Relief from rain today, but it's been colder. I went to St Catherine's and celebrated the Eucharist with ten others and a two week old babe in arms with his dad. What a delight! It's been quite a while since I last blessed such a young baby at the altar. After coffee, I collected this week's veggie bag from Chapter, and then went to the station to collect Rhiannon from the train, she's come to stay for a couple of days, much to our pleasure.
We haven't seen her since the summer. Since then she's had an acting job in Warwick Castle, and finishing on Hallowee'n with a thirteen hour costume role play session in front of visitors in search of spooky thrills. A good experience for her with half a dozen character scripts to learn by heart. It was great to hear about this, and about a holiday visit which took her the length of Italy, from Naples to Como, Bologna and Milan by rail with a girl friend. It's not her first excursion abroad without her parents with. Such confidence at nineteen!
I cooked pasta for our lunch, then went for a walk while Clare and Rhiannon went to Beanfreaks for part one of our weekly grocery shopping. When they returned, it was my turn to take the shopping trolley and go to the Co-op for the rest of our provisions. Job done, it was time to start a batch of fresh bread. While it was leavening, I made another batch of pasta sauce to make pizzas with a third of the bread dough. I was pleased with the outcome. It tasted fine, the pizza base was light and spongy in texture, but a bit too thick. I used too much dough. It's many years since I last made a pizza. I'm out of practice at rolling it really thin.
After supper we chatted with Rhiannon and watched the latest episode of 'Shetland'. Then the girls went bed. I watched the news, and learned about the Israeli army entering Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City, in search of evidence of a Hamas military operations centre, said to be the justification for bringing the last remaining medical functions to a halt. A small cache of weapons and armour hidden behind a scanner and a couple of laptops containing information about some of the hostages are all that's been found up to now.
As for hospital access to the tunnel network, nothing so far. None of the staff or patients questioned know of a place where there might be a hidden entrance. It makes more sense to me that such entrances would be at some distance from the hospital, as it wouldn't be in anyone's interest for medical services to be compromised or disrupted by military comings and goings on-site. Maybe bombing nearby has already destroyed entrances and they're now hidden under ruined buildings.
The main activity being hunted for is a military operations centre whose function is communication with fighting groups. This could be achieved with an easily movable network of laptops and a few satellite phones, whether above or below ground, possible to anticipate once it was clear the hospital's sanctity would be violated by the Israeli army.
Concealment, mobility and a multitude of fighters with little or no concern for self preservation are assets for Hamas fighters, reminiscent of how the Viet Cong made waging the war in Vietnam unwinnable for the Americans back in the 1970s, despite their immensely destructive firepower. Another David and Goliath story. Lessons of history unlearned again. I'm following this aspect of the story with interest, but insufficient concentration to prevent me falling asleep in the chair at the end of the news and waking up over an hour later. A busy day, and a tiring one.
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