Returning home from St German's yesterday passing the former St James' church building, I noticed the security fence enclosing the site on the Newport Road side has been taken down to reveal the north face of the building for the first time since it was bought and the developers started working on proposals, thirteen years ago. A plan to convert the place into fourteen apartments has finally come to completion. Not long after the building was bought, the banking crash occurred and the flow of credit to all sorts of projects dried up, and work halted. Now there's a big sign outside and an advertisement for apartments for sale. I'd love to have a look what's been done inside the building since the Parish lost it in 2007.
Monday's housework routine was disrupted this morning by my urgent need to make an enquiry call about travel insurance cover, following up on last night's premium quotation obtained on-line. I had to wait an hour and then had a forty minute conversation enabling me to purchase cover for the next year. I paid £148 which is £37 more than the 2020 pre covid price, but then a big increase was something I expected.
While I was waiting for the call, I worked on texts for the next Morning Prayer to pass the time, and answered a few emails about chaplaincy arrangements for next week. Clare was out at a Pilates class, so I cooked lunch. Then we drove over to Rumney for a hairdressing session with Chris - both of us.
On our way home we called in Currys superstore to look for an electric waffle iron. It seems they don't stock them. In fact none of the big retailers of domestic goods stock them. If you want one, you have to go on-line to buy from Amazon. Is this a matter of something being out of fashion? No longer any demand? Incredible.
After supper I started checking in for my flight on-line, in response to a prompt email from Vueling, but I couldn't complete the process and get my boarding pass, as the free random seat assignation option doesn't start until tomorrow.
It's pretty certain we won't see Jasmine now, even though she's not yet tested positive for covid, but she's still in the company of people who do have it, and to reach Cardiff, whether she is driven all the way or driven to catch a Cardiff train by her covid stricken Dad, the risk of infection escalates. In my flight check-in procedure was quite a detailed notification about not flying if you've got covid or been in close contact with someone who has it within ten days. It's even stricter than I imagined, so there's no way either Clare or I should see Jasmine, just in case. So sad.
After supper, I finished my share of the housework and then watched this week's episode of Blacklist. It's an extremely dark and violent mix of criminal conspiracies and spy fiction in which vengeance is the persistent threat and the message seems to be that however nasty, the end justifies the means. A bit like Putin's mob, only these are all American Feds verses a cosmopolitan global underworld, or something. I watch to see if there'll ever be any point to the series of case stories making up the episodes.
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