Looking back again

Cloudy again today and even warmer, 27C. Monday housework after breakfast, then I wrote for a while. As Clare was preparing veg for lunch, two bright green caterpillars fell out of a bunch of leaves. I took a few closeup photos of them before returning to the wild. If they survive they'll turn into butterflies. 

I took over cooking while Clare went for a walk. After lunch Clare and I went into town separately for last minute clothes shopping, and we met for a drink half way through our separate missions. I bought for the first time a pair of wide fitting slip-on trainers. My feet have spread and increased comfort would be welcome. I also found a cotton 'shirt jacket' with top pockets in M&S, just right for hot weather, but not easy to find here. When we returned, I walked in the park for an hour. For the first time in days there was no wind. On the edge of Pontcanna Fields a family barbecue was taking place. I was surprised at how far the pungent odor of charcoal cooked meat diffused throughout the surrounding area. The parks are strangely quiet  in July and August when there's far less bird song, just the occasional warning cry from a bird sensing a threat, squawks from magpies, crows and gulls. This afternoon I heard the bubbly song of a robin for the first time in a month.

After supper I scanned another seventy photo negatives - ten from James' christening in 1996 and sixty from Kath and Anto's wedding back in 1992. None of the aunts and uncles in those photos are alive now, but some of the cousins are. Lovely to look at photos of 14 year old Owain wearing his first grown up suit. Still more of the wedding to scan, and thousands more from the thirty year period of family holidays up to the start of the millennium and my first digital camera. I've been digitising film negatives spasmodically since I retired. It's time consuming even if it rewards us with glimpses of our shared past. It's a special stimulus for Clare as her memory becomes more erratic.

Before turning in for bed, I double checked packed bags added piecemeal during the day and travel  documents. Just as well, as I didn't find my euros where I thought I put them, and panicked. Eventually after a fruitless search elsewhere I found them tucked into the euro driving permit I had no reason to take with me on a river cruise. As as result I got to bed three quarters of an hour later than intended. Ah well !