Taff bird lineup

As I got ready for bed last night, I looked out of the window for a glimpse of the full moon. What was a clear sky earlier had acquired a layer of thin cloud, that not even full strength moonlight could illuminate. What a disappointment! Nevertheless I had a good peaceful long night's sleep and didn't wake up until just before nine. I caught up with 'Thought for the Day' on BBC sounds. It was my friend from college days Roy Jenkins talking about Donald Trump's appointment of unqualified unsuitable people to government roles whose only merit is their loyalty to him. Who then will speak truth to power? was his concluding question. 

After a pancake breakfast with added garlic mushrooms, I went out for a walk. Unfortunately the sky was overcast and remained so all day with occasional light drizzle. After a circuit of Llandaff Fields, Clare came out and joined me and we went across to Bute Park to visit the Secret Garden cafe, very busy on a Saturday lunchtime. At the edge of the pool in front of Blackweir Bridge, I noticed a heron a female cormorant and an egret, each about twenty metres apart from each other, observing the water and poised, ready to strike. The pool is rich with elvers and other small creatures. All three birds hunt or forage there as their territories overlap, but I've not seen all three lined up like that before.

We returned home after queuing for a long time and taking longer waiting for our hot drinks to cool down. Clare was satisfied with eating just a samosa at the cafe, but I needed something more substantial, so I cooked a dish with chorizo, chicken and veg, then had a tasty slice of rye bread to go with it for a change. Then another walk, this time to Thompson's Park, where I caught sight of a pair of moorhens mingling on the edge of the pond with the crowd of mallards that occupies most of the space. It's the first time I've seen the moorhens here in several weeks. Fascinating to observe that for much of this year, it's just been female mallards that have occupied the pond, sometimes without a single drake to be seen. The gender balance is now just about equal. It's all a bit strange.

After supper I returned to scanning photo negatives for the first time in a couple of months. Pictures from a trip down the Telemark Canal when we visited Norway and another Clare made to Itzehoe, back in the nineties. It's funny. I had a vague memory of taking pictures, but not seeing them in print, so it was good to see them and remember that special journey. While I was cleaning the images of accumulated blemishes from thirty years of neglectful handling using Windows 11 photo edit tool, Clare was watching an old 'Gavin and Stacey' Christmas special. It reminded me of childhood seasonal family gatherings, and although it's comic satire it was for me uncomfortably true about the world I grew up in, and not in a happy way sad to say.