Catching up time

After spending Wednesday morning slowly waking up and adjusting to being back home, getting the week's food shopping done, I retrieved the car from the Vicarage front yard, where it was lodged while were away to make space in the ever crowded street, then took Ashley our radio suppliers in Chepstow. In the evening I started editing and uploading photos from the first day of our cruise. There's a link to them here.

Thursday morning, I joined the congregation at St John's Canton for the Corpus Christi Eucharist, before going into work, and starting the job of sorting out radio handset equipment returned to CBS after the great frequency switchover two weeks ago. It's a matter of sorting and boxing for storage six different components from ten dozen sets, already at end of their expected life before the changeover. Accessories can be recycled but not the radios themselves, unless someone needs dummy handsets to  use in a film production. It'll take a while before the office is rid of boxes and tidy again. Then we did made another trip to Chepstow to finish what we'd started yesterday. Once again in the evening, more editing and uploading the photos of the second day of our cruise. You'll find Day 2 here.

Today, more time spent in the office, continuing the slow tasking of dismantling kit, disentangling cables of various sorts collected in haste and simply needing patience to sort out. It's a humdrum sort of task, but a calming one which I welcome after so much fresh input and stimulus recently. 

No photo work tonight, as Clare had tickets for a concert at the new Welsh Language Centre in the Old Library, the building where CBS was based last year. Veteran singer song writers Heather Jones and Meic Stefens were performing their own music and singing some songs together, as they had originally done forty years ago in the group 'Bara Menin'. 

Both are in their seventies now, voices as strong as ever, and still full of passion and enthusiasm for their bardic role, as leaders of Welsh language popular song, it's a better way to describe them than 'iconic'. There were well over a hundred people there, of all generations, singing along affectionately with familiar ballads. Sadly I know none of the lyrics and just a few of the tunes, but I greatly appreciated their musicianship.

 

Coed Ely discovered

More time spent in the office yesterday, then out in the evening to St John's Canton for a concert in aid of Pedal Power, the local cycling charity. Two prolific and popular young Welsh singer songwriters performing under the name 'Brigyn' were the main act, and they were very good. Supporting them, however, was singer Heather Jones, one of the first generation singers of the modern Welsh popular song revival, with a career spanning fifty years. She's about the same age as Clare and I, but looking twenty years younger, with a voice that has the purity and beauty the distinguishes Joan Baez. 

She was rightly hailed as 'legendary' by the compere, with such a distinguished career behind her. She says she's now in semi- retirement. Her songs were all in Welsh but she spoke about her life in music as she introduced songs bilingually. When we spoke with her at the end of the concert she said that it was unusual for her to introduce her music bi-lingually. Raised an English speaker, she learned Welsh and kept Welsh speaking company from her school days onward in her life in music. What a wonderful performer, well known in Wales, but sadly not so well in the English speaking world of popular song.

Today, the weather was sunny if cold, perfect for a nice long walk. We drove out to Llantrisant, to the Ely river valley on the road to Tonyrefail, and then explored the walking paths of the 600ft wooded hill that rises to the west of the river, named Coed Ely, which means Ely wood. I was please to snap this Chiffchaff, just as it was taking off

We walked for a hour on the south side, then went for an excellent pub lunch at 'The Bear' in Llantrisant's main square. The pub is in fine fettle, but it's so sad to see that ancient hill town looking quite down at heel these days, with a number of empty shops - commercial life has drained away downhill to the Talbot Green retail park.

In the afternoon we returned to Coed Ely, having earlier found the north side car park, and we walked the forest trails for an hour or so, which occasionally gave us views north into the Valleys.

We walked right over the top to the south side, where trees give way to fields, with a view across the Severn Estuary fifteen miles away, as far as North Devon. Fortunately the rain didn't overtake us.

We returned home for tea and a nice relaxed evening, just right after some vigorous exercise. With a sermon already prepared yesterday, after cooking, I had time to watch 'Spooks' on catch-up, before it was time for the penultimate double episode of 'Trapped'. Despite its near black and white filmic environment, being shot mostly in extreme snowy weather, it holds the attention well, not only with its engaging plot line, but also with some fine acting on the part of all the principals. Altogether, a refreshing day off.