War that nobody wins

Bright sunshine and clear sky to wake up to. I posted the YouTube link to WhatsApp for today's Morning Prayer video then got up. The meds really slowed down my thinking and reactions after taking them with breakfast. It wasn't dizziness, and I didn't lost my sense of balance. It was just a disturbing light headed drowsiness. 

Although it's nearly a month of polling day in the Welsh Senedd elections, I thought I'd better deal with my postal vote. This arrived a few days ago. Clare has made hers and has been reminding to do likewise to reduce the risk of losing the envelope. I opened the voting pack, thinking I would recall from last time the procedure involved, but looking at the instructions stopped me in my tracks. My drowsy head was so slow in processing the instructions and acting upon them that I needed to ask Clare's help to complete the task. This is cognitive impairment, whether caused by medication or insufficient sleep.

A walk to church for the Eucharist cleared my head, but not completely. Nobody apart from Fr Sion and I turned up, but we continued as usual. Instead of a homily we discussed the scripture readings for the day. It was a refreshing change. Afterwards we made ourselves coffee in the church hall and chatted until it was time for Sion to leave for the service at St John's.

I returned home and cooked lunch while Clare was out shopping. I didn't feel hungry or slightly faint with low blood sugar, as I sometimes do when preparing lunch. The light headed sensation diminished as we ate. Then, a walk to my acupuncture appointment on Cathedral Road with Peter at two thirty. I think it helped stabilise me. I felt more awake and sharper as I walked home. 

Clare had an appointment with Peter following mine. She was about to leave for it as I arrived home. Ten minutes later, a panicked call from her, walking up and down, unable to identify the clinic. It's not easy as  house numbers are poorly displayed and variable in their visibility. I had the same problem finding it, the first few visits I made there. Parkwood clinic has a big blue panel sign in the garden which you can only see when you're about fifteeen metres from it. Clare didn't have the house number written down, only 'Parkwood Clinic'. My fault, as the sign outside says 'Parkwood Chiropractic Clinic'. I recognised it by the fact that it was big, coloured blue with white lettering. I memorised it imperfectly. Ooops! She arrived  one minute late.

Trump announced an extension of the cease-fire between America and Iran whilst maintaining a blockade of its ports. He says that it might be possible to resume peace talks in the next few days. Meanwhile Iran is attacking and seizing ships in the Straight of Hormuz. Both sides are trying to assert control  by pulling economic levers. It's a a nobody wins situation.

Israel's war against Hezbollah in Lebanon has so far cost 2,300 lives with over a million displaced, homes destroyed and land seized to create a buffer zone with Israel. A cease-fire and peace talks are taking place between Israel and Lebanon, aiming to engage Lebanon in disarming Hezbollah. Meanwhile two UNIFIL soldiers have been killed by Hezbollah fighters. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon has served as peace keeper during the cease-fire in the civil war between Christian and Shi'ite militias in Lebanon since the war ended, and Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 1978. Concern is being expressed about rising tension between factions leading to civil war again. All parties distrust, hate and fear each other. Israel is determined to neutralise the threat from Iran backed Hezbollah, regardless of the suffering and death of its Arab neighbours.

Nothing I wanted to watch on telly so I made the Morning Prayer video slide show I started yesterday, uploaded it to YouTube and then went up to bed noticing how brain fatigue slows if not stalls a normally coherent thought process. 

Foolish utterances

A bright but cloudy morning, as the cloud was uneven and not low. Only six hours sleep, not enough for me. Serves me right for not getting to bed early enough. Thankfully my intestines are not as irritated now, but I seem to wake up at first light and am restless, thinking about what I intend to do and what I've not yet succeeded in doing. Low level anxiety is still driving me.

I didn't do much. I just tried to grab some more sleep in my arm chair, but with no success. I gave up in the end and occupied myself with transcribing a few more pages of my Jamaica travel diary. Clare didn't go to her study group, and cooked a veggie pasta dish for lunch instead of me. She went to her meditation group after we'd eaten. I recorded another biblical reflection and Morning Prayer in advance, then walked in Llandaff Fields for an hour. Today's session of the Urdd schools rugby tournament was in full swing over the wall in Pontcanna Fields. Noise from bilingual announcements on the public address system could be heard echoing far and wide, perhaps because quite a strong wind blew from the east this afternoon. I came home stiff and tired for tea, though I don't think I pushed myself all that hard.

