Celebrating Butetown's diversity champion

The central heating fired up automatically early this morning for the first time since spring, as the ambient temperature of the house dropped below its threshold. It was cold yesterday and cold again today, bright and sunny, and thankfully no rain. After breakfast I drove Ann and Clare to the train station before driving to Saint Catherine's to celebrate St Michael and All Angels with six others plugging a gap at Mthr Frances' request. Fr Roy Doxsey agreed to cover St German's, although I was scheduled to be there. Clare stayed in town and went to see the Richard Burton biographical exhibition in the Museum.

After the Eucharist, I collected this week's veggie bag, and completed preparation for next Thursdays Morning Prayer and reflection, ready to record and edit when I got back from my walk around the park. On BBC Wales after supper was a programme about the making of a new statue celebrating the life and work of Butetown's Betty Campbell, Wales' first black head teacher and anti-racist campaigner who died four years ago. Her image was chosen by poll to represent heroic Welsh women in history. She lived, worked and died at the heart of the community she served, and was as proud to call herself a Cardiffian as she was to say she was black.

I was surprised to find when I looked on the Wales on-line website at five o'clock, that there was only a brief mention in the breaking news blog of the unveiling of the statue today, and not even a mention of its location outside the new HMRC building in Wood Street. Admittedly, photos were posted on a new page by six o'clock, but news of the statue unveiling had been run by the BBC on the Today programme in the morning, and on a BBC news web page. The statue itself was featured on Radio Four's 'Front Row' programme at seven fifteen in the evening, on top of the TV programme I saw. The Media Wales building is a hundred and fifty yards along Wood Street from HMRC, how come they were so slow to report on this? I should point out that new BBC Wales HQ is also on Wood Street directly opposite HMRC but why were Media Wales editorial team lagging behind the Beeb, when this was happening on their block?

I think we're in for some terminological wrangling. Wood Street is the main thoroughfare running though that part of the city centre designated as the Central Square Redevelopment. Actually, Central Square is the open paved space with Brunel's Cardiff railway station 1920s facade on the south side and the back entrance of the BBC on the north. On the west side are numbers one and two Central Square, the BBC is number three. The east side of the square is where the new bus station complex is under construction. So Betty's statue is within the Central Square development, though not in Central Square, but Wood Street. If all early news reports omit to mention Wood Street, we can look forward to confusion!

Still, it's a great day for the city. I'll be donw there with my camera taking photos tomorrow, under orders from my sister June.

Foolishness

This is Holocaust Memorial Day I was reminded, listening to Chief Rabbi Murvis on this morning's 'Thought for the Day'. He drew attention to other genocides which have happened since the Nazi era, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur, and the current plight of Myanmar's Rohingya, and China's Uighur populations, suffering persecution, denied their distinct identities and way of life, being described as genocidal treatment around the world, and yet again seemingly unstoppable. 

Jews cannot remember their own past without recognising that history is repeating itself, with the resurgence of violent extremism, discrimination and hate speech in our own time. It's a sign of persistent spiritual poverty and deprivation in the world, on a par with economic and social divisions. We haven't yet discovered how to bring about a lasting change that takes all forms of violence out of human efforts to live with our differences in an ever changing world.

It's been overcast and damp all day, but without rain, and mild for this time of year, around ten degrees. This morning I revised and edited the first couple of chapters of my novel, which I deliberately haven't touched for many weeks, so that I could re-read it with fresh eyes. It'll be interesting to see how my approach to telling the story changes as the narrative proceeds, and what I'll need to do, to give it some consistency. I'd quite like to record myself reading it aloud, to find out how readable it is, how easily it comes off the page as a story being told. First I have to figure out the best way to do it.

At lunchtime I walked to Conway Road to collect this week's veggie bag, and then decided to walk into the city centre, which I haven't visited since Christmas, and take photos of progress made on building the Centre Square bus station complex. It's a massive construction site overshadowing the elegance of the new BBC Wales HQ next door. I suppose it had to be built big to be cost effective as an investment, with not only a bus station, but hundreds of income generating apartments, office spaces and shops. 

It took long enough to get the project started, due to finance. To think, a decade ago the post-war bus station was in a huge open area in front of the railway station with a modest block of shops and offices on Wood Street. There's still open area, a pedestrian plaza in front of the station, with the BBC opposite and the bus station site next to it, but all the building loom over the station in a disproportionate way, making it look tiny in comparison. 

Quite apart from the aesthetics of the total concept, I wonder what the psychological impact will be on the thousands who pass through day by day. Is 'build back better and build profitably the same thing? Cardiff Council has nursed planning ambitions to grow the size of the city and its economy nearer to 400,000. The amount of office space available for hire with development projects all around the south side of the city centre, far exceeds present need, and probably future need for decades to come.

The pandemic may not have stopped construction work, just slowed it down, but how much of the available office space will ever be needed and turn a profit for its investors? Lock-down has shown the potential for working at home, and reducing the need to commute to an office. A change in work culture is already under way. We're already running behind viral mutations cause fresh waves of contagion, and there may be years of partial lock-downs ahead of us. What price all that available office space then?

