Virtuoso video

Another lazy Saturday morning. A lie-in then pancakes. Departure of clergy means not only additional church services to undertake, but also on-line reflections and Morning Prayer slots to fill. The Parish is fortunate to have three retired clergy as well as Fr Rhys as a self supporting priest. Together with several laity we'll be able to keep up a reduced offer on-line until Mthr Frances returns and reviews the changed situation.

I had an email this morning from Andy and Michelle, whose wedding I did four years ago, the christened their first born. A second child was born before lock-down, and it became impossible to organise a second christening. Now restrictions are easing, it's possible to work towards a summer date for the christening. It depends on continued progress in keeping contained the fast spreading Indian virus variant. Over the next few days news media is likely to obsess on the matter of whether or not progress to open up will need to be halted.

After lunch, I walked down to the Bay Wetland nature reserve. There weren't many birds around, although I did see a couple of stopover Brent Geese, some swallows, and a strange all black pidgeon. I got several photos of a couple practicing Aikido in Hamadryad Park. My wound got rather uncomfortable after I had walked for an hour and a half, so I caught the number six bus back to the centre, and the the 122 Tonypandy Bus back to Pontcanna.

After supper we watched and listened to a recording of a 'live' concert with a small audience at RWCMD of Chopin piano works, played superbly by Llyr Williams. We used Clare's computer to stream it, and sat on the bed opposite side by side, as if we were young students again. Llyr's playing was masterly in technique and powerful in emotional expression. So refreshing and inspiring. 

Then, some time before bed uploading photos, and maintaining photo files on my desktop workstation. I am particularly bothered by the slowness of Windows 10 in loading programs, and managing files. It's got worse in the two years since I bought it. I will end up converting it to Linux at this rate. I an't see how I could get it to run any faster.

Counting down for a re-run

Lovely sunny autumn weather has stayed with us this past few days, and my sleep pattern has been less broken. Both of these factors have done wonders for my morale and energy level. Progress in healing has continued during this extra two weeks waiting for the next op, which naturally continues to dominate my thoughts, wondering if I'll be fit to travel afterwards, nearer to medical discharge.

Monday morning, the cleaners came early, the Clare went to the gym, and by ten, I was out shopping, with a call at the clinic to pick up a supply of night dressings. It's good to be awake often at first light though I doze until just before seven, then get up for breakfast. I've been a night bird all my life until this year. Now I'm beginning to enjoy early mornings, though not yet to the extent of getting out for an early walk to the river Taff to listen to the dawn chorus.

I remember when I was on locum duty Mojácar, in the autumn of both 2016 and 2017, getting up at first light and walking on the beach, visiting the nearby nature reserve five minutes away to watch families of egrets leave for a day's feeding out in the countryside, a wonderful sight. It's a pity the Bay wetland nature reserve is nearly an hour's walk from home. But then there's the murmuration of starlings early evening to watch out for down there. I've not yet seen that here, although I saw this amazing sight on several occasions, on locum duty in and around Vinaros.

Tuesday, I spent some time photographing Clare's collection of roses in a sun-bathed garden. They are still happily blooming. I used my HX300, Apha 68 and Lumix LX5 to take comparable shots, in an exploration of a digital camera problem highlighted occasionally by photographers complaining how difficult it can be to render the colour red faithfully. Red roses in sunlight don't reproduce well, losing definition, over-emphasising bright light, in a way that's hard to tone down. The photos from the most powerful of the three cameras, the DSLR, render the environment of the red rose in a superior way, but the red rendering is not as satisfactory as is desirable. With time on my hands some of my curiosity can be devoted to this issue. Is it a question of the right filter? Or white balance or ISO setting? I'll play around before googling.

This morning, I celebrated the Eucharist at St Catherine's with seven others. Emma will celebrate at St John's tomorrow, and I will just attend without communicating, to comply with the medical fasting requirements. In the afternoon I walked along the Taff, and got a few good heron photos, plus some blurry ones of a the bird taking off when disturbed by a dog playing in the river. Getting a big bird in flight or just taking off eludes me. It's one small unfulfilled goal. But then it took me several years to get any hoopoe photos at all, so patience and quickness combined are essential.

I went to bed early and watched the latest episode of 'Non Uccidere' to take my mind off tomorrow, about which I am getting nervous. The odd behaviour of this wound, exuding blood more during the hours of darkness than in the daytime continues to contribute to a broken night's sleep. Tonight I could do with a long slumber, but I doubt if I'll get it.
  

