Reunion

An easy drive across town to St Germans's to celebrate the Harvest Festival Mass this morning in a church bathed in autumnal sunshine, a lovely experience. Then a speedy return home for lunch, followed by a walk back to Cardiff Central Station to catch the 14.20 train to London to visit my sister. The journey was half an hour longer than the usual two hours as the Severn tunnel is closed on Sundays for maintenance. Instead the train goes through Chepstow up the Estuary to Gloucester, down to Stonehouse, and then through to Cotswolds to rejoin the main line at Swindon. The weather all the way was sunny with a few clouds, and the journey through less familiar landscape on the first half of the trip was delightful. I didn't doze, nor did I read. I did a big batch of Duo Lingo exercises for part of the way, and stared out of the window, enjoying the landscape for the rest of the time.

From Paddington to Wandsworth Common is a journey I have done many times, but not for the best part of ten years, maybe longer. Essentially little has changed, but superficially the signage has changed and as a result of covid it's not always easy to register familiar routes as things look different, and I missed the correct underground entrance first time and almost went in the wrong direction around the, which cost me ten minutes, but once I recovered, the journey was straightforward, and an hour later I was knocking on June's apartment door - again someone had left the front door open, a nightmare issue in this property.

It's more than three years since i was last with my sister in person, although we have spent many hours on the phone. I have given her a Linux HP laptop which is set up as identically as possible to resemble her existing machine, so that she has a backup device if the other one decides to give up the ghost. She relies on a computer for being able to order food as well as communicate with others, so I am comforted to know she has a fallback which I am confident won't give her much trouble, or a learning curve. But more than anything else it was good to see her face to face again, and see how well she's coping at eighty six.