A cloudless sky today and glorious sunshine, warming the house when the curtains are open. From the bedroom, I saw a pair of pied wagtails foraging beside the swimming pool below along with a blackbird, while a collared dove was cooing somewhere in the background. A good start to the day. I worked on next week's Morning Prayer reflection after breakfast, then sat admittedly indoors basking in a pool of sunlight while my laptop was recharging.
Then an email arrived telling me of the death of Oswald Barnes, former churchwarden of St John's City Parish Church. He was a lovely man, a former senior local government officer, and fountain of knowledge about Cardiff's governance and civil life, an essential companion to a priest ministering in the historic heart of the city. So sad I'll be unable to attend his funeral.
Not long after I'd made another lunch of leftovers, John arrived with the newly repaired car. Both front tyres needed replacing because they weren't a matching pair, as well as the spare. John's own car had been left by Jen around the corner first thing this morning before she was collected for the long drive to Calpe for the Synod. As we were chatting, a local man whose daughter is a neighbour came to greet John and I was introduced to him. The three of us chatted in a mixture of English and Spanish, which was fun.
On the lunchtime news a survey reported on the third anniversary of Brexit that most people in all but three of the country's political constituencies now think it was a mistake. Not surprising really, a process that was rushed and botched, engaged in with promises of beneficial opportunities with a clear idea of what these would be and how they would be achieved. Freedom for those who felt they lacked enough of it, but freedom to what real end?
I did some creative lunchtime cooking with recent leftovers and after eating went for a walk, exploring an enterprise zone which runs in a site next to the autovia but 50 metres above it. It's comprised entirely of large car showrooms and possibly some workshops as well. At its far end there was a gate into a field with two horses in it. Slightly incongruous to my mind the sort of thing you find on the edge of an urban area in many countries I guess.
I then went down to St Andrew's to check out where everything required for tomorrow's celebration of Communion is kept, checking if I could open the office safe to retrieve the Communion vessels then hunting for the bread and wine. Having established this wasn't kept in the office, I searched in church, and eventually found the kitchen cupboard where wine and wafers are stored. Better to know tonight than at twenty past ten tomorrow!
Five hundred metres up the road from the church is a Roman archaeological site, and I waked up there for a look around before going to the shops. There are remains of a bath house, part of a villa lost long ago under road works, but more interestingly a small industrial site, with a small salted fish processing factory, and a pottery right next to it. Indications of what drove the economy here on the coast two thousand years ago if not longer, given the Phoenicians traded here well before that. The site is well explained and laid out with a park and interpretation centre next door, plus a terrace cafe that overlooks the excavated site.
Then went hunting in nearby Chinese emporiums to see if I could find a filter coffee cone to buy, as the house kitchen possesses filter papers but no cone, strangely enough. There may be a filter coffee device tucked away somewhere which I've yet to find. After a few days of lengthy paseos and after a shorter night's sleep, I didn't feel like walking much further, so I got back to the house before sunset.
One of my Google accounts says it's 75% full, mostly photos, so I spent the evening pruning albums, downloading them to zipped files, to store on an empty 32GB pen drive I brought with me, which is more than enough, though not as convenient to view as when they're in the Cloud.
On Sunday Rhiannon sent me a WhatsApp message asking for help charging the old Lumix camera I gave her a couple of years ago. I suspected she might be using the wrong lead, but it seems she didn't and the camera simply wouldn't switch on after charging, and wouldn't work without a battery whilst attached to a power cable. Dead, sad to say, and only ten years old.
Clare was out at a choir rehearsal tonight, so we only spoke briefly, just before we both started getting ready for bed. Both of us tired.
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