Volcano visit

I woke up to sunshine a cloudless sky, and a temperature just above freezing. A day for brisk walking! On the way to St Catherine's for the Eucharist I called at the Co-op to buy our food bank contribution. There were six of us with Fr Sion for the service, and for coffee afterwards. The Gospel was the parable of the talents. Sion pointed out something that had never occurred to me before. The story is told as Jesus and the disciples are on the way to Jerusalem. Does he tell this story tongue in cheek, about the success of slaves entrusted with making a return on money invested in them? The disciples have no material assets. Nobody is investing materially in their mission, they are simply following Jesus. 

The one unprofitable slave does nothing with his stake, he has no confidence in his ability to live up to his master's expectation. He's so afraid he buries his stake rather than entrusting it to a bank to accrue interest. As a result he is rejected and loses his place in the master's realm. That's how the business world deals with failure. The disciples have only the Gospel, themselves, and their ability to invest in relationships with others and be a blessing to others. Hiding themselves away in fear yields nothing. The story has been used to encourage disciples to be creative and make the most of their abilities and material resources. Fair enough, but it also has something to say to those who think they have little or nothing to offer.

I collected the veggie bag from Chapter on my way home. Clare had gone to town, so I cooked fish in a creamy white sauce to go with kale, swede, potatoes, and purple sweet potato. The purple sweet potato is a veg new to us, which Clare discovered and wanted to try out. After we'd eaten, I started a batch of bread dough and then went out for my afternoon walk. As it was so cold I got out my thick tweed winter jacket to wear. Even so, I needed to walk vigorously to stay warm. I need to wear a thicker topcoat as well now.

As our central heating is in use now, the bread dough rose quicker than usual. After knocking it back, and rising again in the baking tins, it went into the oven and cooked before supper. With an hour to spare before this week's episode of 'Shetland', I scanned another batch of negatives, a second set from the 1987 holiday in Teneriffe, the missing link, as many of these were photos from our visit to the summit of Mount Teide. This involved a long uphill drive to the cable car terminus, then a ride to the top where we could scramble around on harsh barren ground with occasional patches of snow in summer, hardly surprising as it's 3,700m above sea level, the highest peak in Spain. I took the photos, but can only be seen in a couple of pictures taken in at the hotel in Puerto de la Cruz. I remember the sulphurous smell of steam issuing from vents in ground heated by molten rock a few metres below, but have no visual memory of being up there. It was as if I was seeing the place for the first time. Strange. After Shetland, winding down to bed time.

Family package holiday recalled

During a rainy night cold air from the north arrived, and the temperature dropped to around zero, with rain threatening to turn to sleet in Cardiff, but not succeeding. There may be snow and ice in the Valleys but a city in a coastal plain, is usually several degrees warmer than surrounding areas. Clare went to her study group in Penarth. I worked on a video slide show for Thursday Morning Prayer the week after next. Ruth Honey has agreed to swap days with me from Advent onwards. The daily office lectionary cycle is spread over two years. Over the four years I have been contributing to Morning Prayer one day a week, this is the second time around for the complete cycle on a Thursday. Switching to a Wednesday will give me a fresh set of Psalms and Lessons to draw from for biblical reflection and leading prayer for the next two years.

I went to Tesco's to buy some chicken to cook for lunch. I intended to cook lentils but the jar contained no more than a quarter of what I needed, which I cooked with onions anyway. It turned out to be enough for Clare along with the veggies I cooked as it turned out, but I needed a small portion of chicken as well.

Clare had a flute lesson after lunch. I went to the Pontcanna Street Co-op for lentils and a few other things added to the list, all of which I bought, apart from lentils which were not in stock. It was bitterly cold and worse with the drizzle of rain. I changed my top coat for the long fleece lined hooded coat that I bought last year, then I went out again to complete my daily step quota before dark. Street lights were just coming on as I got home. Snow and ice in November doesn't often happen. It's still a month until winter equinox after all. 

I had supper on my own as Clare went out to meditation group. Then an hour scanning photos again, this time a wallet of pictures from our 1987 Teneriffe package holiday. I scanned eight negatives from this lot  two months ago which got mixed up with others. I now have thirty, taken with my Praktica SLR, the full roll of film. A few negatives show signs of water damage at the point they were taken, not on the ones I scanned, but probably when the film was still in the camera. Perhaps a little moisture crept in when I was changing the prime lens for a zoom lens I also had. Not that it matters. It's strange how little I remember in detail of that holiday, our first ever in Spain.

Most of the images produced are clean and sharp, and some are disappointing as the film was inadequate in low light. Digital editing can improve some, but it has its limits if a scanned picture is extremely over or under-exposed. I still have the Praktica, but haven't used it since 2001 when I bought my first digital camera. Film is expensive, so I'm not that keen to buy a roll to see if it still works. Can I even remember how to use it? Does its shutter stick from time to time?