Museum triumph

Days, just slip by, held together by routine daily walks, Daily Office Duo Lingo Spanish practice, a few pages of Poveda's 'El Maestro' (as much as I can manage at a time) and occasional binge watch of crimmies on iPlayer and More Four. Nights are still punctuated with wound management. It's more of a problem at night, as I fall asleep easily and deeply, only to be awakened, not by nasty pain but by nagging discomfort, which needs dealing with. If my lie-in is long enough or I take a siesta, fatigue can be avoided, and I have plenty of energy for walking.

Wednesday, I celebrated the Eucharist at St Catherine's and Thursday at St John's as usual. In order not to repeat my operation day fiasco last week, Emma will celebrate at St John's next Thursday, and as Clare is now back in school on Thursdays, Emma will take me to Llandough Hospital afterwards. I suspect I will get teased again about 'nil by mouth' !

Thursday evening we went to a concert at the Reardon Smith Lecture Theatre, adjoining the National Museum, which is currently shrouded in a protective canopy while work is done on the roof. Singer Rebecca Evans, and harpist Catrin Ffinch performed wonderfully in front of about 150 people in an event to launch the National Museum of Wales' development fund. We learned that surprisingly the National Museum's seven sites across the Principality are sustained by a charitable foundation. While it's 85% funded by the Welsh Assembly Government, the trust's 15% equals seven million pounds of the budget, simply to maintain the status quo. 

The development fund will not only aid maintenance of assets long term, but enable new educational projects. One is planned for Llanberis Slate Museum in North Wales in the near future. Two years worth of development work on St Fagan's Museum of Welsh Life has certainly paid off with the recent awarding of the UK title 'Best Museum'. And visitor numbers, especially from school children, keep on rising. It's marvellous. 

Friday afternoon I walked down to the nature reserve down the bay, and photographed some Brent Geese on a floating platform, and a couple of moorhens squatting in an old swans' nest at the edge of the water in open view. Generally they prefer to hide in the reed beds. I thought this was unusual, but I guess it means they felt safe there, about seven metres away from the viewing platform. On the way back, I met Clare in John Lewis' for a cuppa, after her gym session, and then we rode home on the bus together.

Walking out around Pontcanna Fields on Saturday, I spotted our local bird man out feeding a large wake of crows. It's the first time I've seen him in several months. The penultimate double of the latest Danish crimmie 'Darkness' was dismal indeed, over-focussed on a couple of murderous sadists, with a slight secondary relationship plot. It's neither educational nor entertaining. What does make me sit up and take notice however is the way different crime series UK and Euro seem to take it in turns to address current social issues, with greater or less effectiveness. 

Islamist extremist plots have turned up in at least five series I've watched in the past few months. Variations on domestic violence, money and drugs laundering, and psycho-terrorism serial killer themes are also widely distributed. British series showcased gory pathology and cold case investigations for the past twenty years. Occasionally now, others in the Euro zone are making crimmies with authentic historical flashbacks in the storyline. Quite entertaining in its way. 

I wonder how brexit is going to feature in future explorations of human wickedness and transgression? Meanwhile we wait to see how the Law Lords will rule on the transgressions of this crazy fanatical right wing prime minister and his government, causing offence wherever he goes, promising everything, threatening to deliver nothing and blame the EC for his own failures.

Sale bargain Chromebook

Clare was afflicted with a sore throat and cough over the weekend, and I followed suit yesterday. It meant we both spent the day lying low, foregoing an invitation to a Friends tea Party at RWCMD, to welcome the new College Principal. Even so, I made an effort to go out and walk as usual, aiming to increase my daily distance from four to five. 

Despite the onset of the virus, I managed five and three quarter miles, down to the Bay Wetland area to take a few bird photos. I walked part of the way back from the Millennium Centre, rather than stand around waiting for a bus, then picked up a number six bus, half way along Lloyd George Avenue to Central station, and a perfectly timed 61 bus from Westgate Street. I didn't feel exhausted after, which says something good about my general state of health, as the wound continues to dry out. I just wish my surgeon could see this, as it doesn't reflect what the MRI scan of nearly two months ago reported. I still haven't heard anything. It's as if I don't exist, a repeat performance of what happened before operation number two.

