More sunshine today! That does me good. After breakfast Clare went off to her study group in Penarth and I started work on recording the Morning Prayer I'd been preparing. To my horror I found that I'd selected the reading for the day before and had to revise what I had prepared before I could get going. I thought it was meant to be St Francis' day and wrote a reflection about him. Instead of writing another from scratch I modified it, to reflect his devotion to Christ's Passion, which was relevant as the Gospel reading for the day is about the betrayal of Jesus. A job that should have taken an hour took two and a half, and I ended up late to start cooking lunch.
In last week's veggie bag there was some celery, which gave me the idea of preparing a pasta sauce in the way I once saw Stanley Tucci doing it, in a foodie documentary visit to Florence. He took sticks of celery, carrots and onion, chopped them finely and fried them together in oil, and only when cooked did he add the tomato passata. Clare arrived home just at the right time as I was wondering how to chop everything finely, got a little used food processor out from the back of the cooking equipment cupboard and showed me how to use it.
The three veg mixture was just right for cooking. Separately, I cooked red lentils with a lot of garlic, and then added the cooked veg, and divided the lot into two portions, so that I could have my sugo with passata, and she could have hers without. We had couscous instead of gluten free pasta with it, as the meal was running late and couscous takes a few minutes. It tasted good for both of us. A successful culinary experiment, destined to be repeated.
I did an update to Sway then walked into town later in the afternoon to buy train tickets for a visit to my sister next weekend. I had to renew my Senior discount rail Card to get the best price. I wonder if I use it enough in a year to justify the outlay. I hope so anyway. It halves the journey time and isn't as taxing as the coach trip when timing matters, but it's so frustrating when there's a rail strike, and then a coach becomes the only option. I then called into John Lewis' to see if I could find a long handled brush for back scrubbing in the shower, but there was nothing of the sort to be found, but I did find one in Boots' in the Grand Arcade, just what I wanted.
I had a few emails to deal with after supper, one of them contained the double job profile for the two vacancies in the Ministry Area team. Well thought out and presented with perfect sunny day pictures of the parks. The area all looks bright and shiny posh, in a way that hardly reflects the working class nature of some parts of the area. There's little in the visuals to reflect the typical ethnic and cultural diversity of its inhabitants, even if it is mentioned in print. I hope it attracts priests who can understand and work with this.
I became aware a few days ago that Penhill Road would be closed overnight from late evening, so when I had finished work, I went out with my Sony Alpha 68 to see what I could see. There was slow moving traffic up to the lights, to early for the road closure to take effect, but there were a dozen large vans and lorries parked in the bus lane to-be and noise from the corner of the junction with Llandaff Road. A hole was being dug in the pavement next to the lights, and all of the road except one lane was cordoned off with temporary traffic lights controlling flow. I suppose it might be something to do with upgrading the traffic communications infrastructure which operates the traffic lights at the junction.
The big tidy-up prior to re-opening the entire refurbished road to traffic has yet to take place. I got a few atmospheric pictures of traffic queuing in the dark, but my efforts at capturing the three quarters full moon were in vain. I couldn't remember how to tweak key settings manually for moon photos, so nothing worked. Standing out in the Fields trying to capture traffic and the moon from a vantage point in darkness were a wasted effort. All I got were shoes covered in wet grass. There were teenagers still out there, lying in the dewy grass chatting, with the air temperature down to thirteen degrees. I don't know how they can do it.
Home again, some photo uploads and edits, then time for bed.
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