Cool cloudy with occasional showers throughout the day. It's Kath's birthday today, so we sang her a birthday greeting on WhatsApp as soon as we got up. She and Anto are celebrating in Santa Pola, with two new fans installed in their apartment. After breakfast, I took Clare to the Nuffield hospital in Cardiff Bay for a round of blood tests preparing for next Monday's hip operation. She'd been told this was when she should pay the medical fees, so she went to the Co-op Bank in town yesterday to alert them to this outlay from her account. She was told she would receive a request for transaction confirmation by email when she made the payment with her debit card, but nothing happened as arranged. After the appointment she had to go back into town to the bank and make the payment in person. Such incompetence, really annoying.
When we got home two NHS letters were waiting for me. One was a reminder to cancel an appointment for a telephone consultation if I no longer needed it. The other was an appointment for my second cataract replacement op on the 17th September. So pleased about this. Now I can make plans to meet up with Veronica and John when they come to Britain in two weeks time.
While Clare went to the bank, I cooked lunch, anticipating her having a long wait in the bank, luckily I got the timing just right. I slept for an hour in the chair after lunch and dozed for even longer. Then I went out to post a letter, buy plant milks, fruit, nectarines, grapes and a huge honeydew melon. A heavy load to carry home. Then a second trip for a bottle of red wine for a change. During the hot weather we've drunk mostly white at home. In the air conditioned comfort of the cruise ship I sampled most of the excellent wines served, whites and reds but seldom the pink ones on offer. We ate fruit at every meal on board, and many of the reds as well as whites went well with it.
After supper I went out for a short walk to complete my day's step quota, and then watched the final episode and a half of 'The Darkness'. I got used to it being in English, but needed to concentrate on the dialogue, being used to sub-titles with foreign films. It was another of these crimmies in which the beautifully filmed landscape played a great part in setting the mood of the drama. Mountain glaciers, sea shore with distant town-scape, and inevitable drone shots of wilderness and urban road networks.
It tells a complex story about refugees, people trafficking and local mafia, but buried within are deaths that look like accidents, not properly investigated and turn out to be the work of a serial killer. All this is unravelled by a detective on the verge of retirement, with her own history of secrets and suffering. In an unusual plot twist she is murdered in the penultimate scene, having saved the life of an abuser's victim. Reviews I read on IMDB are strongly pro or anti. The cast was mainly Icelandic actors. At least the Icelandic English accents were plausible as a result, and there's one detective ostensibly raised in the UK with a British English accent, but an Icelandic name. I certainly kept my attention throughout.
After exchanging messages with Kath and Veronica, we've settled on a rendezvous on 20th September. Glad we've got that sorted.
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