Royal flying visit

After breakfast this morning I walked over to Pontcanna Fields to await the King's arrival. I was there just after ten, and had more than an hour to wait. The tree lined avenue was cordoned off and lined with police officers. Down the path to Blackweir Bridge a line of VIP vehicles was parked and dozens of officials and security personnel were gathered, along with photographers. Getting a clear view of the King's helicopter landing spot wasn't easy, as nobody was allowed on the side of the avenue next to the field. The view from behind the banking that carries the road was restricted, so I had to use the full extent of my Olympus long lens to get any worthwhile photos, and crop them on editing.

It was eleven twenty when the King's helicopter arrived. I was surprised to see that it wasn't a military but rather a civilian one in maroon livery. As the King was at Highgrove House in Gloucestershire overnight,  the flight most probably started there, about half an hour away from Pontcanna Fields. Fairly quickly, the royal party and their minders drove away from the landing field up the avenue. Three police motorcyclists went first, with a single police motorcyclist in front of the usual regal Rolls Royce, with the royal standard pennant on top. 

On a whim, I decided to use my Sony HX90 in burst mode to capture a sequence of pictures of the passing royal car, but this was a complete failure. It takes great photos very quickly, but takes several seconds to save them to the camera's SD card. I got the motorcyclists, and the approach of the royal car, but as it went past me I was still waiting for the previous burst of photos to be saved. So disappointing!

I went home then, in time to watch the service from Llandaff Cathedral. It was lovely to see the faces of several people I know taking part. Throughout, it was thoroughly bilingual, hymns, readings, prayers, wth a special anthem written for the occasion, accompanied by the past and present Royal Harpist. The BBC delivered English subtitles - and they were readable for a change. Archbishop Andy spoke well. Five people took part in prayers of intercession, led by Bishop June, including Muslim and Jewish as well as ecumenical representatives. It was a splendid affirmation of Wales' diversity and bilingualism.

We watched the ceremonies that followed in the Senedd while eating lunch. It was nice to see Barry our former Archbishop commenting on the service in the studio afterwards. Clare was inspired to take off to the Castle to see the King arrive. She caught a bus, but was five minutes too late getting there. I followed on foot. We stood among the crowds opposite the Castle and waited for an hour and a half for the royal car to depart, through an inter-service military guard of honour outside the gate, with scores of police officers on the street, and other officials in their dark suits and black ties, standing around doing goodness knows what. After a long wait in a chill wind, it was over in a couple of minutes. 

We went to Barker's Coffee House in Castle Arcade for a warm-up drink, and a sit down. Clare then went to the crystal jewellery shop next door, and spotted a possible birthday present, which I purchased after she'd set out to walk home. I went to bank a cheque, caught a bus to Canton and walked the rest of the way home, then edited and uploaded a second batch of photos of this exceptional day. No good photos of the King, but a fair number of pictures of the setting of his arrival and departure from the edge of the action, as ever in my case. You can see them here

After supper, I started writing a Sunday sermon and got stuck half way. I needed further study on the text I'm expounding, but didn't feel like it, so I watched a couple of episodes of 'The Wagner Method' on my laptop instead.

Mourning ritual

Another day of clouds, sunshine and showers. After breakfast I went to St John's to share in the Requiem Mass for the Queen. There were nineteen of us present, and the service was streamed on Facebook as well. Then I went to town, hoping to hear the great tenor bell of St John's City Parish Church, tolling ninety-six times to mark the Queen's passing. I wasn't disappointed. I met Ruth in the porch, welcoming visitors and alerting them to the fact that the  usual midday Mass was going on. She told me Evan Chapman the verger was doing the honours up in the tower's ringing chamber. Good to hear he's still there, over twenty years in quiet service of the church's solemn ritual if not longer to my knowledge.

I recorded some of the tolling, and then went to the Castle for the Royal Welsh Regiment's ceremonial honouring of the departed monarch with a ninety six gun salute. People were queuing along Castle Street in the drizzle to be security checked into the grounds. I joined a crowd of about a thousand others waiting for the salute, scheduled at one o'clock. By the time the ceremony started, the number had doubled. I took nearly sixty photographs and a short video of four out of the ninety six rounds. 

The ceremonial field guns were positioned with their armourers standing watch over them, and then at ten to one the teams responsible for each one in full dress uniform marched to their assigned positions, behind each gun. With meticulous punctuality, they fired a round every ten seconds, beginning as the City Hall clock struck one and ending at one sixteen. Each team then left the field in their personnel vehicle, towing their gun. The crowd was too dense to see all that was going on. For security reasons no vantage points from above were accessible. Press cameras were on a grassy bank about a metre about the field itself.

