Outbreak

As I was posting my Morning Prayer YouTube link to WhatsApp this morning, just in time to listen to 'Thought for the Day', I was surprised when I switched on the radio to hear it had been postponed, as the Archbishop of Canterbury was going to speak later in the programme. I soon gathered that Ukraine was now being invaded by Russia in a concerted show of force from all points of the compass. It wasn't that the Queen had died, the only other piece of breaking news that I could think of which would disrupt the routine of the Today programme . A succession of world leaders reacted, pronouncing condemnation on Putin's action. This and sanctions against Russia have dominated the news ever since, all day. 

War again in Europe, a couple of months short of seventy seven years since it last ended. How long it will last, and what follows from this dreadful moment, we can only wait and see with trepidation. Ordinary Russians and Ukranians didn't ask for this, nor did any other country. It's been imposed by Putin and his supporting criminal mafia in pursuit of his perverse vision of a 'Greater Russia'. It will have punitive repercussions at least for the economies of western nations. How the Chinese dictatorship will react to this global disruption is anybody's guess. God help us all.

A chill wind blew all day. Clouds and sunshine, rain alternating with hail. I joined four others at St John's for the Eucharist, where we kept a few minutes of silent prayer about the crisis. After the service, I went home, wrote next week's biblical reflection on the passage from the Joseph saga to be read next Thursday, then recorded and edited the Office and reflection in record time, with only a fifteen minute break for a bowl of salmon and vegetable soup. Clare bought a month's supply of fresh fish yesterday and the soup was made from the bones left over after cutting fillets from the salmon.

I had a cheque to bank, and started my afternoon walk with a trip to the bank, then went on to the Castle grounds, and back through Bute Park to the Millennium Bridge, up the footpath to Pontcanna Fields and then home. Two big trees near the gate house entrance had been uprooted by the storms of the past few days. It was interesting to observe how shallow their root systems were, no evidence of tap roots going deep, as the entire floor plain area in the vicinity of the Taff is densely packed with alluvial stone, hard for roots to penetrate below a top soil surface about half a metre thick. 

Those trees would have been half a century old I imagine, from their size but they may not have had to face such strong winds in that time, plus the topsoil layer has been waterlogged, also flooded for weeks by heavy rain and river water in recent years preventing the layer from hardening to anchor the roots against such strong wind. The Bute Park arboretum was established in the 19th century in terrain which for millennia was tidal wetland. Only trees which are native to that kind of environment would be expected to thrive naturally. Species introduced would inevitably need careful long term management and protection. Not impossible, but maybe it's always going to be an imperfect work in progress. 

This evening, after supper, we watched the classic movie of Graham Greene's novel 'The Third Man'. It's the second time I've seen it in the past couple of years. It really is a work of art worth revisiting, evoking life in a divided and occupied Europe at the end of the second world war when I was born. The outbreak of war in Ukraine may not impact on Britain as the war did back then, but lovely cities like Kyiv, Karkhiv, Lviv and Odessa could face destruction if fought over, along with masses of their citizens. Oh God I hope not.