Moonlight walk

I walked to St John's this morning to celebrate their midweek Eucharist. After the service I bought two jars of chutney from the home preserves table to take home. We have dozens of jars of new marmalade, a couple of jars of last year's Clare found hidden among the remaining jars of last year's batch of jam, but none of last year's chutney, as the little that was made was eaten long ago. 

After lunch, I drove over to Llanrumney to visit a bereaved family. Next Thursday, I have two funerals following each other at Thornhill in the afternoon, the first a burial, following a service at St John's Canton, and the second one a service in the Briwnant chapel before cremation.

During the day, a chilling wind arrived and by early evening under a clear sky lit by the full moon, there was frost then a sprinkling of snow, but the wind then abated, no more snow fell, and the temperature hovered around two degrees. Quite late in the evening, Clare fancied a walk, so we went out for a brisk moonlight stroll in Llandaff Fields. I couldn't resist taking a camera with me for a few hand-held night shots. It's ages since I last used a camera at night, and had to rely on auto settings, although I found that my custom program settings were still in place on the Sony Alpha 55 I took with me.

When we returned, I took the camera out into the moonlit back yard for a couple of moon shots and to try and capture reflections of the moon on a frozen puddle on the cover over the garden table and chairs. After a few unsuccessful efforts, I mounted the camera on my tripod, setting it up in the dark with some difficulty to get the right angle, took shots using the timer to avoid trigger vibration, and long exposures. The moon shots, using my previous exposure settings were as good as they could be, and the photos of the frosted surface reflecting moonlight were interesting. Although well dressed against the cold, I was  thoroughly cold by the time I finished, but it was worth it.

   

Celebration and commiseration

This morning I returned to St John's to celebrate the Eucharist, having left only twelve hours earlier, as we were invited to the engagement party of Martin and Andrew, two members of the congregation who are preparing for their Civil Partnership ceremony at the end of October. Sadly I'll still be in Spain on the date, so I was pleased to have this opportunity to give them my good wishes in person. The nave of the the church was lined with several rows of trestle tables for the buffer meal, and there must have been a hundred guests, many of them from the churches of the Benefice. A splendid occasion.

By nine o'clock this morning, the church was spic and span, and the bunting was being taken down. I'd have left the decoration there if I'd had the choice, as a reminder of the lovely evening of fellowship we had the night before, in which some of the twenty people in the congregation took part. Afterwards, I went on to Saint Luke's, leaving behind my sermon, which meant preaching from memory. When this happens I go slower, and worry about going on too long. Fortunately, I didn't notice anyone looking at their watches on this occasion. 

For a change today I had braised lamb, which Clare bought and kept in the freezer for either Owain or myself. I thought this was an occasion to open one of the special bottles of wine that we received as a Golden Wedding anniversary gift, a 2003 Anjou vin rouge. Drinking something this old is quite rare for me. The last I recall was a 1966 Medoc presented to us on our 30th Wedding anniversary back in our Geneva days. It's amazing that wines can keep their complex flavour and aroma for such a long time, if in gentler and more subtle way. Something to take time over. Half a bottle today, half tomorrow. Definitely not everyday wine drinking pleasure.

After drinking wine at lunchtime, I walked in the rain, late afternoon, rather than drive, to make a bereavement visit to a family in a new gated housing area opposite Leckwith Stadium. In his youth the deceased had been a naval rating on board the Royal Yacht 'Britannia'. I was shown photos of him standing tall in the background, escorting Princess Diana and Prince Charles on their honeymoon voyage. He didn't make a career in the Navy, but like many young men, the experience of those years and skills learned made him capable of earning a decent living in the wider world. A four year battle with cancer cut short his life. Sad that any grandchildren will never be able to hear him say "I was there on Britannia for the Royal Couple's honeymoon." But now Britannia has been retired, and the ship is no longer a household name for rising generations, this family story will take a little more explanation that it would have done at the end of the last millennium. 

I read an article recently about making use of manual settings on a DSLR camera, so this past couple of days, finally having understood the use of switch settings on lens and camera body, which I've avoided by staying on excellent Auto settings for the past four years, I've revisited old style manual SLR usage, taking flowers in the garden after the copious rain of the past few days. It'll take a while to regain the skill required to get the sharpest focus on an object when there are several possible points of focus within immediate range. On Auto, the lens is very sensitive to movement and makes minute refocusing adjustments, and I'm always conscious of the low level noise this makes when framing a picture, like background chatter. With Auto switched off, the camera is quiet. That's good for concentration, and you actually need more of it, to get the handheld shot you're after. Nice to get around to this at last.  

