Flower mystery

With nothing scheduled for today, I decided to sleep for an extra hour, or at least to relax semi-conscious until the sun appeared above the neighbouring rooftops and lit up the house. It's still chilly, 9C until the afternoon, when it rose to 17C, though with wind chill it felt colder all day. I took my time over breakfast and prayers, listened to a discussion by some leading economic thinkers talking about the macro relationship between capitalism and democracy. 

They looked at the need to rethink global future economic aims, now the world's survival is threatened by climate change. We're in such dire straits because of uncontrolled greed for growth from exploiting the earth's resources without honest consideration of the consequences. Where do we go from here? It was an interesting conversation with some agreement on future approaches, but no real consensus about how to go in the direction we urgently need to.

A grocery top up trip to Mercadona before lunch, where I bumped into Craig and his wife from church also out shopping. We were all taken by surprise. It's rare to meet someone you know in a supermarket in a foreign land! I found a thick tuna steak at a discount in the fresh fish cabinet. I fried it for a few minutes in olive oil and lemon, with a spud, a carrot and pieces of broccoli. It was perfectly cooked and delicious.

Afterwards, I looked at next Sunday's readings to consider what sort of sermon subject I could work with, and made a false start by failing to realise that my file had an incorrect first reading. Never mind, another try later on.  I went for a walk over the hill down to the Mijas road, and walked along the footpath down the Arroyo Real riverside park and back, trying to identify some of the wild flowers and take photos of them. There's a variety of species in open stretches of land not yet built upon, but one kind in particular which is everywhere in huge numbers, buttercup yellow, whose name I have yet to find against any photo on the internet.

It seems to open up in response to bright sunlight and close again when in shade, but I could be wrong about that. May be it only opens at the end of its development cycle and then doesn't last for long. It's also hard to take pictures of as it's light and moves with the slightest breeze, and autofocus with my long lens doesn't work so well on a small subject at close range. So this is my best shot so far.

In tonight's news, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has negotiated amendments to the Northern Ireland trade protocol with the EU. Political opinion seems largely in favour of what's known of the agreement. In the end however, if the DUP reject the settlement, it's back to negotiations. In effect the party has a power of veto and it's produced a political stalemate making Northern Ireland ungovernable for several years. If Ulster folk of all shades get fed up enough of this status quo, the DUP may find its share of vote reduced to the point where the part is powerless at the next general election. 

After supper, I talked with Clare, then listened to 'The Archers', and uploaded the day's photos before settling to read until bed time.