Peace talks between America and Iran haven't made significant progress. As the cease-fire period expires. Trump is threatening to resume bombing Iranian bridges and energy production targets. The blockade of  Iranian oil ports has led to the closure of the Straight of Hormuz again. The longer this war goes on, the greater the cost to those who use million dollar missiles, against adversaries who can deploy fifty cheap drones for the same price. At what point does making war become un-affordable for one side or the other? 

Trump's coercive rhetoric leads to oil market price rises and a ripple effect runs through financial markets. Analysts are noticing this is leading to profitable anticipatory moves by market traders and alleging this is evidence of illegal insider trading. While there are bound to be attempts to discredit Trump by his political opponents, I have yet to hear any dismissal of such allegations on the grounds that AI analysis of financial market activity could to predict Trump's utterances and reactions to them to inform traders of most likely investment options. His efforts to keep competitors and adversaries guessing about his next move are now working against him. If only Trump would think before he speaks and say less!

After supper, I did a bit more Jamaica travel diary transcription and edited together the Morning Prayer audio recorded yesterday, then went to bed feeling tired.

Stocking up

A lovely spring day to rejoice in, despite the clouds that play hide and seek with the sun. The sweet scent of lilac on a mild breeze wafts into the garden from a neighbouring tree. Having taken the precaution of  not eating much high fibre bread, I make a better start to the day. Blood pressure medication affects me as ever. light headed, a bit slow thinking, but clearer. My intestines are not as irritated so I don't feel as poorly as I have been. The pills seem to amplify the stressful distracting effect of bowel irritation, just as irritating noise does.

After breakfast, we walked to the King's Road pharmacy to collect our prescription medications. Two month's worth for me. In case I forget, I now add a reminder to my phone calendar a week before I run out. I had just one day's supply left, as last time I found out that I had to initiate a repeat prescription with a week's notice. I have the new NHS digital app on my phone and should be able to re-order using it, but I have yet to master it. The app won't remember my password automatically, even if this is probably for security reasons. I have yet to figure out how to enter a pass-code without making a mess of it. When my brain is working slowly, I get nervous about making mistakes and locking myself out of the system. I'm over-cautious and my confidence ebbs. I haven't got much further than admitting that I have a problem trusting myself in these circumstances. I need hand-holding to get used to tackling new things and doing them habitually.

Clare had a problem with her repeat prescription for eye drops. The UHW eye clinic failed to communicate properly with the GP surgery and sent a letter to the pharmacy which the surgery her to call to call the clinic to ask for an explanation of what was meant to happen. She had to buy eye drops of the required composition to tide her over until she can sort out the issue with the eye clinic.

We went to Jason's greengrocer's shop on our way home. The sun was shining so I erected the garden sun brolly and we drank our morning coffee and had lunch sitting beneath it, listening to the neighbourhood blackbird sing. 

After lunch, a walk in Llandaff Fields. Pontcanna Fields was taken over by the Urdd national schools' rugby tournament for boys and for girls teams. Hundreds of youngsters playing enthusiastically in  afternoon sunshine. Great to see.

After supper, apart from a chat with Owain, I wrote a Gospel reflection on two healing stories presenting the approach and method of Jesus the healer. It took me rather a long time to condense my thoughts, so it was late by the time I headed for bed. Grateful for a clear head and no gut irritation.

An afternoon with the WNO

Cool and mostly cloudy today. I slept fairly well but woke up early with irritated bowels, denying me a lie-in. I'm coming to the conclusion that it's the combined effect of the slow release medication capsules and too much high-fibre bread that's triggering irritation and diharrea. When I took my daily blood pressure pill after a lower fibre breakfast the unpleasant sensation of intoxication was minimal my head was clearer my thinking was less sluggish and stayed like that for the rest of the day.

We went to the Parish Eucharist at St Catherine's. Ordinand Jeremy preached well on the Road to Emmaus story. As he spoke about the disciples realising that the risen Christ was making himself known in the breaking of bread. This reminded me of the day thirty years ago when I was in Syria, travelling by shared taxi from Aleppo to Damascus. We stopped at a village bakery to collect several kilos of fresh baked pitta bread. Its aroma filled the minibus, and the man who brought it on board began tearing off strips of it to share with fellow passengers. After saying shukran, all ate in an appreciative silence as we drove on. A similar moment of realisation for me in a predominantly Muslim country, a moment I treasure.

