Cricket lovely cricket

As Clare's back pain is happily diminishing at last, I proposed a trip to Dyffryn Gardens at breakfast this morning. By eleven we were on our way there, and the weather was just right. All the trees are now in full leaf and the arboretum with all its colourful diversity looks magnificent. Since our last visit in January this year, more work has been done on sections of the garden, and they too are full of colour. I took over sixty photos. You can see them here.

There are some sections that are closed off and left fallow with plants that will fix nitrogen in the soil and help to loosen it after years of compaction. The healthier the soil becomes, the less prone it will be to harbouring pests and colonising weeds that spread in poor exhausted ground. This way, soil can be regenerated without using fertiliser and readied for re-planting with flowers and bushes after two years of rest. It's much more wholesome process than using manufacture fertiliser and weed killer. We stayed until lunchtime, had a drink and a snack and then came home so that Clare could rest.

Then I went for a walk around Llandaff Fields. Three cricket matches were going on at the same time, and yesterday evening when I was out, the practice nets were occupied, and there was a large group of children on the adjacent pitch being taught how to play cricket by several adults. It's wonderful to see such enthusiasm for the amateur game.

In his gastro-tourist series of programme, Rick Stein was in Cadiz tonight, an amazing ancient city on the Atlantic facing section of coastal Spain, said to have been founded by the Phoenicians some three thousand years ago. It was all about the seafood dishes made possible by the diversity of fish caught and landed there. Some of the recipes he extolled I think I could make from memory. It's an hour and a half journey to get there from Estepona, so who knows, I may be able to visit there while I'm on locum duty. I told my friend Roy Thomas who now lives in Madrid about my forthcoming sojourn in Spain and he's promising to come and visit me, We were nearer to each other when I was in Ibiza and he in Alicante, but lock-down prevented us from getting together.

After this, another episode of Swedish crimmie 'Beck' about a hostage situation in a TV studio involving Alex, Beck's deputy chief. Although his murder squad team was ordered not get involved in the situation their behind-the-scenes swift researching of facts about people involved prevented a massacre even through it still ended tragically. A successful resolution marred by a failure, and as Alex says at the very end, it's the failures that haunt you. That makes sense to me.