In the course of taking photos beforehand and trying to keep my camera from getting wet while it was still drizzling, I lost my camera lens cap. When I realised, I retrace my steps, and fortunately a couple and a young girl had spotted it on the ground, and left it there in case I returned. I was lucky! It seemed like everyone in the crowd was taking photos on their phones - hundreds of people with both hands held high in the air to position themselves for their best shots. I wasn't able to get near the crush barrier so my photos weren't as good as I hoped for. Nevertheless, when I reached home, late for lunch I spent the afternoon editing the sound files I'd made and incorporating them into a video slide show, which I thought my sister June would appreciate, and maybe a few others as well.

At six o'clock, before the national thanksgiving service at St Paul's Cathedral, we watched King Charles' first speech as our new sovereign. It was a warm tribute to his mother's vocation and life's work and he included twice his solemn pledge to continue to minister to the nation in the same way as his mother. He acknowledged that his life would change in the light of his new role, but expressed confidence that the things he was passionate about over the past fifty years now had momentum of their own in the hands of many others. 

The service following was good, uplifting music, carefully chosen readings and some new prayers for the departed I wasn't familiar with, but which spoke poetically about the mystery of eternity and resurrection. Such public prayers for the dead in a CofE service back at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign would have led to hard-line Protestants causing uproar, alleging papist inflitration. Not only the world, but the church is a different place from how it was when I was a kid.

Bute Park lock-down

When Clare left for her study group, I went out, charged with finding some red candles for our Advent table wreath. I couldn't find anything suitable in the Cowbridge Road shops, but on the way back called into Beti Biggs, a small boutique, on Romilly Crescent, not far from home and found exactly what I had been looking for. It's not a shop I've ever been in before, specialising in small gifts and things and glitter at this time of year. I though it might have closed for goof during lock-down but it bounced back, which is encouraging to hear.

I cooked lunch in time for Clare's return, then went into town to buy Christmas cards for sending with our annual newsletter, which I have yet to write. Bute Park, apart from the east west cycle route is closed to pedestrians and cyclists, as the arboretum zone is being used for the illuminated night walk - pay to enter. This will not be a popular move though it's within the Council's rights to allow this disruption, as it's not public realm in the sense that streets are. It forces a change to people's everyday routines however, obliging many to walk further than they can or wish to. We wait to see if this initiative covers the cost outlay, and if not, who picks up the bill.

Winter Wonderland in front of the Museum and City Hall is now a fun fair including a ski slope, and is extended to Castle grounds, given over to a skating rink under a large tented canopy, with an open air extension in the form of a circular piste. In the middle of the enclosure are the four light sculptures of reindeer which in previous years were installed on the grass in the castle moat. All the refreshment stalls are inside the Castle walls now and there are just the usual coloured table benches. I guess outdoor drinkers from the hostelries on the other side of Castle Street can sit there, if they are willing to take their lives into their hands crossing the way where two way traffic reigns once more. I think this Winter Womderland was set up like this last year, but covid restrictions prevented it coming into use. 

In the evening I watched another episode of 'Crossing Borders' on My5 catch-up. It's another euro-crimmie showcasing an elite international team of detectives working on cross border crimes. It's rather idealised, in representing people with different policing cultures, jurisdiction hopping without upsetting the status quo, but the bad thing about it is that the key actors all speak English. The difference between their mother tongues has almost no impact on their accents. There's hardly foreign language speech, so it's subtitle free, and hardly any misunderstandings. A low budget series evidently.

Jazz feast

Another damp grey day, but after lunch I made an effort to walk into town, and take photos of the latest changes to the layout of the public realm areas of Castle Street. The road closure still continues, although the sheltered dining area down the middle has now been removed. The carriageway has been narrowed, with one complete lane turned into a raised yellow coloured pavement extension on the side where there are several pubs. The same is happening in Westgate Street too outside licensed premises, so that chairs and tables can be laid out for outdoor drinkers. Indoors, everyone has to be seated, so making a properly delineated space where people can stand or sit in the street makes sense. Heaven help passing pedestrians.

