Less dramatic weather today, cloudy with sunshine, fairly warm and no rain. I had a night of broken sleep, perhaps on account of having to be out of the house an hour earlier than usual to drive to St Michael's to preside at their Parish Eucharist. I woke up out of a very anxious nightmare around six, in which I was just arriving at the church only to find it didn't look at all as I remembered it from twelve years ago, my last visit. It was surrounded by building sites, and I couldn't figure out how to gain access to the main entrance. I kept on rehearsing the familiar route as I dozed thereafter.
When I drove the route an hour and half later, I couldn't help laughing out loud in the last half mile. It was just how it had been in my nightmare! The length of Cathays terrace has a bike lane under construction, hemmed in by Heras fencing and big plastic blocks. The Carnegie Library at the junction with Whitchurch Road is swathed in scaffolding and plastic sheets. When I turned left on to Whitchurch Road itself, the entire campus containing St Monica's (VA) Primary and Gladstone Primary schools is also covered in scaffolding, as it has been for the past three years I was later told. Maybe my subconscious mind had noted this and fed it into my nightmare. St Michael's is dwarfed by the neighbouring scaffolding, but still stands out in traditional dark red brick. It's 25 years this year since the church was consecrated. It's testimony to the work of my predecessor Canon Mac Ellis when he was Rector of Central Cardiff.
Including children, we were thirty for the Eucharist, half a dozen of them I remember from my time as Rector, lovely hard working people, with strong confident commitment to growing a lively welcoming congregation of all ages. Edwina one of the team of Lay Readers preached nicely, others led prayers and read lessons. Thanks to a legacy it's been possible to mount a screen on the wall beside the altar where can be seen by all (except the president!) with a video projector out of the way high up on a balcony. Hymns and liturgical words are displayed on screen, and in the absence of an organist, the hymns are recordings from YouTube with the words displayed.
The whole service is streamed live. People all around the world watch regularly. I was told of a rural head teacher in Uganda who joins in remotely every Sunday. There's no regular pastoral ministry on the ground in his district. One of the reasons he watches regularly is to hear words of absolution and blessing spoken by a minister. He sent a message after the service to thank me for ministering to him in this way. There's also a separate Zoom live service in the afternoon with a regular congregation, many of whom are housebound. As a result of on-line ministry during the pandemic several new members have joined and attend in person. It's great to see how a familiar congregation has remained in good heart despite all the upheavals of Ministry Area impositions, and is continued to move on and develop.
I got back home at midday and for once in a while was able to cook Sunday lunch for Clare. WE went for a walk afterwards and harvested equisitum (horsetail) plants along the riverside woodland path. We got eight hundred grams between us, and there's pleny more out there. Clare is going to use them in applying a traditional herbal remedy to the problem of diminishing bone density. Some German research has shown that these are no less effective than today's 'innovative' treatments. It's good to be pro-active than it is to sit and worry. We washed all the plants and dried them using the kitchen salad spinner. Some are packaged up and stored in the freezer, others will be left to dessicate naturally and others boiled up for use in a therapeutic bath. Well, it makes a change from foraging for crab apples and blackberries!
Before supper, I watched a very interesting edition of 'Countryfile' on BBC One, all about the movement towards what's called regenerative farming, which aims to wear the crop growing industry off the use of pesticides and artificial fertilizers, which have a huge carbon footprint to manufacture and contribute to soil depletion and water course pollution in a way not properly understood until fairly recently. Ir's a move towards encouraging greater plant biodiversity to improve soil health, even down to growing different kinds of wheat in the same field avoiding a monoculture which can be advantageous to weeds and pests.
As energy and grain seed prices spiral upwards, it may be possible to make savings to production costs by drastically reducing expenditure on artificial pest control and soul nutrition. Fertilizers manufactured from organic waste materials (from food manufacturing or sewage farms) which are even more effective can be produced at ten per cent of the cost of the chemical kind. A very interesting agricultural revolution is now taking place, it seems.
That was the only thing worth watching on telly tonight. Neither of us have had any interest in listening to all the performances broadcasted live or recorded from this year's Glastonbury festival of which much is being made on air this week. Glad the weather has been fairly decent, and not the news itself. A good time is had by all whatever the climate. Apparently the police are reporting a big drop in crime and it's being attributed to the phenomenal growth of cashless transactions. Far fewer people are carrying money around to get stolen, and there's only so many transactions you can make with an unreported stolen card before you're asked to confirm its PIN number. This is good news, even if I still lament the disuse of real money.
Looking forward to a visit from Owain tomorrow. He's not going to be here for his birthday as he's going to Geneva to see his friends and celebrate there instead, for the first time in a couple of years.
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