Action shots

A visit to St Mary's Bute Street this morning to celebrate Mass for half a dozen people, my final interregnum duty there. Fr Dean Atkins is to be licensed as priest in charge there the day after we leave for Nerja. I met him on my way out afterwards, and was able to deliver my good wishes in person, having remembered him during the service. Fr Barry Thomas was in the congregation at Mass. He was the chaplain who preceded me in Monaco, and despite him settling in Llandaff diocese in the time since I retired, the only time we've met before was on one of my visits to North Wales with USPG thirty years ago, when he was an Archdeacon in the diocese of Bangor. He has done locum duty in the diocese in Europe since retirement, in Switzerland, where I worked. Funny how we tend to notice co-incidences in connections between people from disparate backgrounds, or similar backgrounds in utterly different situations. But, less evident are those coincident connections which don't materialise, even when mutual acquaintances feel certain they should.

In the afternoon, I took my DSLR for a walk down to Blackweir bridge, photographing groups of people playing baseball on the way, and then photographing youngsters jumping off the bridge into the Taff, to find out what my camera could do. Two middle aged men were sitting drinking beer from cans on a nearby bench and watching. They got up and began walking to the bridge arguing arguing animatedly. The next thing I knew, one of them stripped off his tee shirt, pushed through the group of kids thinking about their next exploit, and somersaulted down into the water. I was too far away to follow the exchange with the kids, but after a few minutes climbing out of the water, he was ready for another. This time he executed a half decent back somersault into the water, thereby claiming bragging rights over the bemused adolescents. The kids stayed in a gaggle on the bridge, few of them jumped again after this.

For the first time this year, I saw a cormorant on a rock in the river below the weir, spreading its wings in display and shaking itself, although I couldn't see another one anywhere around. I got some worthwhile pictures. The bird shots were best. Others at full length lens extension were not as good as I'd like. I played around with burst shots and obtained a few interesting sequences, but they weren't that sharp, and suffered slightly from motion blur. It was overcast, and bright sunlight on the scene might have improved matters a little. I'd like to try a repeat of this exercise with my new HX300, with triple the length of zoom and greater pixel density to work with. Its processing power is also greater, so a comparison of similar long range motion shots would be helpful, to know how best to optimse the camera set-up. For the most part I use cameras on auto, and maybe could do better if I worked out how best to adjust for specific and quite exacting conditions. As ever with me it's a matter of learning by doing.

Owain came over in the evening, and the three of us went out for a meal at Stefanos Restaurant in Wyndham Crescent. Clare heard that it's closing and up for sale, and wanted one last outing there. I had to rush home afterwards, not to miss the start of the second pair of episodes of the French crime drama on BBC Four 'La Disparucion'. This keenly observes an extended family thrown into crisis by a daughter going missing and each finding their own secrets exposed. So nice to have something in French and easy to follow.

     

Glasses crisis

A visit to St Mary's Bute Street late this morning to celebrate the Eucharist. I left my reading glasses behind, and to my horror found that the print in almost every text I had to read from was too small to be useful. I was quite unprepared for this. My memory is quite reliable, but I still need to be able to see the service book for visual cues, not to mention reading scripture. Thankfully, churchwarden Iris loaned me hers, and they were just the right magnification.

It's silly, I often go out carrying two pairs, but the only ones I store normally in the car are driving glasses, but not even these were in their usual place because I'd taken them indoors to try using them for watching telly, to see if it made for sharper viewing. Well, not much. But I forgot to return them to where they belong. As soon as I got back home, I found a spare pair of reading glasses and a pouch to keep them in, and stowed them in the glove compartment for future emergencies. No more panics!

After lunch, I spent some time writing, and then went for a stroll around Thompson's Park with my camera. The huge tree which blew down a month ago still lies where it fell. Nothing has been done to take away the branches, nor to repair the path damaged by the upheaval of tree roots, nor re-instate the bench that was on the path. The tree is stable where it lies, and has begun to sprout leaves but there's a large hollow where up-ended roots tore at the tarmac, into which a mischievous child could easily slip. I could hear two kinds of tits and a robin advertising themselves, and got a couple of indifferent photos of one of the pair of Great Tits I saw. Then there was another bird with a distinctively different song, of which I got a better photo, at the limits of my telephoto lens, and I think it's a Goldfinch.

I cooked an an early supper, so that I could drive to Penarth for a bereavement visit in preparation for a funeral on Tuesday. It was so pleasant to be out on a sunlit evening for a change. The extra hour makes all the difference. When I got back I had a funeral order of service to prepare, and a sermon to finalize, both of which were sandwiched around two hours watching 'Follow the money', which is still compelling viewing. Slowly I am picking out recognizable Danish words that are like German or English equivalents, at least, according to the subtitles. It provides an extra level of interest to the entertainment.

Solemn Mass at St German's again this morning. Next weekend Ann is coming, so I'll just go to church with her and Clare. It'll be my first Sunday off since just before Christmas. Then, the Sunday after we'll all be in Sta Pola together. Clare and I haven't been there for four and a half years. Looking forward to a sunny holiday (hopefully), it's nine months since I was last in Spain, and I've missed it so much.
    

