Wild swimmers in the river Taff

Another hot night, but not so hot that it stopped me from sleeping, and another day at 29C. I did some sound editing in the morning before cooking lunch. It was too hot to eat outdoors until the evening. My afternoon walk took me up-river on the east side as far as Llandaff North bridge and back. There were a dozen or so people swimming and jumping in the water around Llandaff Weir, four times less than than the numbers using the waters around Blackweir Bridge as a playground. 

From Llandaff Weir up-stream there's no gradient up to the next weir and at this time of year the flow of water is poor and the river is for the most part shallow, and this weir is a much steeper drop of two metres, not so friendly for water play as Blackweir. The Council has posted safety warnings either side of the bridge saying it's dangerous, which is entirely true after prolonged rain, but in summer time it's impossible to prevent people from using it was a water park. 

Cardiff Council no longer maintains and outdoor lidos, so it's not surprising that people take advantage of exposed stretches of river bed as pebbly beaches. Kids jump off the bridge into the one area which is deep enough by the fish ladder, and upstream where water is deep enough, they jump off overhanging tree branches. Seaside beaches are bound to be crowded, but with far less people able to go abroad to swim in the sea or in some fancy holiday resort pool, wild swimming in the Taff is a compensatory adventure. I just hope the water isn't too polluted with toxins.

This evening, in no mood to write much or think, I binge watched all four remaining episodes of Baptiste. It gave much food for thought about the rise of far right wing political movements in Eastern Europe, and portrayed the radicalisation of an English diplomat's two sons, manipulated by very clever extremist able, like the best of conjurers to misdirect people into seeing what they thought they were looking for. The end of the affair was brutal and to my mind hyper-violent. I'm not sure if any of the injured parties could have survived the assaults portrayed, and yet they did, to round off the story. Too much blunt force trauma and stab wounds to my mind.

Freedom or more chaos?

I enjoyed a long and relaxed night's sleep without a duvet as the air temperature was a comfortable 23C and it wasn't too humid. Under the bright morning sun, the temperature went up to about 30C again. For me the sensation was just like being back in Malaga, and awakened memories of beautiful days under the sun. It's going to be a good while before I can return there with shifting sands of pandemic management and new viral variant threats making the future uncertain, except for the rich and crazy people determined to travel no matter what the cost to themselves and others. 

Today, the other side of Offa's Dyke, all legal covid restrictions are removed as covid delta variant infections continue to soar. What was made obligatory in similar conditions a year ago becomes optional, relying entirely on the numbers vaccinated to mitigate the impact. The Prime Minister and two cabinet ministers are now in quarantine, having realised that those in Downing Street 'pinged' by the track 'n trace app cannot get away with being infection tested daily, when hundreds of thousands around the country have to stop work and self isolate for the same reason, whether infected or not. 

Previews of an interview with Boris' former advisor Dominic Cummings released ahead of tomorrow night's broadcast give an impression of the chaotic reaction by Boris and his cabinet cronies at the beginning of the pandemic, when denial at the seriousness of the situation seemed to be the initial reaction, people reluctant to believe it was as bad as the scientific advisors said it was. But how many of them have any proper medical or scientific training in anything? Cummings is on a mission of vengeful boat rocking. The trouble is, his personal credibility was ruined by his own behaviour. Even if he tells the truth, he'll be doubted because of his motives, even if the evidence he presents vindicates him. It's as good as any political soap opera we've seen on telly in the past quarter century.

I took a trip to Tesco's before cooking lunch, uploaded photos and wrote a few things before Clare and I walked for an hour along the Taff, as much in the shade as possible. Clare doesn't enjoy the heat like I do. After supper, another episode of Iolo Williams's wildlife programme series on Pembrokeshire with some stunning photos of Kingfishers and their two fledgling chicks. So inspiring. Then I squeezed in a second episode of 'Baptiste', available in full on BBC iPlayer, before this week's new episode of NCIS series 17. Another guest appearance of Cote de Pablo as Ziva in a rather confusing (or was it just too fast moving for me?) part two follow through from last week's episode, before she mysteriously disappears again. I didn't find this reprise of an old story worth the effort that undoubtedly went into providing fans with closure. It felt tired, and un-glamorous.

Have we lost the plot?

Another glorious summer day with 23 degree heat at breakfast time and 30C by lunchtime. The Radio Four Sunday Worship service was from Senghenydd, the parish next to where I served my title as Curate in Penyrheol housing estate, now part of the Caerphilly Ministry Area. Mark Greenway Robbins Rector of Caerphilly is now Ministry Area Leader for the conurbation which covers the ancient Parish of Eglwysilan and  that of Caerphilly. Bishop June preached, and among the other contributors was a community worker supported by the Citizen Church in Cathays Cardiff, which took over St Teilo's Parish Church, to provide a working base for an evangelical church planting 'resource church group' back by Holy Trinity Brompton in London. 

