Good news for Clare

A cold sunny day, up early to take Clare to Llandough Hospital for a nine thirty bone density scan. We got there ten minutes earlier than expected, simply because we had a succession of eight green traffic lights. A rare thing indeed, and the traffic was light. I returned home to work on this week's Sway and send out this week's set of readings. Clare returned by bus an hour later with good news. The bone density scan showed a ten per cent increase in bone density in the first year of the two year course of daily calcium injections.

I cooked pasta with a sugo of carrot, onion, celery, mushrooms and butter beans for lunch and after eating I made the dough for a couple of loaves of bread, then went out for a walk. While I was out Clare saw the leavened loaves into the oven, and the aroma greeted me on return. 

First I walked to Thompson's Park and saw two juvenile moorhens, not the same birds as I saw there a few weeks ago but smaller ones. It's the first time I've noticed a second brood of moorhen chicks in one season. If it's the same breeding pair, it has to be the third attempt of the year, given that the first effort of nest making and egg laying in the small ornamental pond came to nothing around the time Jasmine came to stay. Then I walked to Victoria Park, to take a photo of St Luke's from inside the park gates to use for next week's Sway, as St Luke's will be celebrating its Patronal festival next Sunday.

Two people sent me emails arriving within a minute of each other, containing a poster to include in Sway advertising a Prayer Vigil for Israel and Palestine next Sunday evening at St Martin's Roath. Yesterday at St German's, the leaflet version was given out with the weekly notice sheet. I brought one home with me to scan, but didn't need to, with a suitable jpeg provided.

After supper, I made the video slideshow to go with the recording of Morning Prayer I made and edited a few days ago, and uploaded it to YouTube. We watched a cooking programme with Jamie Oliver showing how to cook a range of different simple dishes using just five ingredients commonly found and used in our kitchens. 

Then a programme about the Chartist movement presented by Newport born Michael Sheen, travelling around the South Eastern valleys interviewing people in deindustrialised villages not far from my birthplace about the reason for political apathy in deprived areas today. A story of voiceless people, past and present, with some of today's community activists striving to give Wales' poor communities a voice and raise people's hopes, powerfully told.