Homecoming remembered

Another lovely hot day with the temperature at around 25C again. I love the weather like this, and easily slip back into the habit adopted in Spain of keeping in the shade when the sun is hottest and brightest, to avoid getting burned. I'm brown enough already from spending so much time outdoors every day.

This morning I completed my preparation for Thursday's on-line Morning Prayer and Reflection, and went on to record and edit the sound file. All I need now is to match this with a handful of images, and put them together in a video upload to YouTube. It's getting easier now I've got the hang of it. I also got the material ready for tomorrow's funeral. I can't risk rushing anything at the moment. Wound discomfort is minimal, but in the morning the internal bruising plays up a bit and rattles my nervous system. It's a distraction that calls for more effort and less distraction to stay focused. Each day is less worse than the previous one so far, but I don't take chances, just in case there's a setback that makes normal activity an effort.

In my afternoon circuit of of Bute Park, Pontcanna and Llandaff Fields, I bumped into David, one of the mid-week regulars at St Catherine's whom I haven't seen since before I went to Ibiza. He's not felt ready to resume live worship, but follows on-line services. Recently he's had the second covid jab and is thinking that it'll give him confidence to return to church, which is nice to hear. 

Talking with him reminded me that it's exactly one year tomorrow since I started my journey home from Ibiza via Barcelona and London. What an extraordinary year it has been. I'll never forget walking out on Pontcanna Fields to stretch my legs after the car journey from Heathrow, and having a family of swallows sweep past me at knee level, hunting for insects. Funnily enough, I thought about this because it happened in the same part of the field where I'd just met David. What a lovely welcome home from nature that was!

In tonight's second round of 'Cardiff Singer of the World' we were treated to four powerful singers, a bass from Denmark, A Korean baritone, and two sopranos, one Welsh and one South African. It was hard to tell who the judges would declare the winner. All four promise to do well in their professional singing careers. It was was the Korean baritone Gihoon Kim who won, remarkable for having been born and raised in a poor provincial town, coming to classical music singing through his local church choir where his musical gifts were recognised. I daresay all four will be recruited for roles by WNO sometime in the future.

Following this was the last episode of the UK Photographer of the Year programme with Rankin hosting six very differently gifted photographers of different ages and experiences. It was great to watch and really challenged me to think again about the rather limited range of photos I take, albeit in abundance. I think I need to work a lot harder and take my beloved hobby much more seriously.

Lying low

I didn't have a good night. Three days on from the operation, although the wound is stabilising, it's been painful and uncomfortable for much of the day. It's a bit like the aftermath of having a big painful tooth extracted. It's such a relief but it still puts you on hold for a while. 

Post-anaesthetic tiredness has caught up with me, but it's not been possible to sleep except in short spells, so I have paced slowly around the house and garden, not covering much distance. This will be the first day in a couple of years when I have fallen well short of my daily target walking for only half an hour instead of at least two  - not that it matters, though I dread stiffening up for lack of exercise.

A lovely sunny day, but I needed to stay home while Clare and Kath went off to picnic on Monknash beach, south of Cowbridge. The roads to the coast were inevitably crowded being bank holiday Monday. For me sitting at all, let alone in a car is impossible at the moment. I'll have to postpone tomorrow's eye test, as I'm unable to sit in a chair. 

In between bouts of walking and resting, I finished my reflection for Corpus Christi, and wrote a sermon for next Sunday. Fortunately my mind is clear regardless of the state of my body. On previous occasions after surgery, down time has been necessary. I wasn't expecting the same impact after the removal of the suture, and wasn't warned adequately of this when the procedure was explained to me beforehand. But I have been here before and will get over it. Just staying in bed all day is no option, with the pressure on my rear end the way it is. Being careful about every move is what counts, and accepting tiredness. That's what I keep telling myself.

This evening there was a fascinating programme on BBC Four with top photographer Rankin tutoring half a dozen promising individuals of different backgrounds and experiences in a variety of different settings, with different kinds of story to be told in pictures - a boxing gym, a wholesale fruit market, a fashion shoot featuring models with disabilities. All of the students were using hefty full frame cameras with an assortment of lenses, mostly Canon, though I think there was a Nikon camera there too. Choice or product placement? I couldn't help wondering. It was the second in a series. Tomorrow I must watch the first one on catch-up. It was amazing to see the variety of expensive high tech kit used in the fashion shoot. The cameras were cable connected to a computer displaying photos almost instantly, big 25-50 mega pixel hi-res JPEG images, ten times bigger uncompressed. How things have moved on since the days of film, and yet for some photographers, film is still the definitive medium for quality and colour. 

I know I take quite good photos on times, and take a camera everywhere, to point and shoot at whatever attracts my eye, but this programme made me realise that I don't really think enough about photos I am taking, and what story I'm aiming to tell with them. Hmm - now that is quite a challenge to sleep on.