A wet start to Summer

A cool and cloudy start morning with occasional rain showers. I slept quite well, despite pain from my strained right shoulder. Even so, I felt drowsy from the medication until I went out for exercise. After breakfast I started preparing another Morning Prayer and reflection. Then Clare and I went out for a walk around Llandaff Fields together before going to Jason's greengrocers to stock up on essentials. I cooked a spicy veg dish for lunch with cannellini beans, mushrooms, onions and carrots, flavoured with a mild curry paste as an experiment. The carrot added unexpected sweetness to the overall taste. 

I wrote an email to our dental practice receptionist, after failing twice to make contact by phone. I need to book a checkup appointment, to replace the one cancelled when I was in hospital. I hope I get a response, or I'll have to go there by bus and make the booking in person. I wrote to June's friend Elaine to inquire about my sister's health as she's not responding to my messages.

It was drizzling rain when I walked in the park at tea time under my brolly for nearly an hour. Thankfully, no brolly wrecking wind.  It's the first day of meteorological summer. A disappointing start in the light of the brief heat wave we had last week. It's been raining most over the evening.

Israel is occupying more territory in Lebanon in an effort to neutralize Hezbollah, which continues to send drones and missiles across the Israeli border. Ceasefire talks have changed nothing. The Lebanese state is too weak and disunited to disarm Hezbollah, or stand up to Iran which supports and arms what is in effect a state within a state. Israel's latest land grab has led to Iran suspending peace talks with America. Under pressure from Trump Israel and Hezbollah have agreed to stop attacking each other, but how long will this last. Iran threatens to pull out of peace talks, widening the scope of the conflict and completely close the Straight of Hormuz through which select traffic is passing. 

Maintaining this war is proving very costly for America in terms of expensive military hardware losses, estimated at $20 billion, with broader economic losses varying from a hundred billion to a trillion dollars so far. How much longer can America afford to sustain such costly aggression against an enemy capable of enduring much greater hardship, and showing how smart it can be in waging war? Despite American optimism about peace talks, perhaps aimed to keep the price of oil from rising further as much as anything else, Trump's claim to have the upper hand in this conflict, on the basis of its destruction of Iranian military assets so far doesn't seem to match reality.