Jesus tells a parable about a successful landowner who invests in building warehouses to keep the stocks of commodities which are the source of his wealth. It's his retirement nest-egg. Then he dies suddenly. His plans seem to have been put before his health - he's a fool for doing that. A story about an individual maybe, but reflecting the story of Everyman in this time when 'one is taken and another left'. 

The Prime Minister has realistically admitted that ridding us of this pandemic is going to take much longer that had been imagined. The government is making plans to restore some sort of normality, but how foolish it would be to set out a timetable. The vaccination roll-out schedule is for the most part going well, but it's patchy, as supplies to each region and delivery cannot be achieved in a uniform way. It would be foolish to think it was possible. A different, more humble kind of planning is needed in such an unpredictable crisis time.

"No sign is to be given to this evil and perverse generation but the sign of Jonah." said Jesus, when asked for a sign to prove who he was. It's interpreted as him alluding to his resurrection, but it occurred to me to see it as an image of a time of crisis. To all intents and purposes, Jonah is dead. He's in total darkness being carried goodness knows where in the belly of the whale, not know if he'll survive. All he can do is to pray and endure. As long as he's praying he's alive. Then when he's thrown on to the shore, he knows what he has to do, simply obey what God has commanded him. It's a humiliating experience, and even so he's still not humbled by it, until God shows him who's in charge a second time. Perhaps we're all a bit foolish like that.

When I returned from town this afternoon, I thought I should try the car and give the battery ten minutes top up charge again, as we're hardly using it at all and I got caught out last week. The battery had drained again and I couldn't get it going. A sure sign that the battery is dying. I got out our ancient mains charger and attached it to the battery with some difficulty, the first time I've had to do this in the two years we've had the car. It started immediately, so I drove it to QuikFit Cowbridge Road, booked it for a battery change and left it there overnight, rather than go through the same rigmarole again. It came as a shock to the system as I was tired after the long walk I'd just returned from, so I wasn't good for much apart from languishing in front of 'Winterwatch' on the telly, happily free of car worries. I know it's in good hands 

Standing up for Wales

I was glad to be able to attend the midweek Eucharist with six others at St Catherine's this morning. From there I walked into town and back for the first time in a couple of weeks, to enquire at the Camera Centre about a better telephoto lens for my new Olympus. I've hardly used the one I bought as its range of view is too limited for my purposes. I didn't find anything to buy, but I did learn something new about optical specifications for Micro Four Thirds lenses I didn't know before.

On Castle Street, the larger section of the outdoor restaurant furnishing has recently been removed, the remainder should be taken out shortly. I wonder how successful  in supporting local hospitality this initiative has been over the period it has been in place. Discussion still continues about whether or not to keep Castle Street traffic free, or how to reconfigure the road layout to create proper and bike lanes.

Building work on the new bus station continues apace. The lift shaft for the apartment block over the bus stations site now reaches up twenty storeys, dominating the skyline. When the building is complete it's going to block a lot of natural light into Wood Street. Newer taller buildings will funnel east-west winds and make the area far less pleasant to walk in. Such a contrast to the more human scale of the street's long gone Victorian buildings, and those of adjacent St Mary Street. I still take an interest in progress made on construction work in the city centre, raking photos as I have done over the past fourteen years. Amazing to think it's been that long since the Grand Redevelopment Plan for the city was conceived and first acted upon.

I got back in just time for lunch, and didn't go out or do much for the rest of the day. Ir was lovely to have an email from Valdo sharing his photos of Aigle and Sierre. The Parish where he lives in retirement has lost clergy due to retirement and no replacements yet in sight, so he's returned to taking occasional Sunday services. He wrote about living with the pandemic and said that the usually efficient health care system is showing some signs of not working properly. 

The Swiss track and trace system seems to be working well, with several different smartphone apps available. Their public health precautions are much the same as ours, with the interesting exception that when small groups of people meet indoors, if they do so for more than fifteen minutes, this becomes a matter of report in addition to date, time, place and names of participants. Useful information if you assume that longer contact time means greater risk. Surprising nobody has thought of this here.

Local authorities in Wales are now to be empowered by the Senedd to prevent people from high infection areas in England from entering Wales, where infection rates are lower, to reduce the risk levels. It seems that twice Mark Drakeford our fine First Minister has asked Boris Johnston to take this measure on the English side and been refused. Fortunately the Senedd has legislative powers of its own to fall back on. He gave a reasoned and lucid account of the reasons for this faced with a BBC news interlocutor who to my mind was faintly hostile in his questioning. A typical London establishment journalist.

After centuries of having its natural wealth leeched from it by central government, Wales will never be in a position to be an independent nation, but the case for increased regional autonomy and having mote power devolved to the Principality gets stronger by the day, when government from Westminster fails to act in the best interests of Welsh citizens.

Short commemoration

How quickly the past couple days have gone by, punctuated by spells of heavy rain with temperatures dropping to near freezing. It tends to slacken off later in the afternoon, which means going out for a walk as it's getting dark, and sometimes that can be hazardous with so many cyclists using routes through the park. Most use high intensity LED headlamps which dazzle unpleasantly. For the most part they notice walkers, though occasionally there are near-misses and outbursts of mutual cursing.

