Another day of summer heat and blue sky even though it's officially autumn now. Kath announced that she and Anto were back home, after an early arrival and bumpy landing at Brum in thick fog. After breakfast, I drove to St Peter's Fairwater to celebrate the midweek Eucharist with twenty others. After a cup of coffee and a chat I returned home, then went to collect this week's veggie bag. While I was out Clare was busy turning the strained liquor of blackberry and apple from yesterday evening's brew into four small jars of jelly. She'd also prepared lunch while the liquor and added sugar were reducing.
After we'd eaten, the contents of the straining bag needed to be sieved by hand to remove the pips, making several more jars of a fruity paste which is great to eat on bread, in addition to the delicious jelly. This is done with an old fashioned hand cranked metal kitchen device, a job which I'm content to take on. It's one of our autumnal domestic rituals well worth the effort. With a modicum of self restraint, jars of each will appear on our family festive Christmas table.
I did the week's grocery shopping at the Coop, then went for a walk around Llandaff Fields. Early on a Wednesday evening scores of youngsters distributed in groups with parents and sports trainers are out on several different games pitches being taken through their paces - soccer and rugby for the most part. These days there is an equal number of girls as there are boys. It's a hive of activity, and great to see.
Other evenings the young cricketers will be out practicing, playing games, then on the weekends at the moment there will be cricket matches, in Llandaff and Pontcanna Fields, as many as half a dozen some times. Near Blackweir bridge a baseball diamond is marked out, and there are games on the weekend Some weeknight evening young baseball players come to practice. On top of all this are daily runners regular Parkrun groups, competitive athletics meetings and occasionally, big fun runs . Managing all this activity must be quite a challenge, as demand continues to evolve.
Not all the space given to traditional asphalt tennis courts finds regular use. A plan is in the pipeline to replace a couple of surplus courts with a cricketers' clubhouse and changing room. Next to the tennis enclosure is a bowling green and clubhouse, no longer used. A mile down river in Sophia Gardens there is another bowling green which is very well used. I believe two clubs have been merged.
Another plan is in the pipeline to turn the redundant bowling green into a padel court with changing rooms, as this has become a popular sport here, possibly due to its discovery by holidaymakers in Spain. The court can be used for volleyball as well I believe. Padel is a form of tennis played in an enclosed space roughly half the size of a conventional tennis court, which originated in Mexico in 1969, and has spread globally since. I first came across it in Mojácar seven years ago, as I saw a sign board for a padel court on my daily walk to the neighbourhood nature reserve. I first saw it played in the sea side hotel garden in Estepona last year, also on my daily walking route!
When I got back home there was a note from Clare with the bowl of blackberry and apple paste left out on the table. We'd both forgotten that the sieving device doesn't remove tiny pips, so the paste has to be passed through another tighter meshed sieve again. Another half hour's work to complete the job before adding sugar to preserve it and enhance the taste. Yes, still worth the effort, although the consequence of all that manual exercise was to bring on painful cramp in all my hand muscles. No gain without pain.
After supper I uploaded and worked on photos taken today, then read 'Battle for Spain' for an hour and a half before bed.
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