A damp and chilly day after rain overnight. Clare went of to her study group in Penarth after breakfast and I stayed in to receive the plumber who was due to come and fix a dripping bathroom tap. Mid morning in Halifax the Muir family, friends, colleagues and former parishioners were gathering in the Parish church at Sowerby Bridge near Halifax for the funeral of Clare's cousin John, a former Vicar of the Parish. It was livestreamed on YouTube, and I watched. The service lasted an hour and twenty minutes with tributes and an account of his family life and international ministry taking an hour.
At the conclusion of the service Bishop Smitha Prasadam the Bishop of Huddersfield came forward from the congregation and gave the blessing. I didn't recognise her at first, but curiosity compelled me to check if I was correct. Until last year, she was Chaplain of Saint Alban's Copenhagen. It's unusual for a serving Chaplain to be recruited to the episcopate, so her ministry must be well regarded in the CofE. Her father Sam was a priest of the Church of South India, who spent several years as a parish priest in the Rhondda, when I was new to ministry fifty years ago.
While I was watching, the plumber arrived. It turned out not to be a straightforward job, as he couldn't dismantle the tap, parts of which were so tightly jammed together that there was a risk of breaking the surrounding ceramic wash basin. The plumber called his mate to give him a hand, but neither of them could get the offending tap apart. What to do? I never liked that set of taps as they opened and shut on a quarter turn like a lever tap, opening and closing the opposite way to traditional British full turn taps. I never got used to lever taps and asked if they could be safely changed for ones I prefer since changing them was necessary. As luck would have it, there was a spare pair of full thread taps in their van, and half an hour later the job was done.
The funeral live-stream was continuing on my Chromebook on the kitchen table. I had just started making lunch, and nearly incinerated the onions I was frying when the plumber arrived and the door needed to be answered. Everything seemed to be happening at once, but by the time Clare returned the chaos subsided and lunch was only twenty minutes late reaching the table. After lunch, I wrote some more of my current story, then we drove to our hairdressing appointment at Chris's salon in Rumney. We were on time. but he was running late, so while Clare was waiting, I walked a circuit of Parc Tredelerch enjoying the sunshine and saw a large green dragonfly above a boggy reed bed. Too fast to photograph, no idea what it was.
I decided to keep my hair long for the time being. Chris's excellent coiffure makes it easier to control and comfortable to wear loose and tied up. The sun was setting at six when we left for home, a layer of cloud on the horizon under a blue sky was tinted orange-yellow, very pretty, though it was soon gone. I still had another hour's exercise to do, and went out again after supper and the Archers. For the second evening in a row, a corner of the field behind the WJEC building was illuminated by four strong battery driven LED floodlights. As it was misty, it conveyed a somewhat sinister impression. It seems that sports training for youngsters in the park can now continue after dark, thanks to the acquisition of lights. Not so sure what the resident foxes and owls make of this disruption to their hunting time.
After my walk I spent the rest of the evening writing, until it was bed time.
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