This year's Winter Wonderland year end funfair has been relocated from the lawns in front of City Hall and the National Museum to the Castle interior and the open area in front. The grass is boarded over and cordoned with fencing, and there's a large bar/restaurant at the east end corner, all themed as an alpine ski village, with small chalets along the wall next to it, to provide sheltered dining and drinking spaces. It's all very nicely done. Inside the Castle are a selection of popular rides its been possible to make covid safe, plus a large fenced off oval with a raised walkway, which was intended to be iced over for skaters to use. A nice idea, but it failed understandably on health and safety grounds. Treating anyone who had an accident would be a nightmare in present circumstances for first responders.

I bought some packs of Christmas cards, then headed for home in the drizzle. I'm several weeks earlier in making a start on the annual round of festive greetings, although Clare was ahead of me by several days, and was ordering presents on-line when I got back. I began thinking about our annual family news letter, and spent the evening making a first draft, while watching music programmes on BBC Four. One was a contemporary re-take on the old Jazz 365 programme from the days of black and white 1970's TV telling the story of a British Jazz renaissance happening now, thanks to a community of young black musicians, male and female, mostly based in South East London. It was an amazing hour and a half of superb original music, innovative in combinations of style, cultural influences and use of instruments.

The music making was polished and adventurous, full of joyful energy. In the concert footage shown, the audience was on its feet dancing, participating with gusto, rather than still and silently attentive. It could have been a rave or a rock concert, and illustrates a big difference in the way jazz is appreciated today, and the audience for these performances are mostly teens and young adults. I recall reading an article on the new East London jazz scene a year ago. This is the first chance I've had to listen to the music. It was most impressive.

The programme following this was a documentary on the life and music of trumpeter Miles Davis told by several of his musical contemporaries, and using texts from his personal journal. So many pieces of his recordings played in between interviews I remember vividly, having heard them in my late teens at the home of our local scoutmaster, when I first became a fan of his. Love of Jazz ran in the family, even though we didn't have a record player that took LPs when I was growing up. When I was in Ibiza, Owain sent me a couple of Miles' albums in MP3 format, music unheard for fifty years. Tonight there was more of it, More joy, even though it meant going to bed later than usual. 

Castle concern

I walked to St John's Canton to celebrate their midweek Eucharist this morning. Then in the afternoon Clare and I walked together to town, on my part, with no particular aim in mind apart from exercise. When we reached the Castle, Clare proposed that we enter and have a cuppa in the restaurant there. It proved an opportune moment to renew my 'Castle Key' residents' free entrance pass. My original pass was issued free and expired over eighteen months ago. I simply never got around to renewing it. Now it costs a fiver to cover the cost of issuing a new card, which is forty percent of the price of a single visitor entrance ticket. Most reasonable. I was impressed that a fresh plastic photocard could be made for issue within minutes of proving one's residence rights, using a hand-held scanner to take a photo and etch it on a card with name and renewal date.

On our way out Clare chatted with one of the guides/welcomers who look after visitors, someone who had been on the team when she acted as a tour guide there. Recession has reduced the number of visitors, and Council budget cuts have led to a drastic limitation of the conservation budget, so that some of the most visited rooms are suffering from wear and tear and starting to look neglected. This is hardly likely to attract extra visitors. "It's slowly turning into one big function suite."  I heard said. Hiring the place out for receptions and social events helps balance the books. One of Cardiff's iconic tourist venues is in government speak 'Just About Managing'.

What's so sad is that the region boasts many institutions of higher and further education with staff and students undergoing various specialised aspects of training in conservation arts and crafts. There's no reason why a partnership between these institutions and the City Council couldn't help to guarantee a high standard of maintenance and provide a practical training ground at the same time. Admittedly a significant obstacle would be the surveillance CADW exercises on listed buildings and monuments in Wales. It's a quango which sets acceptably high standards, but is dauntingly slow and bureaucratic in exercising its regulatory powers, so getting a functional partnership between educational interests, Council and CADW, even with a shared aim, would not be easy to commend to politicians preferring the glamour of quick wins. 

Wales has so many ancient monuments, more than its fair share of ruins. Across the centuries few prestige building projects realized by wealthy or powerful people have survived the test of time in their intended condition. Sooner or later, places lose their significance as status symbols in the public eye. They become unaffordable to run, and end up in ruins. The hardest thing is to witness the decay of beautiful things and places through neglect, for whatever reason.

After walking around the shops for a while, my knee joint started to become painful. I may just have overdone the exercise lately. Anyway, I caught the bus home, tired and aching, conscious of my own wear and tear. After a short rest, I drove over to St German's for the evening's Lenten Stations of the Cross and eucharistic adoration. At the end, a man who arrived with a friend during the service asked with tears in his eyes, to talk to a priest about his troubles. 