I celebrated the Eucharist with five others at St Catherine's this morning. After lunch I went into town and bought a new high spec Asus C302CA Chromebook, discounted from its original £450 to £300, in the John Lewis summer sale. It is, to my mind worth paying for something with a 10-12 hour battery life, HD touch screen and superior back-lit keyboard. What's so super about Chromebooks is being able to log into your Google account, and within minutes be looking at a clone of your familiar customised display layout. Plus, the newest devices run Android apps, so those you have installed on your Android phone can also be installed, if wish, on your laptop. Dull sameness for some people maybe, but for others desirable convenience and consistency. I wish I could persuade my sister June to give Chromebook a go. There's nothing new or unfamiliar needing to be learned.

Pleased with myself for walking over six miles today. I noticed, passing by the station that a large sign saying 'BBC Wales' has been mounted on the top right hand corner of Number 3 Central Square the Beeb's new HQ, currently being kitted out and moved into by Llandaff based staff. Official opening is in September. The last time I took a picture of the building end of February, there was no sign, so when this happened is a mystery. Curiously it doesn't show up in the media coverage I have so far googled.

Hatching what?

With a late afternoon clinic visit today, I went out before lunch, taking the bus to town, then bought a snack, took some more photos of the St David's House demolition, and walked on down the Taff Embankment to the Bay. The eastern end of the the site being worked on that the moment is the broadest in relation to the new HMRC building next to it. I recently noticed that a service ramp runs for three quarters of the length of St David's House, which means that most of the old building is ten metres further away from its neighbours, giving double the amount of space between old and new. This will most likely hasten the pace of obliteration of a not-so-iconic late sixties building. But, we shall see. It's interesting to watch others work at things on this scale. I'm enjoying this as much as did during the year the St David's II centre site was cleared for rebuilding.

The Bay wetland nature reserve was quite quiet, perhaps because its inhabitants are preoccupied with brooding over their latest batch of eggs. I caught sight of a crested grebe sitting on some broken reeds in the middle of a reed bed, hatching eggs maybe? I heard heard the mating call of a bird that I felt I needed to check on to be sure what it was, and then I saw it, one of several in the same stretch of riverbank. The distinctive face of a Goldfinch high up on a bare tree. I was pleased with the photo I got as well. 

I took the bus back to the city centre from Plas Roald Dahl, then wandered around for a while before heading back to Riverside Clinic. Somehow, I mistook the time and arrived half an hour early. Ah well, never mind. Time to complete the days dose of DuoLingo Spanish. And, I've started reading one of the Poveda novels Kath gave me - 'El Profesor'. 

I found it easier to engage with than the last one by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It's in contemporary Castilian Spanish and its narrative style is a bit more, familiar from stuff I read in the Spanish thread of my Google newsfeed. The author lived in Warsaw in his early thirties. I don't think this is an autobiographical tale, but it certainly draws from his experience of living there, and even reading it in a second language gives me an impression of the modern Polish capitol.

That was a lovely walk this afternoon, but I was quite tired by the time I reached home, so I idled the evening away, lying down rather than sitting and fidgeting. I'd love to feel that I could be more creative, more productive. Unlike the wildfowl I'm hatching nothing at the moment.

  

Change in musical taste

According to my pedometer app, I walked 8.6km on Thursday, going to the office, around the city and back up the Taff Trail as far as the big Tesco in search of clip on sunglasses. As my diary was empty Friday I thought I'd do another walk. I followed the Taff Trail in the opposite direction down to the Bay Wetland nature reserve and took photos of the resident grebes and coots with their fast growing chicks. I clocked over 10km by the time I reached home, and wasn't too stiff, although I slept even better as a result of the additional exercise. my photos are here

This morning I went into town to  met Rufus for a coffee and a catch up chat in Cafe Zest upstairs in the House of Frazer store. Strange to think that it's been earmarked for closure as a department store because of the group's profit warnings. The increase in commercial market rents is being blamed for this. Will it be redeveloped, as was the David Morgan store, as a mix of retail and private apartments? Or will it perhaps be taken over by another big market name. As a property it's something of a nightmare to envision of future for. It was built in several phases, and enclosed Bethany Baptist chapel, which was converted into a retail space still known as 'The Chapel'. It would be possible to demolish the interior and keep the facade, but as the complex of buildings on the site tells such a fascinating tale of the work of Victorian retail entrepreneur James Howell, there might be conservation orders in place that would hinder this.

