Inexplicable

I work up just too late for 'Thought for the Day' and listened on catch-up after I'd heard most of the day's news. Apart from Boris and the Downing Street Partygate scandal news about Ukraine has now slipped down the priority list, displaced by reports on the spread of monkey pox. Yesterday the UN stated that fourteen million people in Ukraine have been driven from their homes by the war. It's looking as if the conflict will drag on for many more months without some unexpected change in the Kremlin. 

The war is costing both sides, and the international community supporting Ukraine vast sums of money. Such a sinful waste of resources and lives, especially when global warming unchecked starts to cause irreversible damage.  Already spring in Andalusia as as hot as normal high summer. What will it be like when we're there I wonder? 

After breakfast I did my share of the housework, then cooked lentils and veg with quinoa for lunch. Quinoa and lentils is a good combination, easy to digest and nourishing. A good alternative to rice and pasta. This Friday I have a funeral, so after lunch I drove out of town for a bereavement visit. The brother and sister I met were in shock at losing their septuagenarian mother unexpectedly, after she was admitted for minor surgery. She deteriorated and died in the intensive care unit a week later. Apart from stomach pain she'd been well and active until she went to hospital. No cause of death was established so the Coroner opened an inquest which could take eight months to conclude, they were told. When not even the doctors can understand what went wrong, it shows how much still has to be learned about the mysteries of the body, and life itself.

Clare and I want for an hour's walk around Pontcanna Fields when I got back. Then I prepared a hymn list for services during my stay in Costa del Sol West. I thought it would be good to make an early start as the services involve use of Powerpoint presentations which take time to create. As I'm arriving the night before my first service I thought it would be good to make an early start on this task. It only took me an hour and a half to complete. The hymnbook in use there is Mission Praise. I'm not sure I ever had a full copy of that one, but I found a database on-line with all the information needed on almost a thousand hymns. All I needed was twenty eight. Spoiled for choice!

In the evening, another visually wonderful exploration of the planet's surface by high powered satellite cameras in 'Earth from Space' on BBC Four, followed by another episode of Blacklist on 5 USA, with another unbelievable espionage plot, sort of.