He said his landlord had thrown him out, and that he'd been on the streets for two days and neither eaten nor slept. I'm not sure I believed the story he told, or maybe it wasn't the whole story, as he looked remarkably clean and tidy for someone who'd been out on the streets a couple of days with no support, but there was no way to corroborate his story, He was hungry, but there was no means to give him anything to eat and drink at that time of night with the church day centre closed. I sent him to the homelessness hub in Tresilian Terrace, and told him where he could contact the city centre detached social worker team, and the church gave him some money to buy a meal on his way. It was the best we could do. There are so many ways in which someone can be precipitated on to the streets unprepared and traumatized by the experience. Cardiff has many voluntary and professional people active in caring for the homeless, and the numbers continue to grow.

Steeling ourselves for NATO

Yesterday morning early I took the Megabus coach to London to see my sister June. The journey was only three hours as the coach got in fifteen minutes early. It was somewhat different on the way back. The coach left twenty minutes late, and made up some time getting as far as Newport, but all the M4 section around Newport was closed off, as preparations are in full swing for the forthcoming NATO conference based at the Celtic Manor hotel, and other venues in Cardiff. The coach was then more than half an hour late arriving and the last bus had gone, so I had to walk home. A long day.

A temporary 'ring of steel' is being constructed around the Celtic Manor domain, also around Bute Park in Cardiff. It's a security fence, meant to thwart terrorist guided missile attacks, or something. Such a huge and expensive show of force to impress hundreds of visiting dignitaries from all the partner countries imposes unwelcome restrictions on two of Wales' key cities and the Principality's major economic artery. The disruption to normal life in both cities is causing a great deal of resentment. What are tourists to Cardiff going to make of the barriers down the middle of the road outside the Castle. What unintended message do they convey about the perceived trustworthiness of the general population in the eyes of those in power?

Will this generate more anti-military protest than usual, one wonders? This is a time when NATO's strength and potential for action is vital to resist the ambitions of aggressors whose ways are foreign to liberal capitalist democracy - whether Putinesque or Islamist dictatorships. Alienating the good will of ordinary citizens is not a good idea politically speaking.

Actually it's not a security fence at at all, but an insecurity fence.

I had a funeral at St John's Canton this afternoon. A congregation of over two hundred gathered, many wearing rugby shirts, to say goodbye to a man in his early fifties whose death was unexpected. Afterwards, a brief visit to the office, before a visit to St Luke's Canton to celebrate the Feast of the Assumption with a small prayerful group of half a dozen. Couldn't help thinking this fiesta is the one with which summer holidays end in Europe, and families start making their ways home to get ready for the resumption of school.

   

Enter YouView

Friday, we drove over to Bristol in beautifully sunny weather to visit James and Amanda, who returned from hospital earlier this week. James went into school to get some help with sorting our a course for next year. By the end of the day he'd  applied for a BTech Computing course at the near by Filton FE College. This is a good move, as he has set his sights on working in the computer games industry eventually.

A conversation with a telephone sales rep from TalkTalk at the beginning of the week, led to us being offered a free subscription package upgrade at no extra cost. This includes a TalkTalk YouView digital box, which arrived today. It gives us the full range of free view offerings plus a wide range of catch-up TV options and a channel for renting movies in addition. All I had to do was connect it to the router, and run the set up programme which despite a few ambiguities in the on-screen instructions worked well. We had arrived home just too late to see an edition of 'A place in the sun' house hunting programme, focussing on the Orihuela region, not far from Sta Pola, where Anto and his sister still have their mother's apartment. The first test of the new device was to find the programme in the roll-back schedule and watch. It couldn't have been easier.

Saturday was a quiet day, apart from our afternoon walk around Bute Park, with tea in the Castle grounds restaurant before heading home. It was good to take advantage of our Cardiff Castle Key cards, which not only give us free entrance as citizens to the Castle, but a discount on refreshments as well. In the evening we had the treat of watching the first of the new series of 'Wallander', said to be the final series, charting his life as he slips into illness and old age. Impressive acting as ever.

Clare and I went to St Catherine's for the Parish Eucharist this morning, and walked to Riverside Market to shop for organic veggies and cheese. The weather was again beautiful, but the pollen in the air hit me hard, and swollen sinuses took away the pleasure of the walk and laid me low for the rest of the day. There's been something of an improvement from the course of antibiotics which I finished last night, but allergic reaction to the prevailing atmosphere is still the order of the day.