A mild cloudy day with no rain. I woke up at eight, posted the link on WhatsApp for Morning Prayer and then got up for breakfast. Chief Rabbi Ephraim Murvis spoke on Thought for the Day about the month of Av, fifth month of the year in the Jewish calendar. It's a month of sad memories when the destruction of the First and Second Temples is commemorated, also the expulsion of Jews from England in 1290 and from Spain in 1492.
He went on to describe how the Babylonian exile led to the Temple being replaced by synagogues as community gathering places for worship and festive banquets, with the family meal table replacing the Temple altar as the place to offer the sacrifice of praise and feasting. Out of the catastrophe of exile a new way of celebrating Jewish identity emerged. He lamented the reduction of time spent eating together, and advocated making the effort to sustain the family with table talk, discussion, argument and even disagreement as essential for learning to live together in love despite differences. A very neat three minutes worth of thought provoking discourse.
I had a quiet morning, praying and thinking, then went for a walk before cooking lunch. Again I fell asleep for an hour after lunch. It seems that I need the extra hour if my night's sleep is disturbed as it often is. At least it means my afternoon walk in the park is a bit more energetic. I picked up a new empty plastic bag from the long grass beside the road on Western Avenue. In the course of the next hour I filled it with rubbish collected in my circuit of Pontcanna Fields and binned it. If my objective is to walk ten kilometres a day, my aim is to leave the park a little cleaner and tidier than I found it.
After supper I whiled away the evening watching episodes of Swedish crime drama 'Top Dog' on Walter Presents. It's about rivalries underhanded affairs in a big law firm with high value clients, and lawyers consorting with criminals. It makes a change from police procedural storylines.
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