Tulip-fest in Dyffryn Gardens

Another grey start to the day, though a little warmer overnight. Clare made pancakes for breakfast again, and then late morning we drove out to Dyffryn Gardens for our first visit of the year. Cloud over Cardiff turned into thin mist over the fields of the Vale of Glamorgan, as we drove through St Nicholas, but by the time we reached Dyffryn the mist had evaporated, the sun came through the clouds and it became warmer. The house has been completely closed since last autumn and is wreathed in scaffolding for the exterior stonework to be cleaned, repaired and for weatherproofing work. Nevertheless, there were over a hundred cars parked, and lost of family groups out enjoying the arboretum and gardens. Both cafes were busy too. So good to see it's as popular as ever. Our membership card still says we're family members (accompanied children under sixteen get in free), although Clare has cancelled the family part, as our grandchildren are both over sixteen, and sadly there's no prospect of having any other young children to visit with us.

Sections of the garden are still closed to tackle issues caused by dominant plant root systems restricting the growth potential of other species. The beds at the front of the house are crammed with dozens of tulip varieties, and it's a spectacular riot of colour.

We had a light lunch in the garden cafe (at the far side of the house in the photo above) and walked around the grounds for an hour. Clare and I got separated, and I waited for her on a seat beneath a tree where I was joined by a robin, which sat on the arm of the seat and stared at me with indignation before flying off, a ritual repeated several times. Robins are very territorial! On its last visit I got a couple of decent photos at about a metre away from the camera. I don't think I've ever taken a photo of a bird at such short range.

Both of us were feeling tired by this time, so we drove home and had a short siesta to recover. Then I went out again for a circuit of the park before cooking supper, with a sauce of butter beans, onions and mushrooms with vegan chorizo for Clare and the same sauce with tomatoes added plus half of the Mercadona chorizo I brought home with me from Fuengirola. Delicious! 

I spent the rest of the evening watching more episodes of 'Non me lasciare'. Quite apart from its setting in contemporary Venice, and romantic relationships with its origins in the city, it tells the story of an investigation into an organised criminal gang with paedophile perpetrators and clients, operating on the 'dark web' and gives an interesting insight into the kind of teamwork necessary to get the job done. The speed and efficiency with which the technology works does stretch the imagination a little, however.

Cricket lovely cricket

As Clare's back pain is happily diminishing at last, I proposed a trip to Dyffryn Gardens at breakfast this morning. By eleven we were on our way there, and the weather was just right. All the trees are now in full leaf and the arboretum with all its colourful diversity looks magnificent. Since our last visit in January this year, more work has been done on sections of the garden, and they too are full of colour. I took over sixty photos. You can see them here.

There are some sections that are closed off and left fallow with plants that will fix nitrogen in the soil and help to loosen it after years of compaction. The healthier the soil becomes, the less prone it will be to harbouring pests and colonising weeds that spread in poor exhausted ground. This way, soil can be regenerated without using fertiliser and readied for re-planting with flowers and bushes after two years of rest. It's much more wholesome process than using manufacture fertiliser and weed killer. We stayed until lunchtime, had a drink and a snack and then came home so that Clare could rest.

Then I went for a walk around Llandaff Fields. Three cricket matches were going on at the same time, and yesterday evening when I was out, the practice nets were occupied, and there was a large group of children on the adjacent pitch being taught how to play cricket by several adults. It's wonderful to see such enthusiasm for the amateur game.

In his gastro-tourist series of programme, Rick Stein was in Cadiz tonight, an amazing ancient city on the Atlantic facing section of coastal Spain, said to have been founded by the Phoenicians some three thousand years ago. It was all about the seafood dishes made possible by the diversity of fish caught and landed there. Some of the recipes he extolled I think I could make from memory. It's an hour and a half journey to get there from Estepona, so who knows, I may be able to visit there while I'm on locum duty. I told my friend Roy Thomas who now lives in Madrid about my forthcoming sojourn in Spain and he's promising to come and visit me, We were nearer to each other when I was in Ibiza and he in Alicante, but lock-down prevented us from getting together.

After this, another episode of Swedish crimmie 'Beck' about a hostage situation in a TV studio involving Alex, Beck's deputy chief. Although his murder squad team was ordered not get involved in the situation their behind-the-scenes swift researching of facts about people involved prevented a massacre even through it still ended tragically. A successful resolution marred by a failure, and as Alex says at the very end, it's the failures that haunt you. That makes sense to me.