Yesterday morning, the cleaners came early. I was already up finishing breakfast, and once they left I set out early to do the week's food shopping and cook lunch, as Clare had gone to the gym. While I was standing in the Coop, the in-house network radio channel called for people to stop for a minute's Armistice Day silence. Not everyone caught the message, so some staff and customers carried on banging around. Were all the staff briefed? Some evidently didn't notice, and the radio certainly wasn't very loud. One minute? A discount offer? 

Apart from my daily walk, and a modest amount of TV after supper, I spent several afternoon hours adding to my short story turned into a novel. It's still yielding surprises as a write. Clare wants to read it, so I have sent her a sharing link, and it's not nearly ready to print out a draft for correction.

Today, I spent even longer hours being absorbed with writing. Fortunately, I remembered early enough that it's Jasmine's birthday. She's 13 today, so I Whatsapp-ed her a happy birthday audio greeting, and after lunch had an audio reply!

I walked into town while it wasn't raining this afternoon, to inspect the latest technology offers to see if there's anything new of interest. There wasn't. The rain held off so I walked back as well, and took a few lovely sunset photos of the Taff, glowing pink with reflections off the clouds.

The bus station construction site is showing more signs of activity now, presumably laying drains and preparing to dig foundations. The last vestige of the former Saint David's House building, a solid concrete access ramp at the West end, in front of the Media Wales building is finally being rooted out, in readiness for laying the foundations of whatever is to be built on that site over the next couple of years, to complete the Central Square redevelopment. I don't know why it's taken so long to get started. It's a different company, different lease I suppose, but it may be due to the requirement to let archaeologists examine the site before work begins.

Making space in the city centre

Monday was an unmemorable routine domestic day, quiet and uneventful. Today, I did the week's big grocery shopping and cooked, while Clare was out at her study group, then went into town in the afternoon, to take photos of the St David's House demolition site. All the remaining scaffolding has been dismantled now and if there's anything left of the ground floor shops,  at the west end, it's now masked by the blue hoarding around the site. Only the access ramp is still standing. 

The largest and most powerful of the demolition machines has gone, and the three machines which remain are either loading rubble into lorries, or being used skilfully to sort and gather together metal components from windows, ceilings and stair rails for ready for transport to the recycling depot. In the meanwhile, a levelled and cleared area at the east end of the site is receiving lorry loads of topsoil for use in landscaping the open space, while in the middle section, big drainage pipes are being laid. 

The building was stripped of internal furnishings in the first two months of the year, then the heavy machinery moved in and started gnawing the building apart at the beginning of March. In just four months the levelling of the site and initial preparations for landscaping the area will be complete. It's all happened without serious disruption to the procession of buses around the periphery of the site, and afforded some interesting if not spectacular moments for people waiting for buses to Penarth and Barry on the opposite side of Wood Street.

Wood Street days

This morning I had a clinic visit, and did the heavy part of this week's shopping, as re-stocking a few bulk items was necessary. In the afternoon, I went into town and took photos of the St David's House demolition, which is almost complete. The entirety of the new HMRC building is now visible, and part of its next door neighbour, the Media Wales offices. Once the site is fully cleared there will be 150 yards open public space in front of these prestigious buildings. 

The place north of Wood Street, called Temperance Town was once a slummy Victorian residential area, near the newly built Cardiff General Station. It was on land freed by the diversion of the river Taff, according to a plan devised by Brunel. The wartime blitz took its toll, and remaining houses were razed by commercial redevelopment in the early sixties. Near the river on the train station side, was a fine 'Arts and Crafts' Tractarian church, St Dyfrig's designed by J D Sedding, built 1895-1920. 

I remember seeing it as a student when returning home by train from Bristol. By that time its congregation was tiny, and its Vicar doubled as a student chaplain. It was declared redundant and demolished in 1969, the site having been acquired during construction of an improved road bridge over the Taff. All the sixties buildings are now gone, replaced by the Central Square redevelopment which I have been photo documenting for the past four years. Three complete make-overs of this area in the past hundred and sixty years, and such a wealth of forgotten stories of Cardiff's working class and in this instance, the church's mission to them. Wood Street also had a big Congregational Church, and three schools serving the population.

Photo mission accomplished, yet again, I took a 63 bus out to Danescourt for a bereavement visit in preparation for a funeral next Monday, and walked back to Llandaff to catch a bus rather than wait 25 minutes at the nearest bus stop.

I then had a second funeral preparation to deal with, for a service on Tuesday next, but this time by phone call only, and no prior meeting. This is usually due to physical distance, but on this occasion it was more a matter of distance between the next of kin and the departed. As a result, wasn't easy to acquire any learn anything concrete about the life of the departed to use in the service. It's necessary to accept the trust granted to do the right thing, whatever the circumstances and the story that is or isn't to be told.

Lucky moments

This morning, Clare went off early to the gym, and I did some of the weekly shopping on the way to an early clinic appointment. After lunch and a siesta, I caught the 61 bus into town intending to walk to the Bay Wetland nature reserve along the Taff Embankment footpath. This took me along Wood Street to start with, and gave me an opportunity to take a few photos of St David's House demolition, now about 90% complete with three large machines working, two of them on site clearance, and one using its thirty metre long arm to tear down the building's reinforced concrete structure. 