Sunny Lent Sunday

It was a lovely cold bright morning, and the sunshine made the interior of St German's glow during the Sunday Mass. We began singing the Lenten Prose, from the back of the Old English hymnal. I haven't sung that for years. What a refreshing change. There was a delicious Parish lunch in the hall afterwards for about thirty people. I sat with Hamid, and slowly, deliberately we spoke about many things. This week he heard that his law firm has dumped his case, but he is not down cast, still full of trust that God has matters in hand, however things turn out for him. He's visiting the City URC Church Asylum Justice service tomorrow, as recommended by his lawyer. 

Later in the day, I emailed Mareika Arthur to see if I could find out who might be dealing with him on arrival, and I forwarded to her the briefing I'd written yesterday about Hamid's case to send to Jo Stevens, the local MP. It's a last ditch effort, but the least we can do. I regret not realising much earlier the finality of the hearing I attended as a witness, and only on reading the final judgement did the gaps in the argument made in his defence became apparent to me. I think his advocate was over-confident the points he'd made were sufficient to win the case. Is a rescue now possible I wonder?

I'd forgotten that Clare had gone over to Bristol to her monthly study group this afternoon, so I went out for a walk to the park and along the Taff to enjoy the sun, with my DSLR camera. The battery exhausted itself after six shots. It loses charge quicker these days and can only manage a third of the number of shots it used to between times, so I'll have to get a new one pretty soon, or a new camera body, as the present one looks and occasionally behaves tired. It's more than five years old now.

After supper, when Clare got home, there was nothing much on telly worth watching, so I caught up with the first two episodes on iPlayer of the new euro-crime drama 'Trapped', set in Iceland. All that darkness and snow, but quite an interesting small time police procedural piece, laced with a sense of chaos and uncontrollable events driven by dark forces. It's in colour, though it looks as if it's in black and white much of the time, because of all the snow. The hero cop is a big burly guy, a bit like Wallander Mark One with a beard, and I'm sure one if not more of the supporting actors also appeared in 'The Bridge'. At least it makes a change from a movie coloured mostly in black and orange.

   

Supermoon eclipse vigil

After some camera preparation earlier on, I woke up just after one, and dozed until the eclipse of the moon began, then went downstairs and took pictures from the front lawn in a dressing gown and pyjamas, it was just warm enough, at ten minute intervals until complete obscurity. 

Surprisingly my little Sony HX50 did me proud until this point. The 'blood moon' effect was hardly visible through the viewfinder at any zoom magnification, so I switched to the Alpha 55, with its TTL electronic viewfinder and captured a few images, though none turned out to be all that satisfactory. If I'd persevered with changing settings maybe I'd have got better results, but by this time I was getting tired, and returned to bed. 

I woke up again with the dawn twilight and glimpsed the moon from the bedroom window as it was just touching the horizon, brighter than I'd seen it when it was full and high in the sky earlier, or so it seemed. Too tired to make the effort to reach for a camera, but the memory remains vivid and rather wonderful. In fact the whole experience was rather wonderful. The naked eye sees so much more than the above average consumer camera. 

You can see the pictures I took here

After breakfast we returned to Cardiff, Clare driving most of the way as I was somewhat worse for wear. We stopped to buy a picnic lunch at a service station outside Ross on Wye. The checkout guy noticed my cross and said "Tell me, does that cross mean you are a Christian?" "Yes, all my life and proud of it." I said. "Do you know about what's happening to Christians across the Middle East?" he asked. I assured him that I did, and we talked for a while until his next customer came to the till. He said he was from Lebanon, but not what kind of Lebanese he was. An exile, for certain, worried for kinsfolk and neighbours back home, no doubt, since his homeland of 4.8 million people has taken in a million Syrians.

A documentary photographer friend of Owain's has recently been working over in Lebanon, profoundly moved by what he witnessed. He returned feeling deeply ashamed of British Government attitude and policy towards suffering on this scale. Sending aid to refugees in places nearer to the land they left may seem like a well intended gesture aiming to make it easier to return when order is restored, but the pressures on a small country the size of Wales with over 50% more population than Wales to start with, are simply inhumane.

We got home early afternoon, and I set about painting the front garden railings and gate, boosted by warm bright sunshine. I was out of the house again to make a bereavement visit in Pentyrch at six, however. It related to one of two funerals I have Thursday this week. I learned about a man who'd died six months before he was expecting to receive a telegram from the Queen. He'd lived in the same house in Ely since it was built 93 years ago, in a street that has changed its name twice since he first moved in as a kid.

Upgrading - various

Wednesday afternoon, as I was going into the office, I bought a prime lens to go with my Sony Alpha 55. No telephoto capacity, just a set focal length F1.8, much like my old Praktica SLR film camera. In fact the 49mm UV lens filter from the Praktica fitted the new lens, although sadly it's acquired a scratch and will only be temporarily useful. This kind of lens works best for portraits and landscape. I shall enjoy exploring how to use it, having got used to variable focal length lenses on all the different digital cameras I've had over the past 15 years. I can't believe it's that long since I started to abandon 35mm film photography.