Bed time already.

Negative scanning evening

Oh dear, overcast and light rain all day and in the evening. Housework after breakfast, then shopping to replenish stocks of plant milks in particular. I cooked a spicy fava bean dish with brown rice for lunch, then took my brolly for a walk in the rain, all the way to Tesco Extra to buy a new handheld food mixer as one of the beaters on our ancient one broke when Clare was using it a few days ago. It might be possible to get a spare pair but how long it would take to source them is anybody's guess.

I had an exchange of emails with my cousin Dianne about a couple of old family photos, and that prompted me to scan more batches of old negatives - ones of family occasions from our time in Monaco, an assortment of negatives from when Kath was a new born in Penyrheol and a few others from St Paul's days. These were negatives of a different size to the standard 35mm ones that I used prior to 2001. I think they were shot by someone using a 110 film, 16mm size negatives. But who? 

Given the years between the two locations there may have been two different people with 110 film cameras, or perhaps one visitor in both places - possibly our dear departed friend David Barker, who also took pictures of our wedding, which I also looked at this evening. In addition there are dozens of much larger negatives shot with Clare's Zeiss Icon bellows camera, which got stolen sadly, when we lived in St Agnes Vicarage. Scanning those negatives one of these days will be a different challenge, as they are 6 x 4.5cm in size, and need a flatbed scanner and the right software to make a good digital image. An enjoyable way to spend the evening on a dark wek night.

Curlew River revisited

A cold overcast start to the day, but the cloud broke up and the sun came through fleetingly later on. We went to St Catherine's for the All Age Eucharist which today included the baptism of a small boy. I had an interesting conversation over coffee with a young woman who has joined the choir recently. She's decided to investigate Christian faith on her own terms, conscious that her contemporaries are not interested. One of her siblings has become a Muslim after inquiring into Islam's teaching about God. Growing up in North Wales she encountered Eastern Orthodoxy through the ministry of the Welsh hermit, Fr Barnabas. Being a singer, choir seemed to be the right place for her to start. I told her how important singing in church choirs had been to me as a teenager and a student. It was how I learned about authentic Christian faith, and encountered the mystery of God, rather than through formal instruction classes.

After lunch, I delivered the remaining fifteen Christmas Fayre leaflets of the assignment I took on last Sunday, having picked up the extras I needed from church earlier. I was still one short annoyingly. I must have re-started delivery at the wrong house, or made an incorrect count. I made the effort to go out early for a walk. As a result I was home half an hour before sunset. In the darkest months yet to come, making the most of daylight hours outdoors may be one practical way to defend myself from wintry melancholia.

After supper we watched a film of Benjamin Britten's opera 'Curlew River'. It's the 60th anniversary of its premiere, and we first heard about it when we were students and bought a record of an early performance. If we hadn't been familiar with the music, and the setting of the performance in what I think is the Parish Church at Aldeburgh, it wouldn't have been as compelling to listen to. The theatrical action was interlaced with beautiful shots of the Suffolk coast, an area we've come to know over years of visiting Eddy and Ann in Felixstowe. For me, it's a special landscape to contemplate, such a contrast to the coast of Wales.

Then I watched the final two episodes of 'Ludwig' to finish the day. A quirky sort of detective series, difficult to follow on times, with an incomplete story line ending, so there'll be another series, sooner or later. Ah well, that's entertainment.

Taff bird lineup

As I got ready for bed last night, I looked out of the window for a glimpse of the full moon. What was a clear sky earlier had acquired a layer of thin cloud, that not even full strength moonlight could illuminate. What a disappointment! Nevertheless I had a good peaceful long night's sleep and didn't wake up until just before nine. I caught up with 'Thought for the Day' on BBC sounds. It was my friend from college days Roy Jenkins talking about Donald Trump's appointment of unqualified unsuitable people to government roles whose only merit is their loyalty to him. Who then will speak truth to power? was his concluding question. 

After a pancake breakfast with added garlic mushrooms, I went out for a walk. Unfortunately the sky was overcast and remained so all day with occasional light drizzle. After a circuit of Llandaff Fields, Clare came out and joined me and we went across to Bute Park to visit the Secret Garden cafe, very busy on a Saturday lunchtime. At the edge of the pool in front of Blackweir Bridge, I noticed a heron a female cormorant and an egret, each about twenty metres apart from each other, observing the water and poised, ready to strike. The pool is rich with elvers and other small creatures. All three birds hunt or forage there as their territories overlap, but I've not seen all three lined up like that before.

