Jas in St Paul's

Cloudy and cooler today 17C, with random light showers. After breakfast I worked on making the video slide show for next Wednesday's Morning Prayer. Housework was postponed until later in the day when we have the house to ourselves again. Jas proposed a walk in the park before leaving, but the morning just ebbed away getting her bags packed. Clare made an interesting farewell lunch: cold salmon with grilled courgette, fried aubergine and sweet potato. We took Jas and Louie to the station for a three o'clock train to Bristol. 

They're meeting Owain there, staying in an AirBnB in Wilder Street, in the St Paul's Area, the heart of the Parish I served in fifty years ago. At the east end of this street is Grosvenor Road, where the Jamaican Black and White Cafe served as a focal point for Jamaican men to socialise, play dominoes and eat traditional food. It was the epicentre of the brief outbreak of rioting in April 1980 which drew attention to institutional racism, endemic poverty and the frustration of young people for the first time. In those days housing was decrepit and the street was within the red light neighbourhood. 

Things are different now, housing replaced or renovated. The Black and White Cafe lasted until 2004, when it was demolished. St Paul's Area is even more diverse now than it was in those days, in some parts it's still poor working class, gentrified in others thanks to its proximity to the city centre. None of this will be apparent to Jas and Louie. I hope Owain will tell them some of the story of the area where he was born. I love the fact that one of the clubs in the neighbourhood has continued to run over the years since then, and is still a haunt for aficionados of techno and other alternative music, Owain among them.

After dropping them off, I proposed to drive to the Council's Bessemer Road recycling centre to get rid of a car boot full of assorted electrical stuff and old violin case with broken locks. You have to book a place in the queue for the site to do this but I hadn't yet done so. I gambled on it not being busy immediately after the weekend peak dumping period, to book a slot as we travelled as near to our arrival time as was possible. If we had to wait a while, we could pop into Lidl's and do some grocery shopping first.

Crisis! The Council's website was off-line. What to do? Keep going. There was no queue at the entrance to the site, so I parked the car and approached the guy who was managing traffic at the check-in booth and explained my problem. His first question was - did you try to book through the Council app? No through the website which is down. Yes, it's not unusual, but the app keeps running anyway. I resolved to return to the car, install the app and book myself in, but the guy wouldn't hear of it. He checked my details on the spot on his Council smartphone and directed me to a free parking slot by the electrical dump. These guys are so good natured and helpful, a credit to the Council.

Job done, we drove to Lidl's on the way home and bought much of our grocery requirements for the week. Then, the deferred housework. After that, we both went out for our respective circuits of Llandaff Fields, met for a brief kiss on our circuits half way, then returned for supper. I read more of my Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel for a while afterwards. Despite the ever present challenge of new vocabulary, his story telling gets me laughing aloud when I get the gist of the narration. Then I went out to Thompson's Park for some fresh air to complete my daily distance. There was a drizzle of rain after leaving the house, enough to make me turn back to get a brolly. Carrying a brolly seemed enough to prevent further recurrence.  

Clare was watching a Michael Moseley programme about staying fit and living long and well in old age. Interesting to learn about the need to mitigate ageing muscle wastage by regularly eating extra protein. For much of our adult lives we've been vegetarian, but this last couple of years I've felt the need to eat a small portion of meat regularly. Recently Clare has started helping herself to chicken I've cooked for myself and now admits she's starting to feel the need for this little dietary supplement. And why not indeed! We are so blessed to be able to eat a varied balanced diet, with lots of organic veg and as little processed food as we need. And can afford to eat well too.