Thursday was broadband upgrade day - at some time unspecified, the line would drop, and then restart and it would all happen some time before midnight, as the TalkTalk upgrade letter said. It was a day when there were several work matters I needed to deal with and be on-line for, thankfully the old speed link was stable and uninterrupted until just after two. By then I'd done all I needed to do. It was much later in the day when I got around to unpacking the new router and installing it. 

Happily it started up quickly and was soon delivering a much smoother service in getting the household devices all on line without IP address clashes. I say smoother rather than faster, as I've formed the impression that Windows 10 computers still load programs with a degree of latency, more than one would expect for faster modern day computers. Once fully loaded the speed is obvious, but while they load an assortment of internet checks are being made. How I wonder are really necessary? I think it is presumed that people will leave computers permanently on with programs open, or else configured with a pre-load feature operating at boot time, to give you a quicker program start, but a longer wait from switch on to first use. 

It used to take four or five minutes to get a computer system up to speed. Windows 10 gets you to a login screen in under ten seconds, unless inconveniently updating at the time. This always seems to happen to me when I'm in a big hurry to get started. How impatient we've become! Loading programs and work files, brings the time from switch on to starting work down to a minute. In the early days of home computers, there were office suites of programs etched on ROM chips, were extensions of the ROM based operating system. You were ready to find the work file you wanted in seconds from switch on. The nearest matching device for speed today is a Chromebook with fast broadband, though less so when off-line. Such systems are limited in scope, but great if your needs are limited. A good smartphone or tablet always on even when charging, is also quick to get you working, though I'm not a virtual keyboard fan, and prefer a traditional computer to work on. Other devices get used mainly for media consumption.

Today is Kath's birthday. We exchanged messages and greetings in Spanish. They're staying in Toledo on their way home from Sta Pola. I've been enjoying the smooth and uninterrupted quality of broadband access. As at work, this takes a certain tension out of doing what you have to do, as well as reducing delays - except to the imagination, which works at a pace that's not time dependent. After lunch I went for a stroll to Llandaff Fields with prime lens equipped camera to see what I could see and record. I take pleasure in enjoying the bigger picture, landscapes and townscapes are what I look for. The prime lens challenges me to look at detail. Its range of focus gives you a sharp clear subject set in a de-focussed background, so you need to think carefully about what you're looking for in a picture as well as what you're looking at. 

I stopped and had a coffee in Cafe Castan. So glad it continues to flourish, ministering food and drink to park visitors. It's a real enhancement to the locality, and the staff are friendly. Then, late afternoon I went into the office for a couple of hours, and found myself with the task of completing the re-install of Windows 10 on the new Acer desktop PC. It crashed badly and had to be reverted to factory settings, Windows 8.1, then 148 updates had to be made before it could be accepted in the queue for upgrading to Windows 10. 

This dragged on for days, leaving Ashley un-confident about whether or when he could use it, so I finished the job and re-configured it, turning a short visit to talk business into a long one machine minding, so I got home late for supper, resentful that these processes don't always function as smoothly as intended. I never found out why this PC's crashed in the first place. It might have been something simple, sync or an email attachment failing to find an app to open it, locking up the system and leaving the machine useless until it drops into sleep mode. The on/off switch tell tale is so dim, you cannot tell whether it's off or in sleep. At that stage, a wrong move may have caused damage that confounded the various system repair and recovery options. There was no success in recovering settings data stored in OneDrive either, hence the need for a hugely time wasting factory reset.

After supper, we settled down together in front of the TV and watched 'The Last Quartet' a fine film about the middle aged members of a string quartet, thrown into crisis by the impending retirement of one of its members, based around the sublime music of Beethoven's last quartet. Wonderful.

Hoopoe hunting again

It was raining lightly when I got up this morning, the first day of rain in the month that I've been here. Too hot for a rain coat, but I remembered seeing a brightly coloured golf brolly in the house, and soon hunted it down for my walk down to the Church Shop to celebrate the midweek Eucharist for seven people. After a chat over coffee, a few special items to shop for on the walk home, this time carrying the umbrella, no longer needed.

By late afternoon, the clouds had cleared, so I walked up through the Capistrano urbanizacion to the track that goes up into the Parque Natural, to the place where I'd previously seen the hoopoes, in the hope of getting better photos. I certainly saw the pair that live in the first section of the trail up behind the houses, and watched them flee ahead of me, flying close to the ground with their evasive swooping motion. Hard for predators to grab, just has hard for camera autofocus to adjust to adapt to the background terrain quick enough. Even using the multiple shot option I was unsuccessful. 

Still, the exercise and the effort of getting there, watching and waiting, was its own reward. I saw several black caps and heard tits, backbirds, assorted doves and pigeons, and collected a good few midge bites for my trouble. The prize for waiting was the sight of a goldfinch feeding in a patch of dry grass, picking seeds out of a smallhead of dry grass.

It stayed where it was, oblivious to my presence and didn't fly away, so I was able to get close enough for some pleasing photos.

 It's great having time to do this. If only I was quicker off the mark, readying my camera for action!

