Blossom time

Another pleasantly mild dry day, no need for a top coat outdoors again. I spent the morning working on a reflection for Easter Thursday Morning Prayer, making an effort to get as much prepared as possible so I can spend Easter Week getting ready to leave for Spain. There were a few messages to deal with about the Sway handover too. It all takes time to get things to go smoothly. Again today it was coming up to one and neither of us had realised how late it was. I got busy and cooked an easy lunch of steamed veg with cod in a separate pan on top of the steamer. Twenty minutes later and we were sitting down to eat.

After lunch, I needed a snooze in the chair having had a disturbed night's sleep. Then I went for a walk over to Bute Park and back.  I paused to take a photo of blossom on one of the trees in the park alongside Penhill Road. A tall man with Japanese features was passing by. He smiled and gave me a thumbs up. On the other side of the world it's also cherry blossom time, when Japanese people flock to parks and forests to catch sight of the first blossom of spring. Such joy in natural pleasures that unite us wherever we are. It happened to me last year as well, when I met a smiling Japanese lady photographing the blossom with her phone? Or were both these people Korean I wonder, for they too love blossom time, I believe, and there's certainly a noticeable Korean community in South Wales, with its own church and pastor in Cathays.

I walked to the top end of Llandaff Fields and down the slip road connecting to Western Avenue. Along the pavement are numbers at intervals written in red and yellow spray paint, marking where several tests have been made recently by gas engineers. One of them was working there when I passed by there a few days ago. A couple of months ago a section of the road was dug up and lay open for several weeks. The smell of leaking gas had led to this excavation. It seems the problem wasn't fixed as the smell of gas never really went away, and complaints about it still kept coming in. 

The engineer I spoke with said that the leak could be anywhere in the 250m stretch of piping beneath the slip road, and it was likely it would all have to be dug up, so that the old iron gas mains piping could be replaced. This afternoon I saw a Western Power Distribution Company lorry parked at the roadside with safety barriers on board, ready to cordon off a stretch of road. Or maybe collect the ones dumped in the hedge beside the path after the last excavation. However much or little they dig up at a time, it's going to create traffic congestion. 

Further on down Western Avenue before turning again to go to Bute Park via Blackweir Bridge, I saw that Llandaff Rugby Club was cordoned off with police crime scene tape. Several police vehicles were parked on the forecourt there. Yesterday, I came across a local news item about a man in his sixties being found dead at three in the morning in the lane beside the club. A demise in need of explanation it seems.

The grass verge of the Bute Park woodland is a sea of daffodils at the moment, several different varieties, a delight to see. There are lots of other less conspicuous wild flowers in among the grass, arriving early as a result of milder weather and a respite from heavy rain this past week. I returned via the Millennium Bridge and went up-river as far as Blackweir before heading home. An interesting walk today.

After supper, I had some messages about Sway to deal with, and wrote for a while before watching a couple of episodes of 'Top Dog' series two, just released, about corrupt municipal government linked to organised crime in a provincial town. It's one of those series in which it's hard to recall who is related to who in an extended Balkan family network let alone who knows who in business. It was the same in series one as I recall. Worth watching anyway.