Work had come to a halt temporarily. I identified over the traffic the distinctive but strange sound of a scaffolder working at loosening joints with a power tool. During demolition, building remnants are enclosed by a protective framework of scaffolding covered in plastic sheeting, but how scaffolding is taken down as the work proceeded had never occurred to me. Then, I spotted movement at the top corner of the remaining structure, and aimed my camera upwards in that direction. To my surprise and delight a little later, I discovered I had photos of a scaffolder at work in the most vulnerable place you can think of, close to the pneumatic iron jaws of the demolition machine. Amazing luck at at distance of 120 feet. I can only hope he gets paid well! 

My walk to the Bay Wetland nature reserve was rewarded with the sign of a grebe carrying its new chick on its back - a rather fuzzy photo - and a coot with three chicks exploring the extent of their first home in one of the ponds.

Needless to say, it was well nigh impossible to get all three chicks and parent into frame at the same time, let alone in sharp focus. Just glad I caught a glimpse of this moment another year.

   

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.

  

Without a vision...

Yesterday, I had a late clinic appointment, so I went into town and took more photos of the St Davids House demolition. A big bucket excavator was at work clearing the mound of rubble and loading it into a lorry to take off to landfill. The site area is too confined for the demolition machine to work at the same time. Lorries park tightly in a cordoned access area where the pavement used to be, next to the site, and buses turn part the site a couple of meters away on a road used in the routine city centre bus turn around. There's scant margin of error for drivers and operators involved in this dance of heavy vehicles.

This morning I celebrated the Eucharist at St Catherine's and straight afterwards was picked up and driven to Thornhill Crem for the funeral of a 92 year old lady, attended by just half a dozen. She was a young back office clerk during the war, helping to keep the airmen operational in the Women's Royal Air Force, so I wore my Royal British Legion chaplain's scarf to show my respect.

Parliament still fails to agree a plan to leave the European Union. As another deadline extension is reached, another delay is being sought. Some eurosceptic politicians and media brexit advocates are starting to admit to misgivings about making it happen, because of the complexity of the process and its impact. Polls indicate that a majority now favour remaining in the EU. As knowledge of the real consequences of the rupture is absorbed, I believe people are realising how misled they were by simplistic rhetoric, downright lies and a failure to envision future relationships between the EU and Britain after brexit.

A former EU diplomat on the radio reflected on the success of the separation of Czech and Slovak republics into separate nations. This was done swiftly and efficiently without disturbing incident and both countries remain EU members. Having acknowledged the peoples' call to undo the legacy of a state created by the secession of two distinct regions from the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918, the 

negotiations were preceded by discussions about what both regions valued about their heritage and wanted to take with them into the future. 

In other words, they began from a vision of the future, not from a present sense of grievance generated by things they resented and rejected. If only Britain had been so constructive, envisaging a post brexit future! But maybe it's impossible anyway. The European project was born from a desire to create a shared environment in which post-war reconciliation and peace-making could flourish. I cannot understand why this hasn't featured in the brexit rhetoric of the past few years. The persistent idea that 'we won the war' unaided is a fantasy, an illusion. We are as we ever were, 'members of one another'.

  

Digital bemusement

I had a clinic visit yesterday morning and was seen by one of the regular nurses who's been on leave for a couple of weeks, so she observed a significant difference in my wound condition, and hoped this bode well for Thursday's surgery. It's thanks to her and a dozen or so of her colleagues treating me since Boxing Day last that I've recovered this well with no significant setback. What lies ahead is far from certain, and depends on Mrs Cornish the surgeon.

After siesta, another walk around Pontcanna fields with my DSLR. It was colder and quite cloudy with intermittent rain, which made for interesting landscape shots. A quiet evening without telly.

This morning, I celebrated the Eucharist with seven others at St Catherine's. We talked a little about the interviews for the Team Rector job, due to take place this time next week. We've no idea about who the candidates are, only that a lot of interest has been shown in the job.

Somewhat belatedly, I saw a belated April Fool's spoof article in my newsfeed. It was a clever satire on the common style of digital camera review journalism, featuring a Minolta Dimage V from 1996. Its range of features was described enthusiastically and critiqued as if it was a recent state of the art camera, and it actually made amusing reading. Talking of newsfeeds, over this last week or so I've noticed a sharp increase in the number of articles in Spanish from Malaga news sources. It's really useful for improving my reading comprehension ability, as well as interesting, and I get reports of things going on in the city, including news of Semana Santa preparations. 

Why this should suddenly start to happen now makes me wonder what's going on. I went to Malaga for a last locum stint there at the beginning of March last year, and at that time began to get local Spanish news articles displayed. This stopped some time after I returned home at Pentecost. Strange to say but I didn't get that much contextual news in French any time I was in Montreux. And now I'm at home, and not in either place. What's this all about I wonder? 

Late afternoon, I went into the city centre to take photos of the progress in demolishing St David's House. Comparing these with ones taken last Friday is interesting. Superficially it seems as if little progress has been made in the three working days since then. Hollowing out the interior has to be done very carefully, before the external wall twenty metres from the brand new HMRC building can be pulled down into the void created. Being pushed outwards and collapsing would be an expensive disaster in the making. I imagine the demolition experts wishing they could have started the job a good year earlier, while the HMRC building was still no more than a neighbouring steel skeleton. Timing on such a major project is so complex and very difficult to get perfect in such a tight space. 