When I was checking the identification of this bird on the internet, I was presented with a picture and description in Spanish, from which I learned that the Spanish for Goldfinch is Jilguero - it just happens to be the name of the street where Church House is located.
 

Not bank holiday Monday

Today was not the Bank Holiday here, Friday, Mayday was. I lazed around until mid afternoon then walked into town, dutifully fulfilling my daily 5-6km exercise quota, toting my Sony Alpha 55 DSLR for the first time since I've been here. Two weeks unused, its battery had dropped to 70% and needed topping up. Not surprising, I didn't buy the camera new, and goodness knows how much it had seen before I acquired it, two and a half years ago. I'm still learning how to manage the Tamron 18-270 all purpose telephoto lens I bought at the end of January. For anyone used to handling a compact super zoom camera, equipment thrice the size and weight is a challenge, but worth the effort, as the quality of the photos it produces is superior to the kit lenses that came with the camera.

I re-visited the chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows on the Plaza Ermita in the Calle San Miguel and this time took some photos there.

Not only Our Lady, but also St Nicholas (with three children at his feet), Jesus Cautivo popular throughout Andlausia and Sta Teresa de Avila, honoured by the church for her spiritual teaching as a Doctora de la Iglesia, and an icon of Christian feminism, given her campaigning for reform in the sixteenth century cuonter-reformation church

I paused on my way back to take photos from the Balcon de Europa of Calahonda beach below on the north side, observing a young African street trader attempting to sell watches to sunbathers, taking time out. Such persistence, such faith! I wonder how often he makes a sale?

Libre Office landmark and new lenses day

This morning I noticed a tweet announcing the release of Libre Office 4.4, so I downloaded a copy to install as soon as I could and installed it to try out on one of my home laptops. I was most impressed by this upgrade and processed to install it on four more Windows 7 & 8 machines in the house. It's worth the effort. A few days after the release, whatever device you run Libre Office on, notifies you of the upgrade and nags you until you install it. If you're busy, that's a time wasting distraction, so it's better to waste a block of free time and get the job done early, if you can.

It's been one of those weeks when business work has been done mostly from home. The afternoon I went into the office to touch base with Ashley and work on a few things together. I got around to upgrading two of the four machines with Libre Office installed, although I'm the only regular user, as the machines are set up for MS Office default use. Changing that would most likely sow too much confusion for comfort and efficiency. I'm glad to have been an early adopter of Open Office, and then Libre Office, not least for their versatility in dealing with different file-types, and ,pdf generation. It's great to think that so many people world-wide contribute their expertise to make a product which continues to adapt and develop in  changing times.

On my way to the office I resolved after much agonising to buy a new telephoto lens for my Sony Alpha 55, something more capable than the kit lens which came with the camera originally. I visited Cardiff Camera Centre, where I've purchased all my Sony camera equipment over the past decade, and walked out, not only with the 18-270mm 'all in one' general purpose travel lens I had my eye on, but also a second hand bargain, an old and heavy 75-300mm Minolta lens with Sony Alpha mount compatibility. It's known as the 'beer can' lens because of its length and shape, and needs mounting on a tripod, but even with the few trial hand-held shots I took outside the shop, I was impressed. Very quickly I got the feeling this would be fun to experiment with. 

Later, back at home, out in the back garden, I got a hand-held shot of the half-moon with better detail than most attempts I've made in recent years with other cameras. I'm confident the new lens will do everything I need it to. There's extra pleasure in having a classic old lens to play with as well, at little extra cost. Moreover, the purchase has prompted me to retrieve the camera handbook from my digital archive to investigate the ins and outs of using the camera's 'manual' settings. Normally, I am so lazy that I rely totally on Auto settings, and spend ages afterwards fiddling about with a digital photo edit program to get the result I could have got in the first place with a bit more forethought. What you think you see isn't always what you get in the world of photography, digital or otherwise.

       

Dusk images

Friday, just by coincidence, when I was out taking pictures in Xert, the 8gb memory card in my Sony DSLR registered it was full just as the camera was threatening to shut down due to drained battery and I had to carry on shooting with my HX50. I'd bought a new card on special offer a couple of months ago in El Corte Ingles back in Fuengirola, so after re-charge and card formatting, I took the camera with me when I walked to the nearest Mercadona in town for some weekend food shopping, late afternoon. 

By the time I'd finished and was walking back, the sun had just set, floodlights on the two bridges across the rio Servol barranco had just come on. It offered me the chance to play around with camera settings to see what I could achieve with a machine that has a good reputation in low light conditions.

I was slightly impressed with this first one I took on enhanced auto setting, but I wanted to try longer exposures with a manual shutter and slower iso setting, as faster iso gives much grainier photos. I prefer to learn by doing, playing around and reading the manual only when mystified by the machine. It proved easier to achieve than I thought, although only one of the batch I took at 1/4 or 1/3 second, handheld was satisfactory.