We did some shopping  at the Coop before returning home for lunch. We both snoozed for a while before a taxi arrived to take us to the Millennium Centre for a matinee performance of Wagner's 'Flying Dutchman. I wondered how I would cope with my first outing to this familiar much loved venue. It was busy with people on the move. I was reminded that visual impairment has affected my spatial awareness by the nervousness which accompanied navigating my way through the crowd. My impression of the auditorium was that it's smaller than my recollection of it. My hearing seems more sensitive since the stroke. The sound of a thousand people chatting before curtain-up I found disturbing and difficult to adjust to. The loudness of the orchestra however, didn't bother me. The singers' German diction was excellent and added extra emotional power.

The minimalist staging of the performance was clever but hardly nautical. The heroine's back story was presented on stage in a striking visual way during the overture, but the significance of this was squandered by the absence of any reference in the synopsis to this key element in the entire drama. While there is a mysterious element to this maritime story, I don't think it helped that is was inadvertently mystifying. This was the final opera to be conducted by Tomáš Hanus, who is now moving on. I wonder who will replace him?

A crowded number six bus was waiting outside when we left the Millennium Centre, which took us to the town centre bus station where a number sixty one was waiting to take us to Pontcanna. We were home for supper just after the Archers started. I went for a sunset walk in need of exercise. After spending much extra time sitting down on a hard theatre seat my buttock muscles were stiff! 

Changing electoral scene in Wales

Sunshine but also clouds this morning. I felt better for getting to bed by eleven, but still lost a couple of hours' sleep during the night. The blood pressure pills make me feel sleepy and slow thinking. I feel worse in the morning if I don't fall asleep quickly. Rarely do I sleep for more than three hours before my bladder disturbs me. Sometimes tiredness accumulates, just like mild dehydration if I don't notice I haven't drunk enough. Getting the balance between rest and activity is daunting.

Our postal voting papers for the Senedd elections arrived in today's mail. Clare has put up a Green Party poster in the bay window already. There are several other houses in the street displaying them as well. Forthcoming Senedd election opinion polls predict Labour will lose power, with the Greens, Reform, Plaid Cymru and Conservative candidates all contending. The age of eligibility to vote is now sixteen. How first time youngsters will vote may turn out to be unpredictable and interesting.

Clare started cooking brown rice for lunch. I prepared the veggies, and savoury prawns. The meal made me sleepy. It was an effort to get started on my afternoon walk with a sleepy head, but it cleared the longer I exercised. The sun and warm wind made it a pleasant afternoon for walking, especially along a stretch of the Taff, where I saw a goosander and a pair of cormorants. The river bank is carpeted with wild garlic and bluebells a beautiful sight.  After a circuit of Pontcanna Fields I went to the shops on the way home to buy a few things we needed. After a good eight kilometer walk I was bothered that my feet hurt. It's unusual for me. No ankle swelling fortunately. Sometimes I can't figure out what's happening with my body.

After supper, I made the prayer video for the Wednesday after next, the feast of Catherine of Siena, and uploaded it to YouTube. We chatted with Rachel. I watched another episode of 'Blanca'. It was an interesting idea to have a blind person with superior sense of smell as well as hearing as part of a detective team, but it errs in being over-sentimental, not only in terms of romantic entanglements but also in terms of her relationship with a guide dog. The snappy multi-screen cinematic presentation of some parts of the story reminds me of avant garde movies of the sixties, and adds little if anything to the story.

Talks during the cease fire between Iran and America led to the Straight of Hormuz being re-opened under tight Iranian control and payment of a shipping toll. American blockading of oil exporting ports to exert pressure on Iran at the negotiating table has led to the Straight being closed again to most traffic. Iran has not yet agreed to a further round of negotiations as it regards American demands as excessive and will not preserve the country's rights under international law.

Trump's continued coercive threats merely add to the uncertainty of the outcome of peace negotiations. Strategic experts think he has overplayed his hand, because he is desperate to be seen as winning the war. Iranian leadership highlights lies and inconsistencies in his social media utterances. He's too fond of keeping everyone guessing and ignores the fact that he's being dealt with as untrustworthy and a liability by allies and adversaries.

Action inertia

Overcast with drizzles of rain this morning. I woke up before daybreak and heard a solitary blackbird sing in the garden. I went back to sleep, slept until after nine and felt quite well when I got up, but the blood pressure pills soon delivered the usual light headed feeling, impairing concentration. 

Pakistan brokered cease-fire talks between Iran and America have resulted in a resumption of maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz with pressure being exerted on Iran by US blockades of oil exporting ports. Keeping the Straight open is of vital importance. There's now an international shortage of jet fuel which is going to have a critical effect on transport and trade. If energy exports from the Middle East  were to resume immediately it would take time for global supply chains to recover. Trump's war initiative has proved to be a colossal miscalculation.