Ashley called as I was taking photos, and as he was also in town and nearby, we went to John Lewis' for a cup of tea and an hour's catch up chat before heading home in time for the Archers, supper and early bed, so I can be up in time for a very early breakfast before fasting for surgery, and not for Lent this year!

Match day in town

A Saturday afternoon walk into town with Clare, while the Wales v Scotland rugby match was on, leaving the streets relatively quiet. She wanted to buy some new boots, I just wanted exercise. Then  tea in the top floor restaurant at John Lewis before walking back home, having failed to identify if or from where buses were running, just as the match ended, and the streets began to fill with happy Wales supporters, going out to celebrate.

It was dark when we passed along Wood Street. The new buildings are all lit internally. and on the east side of number three Central Square, soon to be fully functional as the headquarters of BBC Wales, a large Boots store has opened, and a Greggs. There's now an alleyway running past them with the construction site of the long awaited new transport hub (aka Bus Station). Little seems to be happening there. I'm not sure if a final plan has been agreed that contractors can work on.

The evening's viewing saw a new Scandie crimmie on BBC Four, series seven of 'Beck', which I find enjoyable watching. It deals frequently with topical issues. This episode dealt with two issues; one the impact of Islamist terrorism on a Turkish migrant family, another was working in retirement.  His quirky sociable neighbour is back. Now they while away their idleness playing chess together.

Beck quit the force at the end of the last series. This time he is in the throes of trying to settle into a new lifestyle when he's called on to advise the team tracking a terror threat, since Beck knows the suspect's family from times past for other reasons. It was lovely to see former colleagues teasing him over his new status. As expected, his experience and knowledge is instrumental in solving the case. Then, he's invited to rejoin the police, but not in his former role - he was always happiest working within a team - but in a more senior supervisory role. Does he really want it? Will he, won't he? We wait until next week to find out.

Photo catchup

Clare heard that the Council's Bute Park plant nursery was having a sale, so we walked over there at the end of the morning and purchased a few more additions to her delightfully colourful flower beds and then had lunch in the small courtyard cafe which is at the public entrance to the interpretation centre and greenhouses. I was glad to have taken along my Sony Alpha 68, as the wealth of colour displayed in the array of bedding plant trays was spectacular. My photos can be seen here.

Later in the afternoon I took the bus to town, to buy a lens filter, with some birthday present money, having discovered that I have three 55mm lenses but only two filters. I also took with me my Lumix LX5, little used these days, except that for the past three years I have kept it in service to record the Central Square building redevelopment, taking advantage of its fairly wide angle lens. Last used back in February, and probably charged in January before that, I was surprised to discover that the battery still had enough power to shoot twenty odd pictures, and still only display as half full. Perhaps this is because it doesn't have GPS, NFC, Bluetooth or Wi-fi built in for sending photos to another device. It's a plain digital compact camera, robust with a touch of sophistication about it. 

The only tower crane now in the Central Square construction sites serves the HMRC building, whose steel structure has grown very rapidly during the three months I've been away. When I left, only the cores of the two lift shafts were nearing completion. The exterior structure of the new buildings on the south side of Wood Street is now finished, but the entire site is still cordoned off, as paving has to be laid and entrances completed. All that remains now if for a start to be made on the bus station, intended to occupy the remaining empty site in front of the station. These photos can be seen here

Catch-up viewing language lesson

Feeling somewhat better on Friday, I worked on my Sunday sermon, worked on next Tuesday's funeral and then went into town in the afternoon, for a catch-up meeting with Ashley. On the way there I walked around the Central Square development site and took photos It's ten weeks since I was last here and the major visual change is the extent of the external glazing of the buildings. On a bright but cloudy day, the reflections look very decorative. Not so wonderful on one of Cardiff's many low grey cloud days, I suspect.

This afternoon, Clare and I walked our usual circuit along the Taff through Bute Park and back. It was pleasantly warm, and there was an open air concert going on in the car park of the SWALEC stadium, with a wild sounding jazz big band playing.

In the evening I decided to catch up watching the latest BBC Four serialised euro-crime, a Spanish production called 'Sé quién eres', (I know who you are), rather than drop in and watch the most recent double episode. I got through four of the eight published episodes in one go, as not only was it an engaging story line with good acting, but to my amazement, my last couple of years of hard work using the Duo Lingo language app is now paying off in terms of being able to follow dialogue, and see how it relates to the sub-titles. It was like a four hour lesson in colloquial speech. I learned a lot about how common phrases and interjections are actually used. It was most rewarding.

The plot concerns a tough ruthless well connected lawyer who loses his memory in a car accident and finds afterwards that his car is a crime scene, and he is chief suspect in the disappearance of his student aged niece. He is totally reliant on what his family and colleagues tell him about what kind of person he is. Finds find this leaves him feeling unhappy with himself. He no longer wants to be that kind of person. Yet he has to recover a sense of himself and his memory to defend himself against allegations which promise to ruin his life. 

