Winds of change

This week the midweek Mass attended by a class of children from Tredegarville School moves to Tuesday from Wednesday. so I was out of the house by nine thirty to drive across town to St German's. After the service, four of us drank coffee and chatted in the church hall. In today's email was a copy of the Bishop's decree on the formation of the mew Ministry Areas. Like many faits accomplis, it's short on detail and not thought through in detail, and is not being well received. As a top-down edict its consequence is to reduce the number of lay people involved in decision making, while increasing the responsibilities of the few. The impact of changes imposed on churchgoing membership overall remains to be seen. If it doesn't work, an edict reversing the changes can just as easily be imposed.

When I got back later than usual, I cooked lunch, then went for a circuit of Bute Park. The sun had just set as I crossed Pontcanna Fields on the way back/ The sky was beautiful, mostly clear but decorated with colourful clouds. The temperature dropped in the waning light, and thick mist rolled over the grass. An enchanting scene.

More outrageous revelations in the news about Downing Street government support staff and cabinet members flouting covid regulations last spring's lockdown. Will this be enough to put an end to Boris Johnson's premiership? Several times he has denied law breaking by his office staff, and now a formal investigation is under way which may show that he knowingly lied. He has lied before, notably about  the promise of brexit, and got away with it, but now it seems loyal electors are losing patience with him. After all you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

In the evening we watched an interesting programme in the BBC2 series 'Digging for Britain'. It's best described as a news magazine programme on archaeological finds, reviewing work on digs going on in various parts of Britain. One of the five reports was on finding clear evidence of manor grange farm of the mediaecal Order of Knights Hospitallers in the Leicester countryside, on a previously unexcavated site whose surface contours led people to presume previously that it had once been an iron age fort. In a an Anglo Saxon cemetery in the city of Cambridge were found grave goods and ornamental clasps that had traces of mineralised fibre from the cloaks they belonged to, from fifth century Britain. The weave pattern in each trace was quite different, indicating local and continental weaving methods being used in the same era. 

Then there was a report on a palaeontological discovery in the mud of Rutland Water at low level, that has turned out to be the fossilised skeleton of a ten metre long icthysaurus, the largest of its kind ever found in Britain. TV news reporting at its most riveting - scientists on the job, enthusing! After this treat I remembered that I was two thirds of the way through 'When the dust settles' on More Four, about a murderous Danish terror attack, eight people whose lives are changed by it, as well as tracking down perpetrators. Well observed slow going, ten episodes long, but I watched one episode before turning in for the night.