Visitor time

Tuesday afternoon, our friend Saralee arrived from Seattle to stay. Autumn, two years ago, she and her husband Mark came over and we spent a week together in the Llyn peninsula. This week Mark is lecturing in Vienna, and next week, he's at a conference in London, a good enough reason for both to make the trip to Europe. After she'd settled in, we walked around Pontcanna Fields. The village of tents to accommodate surplus visitors for this weekend's UEFA Champion's Cup final continues to grow, and the physical security cordon around the city centre and even across Bute Park speaks volumes about the disruption to come this weekend for pediestrians and car drivers alike. When did citizens ever get to vote on things like this?

Wednesday morning, I slipped away to St German's for a couple of hours to celebrate the weekday Mass for the last time before the interregnum ends. As it's half term, there were no children in church yesterday morning, so I celebrated in the Lady Chapel with half a dozen regulars - quite appropriate as today is the feast of the Visitation of the BVM to Elizabeth. Afterwards, we walked the Taff Trail to Llandaff Cathedral and had lunch in a cafe in the village. It's always a pleasure to take visitors there, and share the experience of a place which has so much meaning for me, from teenage years through to ordination and beyond. 

Thursday morning, I walked to St John's to celebrate the Eucharist for half a dozen people. Clare took Saralee to Dyffryn Gardens after lunch. I walked to Llandaff North for a dental check up, and returned home with an unexpected new filling, having met Pavel the newest member of the practice dental team. As I stood at the bus stop opposite the surgery, I was surprised to be hailed by Paul, the driver of one of Pidgeon's funeral limos, on his return trip from the cremation ceremony for ex-First Minister Rhodri Morgan, whose public funeral was held yesterday at the Senedd in Cardiff Bay. AS he was on his way back to the funeral home at the top end of the Parish, he gave me a lift to Canton Cross, enabling me to go straight into the city centre from there to meet Ashley for an update on all the security preparations for the weekend's big game. As ever, it seems that information distribution is patchy and not all those recruited to keep the city centre safe and secure are adequately briefed. Sadly, that's nothing new.
   

  

Houses visited and remembered

The weather was mild enough today to encourage us to visit Dyffryn House and Gardens for the first time this year. We had a light lunch in the cafe before entering and watched blue tits feeding at the bird table near where we were seated. In the grounds, plenty of snowdrops were out, an occasional early primrose too, but none of the daffodils were yet blossoming, just appearing as shoots yet to bud. It's that much colder for them to develop out here in open countryside than it is in the urbanised coastal plain of Cardiff. The grounds have been tidied up as far as possible after the fall. All is quietly waiting to emerge, buds are appearing on trees and bushes, earlier than usual.

Inside the house is where changes have taken place since our autumn visit. The main drawing room and the library have now been furnished elegantly with suitable period pieces, now that the restoration of the walls and windows is complete. It's impressive, and the enthusiasm of the volunteer guides is also impressive. It's a grand labour of love, this landmark place in the Vale of Glamorgan, of which many are justly proud.

Owain came over, both to see us to visit friends in the evening and stay overnight. With a Sunday sermon readied on Friday, there was time to enjoy cooking supper and relaxing with another episode of Young Montalbano, in which he lunches with his vineyard owning Father in his huge barn of a bottega. The traditional wine barrels in the background setting of the scene caught my eye, about three metres in diameter, and five metres in length on their side. They reminded me of the large ones I saw for the first time forty years ago in the bottega at Palazzola, at that time, the English College summer residence, south of Rome, above lake Albano. We were staying there as ecumenical guests of a local Catholic parish community that hired the fourteenth century convent buildings for group summer holidays. The site had been in use as a dwelling place since the days of ancient Rome, and the cellars, hollowed out of the volcanic tufa dated back that far. Happy memories of summers when the girls were toddlers.

Afternoon in the Vale

This afternoon, we drove Owain out to Coed Hills near St Hilary in the Vale of Glamorgan where he'd been invited to a humanist wedding celebration outdoors in the grounds of the Coed Hills Rural Artspace. It's a mile from the nearest bus stop, and buses are infrequent, so we offered to give him a lift and pick him up afterwards. We then went to Dyffryn Gardens, had a picnic lunch, then spent a few hours strolling around the gorunds, enjoying the different seasonal look of areas both cultivated and natural. There's always something fresh to catch the eye there, so we never tire of visiting.