A fairly steady hand helps. I have a mini tripod but rarely bother to carry it. For the most part I leave a camera set to auto in daylight and make simple adjustments in Picasa's photo editing suite. Still, with time on my hands, and plenty of low light at this time of year, why not experiment a little? Next time I try this, I'll go for photos in darkness with a tripod.

 

News from Fuengirola

I received an email from churchwarden Linda in the Costa del Sol to say that the 'preferred candidate' for the chaplaincy had visited and agreed to come. With all procedures satisfied, it means he'll be able to start at the beginning of Lent. I'm delighted. This is excellent for all those who have worked so hard there to maintain the church's lively ministry over the past year. The appointment will be announced in due course. Then, and not before I'll find out who's the fortunate guy. There's such a lot of variety and stimulus to ministry there. It's more populous with expats down there, and with the 25th anniversary of St Andrew's being celebrated in February it's that much busier than the Costa Azahar pastorate. Very much a full time job. I greatly enjoyed spending so much time there, helping them to do all they do best.

It's been a quiet Saturday, getting ready for Sunday, going for a stroll, observing the huge flocks of starlings that are such a feature of autumnal life here. Are they, have they been migrating from further north? I certainly don't recall seeing them in such numbers when I was here in the summer two years ago. The tree in the neighbouring garden was alive for several hours in the late afternoon with the sound of roosting starlings in conversation, then occasionally large numbers of them taking to the skies in a swirling dark cloud as busy as gnats. I captured a few moments with my DSLR camera, which give the impression, but aren't all that wonderful. Too many moving points to avoid confusing auto-focus.

    

In the swim

A late Sunday start, as my only service today was up at Alhaurin. Again we used the old back road up to Mijas, and along the mountain contour. Although it's slower and a less easy drive, it doesn't take any longer to get there. There were twenty of us for the Eucharist, and half stayed for coffee at a different bar in Alhuarin because the nearest one normally used is closed for annual holidays at present.

We returned for a late lunch and siesta, and I ventured into the swimming pool for once, as it was so humid. Now that the end of school holidays is upon us, the coast should get less busy. We've been wondering how long the urbanizacion swimming pool will stay open, before it closes until next spring, but so far, no notice has gone up, and the water filtration system gets turned on for several hours a day. Being outdoors and swimming in the sun for twenty minutes left me feeling slightly singed. I'm not used to exposing my body to that intensity of heat and light. Clare is better adapted to it, as she likes to swim every day, and bask in the shade while she reads a book on her Kindle. Let's hope it stays open until she's due to return to work back in Cardiff.

To my annoyance, I've discovered that I failed to bring my Sony Alpha 55 battery charger with me. Either I must buy a replacement, or send the camera home with Clare. It's not as if it's my only camera. I do have two others with me. I packed it in the hope of learning better how to get the most out of it. It's a great piece of kit, but still fails to win the place in my affection reserved for less prestigious but equally capable cameras that normally travel with me.

Bank Holiday weekend

We drove to Bristol Friday to visit Amanda, who's in hospital again, and to give James some support. Caring for his mother this past month or so has led to him missing school and examinable assignments, so now he's not going to be able to complete his A level year. We took him out to his school at Thornbury, to find out what options might be available to him. His head of year and head of sixth form were delighted to see him as he has recently been the subject of their pastoral concern. They took an hour with him, mapping out the options for next year, encouraging him to come into school while he's free from having to care for his mother daily, and use staff expertise to write applications, once he's clear what he wants to do next. It's very pleasing to see that he has so much understanding and support there.

Saturday, we took the bus to Penarth and had lunch in the 'Cafe des Amis'. Then we went down to the sea front to inspect the recently renovated and now open buildings on the Pier. It's an impressive restoration and adaptation of a landmark building. 

Part of the upper level of the old ballroom is now a cinema. Underneath it there are function rooms and exhibition space. On the sea side is a stylish restaurant with deck and balcony level dining areas. The pier was busy with bank holiday weekenders enjoying the warmth and Spring sunshine. 

I had a fit of geekiness and took all three cameras, (Sony Alpha 55, HX50 and Lumix DMC LX5) along with me, aiming to take the same photo with each of them, in select locations for comparative purposes. It was an interesting if fiddly time consuming exercise. The wide angle capability of the Lumix lens in comparison with the others is impressive. The telephoto capability of the HX50 and the quality of output is quite remarkable. I used my 28-200mm lens with the Alpha, and found its performance disappointing. Maybe that's my inexperience at using it, even on auto settings, but it could also be a matter of quality as an entry-level priced lens. Some of the photos I took are here. 

We walked back to Cardiff Bay along the beach, as it was low tide, and then along the Barrage to the Millennium Centre for tea. We bumped into Canon Aled Edwards, the CYTUN executive officer in the foyer and chatted for ages. He was on his way out after an Open University Graduation ceremony - one of the many events hosted by our wonderful operatic auditorium.

