A great priest remembered

I woke up late under a grey sky with strong winds forecasted and a short spell of rain. It felt colder than the actual 15C. I had a productive morning. Between breakfast and lunch, I finished Sunday's sermon and drafted another one for Ash Wednesday.

The death was announced of Father John Rogers former Dean of St George's Cathedral in Guyana and in his pre-retirement Dean of Llandaff. His daughter Sarah is a priest and her twin brother Paul is a senior admin officer in the Representative Body of the Church in Wales. Sarah was medical researcher and a church warden of St Teilo's Cathays when I was Rector of Central Cardiff. Then she was accepted for ordination. I first met the family when John was Rector of Ebbw Vale back in the eighties and I was working for USPG in Wales, the organisation that sent him as a young missionary priest to Guyana, so we'd known each other for forty years, and met occasionally in retirement.

John died on the morning of Sarah's induction as Vicar of Tonypandy, after a tough five year spell as Chaplain to the Bishop of Llandaff. I'm sure he was delighted to learn of her return to parish ministry. He was the consummate parish priest, wise, calm, gentle, with a wry sense of humour. Pam, his wife, died while he was still working. She was a traditional conservate Anglo-Catholic, fervently against the ordination of women to the priesthood. If John had been originally persuaded against, evidence of his daughter's priestly calling must have helped change his mind, as he was so supportive of her. He was one of the Church in Wales' finest missionary pastors. I'm grateful to have been a colleague of his. May he rest in peace.

Clare messaged me from the bank to say that she'd transferred the deposit sum to Owain, no problem. A relief for both of us. Later Owain messaged to say the solicitors were satisfied that due diligence is done, so sale procedure for his flat can now continue, hopefully at a reasonably quick pace. It will be so good to see him settled in place of his own.

After lunch, I walked down to church to exchange the novels I read for a new one, and then walked to Playa San Francisco on the Paseo Maritime. It wasn't exceptionally windy but there were three metre waves driving relentlessly in from five hundred metres off-shore. Just one kite surfer was out, and he only managed a ten minute battering by the wind in such blustery conditions. Clare called from her paseo, out in the drizzle in Pontcanna fields as I was walking back, and we chatted until I set out to do weekend grocery shopping in the Mercadona up the hill.

A quiet evening after supper, I was settling down to read and dozed off. I didn't realise I was tired enough to do that. It's the first time in ages. I've been doing without a siesta since I arrived. This time I read my neglected Spanish novela in for a change and then went to bed.