Peace talks between America and Iran will continue over the weekend. Israel and Lebanon are holding talks during a ten day truce with Hezbollah. This is linked to Iran easing pressure on Hezbollah to prevent retaliation on its behalf during the cease fire. Russia is feigning concern about the peace talks alleging America is stalling for time to regroup its forces to add to uncertainty and tension on the battle front. Russia has been supplying drones to Iran and its allies to sustain the conflict, a lucrative business for a malicious stakeholder in the conflict.

After breakfast, I wrote a long email to Sara, which took me ages to compose as I was thinking so slowly. Then I walked for three quarters of an hour in Llandaff Fields to try and clear my head while Clare was cooking lunch. 

Each day the leaf canopy looks denser. Some of the horse chestnut trees are now coming into bloom with their distinctive tall white flower spike 'candles' opening. A lovely springtime sight. From our back garden we can see blue lilac blossoming in a garden opposite. Another tree has burst into leaf in the past few days so you can't see through it any more, for the first time since last autumn. I returned home and dozed for an hour after we'd eaten. Then I went for another walk in a vain effort to clear my head and it started to drizzle. The jacket I was wearing wasn't waterproof so I had to return home to avoid getting soaked. Then I absorbed myself in transcribing more of my Jamaica travel diary until the sky cleared of clouds and the sun shone an hour later. I went out again, with my head clearing at last, and took a few photos of trees in leaf, luminous as the sun approached the horizon, and completed my daily step quota before supper. 

We chatted with Owain later, he reminded me about preparing a Lasting Power of Attorney document for signing and registration. Clare's done hers but I haven't. Delayed and then lost in the brain fog when this was first proposed a month after the stroke - and that's now six months ago. Writing each day is something I can still do, but attending to detailed legal and financial information is still something that carries with it a fear of failure due to misunderstanding or simple undetected error. In many ways I've made a good recovery so far, but it's far from complete when my head swims, concentration evades me and I feel half awake, or just plain poorly. Sometimes I doubt I can improve any more than I have done already.

Jamaica revisited through my travel journal

A cloudy day with occasional sprinkles of rain, but not overcast. I had a fair night's sleep, but could have done with more. I woke up thinking about transcribing another of my travel journals. My previous writing project was reconstructing the Reggie Rabbit stories I wrote when the children were little. Rachel has been my editor, going through them in detail. I may not get around to seeing anything of my literary legacy published, but I would like my experiences and stories to be passed on to our children and grandchildren.

I recently found an assortment of writings made on my study tour of Jamaica in 1981. Most are on pads of airmail letter paper bought while I was travelling. All are in my thin spidery cack-handed script. The last time I referred to any of these after my return was in preparing talks about the role of the education system in Jamaican culture, and its influence on Jamaican family expectations of schooling in Britain forty five years ago. The country was Third World poor in those days, next to bankrupt. Bob Marley was alive then, singing his commentary on social injustice and the struggle of poor people to remain fully human against terrible odds. It was a life changing journey for me, visiting extended family members of Jamaican parishioners in Bristol, learning about their lives, what motivated some to emigrate and others to return disillusioned with social climate as much as the miserable British weather. 

Working on those papers wasn't easy and took over the day as the meds really slowed down my thinking. Clare cooked lunch, than sent me to collect my jacket from the dry cleaners afterwards,while she went out  on a different shopping mission. Coincidentally, we met each other twice in the course of our expeditions. Later at home, when I was trying to recall what I'd done during the day, my mind was a complete blank for a while, light headed too.  Eventually my memory yielded with two clear images of Clare in places where I'd recognised her in the street, wearing her distinctively coloured magenta puffer jacket. Then the memory of the afternoon fell into place.

Reading my travel notes and transcribing them is a lovely experience. It awakens strong images of place and time and people for me. Not least because my Practika SLR camera accompanied me. I took over 300 slide photos during my visit which I used in making educational presentations in subsequent years. Twenty years ago I digitized them all and they're now a treasure in my Google Photos archive. I didn't bother to transcribe the notes before as I always had the photos to remind me. In an amazing way, the notes awaken sensual memories of scents, sounds and atmosphere from fifty five years ago. 

I continued transcribing in the afternoon and early evening. Finally I walked for an hour to clear my head and get some vigorous exercise as darkness fell. After supper another couple of hours writing, needing to resist the temptation to keep writing way past bed time