The thought provoking story of how this happens is convoluted and interesting, and the theme of family loyalty runs through it, as well as that of corrupt practices in the legal profession. I think it's set in Barcelona. Thankfully the discourse is in Castilian rather than Catalan, or I would have far less chance of following it and getting so much out of it. That's the first time I've watched any TV or video since I went to Malaga, two months ago. Amazing how one can live without entertainment when everyday life on the street is so interesting to be part of.

Central Square Redevelopment Progress

I went to St German's to celebrate the 'Class Mass' this morning. Church administrator Angela tripped over her dog, fell downstairs and broke her shoulder yesterday. We prayed for her, aware that she was being operated upon at the same time. Afterwards, it was pleasing to hear reports that the church hall wi-fi network now covers the entire building. That gives me added pleasure.

I walked into town and back, late afternoon, to visit Central Square and take photos of the construction site. It's over a month since my last visit. All the lift shafts have been completed, and most of the steel building framework. The first giant plates of armoured glass that will cover most of the exterior walls of the building are being installed on the facade which faces Cardiff Central Station. Other photos taken  of the site today are here.

A few days ago, I found a video sequence of views of the whole development on the Media Wales website, showing that the site reserved for building a new bus station, will have high rise apartment blocks above it, extending above the current roof-scape of Lower St Mary Street. I'm not sure I liked what I saw, but it will undoubtedly be lucrative, and will result in continuing growth of the city centre population. The sad thing about this is, many of those who become residents, other than those staying in hotels, will be students or people who keep an apartment in town as a secondary residence, and live mainly elsewhere. Not exactly a recipe for building new community.

In the course of my walk down to Central Square, and back through Bute Park, I picked up sixteen items of litter, most on the way in, very few in the park. That's over 140 bottles, cans and paper cups picked up on daily walks since last Wednesday. 

The sun began to set as I walked through Bute Park. I heard more varied birdsong in the woodland stretch along the Taff than I have until now this year, and not surprisingly, with only a fortnight until Spring Equinox.

Redevelopment progress in Central Square

Yesterday was a cold and rainy day, enough to sap motivation to go for my usual walk, so I just stayed in and pottered about. An email notification of pending water rates bill from Dwr Cymru prompted me to go on-line and register to get access to our account on-line. It wasn't quite as straightforward as it might have been, and I had to ring the help line to check about the entering the name of our account into a database field which seemed reluctant to accept what I entered from the account holder's name line of the bill address. Once sorted, I was able to download a pdf of the bill to examine.

When I mentioned to Clare that I'd done this, she complained, saying that she'd rather receive a paper copy, and then pay on line, something she's used to doing, perhaps even more than me. I returned to the Dwr Cymru website and discovered that in signing up for web access to the account (aka eBilling), I had lost the possibility of paper billing. Oh dear! So then I proceeded to de-register from using the online account, and when asked to explain why as part of this routine, stated I needed both and, not an either/or option..

This morning, by co-incidence, the water rates bill arrived in the post. It was already on its way when I was registering and de-registering yesterday. Hopefully this won't have disrupted the paper billing sequence in future. When you only get two water rate bills a year, it's easy to forget when they are due. I may get an email reminder, but Clare doesn't. If I was away when it was due, it might not get paid if she wasn't aware it was due.

Later in the morning I walked into town, with the aim of returning some surplus equipment to the office, and to take some photos of the Central Square Redevelopment construction site. It's seven weeks since I last did so. Work had just been started on demolishing the four storey row of shops and offices flanking Central Square on the east side. Now, all but a fraction the southern corner of the row has been cleared, exposing the car park behind, itself due for demolition, some time soon.

Amazingly, two tall concrete lift towers have sprung out of the ground, the excavated car park has been enclosed at ground level, and in separate areas of the site, two large skeletal steel structures have been erected. Very impressive indeed. I circumnavigated the site and took twice as many photos as usual, but can't make up for seven weeks of absence. Just as well that I don't have any travel plans for next year, and won't make any until Clare and I can plan to travel again together.

I had a wander around the shops for a while, looking for possible Black Friday sale bargains, but saw nothing that really tempted me at all. I'd quite like a smaller Windows laptop with a hi-res screen, as the work one I have is really too heavy and bulky to take in a rucksack. Most of those on offer are not the right size, and the screens are just not what I need for photo editing, and the ones worth considering are twice the price I am prepared to pay. If Toshiba can so a hi-res Chromebook for under £300, why can so few Windows PC manufacturers do the same for under £400. My other complaint about the new generation of portables is that so many of them have the battery hard wired and sealed in the case, and thus the device dies when the battery does. It's the same with phones too. Built in redundancy - it's the curse of consumerism and on the environment.

Having completed a tour of most of the shops I wanted to visit, I began to feel bored with shopping and headed for home, whereupon it started to rain and get colder, so instead of walking for another half an hour to get home, I waited for a 61 bus. During the journey, the heavens opened, sending forth a torrent of hail as well as water. It had just about stopped by the time I got off the bus, but everywhere was briefly covered with a white slushy blanket. By the time it got dark, the temperature had dropped just enough to cover the cars with frost. Winter is certainly on its way.
   

