Improving

I had a fair night's sleep. Fortunately my knee joint wasn't too painful, just stiff, so it meant taking extra time and care to get myself mobile when I got up. I made breakfast and took Clare's to her in bed. She was already dressed and feeling somewhat better. I've had no covid symptoms. So far so good.

I spend the morning preparing next week's Morning Prayer and Reflection, then cooked lunch. Clare came down and sat outside with her lunch in the garden. Afterwards, I recorded and edited what I'd written in the morning and started making the accompanying video slideshow. When I stopped to go for walk, it was already four o'clock. The day's work had been punctuated with getting up and down and walking a little to prevent knee stiffness from worsening. On leaving the house I had to walk slowly and didn't pick up much pace over the next hour and a half. Walking with a stiff knee without limping is physically demanding so I needed to stop and sit on a bench and relax a few times on my circuit of the Llandaff Fields.

For the second day in a row I saw a crow with a fringe of white wing and tail feathers on the same stretch of path in among the trees at the Western Avenue end. It's due to a genetic condition called leucism, and it seems the distribution of what feathers like the condition, is random. The particular bird looks distinctive from behind in flight, as all its trailing edge wing feathers are white. I got a few photos, but at a distance. Without my long telephoto lens the cropped pictures aren't all that sharp, but here are the better ones - in flight

And on the ground 

Tomorrow, I'll change to my long lens, and see what I can snap.

Autumn is really with us now. Some trees are changing colour, and some fallen leaves have beautiful colours. Easier to photograph than crows! Cricketer's apparatus - sun screens, practise nets and wicket  covers have all been stored away, leaving the pitches free for rugby pitches. The wicket covers leave behind large patches of dried grass of different hue, depending on how long it is since any of them last saw the light of day. They only get moved in the event of really heavy summer rain it seems. By the time I got home, I'd walked my daily quota without making my knee feel worse. Clare made me sit with my leg raised and an ice pack under the knee for half an hour before supper, while she prepared it. It's been at day of recovery for her, and she managed a short walk in the fresh air too.

After supper, I watched a couple of episodes of 'The Bank Hacker' on Walter Presents, and episode two of Norwegian crimmie 'For Life', investigating the sudden death of a politician with a reputation as a sexual predator while giving a party speech. It made a worthy job of portraying the various reactions of his victims to his unwanted attention. All good viewing.