Blue sky and sunshine today, a little warmer but chilling gusts of wind from the east still persist. I took down my cabin bag from the top of the wardrobe and started adding clothes to it during the day. Clare kindly made sure that my alb was washed and dried ready to pack. Half ready a day earlier than usual! Strange behaviour for me, usually I pack at the last minute, but don't function so well if I'm under pressure nowadays.
On top of my to-do list before I go away, paying the invoice for the balance of our Duoro cruise, payable three months in advance. Time has flown by since we made the booking. As it's an unusually large sum of money I decided to visit the Santander branch in town, rather than do it on-line, as it would also allow me to notify the bank that I may use my debit card abroad next week. It's not strictly necessary with Santander being Spanish banking group, a one small security precaution, just in case. I got there at ten to twelve and saw there was a notice on the door announcing the national 2 minute silence for VE80 day. As I queued, wondering if I'd be through before noon, one of the floor staff accosted me and led me to a desk to conduct the transaction separately. It was concluded just as the lights in the branch were lowered to signify the start of the 2 minute silence. Job done, I went straight home on the bus, to find Clare well advanced in cooking lunch.
After we'd eaten I retrieved two ancient biscuit tins from my store of old stuff, full of a century's worth of old photographs and an assortment of birth, marriage and death certificates. Most of the photos I digitized more than a decade ago, so I decided to take a collection of them with me featuring my sister June, from twelve years old to sixty five, to give to her daughter Veronica.
Then I went for a walk in Llandaff Fields and checked if there'd been any visible progress on erecting the the second section of canopy over the new padel court, but apparently not. While I was walking a message appeared on the Parish WhatsApp prayer group stating that a new Pope had been elected twenty minutes earlier, and he would be named Leo XIV. Amazing surprise - Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, American by birth, from Chicago, but is now a dual national citizen of Peru, where much of his life was spent as an Augustinian missionary before being called to serve at the Vatican. He's 69 and highly regarded outside of the Roman Curia, seen as a successor to Pope Francis who also emphasises sharing the Gospel with the poor and marginalised.
The 19th century Pope Leo XIII was a pastor of the modern era who taught about what we think of as the social Gospel. He's clearly the new Pope's exemplar. An interesting co-incidence that his second name is Francis. The monastic rule of St Augustine is the oldest in the Western Church dating back 1,600 years, and its communities' sense of mission is influenced by mendicant Franciscan spirituality. Let's hope and pray that he'll be as inspirational for the whole world, as well as the churches in his new ministry.
Clare watched the big VE80 day concert, staged on Horseguards Parade after supper. It was an amazing and complex multi-media production of song and dance routines from the war-time era interpreted for a contemporary audience. It was superbly executed, though I wasn't impressed by all of the singers, or the re-rendering of old classics. I wondered what the veterans in the audience thought. Several stories were told of war-time experience and the coming of peace by those who have lived to tell the tale. The King spoke reflectively about the war time experience, its meaning and value in today's uncertain world.
I half listened to the show rather than watched it, as I really wanted to read more of Sangre Nueva, which is quite difficult, especially as my phone battery nearly died and needed a re-charge, just when I needed the services of Google Translate to make sense of a sentence. This slowed me down, made me re- read the same sentence until I could connect it to what I'd read. As a result I went to bed later than intended.
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