Ascension and Election day

There were fifteen of us for the Ascension day Eucharist at St John's this morning. I enjoyed being able to walk down to church in the sunshine. The really cold weather seems to be passing, and it seems more like spring at last. The colours generated by bursting young leaves are just amazing to see. After lunch I spent a few hours in the office, putting an accounts sheet in order, and adding to the inventory database I created last week. There's a long way to go however, to get everything in order before it's all distributed to users. Then there were minutes and agenda to prepare and issue for the next BCRP Board meeting. I won't be able to attend as it takes place the evening before we leave on our Danube cruise, but I am confident the meeting will be in good hands with Julie as scribe.

Voting for the Welsh Assembly Government takes place today, amongst other things, so the news seems to be a relentless grind of political chatter of no consequence. We voted postally a couple of weeks ago, so there was no outing to a polling station after tea for us, just a quiet evening, editing photos of the Central Square redevelopment and uploading them. You'll find the collection here.  I've been taking photos from just three or four vantage points around the site, so many of them appear much the same, apart from weather changes and equipment movements. Over six months, however, looking carefully at the centre of the pictures you see the ground level dropping piecemeal.

The huge 7 metre basement area excavation is nearly finished now, and the cleared ground is becoming a forest of reinforced concrete rods, prior to the introduction of the steel beams for the framework of the buildings. It's amazing the speed at which half a million tons for earth and stones has been dug out and removed from this area since January, regardless of the weather too. Very impressive organisation in the midst of a busy area of town.

Keeping track

In between routine tasks, I must have spent an hour on the phone this morning discussing forward plans with Ashley. We cover a lot of ground in these exchanges, and they are backed up by exchanges of text messages, which is just as well, since he is so busy we don't get much time face to face. Recently, I started tinkering with the Evernote app, which comes installed on phones and is there on some of our recent PCs as well, and have now started to use it in earnest to keep track of various issues we need to stay on top of. 

Having developed our office file system from scratch I navigate through it much easier than Ashley. He will sometimes call and ask me to find and email a file to him as he's too busy to hunt, or can't recall a near enough file name to benefit from available search facilities. I've realised lately that when I start a record on a particular subject in Evernote or OneNote, I can attach copies of relevant files to the note for easy access. I guess I tried software of this kind years ago but didn't stick with it because it was slow and crash prone. With faster internet speeds and search facilities, making Cloud storage that much easier and reliable, this kind of free-form database is much more of an asset. 

We've been using OneNote to keep notes on subscriber accounts since last autumn, as it was the first app to offer a solution to the limits of text entry into a highly structured database of user accounts. It's less resilient and more limited than Evernote in my opinion. If I could swap data to the latter easily, I think I would - something to look into when I have time on my hands, maybe? 

When eventually I did go into the office, mid afternoon, I called at the Central Square building site and took some photos on my way, interesting to see the ever deepening hole being excavated for a car park basement, on top of which two buildings will eventually sit, as a lorry dispatcher told me. There was one simply job to do, updating and preparing notification templates, drawing upon a file first created the purpose five years ago. It was a slow dull laborious task, which took me ages as I found it hard to retain focus on so many similar documents in which there was little to change. I didn't expect it to take me quite so long, and it was quarter to seven when I arrived home for supper.

SIM satisfaction.

I celebrated Wednesday's 'class Mass' at St German's, then returned home and cooked lunch, before taking Clare to the train for Coventry. She's looking after Rhiannon over the weekend, while Kath and Anto are gigging far up north in Cumbria. Apart from a couple of hours watching episodes of Spooks and Happy Valley on catch up TV, the rest of the day was devoted either to Lent blog writing or preparing material for the office. Somehow, even when I have time to myself and only me to look after, I still end up getting to bed later than intended.

I woke and breakfasted earlier than usual this morning, and having had less sleep than I really needed, I spent the morning doing very little, quietly, with the occasional doze in the armchair thrown in. One nice thing about being retired is not feeling guilty about such treasured indolence. I spent the afternoon in the office, by way of a visit to the Central Square building site, to take more photos of the construction work on the foundations, now under way.

I chatted with a lorry dispatcher outside a gate on Wood Street. He told me proudly that he'd seen 143 lorries of excavated subsoil off-site the day before. These are big vehicles, and must be carrying a 20-30 tonne load, so that's about 3,000 tonnes a day. The basement car park will be four and a half metres below ground level, 150 by 250m surface area. The weather as pretty rotten lately, but I was surprised later to discover it's over three weeks since I last visited the site to snap the progress.

After a wasted trip to the bank failing to satisfy all the requirements for signatory changes to the BCRP Board account, I spent another hour and a half on MS Publisher in the office, the set off to St German's for Stations of the Cross at seven. On the way, I called in the EE shop in Grand Arcade to top up my personal PAYG phone, and was told that I needed to exchange my old Orange SIM card for an EE SIM card, as before too long it would cease to be functional, now that the merger of companies at technical and administrative levels is moving to completion. As I had ten minutes to spare, I waited around in the shop until a PAYG SIM could be issued and top up payment taken.

