Sopa de ajo

Cloud cover stirred by the breeze with sunshine breaking through again today. I woke up at seven fifteen and posted today's YouTube link to the WhatsApp daily prayer thread before getting up and putting my Fitbit on charge as its battery was nearly dead. It lasts just under 48 hours and timing a recharge during a period of inactivity is a bit tricky if I don't keep an eye on it.

Clare took a taxi to UHW for an eye check-up and left just as I was setting out for St Catherine's. There were eleven of us for the Eucharist. Baby Sebastian was brought by his visiting granny today, and we had a visitor for coffee afterwards in the person of Angela, a senior member of Conway Road Methodist Church, a friend of several of our church members. Ann and Paul were there ahead of her mother Marlene's funeral in Llangyfelach, giving us a briefing on finding her Parish church in the vicinity of Morriston Swansea. Four of us will be attending the service. Ann has asked me to lead the intercessions.

I collected this week's veggie bag from Chapter as usual. When I walk through on a Wednesday lunchtime there often seems to be a remarkable number of mothers with babies socialising in the main bar restaurant area or a group in a side room, with special event programmes geared up to their needs. Chapter is shortlisted for the 2025 Art Fund Museum of the Year award, not surprisingly as it incorporates a cinema, a theatre, art exhibition and music performance spaces, and sixty cultural work spaces, making full use of the old Canton High School buildings since 1971.

There's so much going on there we're hardly aware of, and said to be one of the largest centres of its kind in Europe, just ten minutes walk from home, and perhaps taken for granted until it's in line for a well publicised major award. Six years ago this award went to St Fagan's Museum of Welsh History. For a city to have two outstanding institutions win such acclaim within a decades is reason enough for civic pride.

Clare cooked prawns with rice, broad beans and mangetout peas for lunch. I helped with preparing the veg fresh from Coed Hill Market Garden which I brought home. I met Green fingered Keith on my way back and he gave me a large bunch of freshly picked garlic bulbs from his allotment. He had offered them to others who politely declined. They needed to have roots and shoots removed and cleaned up before they could go in the fridge, which I didn't mind doing. It gives me an opportunity to look up a recipe for sopa de ajo, and experiment with preserving some of them too.

The head of the International Red Cross has spoken about the moral outrage of the treatment of civilians in Gaza, appealing to the community of nations to recognise the dehumanisation of the population by the way the Israeli government's has waged war against Hamas, barring accredited humanitarian agencies from entering the territory and delivering aid to people, totally contrary to international law. It remains to be seen what action the international community of nations will take in response.

After a trip to Tesco's for a few food items we needed, I went out again for a walk in the park, but the wind was strong across Llandaff Fields, so I walked round the streets to avoid the wind instead. After supper I peeled three heads of garlic to yield thirty cloves for roasting in olive oil, following a recipe downloaded after a google search. The roasted garlic needs to be pureed when cool and added to the rest of the soup of onions, potato, chicken stock, almond milk and soya cream, which I'll make tomorrow. Hopefully it'll be a tasty experiment!

We watched 'The Repair Shop' together. Then I read 'Sangre Nueva for an hour before attempting to get an early night. I must be up and ready to drive to Swansea by mid-morning tomorrow and am not much good if I don't sleep well. It seems to be a matter of change whether I do or don't, unfortunately these days.