The streets were busy with extra people arriving for the third of Ed Sheeran's four in a row stadium concerts tonight. Such is his popularity it was clear from the accents audible on the streets that many visitors had come from all over England, as well as Wales and further afield. I lost interest in popular music decades ago, so I'm unsure if I've heard or could recognise any of his work. Music is deeply important to me, almost all kinds, but truth to tell, I've not been good at decoding pop lyrics post Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel, and the classic American popular Jazz and romantic song genre. As I get older, I find I can listen to 20th century and modern 'classical' music with pleasure, whereas I could make no sense of it when I was young and dismissed what I couldn't make sense of. That's an unexpected aspect of ageing I can't say I expected.

I returned home to rendezvous with Clare and take the bus to the Steiner school for the summer fair, at which the Fountain Community Choir was due to sing, but we missed each other. I caught up with her at the school after taking the next bus to Llandaff North, and we joined in the rehearsal and then an outdoor performance of half a dozen songs, most of which I am still unfamiliar with and don't know all the words. It all felt a little precarious to me, but it was fun. I walked home afterwards to relax, and the pedometer told me that I'd done another 8km, which was pleasing, as my legs weren't complaining too much. No telly tonight. There's so much football on right now, which holds little interest for me, and we watched the dark Welsh crimmie 'Hidden' on Wednesday, since BBC Wales TV previews it, ahead of the Saturday prime time slot.

Ministry joys and Linux Legacy

Yesterday afternoon in beautiful sunny weather, I caught the bus into town, took photos of the Central Square construction site, then walked down the Taff Embankment to the Bay Wetland Area. There was a couple of Coots with some young chicks swimming on one of the ponds.

I also got glimpses of what I think was another pair of chicks hiding in a reed bed, but they seemed different from the Coot chicks, as their heads were red/orange. Were they moorhen offspring, I wonder? I've seen both kinds of bird down there in the past. With most things ready for our Rhine cruise journey and a sermon prepared, I watched a couple of episodes of NCIS season 13 which I've not seen before. One was about an agent suffering from the theft of his identity multiple times. Quite timely really, given the on-going global ransomware crisis.

I celebrated the Solemn Mass at St German's this morning as usual. Priest in charge designate Fr Phelim O'Hare came with his wife Annette and two sons to meet people and sit in the congregation. We're still waiting for an induction date, however. It now looks certain that it will take place while I'm out in Malaga, Although I won't be at St German's for the final few Sundays of the interregnum, I will take much pleasure in seeing photos of the event, content to have worked myself out of a job at St German's, for a second time in five years.

After the service, the church filled again with a congregation double the numbers for the Mass, there for the baptism of Michelle and her baby daughter Millie. For me it was a great pleasure to complete something which started last year when I officiated at Andy Michelle's wedding in St German's. Out of curiosity, I checked the baptism register, and discovered, much to my surprise, that over past five years of locum duties at St German's, I have performed 23 baptisms, double the number I did in the eight years of my last job as Vicar of St John's City Parish Church.

By the time I got home, after attending the Christening party in the church hall, Clare had already left for a final rehearsal for the afternoon Community Choir Concert at the Fountain Steiner School, but she'd left lunch for me. Once I'd eaten, I sat down to do my daily Duo Lingo Spanish drill, and when I reached the end of it, I nodded off, waking up only just in time to drive to the school for the start of the concert. The programme was an unusual mix of mediaeval secular and sacred music, technically a challenge for the singers. I've been listening to Clare rehearse for weeks, but only hearing everything sung in performance made sense of what I'd been listening to at home, as some of the pieces involved part singing which was dissonant to modern ears. It was an ear opening success, for the audience and for the singers.

After supper, a quiet evening without telly, making sure computers were all up to date, trying to find some files of photographs I'd digitized for my sister three years ago, which she said she couldn't find. It took me a while to locate them, as they weren't in any of my archives. Then I remembered that I'd done the original job on my previous desktop PC, which I left in its usual position on the floor to the left of my desk, rather than decommission and dispose of it. Once re-connected to peripherals, it powered up into Linux Mint perfectly, and within a couple of minutes I'd found the files and copied them to a backup drive. Later, I discovered that I had already uploaded the missing photos to the web, as well as putting them on June's PC hard drive. They weren't missing. Finding them in either place was her problem. Just as well I had an evening with nothing better to do.

