Survival story

We both got up late this morning and as Clare hadn't made any pancake batter we decided to skip the usual Saturday ritual and have an everyday breakfast instead. I spent the morning recording and editing next week's Morning Prayer audio, and after lunch made the video and then uploaded it to YouTube. 

I was about to book flights for my next locum journey when Clare reminded me of two opera dates in March, five days apart. I contacted Jen, who was OK about me flying home for a week in the middle of my stay at my own expense and inserting the missing week before my departure. I recall doing this once before on locum Costa Azahar, as I had pre-booked a Sunday in Merthyr Vale covering for a priest who found it hard to get holiday cover.

Then another planning issue cropped up when reading the advisory letter from St Joseph's hospital about my cataract op. I'll have to do a PCR covid test several days beforehand, but don't know when, as the notification has yet to be issued. And we'll be away when that arrives, no doubt. I rang the hospital, but the pre-op department doesn't work on weekends, so I'll have call on Monday morning, and find out when it must be done. Unless it can be arranged in a clinic in Swansea, I'll have to drive to Newport and back and lose a third day out of a week in the Gower. 

We walked in the afternoon sunshine to Bute Park for a coffee at the 'Summer House' cafe. When we got home, Clare had a message on the neighbourhood WhatsApp from Ali and Hugo saying that surplus freshly picked apples were available free for anyone to collect. I went around and collected a bagful. Hugo has several trees evidently mature in his allotment. He harvested more than a hundred kilos, and most he's making cider with, having invested in a cider press of his own. Right here in our urban village! Amazing to think that before the industrial and urban development of this area a hundred and fifty years ago much of the land was taken up by fruit growing trees. Here and there gardens persist with old trees still cared for and bearing fruit. The apples are both sharp and sweet, good for cooking as well as eating. What a gift!

This evening I watched programmes in German with subtitles. First another investigation for 'Inspector Borowski' on Walter Presents and then the final double episodes of 'KaDeWe' on BBC Four portraying the rise of Nazism and its impact on retailers who were Jewish, some fleeing to America, others surviving or eliminated. The connecting thread was a group of young friends in business and the intense love affair of two women in the group from utterly different social backgrounds. 

Before the final credits rolled there was a 'what happened to ...' sequence about the destinies of the main characters, some historical other fictional. I googled KadeWe, and discovered that it is a real department store in Berlin which still exists, and is said to be the largest in Europe, founded in 1907 and still going strong today, having survived two world wars occupation and the partition of Germany. Its post-war revival was a morale boosting initiative, as much as anything else under the Marshall Plan which helped put Germany back on its feet. The full story would be worth a movie in its own right. Who knows? Perhaps it's already being planned or in the making. 

Now I understand why many of the street scenes were not in a period piece setting, but contemporary. The street plan is the same, with the department store in it, although it was rebuilt after the war and several storeys have been added to it since. The story of the store is here.