Country diversion en route to Ogmore

A hot day today with the temperature in the mid twenties. After a slow start, we drove to Ogmore by Sea on the A48. When we reached St Hilary we found the road was closed due to a serious car crash for longer than usual, and we were diverted on to narrow country lanes through small hamlets, past a few churches I took services in ten years ago in the early years of my retirement. Progress was very slow due to a lack of passing places and the number of bigger saloons and SUVs taking up two thirds of the carriageway. That added twenty minutes to a journey which took us down Cowbridge High Street, to get back on the A48 as the Cowbridge by-pass was also closed. Luckily I knew my way across this stretch of countryside, as both Clare and Owain were disoriented, and unable to navigate using a phone as there was no signal. 

At Ogmore beach, the heath land over the foreshore was parked with scores of cars and camper vans in a piecemeal assortment of rough metalled parking areas linked by access roads and hemmed in by boulders to limit the extent to which visitors could park off-road. The pay and display parking was a shock to the system. £1.10 an hour, for short stay visits, and then £6.10 for anything over an hour, pay and display. A beach about half a mile long, to the east of the Ogwr river outflow is under active lifeguard surveillance, as there are dangerous rip tide currents in the vicinity, so swimmers and paddle boarders are shepherded away from the area. Owain and Clare went for a paddle while I took a few photos, including a couple with a smartphone for two women with eastern European accents, sunning themselves on the shore. 

The beach is served by an ice cream van and a fast food van and nothing more. The public toilets are in a disgusting unmaintained state. Even so there were hundreds of people on the beach and on the foreshore above, enjoying the sun. It's the sort of place you take a picnic unless you have a camper van. There are no trees, no shade unless you bring your own. In bad weather it's windswept and desolate, but on a day like today with the tide going out, the expanse of golden sand against a blue sky compensates for the stark and unwelcoming impression. Unless you're going to swim surf or paddle board in safe areas, or walk along the Heritage Coast, there'd be little reason to stay longer than an hour, but an extra five quid to park for longer than an hour is hardly justifiable when the toilets are so awful, and there are no changing facilities or showers available. Installation is currently in progress of an automatic number plate recognition camera to enforce drivers to pay and display. I wonder how long that will survive vandalism?

We stayed a couple of hours, then drove back up the river valley for a cup of tea at The Pelican pub, near the riverside ruins of Ogmore Castle before heading for home on the M4, rather than the A48. We called into Lidl's in Leckwith for groceries, to ensure we had enough for supper, as Owain is staying on an extra night. He's taken a week's holiday for respite after a stressful few months. It seems like the solicitors have completed all the conveyancing work, and his purchase of the apartment should be done by the end of this month. Then there'll be more stress for him as he prepares to move in while still working, but he's looking forward to having the security of a place of his own again. The past six months of returning to be a lodger hasn't been the best of experiences for him. 

Clare cooked mackerel and sea bass for supper. Owain then went out to see friends after many months of being too busy, and catching up with them, and I took my prescription renewal form to post through the door of the GP surgery, then walked around the park. There was nothing on telly I wanted to watch, and spent the rest of the evening with Rafon's 'Sombra del Viento'. It's language is rich with a range of unfamiliar words that need looking up or guessing from context, but the conversations and description of characters are wryly comic. It's a challenge, but an enjoyable read.

When the penny drops

Last night was pleasantly warm making for relaxing sleep and late rising. Clare was up early however, and cooked waffles for breakfast. Boris Johnson and Donald Trump are both accusing politicians and officers of the law of conducting a witch hunt against them. Such monstrous egoism! It's amazing that for so long both lied and deceived their way to the top of the pyramid of power and persuaded people to support them. This says a lot about the moral and spiritual health of our respective countries.

In today's post there was a happy Father's day card from Kath for next weekend. The date of Father's day isn't fixed in my mind. She and Anto are going on a cruise along the Norwegian coast this week.

I cooked pasta and veggies for lunch after an idle 'do nothing' morning, perhaps because I don't have to prepare for taking a service tomorrow. There was a layer of cloud, no wind, occasionally penetrated by a few rays of sun, and it's been humid. I sat in the lounge looking out aimlessly at the sky, then fell asleep for an hour. I guess I need to do this given how busy life has been lately with funerals, Sunday services and the weekly prayer video to prepare for.

We went for a walk before tea. Light intermittent drizzle made it necessary to carry and use umbrellas. Too warm to wear a light waterproof. Cricket matches continued, but groups that had gone out to picnic settled down under the shelter of big trees, a rather strange sight.

