Saving lives in Cardiff

Another warmish cloudy day with sun breaking through in the afternoon. Clare went out to her study group after breakfast. I hung a load of washing on the line and it was dry enough to take in again by the end of the morning. I wrote a reflection for next Thursday's Morning Prayer and recorded it, then prepared lunch ready to cook when Clare returned.

I walked to Thompsons park after we'd eaten and found myself thinking about the trunk of a tree which was blown down in a gale as long as ten years ago. It gave me ideas for a poem, so I sat on a bench in the sun and composed it, noting it down on my phone with Google Keep. It's the third poem I've written in the past two months. Since returning from Nerja three months ago, I've only had to write two sermons instead of one a week. It's made room to satisfy the creative impulse in a different way.

On my circuits of the top field in the park I noticed a lady sat under a tree writing or so I thought. On my final round, I stopped to take photos of lichen growing on the structures of two park benches. She got up to leave, and greeted me saying: "Glad I'm not the only one to find a park bench interesting!" It turned out she wasn't writing, but drawing the bench near the tree where she'd been sitting. Time out for her before starting a new teaching job tomorrow. There was a fresh breeze as I sat writing on another bench. It drove me home for tea and cake to warm up before finishing my day's walk in Llandaff Fields.

After supper, I started to gather necessary income data for filling in my tax return, a chore I've been avoiding for weeks. Then we watched the third in a series of hospital documentaries showcasing amazing hi-tech surgery on three different patients, filmed at UHW entitled 'Saving lives in Cardiff'. It was impressive. I must watch the first two episodes on iPlayer now. 

Then more grim news of illegal migrant lives lost at sea, more deaths in a missile strike in Ukraine, a child murdered by his mother, and a teenager murdering an eighty year old man walking his dog here in Britain. In every direction, it seems the value placed on human life is being eaten away by malign forces corrupting minds and souls.