We returned to Coed Hills at the appointed time, but the wedding banquet was running late, so it was nearly seven by the time we departed with Owain. Yet, it was a pleasure just to sit in the parked car in a field listening and looking out for birds in the hedgerow in front of us. As we made our way back along the A48 to Cardiff, the Harvest 'supermoon' was in clear view above the horizon. I'd have loved an opportunity to stop and take a picture, but there was no place where I could both see the eastern horizon and safely park the car. Never mind, it's the 'blood moon' eclipse tomorrow night, provided I have the stamina to stay up.

  

Vale vineyard hunt

Another afternoon spent on building the new website in the office on Friday, with the sound of rain hammering on the roof while we worked. No question of going out and taking photographs. That will have to wait a while longer

This afternoon we went out to Dyffryn Gardens for a walk in the last hour before it closed. Skinny looking crocuses and snowdrops are out, and the first daffodil shoots are just breaking ground. Most of the flower beds look bare, clean and tidy, ready for the first planting of the season. 

We went on from there along the A48 to find out how to get to Llantriddyd, where I'm engaged to celebrate the Eucharist and preach tomorrow. We took a wrong turning, which led us down a narrow lane to Llancarfan, then back to our destination by a round about route. Llantriddyd church is 12th century, restored in the 19th, set in a churchyard bedecked with snowdrops. My friend Derek Belcher is to become priest in charge of this grouping of parishes when he retires from Cowbridge benefice next month.

Next to the churchyard is the ruin of a mediaeval mansion, one of the Aubrey family's historic possessions, abandoned since the early nineteenth century.

There are a few houses in the vicinity, but these are mostly hidden by trees, so the church presents a solitary demeanour. Before the construction of the A48 the road past the church would have linked Beaupre Castle near Cowbridge and St Hilary with Bonvilston - all place names connected with Norman settlements in the Vale.

From there, we headed north in search of Llanerch Vineyard, near Hensol Castle and the village of Pendoylan, on a mission to see if we could make an advance booking for a family meal to celebrate jointly our 70th birthdays at a time when all the children can make it. It's much nearer the M4 than the A48. Although well signposted across country between the two, it seemed to take us ages to get there in the fading afternoon light. We were delighted with what we found there, and that booking a table for the last week in July presented no problems either.

Mission accomplished, we returned home to complete the day with a paella, and the last couple of gut wrenching episodes of 'Engrenages', aka 'Spiral', past paced, full of twists and turns, maintaining the tension right to the last frame. I like the fact that I can understand much of it, even though it's mostly Parisian French you hear. I follow the subtitles to make sure I don't miss anything, but as with 'Inspector Montalbano' episodes, hearing the original dialogue is a great bonus to entering into the emotions of the drama.

Password problems

As it's St Barnabas Day today, I joined the St Luke's congregation for a quiet morning Mass. As  it was bright and sunny, it seemed a good idea to go out for lunch, so we drove to Dyffryn Gardens, walked for an hour or so, marvelling at the changes in vegetation since our last visit six weeks ago, and then ate in the visitor centre's friendly cafe.

Last night, Amanda called, as she was having problems with her computer, feeling that she was losing control of it. Now she's quite computer savvy, and I thought if she's bothered, maybe I should help troubleshoot. She texted me earlier today to say she's been unsuccessful with the measures I proposed over the phone, so I decided a hands-on session was necessary. I drove Clare to her staff meeting mid-afternoon and then took off for Bristol.

Thankfully, there wasn't a lot out of order, just enough to leave her feeling helpless. One of those software downloads with boxes you have to un-tick to avoid acquiring unwanted crapware had been ticked. Her default home page had been set to display a branded search page, full screen. This hid the normal browser controls, so it wasn't possible to change the home page settings. I messed around until I found how to switch off full page mode, and then reset the home pages as she wanted it.

She's also lost access to her Tesco shopping account and couldn't figure out why. She'd made half a dozen attempts to re-set the password, none of which delivered, and made a mess of her memorised passwords, particularly as Tesco require use of an email address and login password. Your password should be different from your email one for security reasons, but it's easy to get confused. Worse still insistence on high strength passwords by default on Tesco's part, means that if you miss out one of their required alpha-numeric components, your password change is requested and it's not at all clear why. 