Discarded in the bushes near Blackweir bridge was a brand new 'bag for life' from one of the supermarkets so I retrieved it and carried it around Pontcanna Field picking up cans, glass and plastic bottles and paper cups, about twenty altogether, a bag half full. And this was on a day when there wasn't a large number of people out picnicking as was the case last week when the weather was much better. I deposited my haul in a bin before heading for home along with the 'bag for life'.  I'm not alone in doing this, reaching polluted places Council rubbish bin emptiers and their mechanical sweeping machines cannot cover. It's another way helping out others after all.

After supper, with no appetite for watching telly, I sat and read Zafon's 'La Sombra del Viento' for a couple of hours. He's a great story teller, and his narrative descriptions and dialogue are funny enough to make me laugh out loud. If I was reading this in English, it might make me smile or snigger. I think the laughter arises because I'm a little slow to realise what I'm translating is funny, and laugh when the penny drops. It's a different kind of entertainment, I suppose. Time passes quickly when I read and then it's time for bed.

Fitbit Versa 3 after two weeks

The night sky was clear, and at sunrise it was somewhat chilly. I got ready to be taken to Thornhill for the funeral I was scheduled to take and stood outside in the still cool shadow of the house. When the car didn't turn up on time (as it did once before with this particular funeral company), I started to fret and phoned the office. I was told the funeral is tomorrow not today. Indeed, when I looked again, my diary confirmed this  was the case. How did it happen? I wondered. 

A bank holiday disrupts weekly routine. Nervousness about a repeat instance of un-punctuality. A careless glance at the diary. Not memory loss, but a loss of focus on what day of the week it actually is. As we're both pretty active, no day of the week is the same as another, so days don't normally merge into each other because each is the same as the other. This is what can lead to people living alone with uneventful lives to lose track of time.

Once I'd recovered from my bewilderment, I picked up on what usually happens on Tuesdays and went to the Coop to do the weekly grocery shopping. Clare had an acupuncture appointment, so I cooked the lunch and listened to a consumer phone-in programme about the technical challenges of making homes energy efficient, with listeners sharing their experience of solar panels and air source heat pump installation, both benefits and unforeseen problems. With energy prices so high, the question of saving money is more of a concern than carbon footprint. What's interesting is the finding that energy conservation by improving insulation standards is key to the success of any alternative heating system. The government has recently launched a campaign to promote and facilitate insulation improvement. Will it deliver significant change? It remains to be seen.

In the news, Moscow was hit by a drone attack last night, not the first in recent weeks, not causing much damage. Immediately the regime alleges this attack is of Ukrainian origin, which Ukraine denies. This was said when there was an attack on the Kremlin recently. This was followed by nightly drone attacks  on Kyiv. Is this a 'false flag' attack, giving an excuse for escalation?  There have also been a few cross border incursions allegedly by Russian militias opposed to Putin's regime. These have not been of much military significance but they send a signal to the Kremlin about government control over the population, by sowing seeds of doubt about how safely distanced from the war Russian people feel they are. Small uprisings and acts of resistance occur and get suppressed, but the more there are, the more it suggests dissatisfaction with the status quo.

It was nearly two by the time we finished lunch and had a siesta. Then another grocery shopping trip to Tesco's before walking in the park together enjoying the sunshine. After supper and putting out the rubbish I decided to sit and read Carlos Ruiz Zafon's novel 'La Sombra del Viento', while my Fitbit was on charge. I've had it now for sixteen days. It took me a while to figure out how to get what I want from the device. It tends to nag to to set up every facility it provides, on top of a link to my phone to record the few essentials I need and suppressing ones I don't want to use is still a minor annoyance. 

The touch screen on the watch is ingenious, but took several weeks to fathom out from scratch. I'm not sure I found the first use instructions, and most of these things are straightforward to get working. The most irritating thing about the phone app is how encourages you to set health goals, like or not, and if you don't it imposes a default set. Any goal it thinks you've achieved, it send you childish congratulatory messages, as if it were a grown-up coaching children. I detest this patronising intrusion. 

All I need is simple information about my daily walking habits plus date and time. At least it has a decent watch face with a minimal always on setting showing only the time. And the strap on it is decent and comfortable. It takes two hours to charge and a charge lasts ten days, but it starts nagging to recharge when it's still 20% full, in effect about two days left. That's a bit annoying too. 

I read thirteen packed pages of the book while waiting for a full charge, and was able to appreciate the humour and the atmosphere of story-line, again, despite the obscurity of some vocabulary which defeats Google Translate. On the other hand the app can be helpful in listing secondary meaning and contextual uses arising from colloquial turns of phrase and this can bring interesting little surprises to light. For example in English we'd say a very rich person was 'loaded', in Spanish it's 'lined' - in both cases with cash. Anyway, that's enough for tonight!

 then printed off a couple of poems I've been asked to read at tomorrow's funeral. Bed early tonight.