Tulips at Dyffryn

After pottering around all morning, we drove out to Dyffryn Gardens for our first visit of the Spring. The weather was overcast grey, but the spectacular brilliance of the displays of tulips wherever we went gave us plenty to lift the spirit. 

 We ended up in the tea room, as we usually do just before closing time, and were served with a smile while the staff were packing up for the day. From our window seat we has a good view of the bird table outside - a solitary robin, a pair of chaffinches amd these blue tits.

I took my Sony Alpha 55 DSLR to use instead of my more portable Sony HX50. I should have taken and used both in order to compare quality in the results. Certainly the Alpha's telephoto lens has but a quarter of the power of the HX50's built in lens, so I know I could have done better with the birdie closeup pictures with the smaller camera. I can see that in expert hands a DSLR can produce fine results, but for the average joe, I wonder if the expense, bulk and hassle of a DSLR are justified, now that pocket cameras have become so very sophisticated and useable.

It was pleasant to have a relaxed evening in front of the TV without sermon or other duties to prepare for tomorrow. My first weekend free in two months. The latest batch of pictures can be viewed here.

 

Fifty years ago this week

After seeing Rhiannon off to school we left Kenilworth in torrential rain to drive across country to Worcester to have lunch with our friends Mike and Gail. The journey was uneventful until I took a wrong turn on the northern outskirts of Worcester, just a mile from our destination. It was a move which took us an hour to rectify as we got quite lost in driving rain and persistent traffic. There's been so much building of new housing estates to the north of Worcester since we last lived up in the West Midlands that the landscape of the area is confusing, unrecognisable without sight of a 'proper' map to give perspective.  Regrettably I had forgotten just how good my Blackberry's mapping device is, and by the time I'd remembered I had it with me, and found out how to work it - the first time ever I needed to in earnest - Clare had left me in a parked car and gone to obtain directions from a nearby chemist's shop.

This week is the 50th anniversary of Mike introducing me to Clare at an open air 'War on Want' bread 'n cheese lunch on the steps of Bristol's Student Union building - then, the Victoria Rooms - in our first term as University undergraduates. He and I were next door neighbours in Churchill Hall of residence on the Downs. Clare and Mike went to the same English lectures. We all liked music, and for a while we sang folk songs and went to Choral Society together.

We lunched at a very nice old pub, the King's Arms in Ombersley, and inspected a huge very classy delicatessen shop called 'Checkett's' a few paces up the road past the church in the village. We returned to their house to talk, drink coffee and tea, and listen to Mike play one of Bach's French suites on Clare's clavichord, which is on loan to him as we really don't have enough of a good space to keep it in regular use at home. Then he played us some fiery Chopin on his Bechstein upright piano. He's maintained a high standard of piano playing every since we've known him and is still receiving lessons regularly in order to improve his technique. I have fond memories of Mike practising piano in the rehearsal room during our days together in Churchill Hall. He worked his way through Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues, with me idling besides him, acquiring a lifelong love of this 'essential' work of art.

Knowing of my interest in cameras, Mike and I discussed options for the acquisition of an advanced digital camera that could match the performance of his old 35mm SLR. I took out my Sony Alpha 55 to show him, just as one of their two fine cats with blue black fur jumped up on to the table. Truly, they behave as if they own the place.

Those grapes, sweet dessert varieties, were grown locally by the proprietors of the cattery Mike and Gail use to look after their pets when both of them are away. Apparently the pusses aren't interested in fruit, but sit up and take notice when the lid is taken off the butter.

We drove most of the way home in rain and semi-darkness. It was an uneventful and un-memorable trip in every way, performed on auto-pilot to the extent that I found it hard to recall journey detail. We arrived just as 'The Archers' was getting under way, so I sat in the car and listened before unloading our luggage. Glad to be back safely and sleeping in my own bed again tonight.

  

Castle visit

We got up surprisingly late this morning and it was midday before we got out of the house and drove to Caerphilly by way of Castell Coch to show Andrea a couple of our local treasures. It's about thirty years, when the kids were young, since we last took a proper walk around the interior of Caerphilly Castle. 

Ten years ago, a modern tourist shop was constructed to replace the elderly ticket booth just inside the outer eastern gate house, several buildings and towers have been restored for opening to the public. Clare and I had not long moved to Penyrheol during my first curacy in Caerphilly Parish in 1970 when the re-roofed Great Hall was opened to the public and started being used for mediaeval banquets. So much has been achieved by CADW since then. The Castle is now a great asset to regional tourism. It was cloudy all day, but occasionally the sun shone through, and created some interesting photographic moments for me with my Sony Alpha 55. The results can be viewed here

After our visit we had a bowl of delicious cawl in the Glanmor tea room just across the road from the castle, and then drove up the Rhymney valley to Ystrad Mynach, Nelson and Treharris to show Andrea a little of our beautiful valleys environment before turning for home. Waiting on the doormat there was a 'failed delivery' note from the postman who arrived an hour after we left, and presumably couldn't find a neighbour in to leave our replacement modem, delivered punctually as promised by Talk Talk Care. I'll have to collect it from the depot tomorrow, yet another un-necessary car trip because the arrival of the postman is so much later and less predictable than it used to be.


