Open air concert season

Another lovely day of spring sunshine started with an early pancake breakfast, then a lie-in before walking to Llandaff and visiting the Cathedral for the first time in ages. All is back to normal now and there's a trickle of visitors. Gerwyn the Dean announced his resignation last week, after being on sick leave and being in dispute with the Bishop for the past two years. I wonder if he will take on a new job in ministry, or give up on the church altogether? I wonder too who will replace him? The Cathedral has been an unhappy place of late. Whoever takes his place is going to have a difficult time reconciling and rebuilding the community. 

Clare fancied a takeaway for lunch and left me to go and hunt for an Indian meal, but I couldn't find an Indian takeaway open for business in Canton. Our usual fish 'n chip shop was also closed, but eventually I found one that was open and took home freshly cooked chips and two gigantic pieces of cod. We sat out in our sun-filled garden to eat them, and drank a palatable Chilean Pinot Noir to go with the meal, just right,  not too heavy. It was so pleasantly warm that I sat outside and read for an hour while Clare had a siesta, taking advantage of the bright light to read a couple of chapters from 'Invierno en Madrid'. So much better for the eyes than artificial light.

Later, we went for another walk, around Thompson's Park this time. It was unusually quiet. I wondered if young families had gone to the beach. Then I remembered that there's a big Ed Sheeran concert on at the Principality Stadium in town. There's an American rock band playing in the SWALEC stadium too, at the same hour. I noticed that a canopied stage had been erected on the cricket pitch when I was passing by a few days ago. Well, the weather is certainly kind for hosting big open air events at the moment.

After supper I watched Rick Stein's 'Long Weekend' programme, this time set in Thessaloniki. It was a lovely reminder of the rich variety of cooking in a region influenced by centuries of Ottoman rule. We went there in the nineties, travelling by ship from Tinos, where we'd spent a few days. We only stopped a day and a couple of nights, then took the slow train journey down to Athens - a lovely experience. I'm not sure we'd have the stamina to do that kind of trip nowadays, even though the travel conditions are likely to be somewhat improved. There are high speed trains nowadays and the fastest only takes four hours for the 500km journey non stop. That's half the time it took thirty years ago. 

Then another episode of 'Beck' about a cop with extreme views of how to respond to social disorder in a changing world, and resentment towards his superiors which turns murderous. We've had corrupt cops before in this series, but this episode explored how someone with a personality disorder could somehow continue working as a policeman without this being noticed. This is a Swedish crimmie, but reflects the same concern arising in British policing in which racist and sexist behaviour persist despite efforts made to root them out.