Return of an old favourite

Another  bright sunny day, although a little colder. After breakfast, I took some photos of flowers in the garden before hanging out a load of washing to dry. Then I did the week's grocery shop at the Coop while Clare prepared the lunch for cooking in the steamer. All I had to do was switch the stove on, let it cook, then lay the table and serve it up when she returned from her morning walk. It's good to see her slow but sustained improvement. 

I had another exchange of emails with Jean, the chaplaincy worship arranger with a draft of my first Sunday there. A good way to learn about their customised liturgical format. It seems that a variety of Eucharistic prayers are used there from time to time. That'll make a change from using just one of the half a dozen available to use here in Wales.

After lunch, I drafted a eulogy for Friday's funeral and prepared an order of service to go with it. Then I went for a walk around Llandaff Fields. At the edge of a woodland patch a magpie was perched on a fallen branch and didn't move when I drew close to take a photo. There was a flurry of wings and screeches of alarm from another bird, a thrush I think. It dived at the magpie in an aggressive way, then flew past, narrowly missing me. I could hear the same bird in a tree thirty yards away issuing the same angry noise. I wondered if the magpie was too close to the other bird's nest, preventing it from feeding its young, or its hatching eggs.

This evening I watched the first episode of the new 'Silent Witness' series 25 on iPlayer, as I missed it last night, then after a break watched the second episode live. A complex case with evidence capable of being mis-interpreted, with mixed motives and conflicts of interest getting in the way of straightforward scientific enquiry. Amanda Burton returns to the series after seventeen years, playing her older self in the role of the original lead pathologist Sam Ryan, now a senior international figure, and this generates some interesting dramatic tension. It's going to be an interesting series to watch.