opportunity for the congregation to make a gift to him and express their appreciation for his pioneering ministry, especially in getting the wintertime night shelter for the homeless up and running. He was given a long round of applause after Mass as well as a cheque with a card.

Then we adjourned to the church hall for the AGM meeting of St German's Friends Association, the first in two years. There was a reception to follow, but as it ran later than I anticipated, I left straight after and went home for lunch, and was still late, due to the traffic and roads awash with rain.

When I left the house to go for a walk the rain seemed to have stopped or was only a light drizzle slowing to a pause in the rain for an hour or so. I was almost at the entrance to Thompson's Park when the heavens opened again and it rained heavily for a quarter of an hour, so heavily I stood under a tree overhanging the footpath rather than make a run for it to a more sheltered spot. I got fairly wet but not soaked through, so kept on walking through Thompson's Park and then through Llandaff and Pontcanna Fields to Blackweir and back home. The sun came out and I was more or less dry leaving the park, then the heavens opened again and soaked me in the last five hnndred metres.

While I was out walking I felt a sharp burning pain at two points in my right thigh muscles, as if someone was pushing a hot needle under the skin. There was no convenient place where I could drop my trousers and examine my left until I found a thicket of bushes by the riverside. I had two puncture wounds, one of which seemed bloody at first inspection, but when I got home it turned out to be the read end of a creature that had stung me, possibly a bee. I think it may have crawled up my trouser left while I sheltered from the rain in search of warmth and shelter. When I felt the sting I rubbed my leg and finished it off, then it fell out leaving only a small amount of tissue and its venom. What an odd occurrence!

After supper we watched on Sky Arts the recording of a concert made in 2002 by friends of Beatle George Harrison celebrating on the first anniversary of his death wide rang of compositions. The band had, I think, half a dozen guitarists, including George's son Dhani, then 24, looking like a much younger version of his father. There were four, maybe five drummers, two keyboard players, a brass and strings orchestra and a host of backing singers. It was a wonderful feast of musical nostalgia, featuring rock stars of the Beatles era all in their sixties and still playing wonderfully.  This happened just as we were settling in at St John's after our nine years in Europe. It awakened many mixed memories of the thirty years of ministry preceding - some of the music that was the backing track to our lives.

Stroudwater Canal

Another day of rain of varying intensity from dawn to early evening, After our usual Saturday pancake breakfast, we drove to Stroud in Gloucestershire to visit Clare's former colleague Jacquie for lunch. It was good to see her happily settled in her new one bedroomed house with its small terrace big enough for the round garden table and four chairs she brought with her from Dinas Powis. It's south facing, looking over  Froom valley woodland just ten minutes from the town centre. The small row of four houses sits alongside the Christian Community Anthroposphical church to which Jacquie belongs. 

Stroud and its environs has many Anthroposophists, contributing to its creative and social life, helping to create an environmentally friendly place with a hip alternative lifestyle, rated by the media as one of the attractive places in Britain to live. Five Cotswold valley streams meet here, so it became a world famous centre for woollen cloth weaving from the seventeenth century onward, thanks to water power, and the canal infrastructure. Those days are long gone and the factories, constructed from brick and Cotswold stone have been repurposed for other enterprises, social purposes or converted into apartments.

After lunch, I went for a walk alongside the canal flowing down the valley to the Severn Estuary, called the Stroudwater Navigation Canal. It was built in the late 18th century in order to link Bristol and London by water. At Wallbridge in the town centre is the junction with the longer stretch of canal through the Cotswolds that meets the Thames further east. From Wallbridge the Navigation runs to Framilode on the Estuary to the west. Boats of a specific length and capacity called Severn Trows went from there to Avonmouth and through the Avon Gorge into the city centre basin. The eight miles of waterway was abandoned in 1954, but is being brought back to life, restored by the Cotswolds Canals Trust. It's interesting that there's a footpath along its southern bank, but it's not a towpath horses could use. The Trows used sails but were hauled through locks manually. I walked eight kilometres in the rain, covering the stretch from Wallbridge to Ryford Double Lock, beautiful experience. My photos are here.

Thankfully, the rain was far lighter on our journey home than it had been in the morning, and there was less traffic. When we returned, I was relieved and pleased to find a package had arrived in the post, small enough to go through the letter box containing the fit-bit straps Clare ordered for me. The order took eight days to arrive from heaven knows where, but was scheduled to take from ten to twenty days to deliver, so I can't complain. Two packages sit in our hallway for neighbours nearby who have been away this week. Has The System figured out we're at home and answering the door more often than others? 

After supper we watched a fascinating Michael Palin travelogue about southern Brazil from a few years back, before the catastrophe of the Bolsenaro presidency. We started watching a French movie on BBC Four with a start studded cast, but gave up on it once we realised it didn't finish until late. Better to get an early night after a hundred and twenty miles of diving in the rain.

Strong 'flu reaction

Normally the after-affects of my annual 'flu shot are minimal. This time proved the exception. I felt tired and went to bed around then thirty, and as the house temperature lowered, as it usually does between midnight and sunrise, I felt chilled and couldn't get warm, then I had strong muscular and joint aches and pains at random, plus a spasmodic headache of the kind I recall from having an infection, though without my temperature going up - what I call a 'toxic' head, like a mild hangover, without the alcohol. It was a pretty miserable night, and after breakfast I went back to bed until lunchtime, then after lunch, slept until four. 

I was in bed over thirteen hours altogether, until I felt well enough to get up and salvage the remains of the day hoping to clear my 'toxic' head with some brisk walking in the fresh air. During the night my fit-bit strap finally became unwearable. I have to wait until next week before a replacement one is delivered. Meanwhile I must carry my phone everywhere, to track my activity level, easier said than done.

Rufus rang up to tell me that he'd moved back to Cwmcarn and was now on retirement leave, waiting to hear what he's be called upon to do next. It will be good to have him back in the Church in Wales.

I walked to the shops for the few things I needed from Tesco's. Outside the store there are some stone benches, in the past frequented by a small group of older men and a few woman who like to sit outdoors to drink out of cans and chat. During lock-down the group of benches was enclosed with Heras fencing to discourage socializing in an area that could be crowded with shopper queuing. The group moved to the steps in front of Calvary Baptist church to socialize, where there's an iron bench around a small tree. They're not badly behaved, and have remained there since the fencing has been taken down. Technically, on the steps they are on private property, so no subject to attempts to move them on unless the police get a complaint from the church.

As I felt better for getting outdoors I extended my walk around the park. Slowly my head cleared. Some of my body muscles still ache mildly. It feels like I have had a complete dose of 'flu within 24 hours. I don't recall feeling as poorly since the Christmas at St John's when I went sick with 'flu very rapidly at midday of Christmas eve and was in bed until New Year's eve. As the pharmacist had asked if I'd report any anomalous reaction to the job, I called into the shop and described what had happened since yesterday. It seems the information is fed back to the vaccine provider, ever keen to monitor effectiveness.

This evening, I completed and printed off my Sunday sermon in honour of St German. Nothing on telly seemed worth watching. Here's hoping for a therapeutic night's sleep, and not so long as today's.