When I next have an idle moment, I'll to a timed comparison of booting the machine to a functioning desktop using the now defunct original Windows Vista operating system and Linux Mint. Vista was less dependent on internet connectivity and than its successors, except for anti-virus updating. Mint works just as well with or without internet. When connected and ready to update, it does so unobtrusively and without interfering with one's workflow. So much better than Windows, once you've learned it and made the switch. Time I switched a couple of my machines over permanently to Linux, and retain Windows only where necessary for working with outsiders.

   

Bay watch

After preparing my sermon for tomorrow and an early lunch, Clare and I walked along the Taff Trail down to the Bay wetland area, enjoying the Spring warmth, bluebells and cherry blossom. We saw a few pairs of Great Crested Grebes in the wetland area. We saw one couple performing mating rituals, posing to each other, displaying the full extent of their head plumage and elongating their necks. We saw one bird disengage, dive and bring to the surface something in its beak, which it then presented to the other. I thought it might be a fish, but on checking later with a decent bird book, learned that it was fishing for strands of seaweed to offer. 

Being a good fifty meters offshore, my photos were taken almost at full length zoom with my HX300 so the quality and composition wasn't wonderful. Clare remarked that I'd have been better off taking video. Funny, all my Sony cameras make a good job of this, but it never occurs to me to use the built in facility. But I still enjoy the challenge of old school 'hunt 'n shoot'. This is one of the better shots.

We had tea in the Millennium Centre, then caught buses to take us back to Pontcanna, as we were both quite tired after a four and a half mile walk. Later, after supper I watched the third in the  Danish series 'Department Q'. This time an investigation into the disappearance of children from families of Christian religious sects, due to a murderous psychopath convinced he was an agent of the devil with a mission to destroy the faith of true believers by making them helpless witnesses of unspeakable suffering of innocent children. 

It was pretty nasty stuff, but it gave me cause for thought. One of the detective heroes is a practising Muslim. The other is an atheist who claims to hold no belief in God or anything metaphysical. His only conviction is that justice must be pursued regardless of the cost to himself or others, and that no crime victim should go without redress. The conversation is fragmentary and disjointed like the characters themselves. The atheist nearly loses his own life to rescue two kidnapped children, and it's the Muslim who finally catches the perpetrator, and drowns him in the sea in a life or death struggle with the diabolical killer.

Earlier in the film there were images of the religious sect practicing full immersion baptism in church so these resonated with that of the killer drowning as he resisted subjugation and arrest. It reminded me of parents speaking about babies crying at the font when they have water poured over them, as 'crying the devil out'. The film auteur plays with religious themes and symbols, raising the question of whether the existence of evil is more tangible and oddly credible than that of goodness. 

The atheist survives, his unbelief intact, just grateful to see children restored to their widowed mother. It's the religious man who is compelled to use lethal force at close quarters to stop the perpetrator's violence in its tracks, aware of the trail of death left behind him in a hospital. Experiences which will impact upon this kind, gentle and devout man. It's the kind of paradox which is not at all foreign to those who serve in security forces or the military, while the rest of us remain, for the most part unaffected. I what would Kierkegaad, that 'melancholy Dane' have made of this, I wonder?

      

Bay bird walk

It was both a relief and a pleasure to wake up at first light and find that the sky was clear of cloud for the first time in many days. After breakfast and a couple of hours of writing, I headed out on foot to walk the length of the Taff Trail down to the Bay Wetland, and take photos. When I checked my photo archive I was surprised to find that it's five years since I last did the walk in full.

After a week's rain, the colours of fallen leaves were not so vivid, and there were fewer birds around. However, the sunny verge next to the footpath along the edge of Grangetown, south of the city centre was occupied by hundreds of Pigeons and a couple of dozen Swans, taking respite from a keen wind. In the wetland reserve,

In Hamadryad Park, I spotted a solitary Grey Heron, statuesque in a bed of crumpled reed and grass.

A family of Cormorants occupied a small island in the wetland enclosure on the west side of the St David's hotel.

Hundreds of Gulls were roosting, then rising like clouds into the air, as if taking exercise, then settling again.

Apart from a few Coots and a few more Swans, this was all I saw or heard. Winter is here indeed, but I'm so thankful for a couple of hours walking in the sunshine, even if I did catch buses to get back home, not least to take refuge from the wind.

When spring comes and birds are on the move again, I must make the effort to visit here regularly, not least for the exercise. Two hours walking left me feeling quite tired, but that's what happens these days if I don't maintain a daily regime of walking for an hour or so. 'Use it or lose it' takes on more meaning with advancing years.