Valued visit

After breakfast, the usual Monday housework tasks. While Clare was out at her Pilates assessment session, I finished this week's Morning Prayer video and uploaded it to YouTube, before cooking lunch in time for her return. 

Owain arrived just after we'd eaten, and was happy to eat just a sandwich, as he prefers a cooked meal in the evening. Last week he had his induction into his new job with the Insolvency Commission. Thursday he's off to Geneva for a birthday long weekend, planned before the new job came up, so his new bosses had to honour the leave time he'd been granted. 

We went for a walk together over to Bute Park and had a drink at the Secret Garden Cafe on the way round. Then it was time to give him a lift to the station for his return to Bristol. A brief but much valued visit. He lives a full and busy life, and we're fortunate that he wants to visit us as often as he does.

After supper, I went for short walk in Llandaff Fields. There was a circle of fifteen people standing under the trees working with a yoga teacher. The sight of them all standing on one leg and bowing in salutation was quite striking. I felt a bit awkward about taking a photo of them, and wished I had done by the time I turned around and headed for home. They'd dispersed by the time I passed the place where they gathered. A missed opportunity.

I watched some of Andy Murray's first round match at Wimbledon while waiting for the fifth episode of 'Sherwood' whose plot continues to deliver surprises, even if its extended flashbacks to 1984 are a bit hard to follow on times. Sixth and final episode tomorrow night.

At least eighteen people were killed and dozens more unaccounted for in a missile attack on a shopping centre in Ukraine today, 80 miles away from the conflict in Donbass in a town where there were no military assets to target. It's not the first time civilians have been targeted. G7 summit leaders have branded it as a war crime. Putin's forces are acting in blatant disregard for the laws of war, as if they can never be punished. The aim seems to be to wear the Ukrainians down and force them to submit, regardless of the cost in lost lives and cities razed to the ground. It's causing outrage internationally, leading to an increase in the military support Ukraine gets, but will it be enough to create a situation where Putin realises he cannot win? Or will he be ousted by others who realise this but cannot convince him?