Normal life on hold

We were expecting a painter to arrive this morning at nine, to complete the work on the section of kitchen wall re-plastered to cure rising damp, so Clare got up early to prepare for his arrival. He didn't turn up, and when she called to find out what had happened, he said apologetically that he hadn't realised it was a Bank Holiday Monday when he put the date in his diary. Incredible!

I made a bereavement call to the elderly sister of the deceased in preparation for the funeral I'll be doing of her brother this coming Friday, and drafted an order of service. I can't complete it until I've talked to the social worker who is making arrangements for his aged next of kin, to get a more detailed picture of the deceased. At the moment, I can only get her her voicemail. I guess the new year of normal activity starts tomorrow after a long festive weekend - supposing it will be normal with so many people having to isolate with omicron covid.

Before making lunch, I walked in the park for an hour. The river Taff is still swollen but the tip of a bank of stones in the middle, and another close to the edge emerged as the water level dropped a little. Out in the middle a pair of cormorants were installed, and on the nearer bank a heron was keeping vigil. It's the first time in many weeks I've seen either bird on watch in this part of the river, let alone both at the same time and I took a few photos that captured them both, and narrowly missed a photo of the heron taking off. What I did get was a photo of the heron uncharacteristically crouching low, a fraction of a second before springing upwards into flight.

I fell asleep in the chair for an hour after lunch, something that tends to happen if I've gone to bed later than I need to. Then I took my second hour's walk of the day. As it's a Bank Holiday the streets are quiet. Some sporting events are going on but without crowds in attendance, yet again.

In the evening a re-run of a 2015 edition of 'Fake or Fortune' on BBC Four about the authentication of three paintings by L S Lowry. A fascinating piece of work involving not only letters, photos and art saleroom catalogue entries, but also film footage of the artist being interviewed in the year the painting were alleged to have been made. To the investigators great surprise, two of the paintings under scrutiny could be seen among a batch of paintings awaiting finishing touches in the background of the artist's studio. Great television, this kind of detective story. 

Then a documentary about the life of surrealist master painter Salvador Dali, told by an art historian who  reviewed and made use of excerpts from five decades of movie documentaries and interviews about the artist, to show the complexity of the man and variety of perceptions of different phases of his life's work, so full of contradictions, yet so influential on popular culture. It was pleasing to find that I could understand some of the Spanish spoken in the interview footage, subtitles notwithstanding.