Cloud crept in again overnight. A cold start to the day. I walked to the surgery for a pre-op blood pressure appointment just after ten, to be told that the appointment isn't until eleven twenty. When I accepted to do a funeral this morning I forgot to re-schedule the blood pressure test. To add to the confusion, instead of doing this, I had re-scheduled my lift to the crem to collect me from the surgery instead of home, an hour earlier. It's crazy, because the diary entries were correct. I had misread them and made the wrong decision, probably when we were in Burry Port on holiday. I have to wait another week now. Not that it's going to make much difference, I suspect I'll still have to wait many months more for the gall bladder removal, as it's not have any distressing impact on me so far.
I alerted Pidgeon's to the change of rendezvous and returned home to wait the extra hour in the comfort of our front room, while Clare's study group occupied the dining room, filling the house with the sound of animated chatter. In future I must pay more attention to checking diary detail if events run close together and act without delay to avoid the risk of a clash, whether I'm on holiday or not.
We arrived at Thornhill early. In the large Briwnant Chapel a funeral involving a horse drawn white hearse was about to start. After the service we saw it leave for the next leg of the journey to Western Cemetery. In contrast the service I took had eight mourners and the coffin had no flowers. Three of the immediate next of kin waited outside the Briwnant Chapel, without realising it wasn't the right one, but were rescued by the funeral conductor. This small group, left after the other five mourners had departed, suggesting a rift in the family still unhealed. I was told nothing of the background story by the bereaved father in his eighties, who had made the funeral arrangements. It's very rare to know nothing at all about the person whose soul I am asked to pray for. It would have been impertinent to ask. God only knows the full story.
Clare's study group had all left by the time I arrived home, and she'd cooked lunch. Afterwards I recorded and edited the Morning Prayer and reflection extra for Friday, and then we went for a walk around the park and along the Taff. For the first time since I retired thirteen years ago and started walking along the river bank, I caught sight of a kingfisher standing on the branch of a tree fallen along the bank at water level, just five metres away. It was gone too quickly to get a photo or draw Clare's attention to it, but I do recall several years ago seeing a Kingfisher fly out from a hole and disappear up-river in a flash. This time I was able to take in its colour and form and get a fair impression of its size in its surroundings. It was luck but confirms where best to linger, camera at the ready, if I ever want to get a decent photo.
After supper we watched Springwatch together. Then there was a documentary on the serial killings which took place in the Port Talbot area fifty years ago this year. BBC Wales has just completed showing a four part drama based around the detective work which finally tracked down the murderer in his grave, some thirty years after the crimes took place. It was a world first instance of familial DNA matches being used to identify a criminal, when DNA testing had not long been invented. How far forensic science has come in the twenty years since then. Interviews were given by the victims' families, and by leading detectives who were young men involved in the original investigation, and then thirty years later re-commissioned to work on the 'cold case', as we'd call it nowadays. All the personal testimonies were moving. I'm glad that I didn't see the crime drama series, and after this don't feel the need to watch it all all on catch-up.
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