Call of Duty - Israeli style

Another day of sunshine, clouds and gusts of wind. With no sermon to prepare for Sunday, I had time to  prepare texts for next Sunday's Eucharist after breakfast. Thanks to a tip off from Kath, I bought a tee shirt for Clare at the online Abba Voyage merchandise site. No idea how long it will take to turn up in the post. The only one she fancied had the logo 'Dancing Queen' emblazoned on the front according to Kath. I hope I picked the right size!

Then a long walk in the park before a late snack lunch, and got supper ready for cooking. While I waited for Clare's return, I watched another episode of Manayek. She enjoyed the concert, although she needed to wear ear-plugs and wear sunglasses to cope with the loudness of the music and intensity of the light show. A good reason why I wouldn't bother to attend that sort of spectacle. I often find cinema surround sound so uncomfortably loud that it detracts from my enjoyment of the movie. My hearing is still fairly good but I don't want it to worsen. I still have tinnitus in my right ear since we watched the 2001 Monaco Grand Prix motor race from a millionaire's high rooftop garden near the Casino. We were given ear plugs but one just wouldn't fit in my right ear, and it's never been the same since.

We ate supper while listening to the Archers. In a recent plot development a soirée has been arranged by a young character for a group reading of the book 'Lark Rise to Candleford' involving several villagers and this prompts the idea of repeating this at the up-coming Harvest supper. Over the past few weeks the BBC drama department has been promoting this performance as a stand alone Sunday afternoon play, just as it did with a village play based on the Canterbury Tales three years ago. It's an interesting project for the cast of the world's longest standing soap opera to take on. 

After we'd eaten I finished the final two episodes of Manayek, a series of ten episodes, and was pretty impressed that considering six or eight episodes per series is the norm, it held my attention throughout. It was a police procedural of a very complex kind, featuring corruption at every level of the police force, judiciary and politicians. It involved investigations involving several separate departments - Local Policing, CID, International Crime, Anti-terrorism, State Security and the Prosecutor's Office, each with their own hierarchy, ambitions and betrayals, secrets to keep, and no mutual accountability. Corruption and serious crime exposed, and then covered up for fear that the whole system would lose credibility and collapse. Too big to fail, as the saying goes.

As in UK anti-corruption drama series 'Call of Duty' much was made of interviews and conversations with colleagues, but with relatively little violence or exciting chase sequences, and almost nothing to do with sex, which makes quite a change, or religion for that matter, and may reflect the Israeli market for which it was made. Interesting to see the diverse range of characters portraying police officers representing the plurality of the Israeli secular state. 

It seems there's a second series, but as this has only recently popped up on Walter Presents, it may be some time before there's a second series follow-up. The only other Israeli series I've watched was 'Shtisel' some years back, about the life and loves of a Jerusalem Haredi extended family with inter-generational tension and social ambition in play, all very bourgeois in its way. Manayek portrays the dark underside of revered public institutions.

Need for boundaries

A windy day, with dark clouds moving at speed, clearing for a while then re-forming, with occasional light showers. More like March than Michaelmas. After breakfast I drove to St Peter's in Fairwater to celebrate the Eucharist with twenty two others, and join people for coffee and a chat in the hall afterwards. Amazing that this midweek service is so consistently well attended, and there's double that number on Sundays. I'm scheduled to be there on Sundays a couple of times in the next quarter without having to rush away at the end to get to St Luke's for another service. Something to look forward to, as it's only ten minutes drive from home instead of 20-25 minutes from Roath, where I've been on most Sundays this last few months.

On returning home, I retrieved this week's veggie bag from Chapter, then cooked lunch and did this week's grocery shopping at the Co-op. The till staff were talking with concern about news of a break-in at Tesco Metro ar Canton Cross last night. Money tills were broken into for their cash float content, and vape display shelves were broken and emptied. Thieves entered through the roof of the rear warehouse. Damage repair will be more costly than the value of what was stolen. "It'll be us next." said the one of them, dreading the prospect.

While Clare went out to shop at Beanfreaks I made next week's Morning Prayer video slideshow and uploaded it to YouTube. She returned with a broken wheel on the shopping trolley, sadly un-repairable. Luckily, things fell apart outside our next door neighbour's house on the return trip. We now have several broken un-repairable items to take to the tip so I'll book an early afternoon visit to the Bessemer Close recycling centre tomorrow after I've taken Clare to catch her train to London for her birthday trip to see 'Abba - Voyage'.

I went out to buy Clare a birthday card. She can't decide what she'd really like, nor can I guess. When you have as much as you need, health and freedom are the things the matter and those can't be commoditised, only looked after carefully. I found an unusual sixteen month 2024 calendar with pictures of Wales, as a starter gift. Still looking for inspiration for something else. The birthday cards were  for the most part were either sickly sentimental or rude, but I found one that will make her laugh. She was having an early supper when I returned, ready to go out for a Plygain choir practice.

Walking up Cowbridge Road from the card shop, I noticed for the first time that Calvary Baptist Church looked different. Then I realised that the front entrance has acquired a set of stylish simple iron  railings and a gate to enclose its forecourt. It seems to be an interesting outcome to covid times.

Outside Tesco's a hundred yards further up the street on the opposite side are some fancy shaped public benches. For ages, these have been frequented by drinkers who prefer to buy supermarket booze, mainly cans of beer and socialise with their mates in the street as they wouldn't be welcome in nearby pubs with outdoor seating. Generally speaking, it's been a harmless enough feature of local street life. Lock-down emptied the streets, but once it was permissible to be outdoors for a while, in an effort to enforce social distancing, the Council surrounded the seats with Heras fencing. 

Street drinkers moved to Calvary Baptist Church which is private property outside the public realm where police enforced dispersal is required. The forecourt was left rubbish strewn and smelling like a toilet. It can't have been pleasant for church cleaners, who'd have enough problems with sanitizing the interior before and after services. Church members would be reluctant to approach, let alone challenge drinkers' behaviour. 

The Heras fencing stayed around the benches for a while after covid restrictions were lifted, but street drinkers have now returned to their old haunt, though it cannot be the same at the moment, as a block of low rise apartments is being built next door to the supermarket and a site security fence blocks much of the pavement next to the public benches. It's not a place where it's easy to sit and watch passers by over a can of beer for the time being. The facade of Calvary Baptist has been modernised at some time in the past fifty years. At that time I reckon the accessible forecourt was constructed, making for a welcoming facade. The passage of time however, has shown that church railings still have their uses.

Until Clare returned from singing, I spent a couple of hours watching episodes of a new Israeli crimmie on 'Walter Presents' about a complex investigation into corruption in the police force called Manayek. The dialogue is fast paced. Concentration is required to keep up with the subtitles. Quite demanding in fact, but the story is engaging. Then I read for a while before turning in.