We had a further culinary treat for supper, as Clare cooked us some venison she'd been keeping for a special occasion with an unusual kind of cabbage resembling a large dense leaf of spinach. This went down well with a bottle of Stellenbosch Shiraz. 

 

Summer in the Park

Thursday, Mioara, a colleague of Clare's came to stay for a couple of nights, interviewing for a job at the school. Our conversations over meals were fascinating as she came from Romania where she'd studied languages and then come to the UK to do a Steiner teacher training and eurythmy formation course after the fall of the Ceaușescu regime in 1989. As with other totalitarian states Rudolf Steiner's thinking was banned in Romania, yet the ideas persisted clandestinely for a new generation to discover, and were there until freedom arrived to practice educational alternatives.

Yesterday afternoon, our old friends Marion and Oswald came and joined us for afternoon tea, and a catch up session of news. How good it is to have time to relax and enjoy company. Between us, we seem to have a lot to do, so it's not as easy as it should be. 

This afternoon we walked our circuit of Llandaff Fields and Bute Park. There were lots of people out paddling or bathing in the river. How wonderful that it's clean enough to do so these days. I took photos of young boys and girls jumping off Blackweir bridge into the pool of water below deep enough to be safe. It's bound not to be permitted by the Council, but it's impossible to stop. There aren't enough park rangers let alone police officers to spoil the fun on a hot day. Pictures can be found here

We had a drink in Bute Park's 'Secret Garden' cafe, part of the horticultural nursery, which is used also as an education center. Then we tried out all latest recreational additions in among the trees - a mix of 'trim track' and adventure trail furniture - constructed from natural materials, offering a few balancing act challenges along suspended logs and ropes close to the ground. Great for little 'uns, but not so easy for someone my size, as I discovered when I tried, wearing sandals and carrying my camera rucksack. Must have a try barefoot next time.
     

Photo Whit weekend

Yesterday, Clare had a school open day. I lazed around all morning, then went out in the afternoon to and photograph birds along the river Taff. I caught a few of a couple of gulls and a couple of crows in confrontation. Not as good as I'd like. It'll take a lot more practice to get the best out of my Sony Alpha 55.

No ministerial duties this Whit Sunday, so Clare and I attended Parish Eucharist together at St Catherine's. It was a lively occasion with three children baptized, members of families who already attend this church. It enjoys a healthy number of younger members, children and adults, reflecting the make up of the area and the pastoral effort made by the clergy team. It always strikes me how welcoming the elder congregation members are here, rejoicing in, rather than resenting the hustle and bustle of kids enjoying freedom to run around in a spacious building. 

After lunch I prepared the little Sony W690 for Clare to take with her on her trip to Arizona, then edited and uploaded recent photos, and we enjoyed our little garden bathed in warm Spring sunshine. Our little dual variety hybrid apple tree was attracting the attention of an unusual looking insect probing apple blossom for nectar. A few careful photos and later an internet search revealed that it was Bombyliidae - or Bee-fly in common parlance.

The Wikipaedia photo is better than mine, but capturing a few decent images was nevertheless a delight.

  

Severn double crossing

I lost most of Friday to writing student year-end reports. I went out only briefly to retrieve a prescription from the GP surgery, for my next batch of medication and then again in the evening for a bereavement visit in Caerau.

After the usual leisurely Saturday start, we went out to Thompson's Park, awash with daffodils and spring wild flowers at the moment. I took my Sony Alpha 55 DSLR camera and got a few decent shots, but wasn't satisfied that they really captured the amazing expanse of yellow and green glory under a blue sky. 

Te little walk gave us an hour's aesthetic pleasure before driving out of town to find ourselves lunch before heading to Bristol to see Amanda.We stopped at a pub in Caerwent, and had a drink while waiting to order. The place was so busy that in the end we gave up and drove into Chepstow, got sandwiches at the Co-op supermarket, and ate them outside the Castle down by the river.

It's some years since we were last there together. I appreciated the new visitor centre and gift shop which has appeared in one of the rooms to the side of the twin tower gateway. 

We lived near here for seven years while the kids were at school. The area around the castle was a great place off-road where they could play safely. The town looks and feels more prosperous these days, a most congenial habitat for the commuting classes, as it was when Clare used to drive to work in Bristol across the now 'old' Severn Bridge, that opened the year we graduated from University.

It was good to see Amanda back home from her brief spell in hospital, finally being attended to daily by carers and in good spirits. She has acquired an 'ejector seat' armchair that lifts her into a standing position. This is a huge blessing, enabling her to stay mobile, as she can now sit down and then get up to use her walking frame unassisted. She's admirably brave, determined not to be defeated by her condition.

The sky was blue and the sun shone all day again today. Driving home across the newer Severn Bridge into a glorious sunset was more of a delight than a difficulty. Not often do we get to use both bridges in one day.