Since Orange UK became EE, about three years ago, I have been unable to log into my phone account to check balance or top up as the Orange site denied all knowledge of me and my phone number or email address, although I could still top up by other methods. Also my present phone, about two and a half years old, has always needed to acquire the network manually, except when I'm abroad, where an Orange SIM still works automatically.

As soon as I returned home after Stations of the Cross, I swapped the SIM cards and found it worked automatically first time, perfectly. Moreover, I was able to download the EE mobile phone app, to enable me to check my balance and top up on-line if I wish to do so. Nice to have the phone working properly at last.

Site Progress

I enjoyed a quiet morning at home. An email from Julie about some documents I couldn't locate didn't even mention the new PC she's working on. No news is good news. When I arrived in the office early afternoon, there were a few issues, however. Some file handling defaults needed changing. The .docx plug-in for Word, and Javascript for Libre Office Base had to be downloaded and installed to resume the status quo. 

Writing here about the complexities of setting up the key machine in the office system on which our administration depends gives me the basis of a proper check list to consult, if ever I have to repeat this again. Because our organisation has evolved, we've never had to make a batch purchase and installation of equipment. Everything is piecemeal, and used on the basis that as long as the user has confidence in it and it isn't broken, it stays in use. Like our seven year old Dell lazer printer.

Last night after I left, Ashley had quietly worked at sliding file cabinets around, setting up a table as the basis of a workspace for Ian, and moving several to create an enclosure for his workspace. There's now only a heavy cupboard and another cabinet to shift, and the new office area is complete. Monday, I'll have my hot-desking area back again.

Once the troubleshooting was done, I decided to quit the office while it was still light and walk over to Central Square to take some photos of the construction site from by usual vantage points. In the past 19 days since my last inspection, there's been lots of progress, despite all the rain. Portakabin units for site workers and managers have now all moved to the south east corner of the site, nearest the train station, and are two storeys high. The pile drilling machine has almost completed its tour of the new building perimeter, leaving a trail of steel rods protruding from a long trench of concrete, and excavators are now at work on sub-soil removal, presumably to create a basement. Interesting times.

After supper we settled down together to watch the Pixar cartoon movie called 'Up', and much enjoyed it. More of an elderly adult show than a family movie, with so many oldies jokes and references which make sense when you're past retirement and getting decrepit. I must say, however, that I do resonate with the dream of having adventures in old age, as often as possible. But there's nothing new about that in my life.

Central Square redevelopment - the long view

It's taken me a while to get around to it, but at last I've uploaded the photos I've been taking over the past six months of redevelopment work in Central Square, the area in front of Cardiff Central railway station. You can find them here. The area used to house the city's main bus and coach station, and the east side will, in a few years from now, eventually house the next generation bus and coach terminal, once Marland House and the car park occupying that site have been demolished, and built over. This site is interesting from a historical perspective.

With a somewhat longer memory than contemporary planners and developers, I recall from my time as Vicar of the City Centre Parish Church, that this is the site which, prior to its present unprepossessing edifices dating back to the 1960s, was the crowded site of older buildings, business and residential, dating back to the early nineteenth century. These were on the ancient water-front of the Taff, later re-routed in the heyday of Victorian expansion. They took over land which from the eleventh to the eighteenth century was the churchyard of the original St Mary's Priory, planted by the Benedictine Monks of Tewkesbury, right on the edge of the river where trade ships from around the Severn Estuary and further afield unloaded their wares. 

St Mary's Priory, on the present site of the Prince of Wales pub on the corner of St Mary Street and Wood Street, was reduced to ruins due to flooding, and a new church at the north end of Bute Street was built to replace it in the 1850s. As the riverside area was so prone to flooding, the course of the Taff through the coastal flood plain was straightened and acquired embankments to reduce the risk, much as we see it today. I wonder who benefited from this cemetery land-grab, which led to the Victorian reconfiguration of the ancient port of Cardiff into the familiar layout of today's townscape.

In a couple of years it'll all look different again. I understand the new BBC Wales headquarters is to be built on the old bus station site, now being cleared. A new office block nears completion next to the site on the west side, where once stood a brutalist 1960's County Council building, and prior to that St Dyfrig's Parish Church, next to the road bridge across the river into Tudor Street. 

St Dyfrig's was a Parish with a small dense urban footprint - a fine costly building, someone's vanity project maybe? The site was compulsorily purchased for redevelopment in the name of social progress, and few contested this. Again I wonder, who benefited? There are few left alive now who worshipped there in its last days. It was still standing when I was a youth. I know its last Vicar Bruce Davies, who was University Chaplain. I recall how each year it hosted an outdoor nativity scene behind the church railings segregating the building from the street. When we instituted the same kind of arrangement at St John's City Parish Church, thanks to the City Council a dozen years ago, St Dyfrig's was in my mind, with good reason.

These days, Tabernacle Baptist Church on the Hayes hosts a live re-telling of the Nativity Story several times daily for visitors to the city centre. It's a massive voluntary enterprise, driven by Christian vision and good-will, reaching far beyond the simple figurines behind church railings, accessible to passers by and vandals alike. The St David centre commercial redevelopment has made possible a regular throughput of hundreds of thousands of shoppers to the city centre. I wonder how many will be touched in some way by this energetic contemporary witness, very much a response to the challenges of our very secularised day and age?