We returned home after queuing for a long time and taking longer waiting for our hot drinks to cool down. Clare was satisfied with eating just a samosa at the cafe, but I needed something more substantial, so I cooked a dish with chorizo, chicken and veg, then had a tasty slice of rye bread to go with it for a change. Then another walk, this time to Thompson's Park, where I caught sight of a pair of moorhens mingling on the edge of the pond with the crowd of mallards that occupies most of the space. It's the first time I've seen the moorhens here in several weeks. Fascinating to observe that for much of this year, it's just been female mallards that have occupied the pond, sometimes without a single drake to be seen. The gender balance is now just about equal. It's all a bit strange.

After supper I returned to scanning photo negatives for the first time in a couple of months. Pictures from a trip down the Telemark Canal when we visited Norway and another Clare made to Itzehoe, back in the nineties. It's funny. I had a vague memory of taking pictures, but not seeing them in print, so it was good to see them and remember that special journey. While I was cleaning the images of accumulated blemishes from thirty years of neglectful handling using Windows 11 photo edit tool, Clare was watching an old 'Gavin and Stacey' Christmas special. It reminded me of childhood seasonal family gatherings, and although it's comic satire it was for me uncomfortably true about the world I grew up in, and not in a happy way sad to say.

Full moon afternoon

Cold and sunny today. After breakfast I prepared Thursday Morning Prayer text and reflection for the week after next. Then I went out to buy rye bread and some chicken to cook for lunch. I made a chicken stew with red beans and veg with quinoa, a grain I've grown to like, as it's light and works well with a protein rich meal. 

I went for a walk in the park until sunset. The full moon rose in the sky before the sun disappeared, always an amazing sight. When I got home, I recorded what I'd prepared earlier and edited the audio. After supper I found another Danish crimmie to watch, with high level corruption and a conspiracy involving a wealthy elite, and the government's secret intelligence service, giving rise to a string of murders. There's dialogue in Danish and English but also in German, but it's not yet clear who the German speakers are, or why they are assassinating people. There's also the first episode of a new drama on tonight about East Germany before the Wall came down. I'll keep that for another night when there's nothing else interesting to watch.

Objection lodged

I woke up at seven thirty and posted my YouTube Morning Prayer link to WhatsApp, then lay in bed until eight fifteen listening to the news, but unusually for me didn't go back to sleep. Not that the news was that interesting. It was a mild and sunny day, so I made an effort to get out of the house and walk in Llandaff Fields. It was interesting to observe the different composition of morning walkers, mostly couples, many of whom said Good Morning when passing each other. There were fewer mothers with children and the children's playground was almost empty. Each group has its own social rhythm I think. I spotted a Jay foraging in open grass and in a grass heap the other side of the wall from the playground, and got some pictures I'm pleased with. It's the first time I've seen a Jay in this place. In effect, it adds to the Jay habitat territories I can keep on my watch list.

Clare cooked prawns with stewed veggies with rice for an early lunch. Then I drove her to UHW's School of Dentistry for a mouth examination. He has developed a strange sensation of her tongue being burnt, for no reason she can think of. When I got home, I started drafting a letter of objection to the imposition of parking permits in our neighbourhood. Despite an increased number of cars in the area in the years we've been here the frequency of occasions when I've been unable to park nearby hasn't grown excessively, and then it's almost always overnight. More cars yes, but some residents are away a lot, visiting or working away. Only occasionally is the street full around the clock, if an event keeps people in the city. For the most part there is sufficient turnover in cars needing a parking space. Reserving some spaces with a permit scheme changes the balance of supply and demand, forcing competition between residents un-necessarily. It's not as if civil parking enforcement officers can keep up with offenders. Those who park in yellow line zones get ticketed randomly, not regularly. Maintaining permit checks seems like a waste of resources, when there are many offenders not being fined for parking illegally where road safety is compromised.

At four, I interrupted work and went to Thompson's Park to photograph the sun setting in close proximity to the Wenvoe telecoms mast. It reaches the south side of the mast just a fraction above the horizon, and in a couple of minutes appears to move to the north side of the mast as it disappears from sight. It's a trick of perspective which occurs when the autumnal and winter sun moves east to west low in the sky. It almost seems to roll along the distant horizon. By four twenty two, the sun was gone for the day.

Clare walked back from UHW after what she described as a thorough examination lasting half an hour. More tests are required and another appointment in a few weeks time. After supper I completed my letter of objection, sent it off and received an automated acknowledgement. I wonder how many others have written? It'll be many weeks before a decision is taken, no doubt.

I was trying to remember how the last episode of 'Inspector Montalbano' actually ended, so I looked for it on BBC iPlayer. It's the only one of the thirty seven episodes available there now. BBC viewing rights for the rest have now expired I think. The last one appeared some time after the rest. If I remember correctly, it was only after author Antonio Camilleri died that the final last story could be published and made into a movie. I didn't watch to the end, as I didn't want to get to bed too early.