The community worker is based at St Peter's Senghenydd, aiming revitalise it and work on regeneration of a deprived and marginalised community that never fully recovered from the loss of over five hundred miners in pit disasters a century ago, and the loss of its last pit Windsor Colliery, just after I left Penyrheol for Birmingham fifty years later. Only one contributor had a distinctive Valleys accent, a former miner at Windsor Colliery. The rest sounded as if they'd crossed Offa's Dyke to re-evangelise the Welsh. Sure, the idea is to 'reach the unreached', in a secular society. I wish them well, but is this enterprise now beyond us natives? Are we being shamed by these enthusiastic in-comers? Is Welsh zeal reserved only for sports and music-making nowadays? How can we rekindle indigenous zeal for a real relevant Christianization of our national culture?

I took my choir robes with me conscientiously to St Catherine's for the Eucharist, and was relieved that it was decided not to robe up, as it was only just a little cooler in church than outdoors. Archbishop Rowan celebrated and preached. It was lovely listening to him again, he has such a relaxed and thoughtful style and always good insights to share. He was talking about Jesus re-inventing the idea of humanity, by abolishing all divisions of status, wealth, power and ethnicity - the ultimate 'levelling-up'. It's not just me that mocks Boris' latest content free catchphrase.

It was good, singing in the choir, such a change from presiding or sitting in the congregation. It keeps you on  the alert and aware of others in addition to the celebrant. I think I'll do more of this in future on the Sundays I don't have other duties, but it will be September before I can make my next appearance in choir, as all but one of the August Sundays I'm at St German's, and the other one I'm preaching at St Luke's. Next week we're down in Oxwich Bay with Owain, Kath and Anto.

Hilary was outside after the service with the first church garden courgettes of the season and a pot of blackberry jam for sale, both of which we bought. For lunch we had the first fruits of the French beans which were grown from seed. Summer delights!

My walk in the afternoon heat took me almost entirely under tree cover through Pontcanna Fields. over the Taff and back through the woods in Bute Park At a guess, there were a couple of hundred people on the pebble beaches along the river or messing about in the water at Blackweir. Hundreds more, in small groups found shader trees or erected their own canopies for shelter. I was accosted by a teenage couple in Bute Park, when the young man noticed the Olympus OMD I was carrying, and asked what type it was. I chatted with them for a while. I think they were at sixth form college. I was wearing my summer beret, which attracted curiosity and conversation about Spain. The girl had visited Fuengirola when her granny was the Church of Scotland Minister of the ex-pat community in Andalusia, around the time I was on locum duty there with the Costa del Sol East chaplaincy. Small world!

After supper we watched Antiques Road Show from Kenilworth Castle, which was very interesting and then the first episode of the second series of 'Baptiste'. An engaging if confusing plot line, as the story is told, switching between flashbacks and the present moment, a little confusing when it's not exactly clear if there's any point to this.

Sleepy Sunday amnesia

Having put the clocks forward early, we got to bed with midnight showing on the clocks, if not our array of digital devices. I woke up having slept only six instead of eight hours, which rather defeated the object of getting an early night, to be sure to be ready for church in good time. It wasn't anxiety as much as never being able to predict how my bowels will function, and consequently when I'll be ready for a wound dressing.

It's horrible for one's life to focus around bodily functions in this way, but it's not nearly as troublesome as it was in the last two months of last year. Anyway, we got to St Catherine's on time, and a congregation of about sixty adults and a dozen children assembled for this quarter's United Benefice Eucharist. 

Immediately afterwards I walked to St David's hospital, pleased to have the duty nurse confirm that the wound is continuing to dry out, albeit slowly. I have to be careful with it, but can move towards a lighter looser dressing in the next few days before surgery next Thursday.

After lunch I was inevitably tired and had a long siesta before taking my Sony Alpha 68 out for a walk in the afternoon sunshine. I didn't take a lot of photos, but on return was most annoyed to find that I'd forgotten to replace the SD card after yesterday's outing to Dyffryn Gardens. The downside with cameras of this type is that the hardware doesn't have an on-board photo file storage, as is the case with fixed lens digital cameras. Even if a memory chip can only store half a dozen photos, it does rescue the user from complete futility on a SD cardless expedition.

Thinking back, this has only happened to me without my noticing a couple of times over the past year. I usually carry a spare card in my wallet for an emergency, but it occurs when I don't feel the need to review a photo I've taken, and don't register the error message generated.

Along with millions of others, I watched the much anticipated first episode of 'Line of Duty', series five. It certainly fulfilled expectations. Then, although it was late, I watched an episode of 'Baptiste' on iPlayer, since my sister June enthused about it while it was broadcast live. Now I can watch all six episodes without having to wait a week between each.

This story has people trafficking and international organised crime as core themes. It's set in Amsterdam's sleazy quarter, with subtitled dialogue in French and Dutch, as well as English. It's the kind of movie I enjoy, to keep me thinking about contemporary concerns and social trends, for good and for ill.
 
TV on demand, to fit with one's cycle of busyness and boredom I find a great asset. It also means you can find out about any series before watching. There's nothing worse than wasting time on something whose promise fails to deliver. To my mind, a great deal of scheduled TV falls into this category nowadays. Even so, I'm binge watching, simply because my active options ae limited at the moment. I so look forward to being able to travel and explore different places once again, one of these days.