Yes, the instructions about password quality are there in your face when you're setting up a new one, but if anything they are close enough to be easily overlooked as you're trying to think of something you'll find either memorable or easy enough to write down. High strength passwords are neither of these, since they use keys which normal mortals don't use often and get distressed about locating consistently.

It's understandable that Tesco have ramped up their security critera, but if this encroaches on usability, it's not good for customer relations. Apparently the helpline people were decent with her about the problems, and assured her that the problem was at the home end. But that was as much as they could do, and naturally it left her worried that her machine had been compromised. This fear was indeed enhanced by the unknowing acquisition of a foreign home page. Sites with secondary download tick boxes on by default should really be blacklisted, for the anxieties they cause.

 

Tulips at Dyffryn

After pottering around all morning, we drove out to Dyffryn Gardens for our first visit of the Spring. The weather was overcast grey, but the spectacular brilliance of the displays of tulips wherever we went gave us plenty to lift the spirit. 

 We ended up in the tea room, as we usually do just before closing time, and were served with a smile while the staff were packing up for the day. From our window seat we has a good view of the bird table outside - a solitary robin, a pair of chaffinches amd these blue tits.

I took my Sony Alpha 55 DSLR to use instead of my more portable Sony HX50. I should have taken and used both in order to compare quality in the results. Certainly the Alpha's telephoto lens has but a quarter of the power of the HX50's built in lens, so I know I could have done better with the birdie closeup pictures with the smaller camera. I can see that in expert hands a DSLR can produce fine results, but for the average joe, I wonder if the expense, bulk and hassle of a DSLR are justified, now that pocket cameras have become so very sophisticated and useable.

It was pleasant to have a relaxed evening in front of the TV without sermon or other duties to prepare for tomorrow. My first weekend free in two months. The latest batch of pictures can be viewed here.

 

Final holiday weekend

Another damp miserable day yesterday. I stayed home while the girls went out to Roath Park in the morning, then traipsed into the office to work on generating the first batch of 2014 invoices ready for issuing next week. Last year I did them in November before going to Sicily. It's not a difficult task. The difficulty, when I only get to do it once a year, is remembering how to produce a decent data-set from the RadioNet client database, then getting Word's mail-merge to make use of it.

I did most of the work in the office, but when I hit a snag, I decided it was better to go home and figure it out, as background office noise was too much of a distraction. Now that I've got my home and three office PCs linked to Microsoft Sky Drive, and, it seems to be working as intended, this was easy, and it meant I wasn't late for supper. When I return to Spain it'll make it that much easier to work on things, as if I was at the next desk in the office - provided the internet connection works.

Today Owain joined us and we went to Castell Coch. Annoyingly, it was closed for the month for restoration and cleaning work, but according to the CADW website it was open. We were able to park outside the gates - not even the car park was in use, and the narrow roadside was lined with the parked cars of walkers. Not a good idea. We let Jasmine explore the outside of the castle precinct. She found a discarded ivy wreath in the dry moat, seemed to know exactly where it was meant to be, and took it back where it belonged and hung it up on the door.

Then we walked up the hillside and played with her in the woods for an hour.

We then drove over to St Nicholas and visited the Tinkinswood and St Lythan's burial chambers. 

We had lunch in the excellent Duffryn House visitor centre restaurant in between the two visits. Fortunately, the rain stayed away long enough for Jasmine to make the most of the children's playground outside while we finished our meals, although the place she seemed to love playing the most was at Tinkinswood, and it was quite a challenge to persuade her to leave when we were all ready to go and eat.

We returned home for a final family meal together with Owain before Rachel and Jasmine leave for Arizona on Monday. Tomorrow we drive  them to her in-laws for a final night's stopover before the flight from Heathrow.

 

A Sunday in Christmastide

After yesterday's computer annoyances, I was glad to attend Canton Benefice united Parish Eucharist at St John's, sit in the congregation with Clare this morning, and just worship. We celebrated the church's Patronal Festival two days late, just right for the occasion.

By the time we got home, Rachel and Jasmine were up and organised to visit Dyffryn Gardens, where we had an al fresco picnic lunch before wandering around house and arbortum. Fortunately the rain stayed away. We used our National Trust Family membership cards to get Jasmine in for free, but her mother had to pay, no longer being classed as a child. Jasmine loved the great open spaces and giant trees, just perfect for climbing, so we enjoyed a very pleasant few hours in the fresh air before sundown. When we returned I cooked paella for supper and Owain came over to eat with us.