Another sunny day, cloudy and occasionally light drizzle. I had extra work to do on this week's Sway after breakfast as I'd missed out a flyer for an event in two week's time. Diana and Pete called around to drop off the manuscript of a novel Diana is about to have published, and stayed for coffee. She's asked me to read it through to see if her portrayal of the protagonist is authentic. I look forward to this unusual task.
An email arrived from my cousin Dianne with information about an appeal from the Diocese of Jerusalem for the Al-Ahli Anglican hospital in Gaza city. It was from her parish's weekly e-newsletter. I posted the link to the donation site on our Daily Prayer WhatsApp thread. We both sent donations to Christian Aid's Gaza appeal already, but another will go to this diocesan appeal now. I asked her as a former-journalist if she had any idea about how to find the actual number of aid lorries allowed through the Rafah crossing so far. She said she'd heard there's no coherent information coming from reporters in the area as their access to the frontier crossing point has been denied.
I cooked a paella for lunch, with the fish pie mix which Clare had bought. It's the first time I've done this in a year or so, and was pleased at how it turned out, even if it did take longer than anticipated. After we'd eaten I set to work on preparing materiel for Daily Prayer two weeks hence when I have to days to prepare for, as I'm covering for Pearlin while she's visiting her mother in India. Then we went for a walk down to the river, and called at the Co-op on the way back to buy evaporated milk and sugar for Christmas fudge making. Evaporated milk is not used as much these days and is hard to find, but we came home with two half sized tins, and that cleared the shelf in the supermarket which stocked it.
After a cup of tea, I went out again and walked for three quarters of an hour to complete my daily quota. The nearly full Hunter's Moon had just risen in a clear-ish sky as I was walking in the darkness of Llandaff Fields, a beautiful sight. By the time I made my way back, it was enveloped by a veil of thin cloud.
I watched another episode of 'For Life', and then the news before bed. More raids on Gaza, the civilian death toll keeps mounting. It's now over seven thousand. Half of those killed are children. Bombing and shelling has intensified this evening and internet access has been lost. The UN and politicians in many countries call for a humanitarian cease-fire, but there's no sign of that, any more than there's sign of more hostages being released. In a worrying move, some Hamas leaders are visiting Moscow as Putin has expressed an interest in hostage release. There are a lot of Russians in Israel. I don't know what influence Russian government has in Israel, but Hamas is backed by Iran and the Iranian government has links with Moscow. What next?
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