I had a rare poor night's sleep due to even rarer digestive discomfort. No time for recovery however as I had to shop for food bank groceries before going to St John's to celebrate the Eucharist. There were only three of us today. We had coffee together afterwards. The Post Office scandal was the inevitable subject of conversation, including the secondary scandal of ex CEO Paula Vennells being a non-stipendiary cleric. How could she not know what was going on?
Simple. She was lied to, going with the flow of the corporate culture she presided over. All too humanly she failed to discern this, failed to be curious about the unusually high number of fraud prosecutions over a period of years. Not even the most capable CEO in the world can be totally perfect. Did the company's data analysis team notice the anomaly? Were they regarded as low status geeks not taken seriously enough by top managers? I hope the enquiry will come up with answers about this. In the world of corporate big business all sorts of things go wrong which only come to light it there's a catastrophe impacting on many, causing a company to collapse.
Clare went to the School of Optometry to be a subject of a research project studying field of vision testing, so I cooked lunch when I returned from church, just in time for her return. A letter arrived from UHW confirming my operation appointment, giving preparatory fasting instructions. It mentions that patients need to be sure they have a stock of pain killers at home, as these are no longer issued. After previous ops I was sent home with a box of cocodamol tablets, none of which I used, and learned to decline them as I'd never needed to take anything that strong. I think that's a good move as this medication is addictive, to be reserved for use in extremis, in my opinion.
I slept for an hour after lunch, then did the weekly mail-out of the link to Sway, before walking until the sun set. After supper, we watched the latest episode of 'Digging for Britain' which featured a report on the archaeological excavations of an area of Parc Trelai in Caerau two miles away from here. The foundations of a Bronze Age round house have been uncovered, and also a feature quite unexpected. Underneath the floor level is the floor of an even older round house of the same dimensions.
It was suggested the earlier house had been destroyed and rebuilt, possibly after the original occupying family had died out, and been replaced by another. It reminded me of the old gypsy custom of burning the caravan belonging to the head of the clan after their death, seen as a mark of respect. But who knows? The original round house could have been destroyed in a raid, or by an accidental fire too. No mention was made of finding charred timber on the site. An interesting puzzle surrounding the remains of the oldest house ever to be discovered in Cardiff.
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