Family reunion begins

House cleaning after breakfast to prepare for the arrival of Rachel and Kath. Rachel's flight arrived half an hour ahead of time at Heathrow, and she was able to take a coach earlier than the one she booked, arrived a couple of hours earlier than planned, which is great.

My sister June called about a minor annoying problem on her computer, which I could fix in seconds hands on, but would find impossible to explain to her on the phone. It'll have to wait until my next visit. Maybe next week? Google photos has been giving her grief as well. Her account display was congested with shared albums so she couldn't find her own pictures. Fortunately this was something I could fix, as I'm able to log into her account for trouble shooting purposes. It took me an hour to remove dozens of shared album links, plus even more blank shared albums, a product of accidentally pressing on the wrong button, over the last decade. It'll be a lot easier to find her own photos now, though these too need pruning as there are lots of accidental duplicates. 

A walk around the park for both of us separately before lunch. We almost missed the grocery delivery as it turned up ahead of the scheduled time. The deliveryman spoke poor English and didn't seem to understand that the scheduled time frame written on the bag needed to be adhered to. He rang to ask where we were, as Clare was still outdoors. She was able to redirect him to Mary across the street, but arrived before he'd left, and  made him carry the bags back across the street to our house. She the rang the Coop to complain and train their deliverers to read the label on the bag. Fat chance of anyone doing that nowadays as people are so focussed on their phones.

I took Clare to the hospital for a back injury x-ray before meeting Rachel's coach. I walked to Sophia Gardens coach station to meet her and walk back home with her. Clare's appointment didn't take long so she walked to meet us in Pontcanna Fields. 

Kath drove down from Kenilworth, arriving an hour and a half later. Supper, cooked by Clare feeling better today, was on the table as she came through the door. Afterwards Clare went to bed early, needing to recover from her day's exertions, and I sat at the kitchen table, chatting with my lovely grown up daughters and listening to Latin Jazz they found and wanted to share until it was time for bed. My girls are amazing gifted women, doing marvellous things with their lives, and happy about their lot. I'm so proud of them, as I am of Owain.

Meanwhile, Putin reviews the troops on Red Square on the anniversary of the Russian victory over the Nazis in Germany, and speaks falsehoods about Ukraine being a breakaway derivative of Russia  denying the historical fact that Kyiv was founded before Moscow as the centre of mission to the Rus tribes, and has had its own life and culture for centuries before Russian empire building ambitions evolved. His aim, to judge from the way his army has acted in the weeks since its botched invasion of Ukraine, is to subjugate the country forcibly, as it did before, ninety years ago, after the revolution. It's no wonder that Ukrainians are fighting so hard against neighbours with whom they have so much in common.