Monknash visit

I was lovely to share our Saturday pancake breakfast with Owain this morning. Clare packed up a picnic lunch and when the early morning cloud began to lift we headed west into the Vale of Glamorgan to visit Monknash with its vast beach and 70 metre high Jurassic cliffs, somewhat inappropriately named 'Smugglers' Cove'. as it's not in any sense enclosed, but an open expanse of coastline. 

The journey through narrow lanes with high hedges and small villages from the A48 to the coast is rather lovely, and we were fortunate not to need to stop to let on coming traffic pass too many times. There were a couple of dozen cars in the parking area a kilometre above the beach, down a narrow valley. Less than a hundred people bunched in groups were scattered on the vast expanse of grey flat bedrock and golden sand which stretches for miles at low tide, and we were there at low tide.

The upper part of the shore is a bank of large pebbles and bigger stones, tricky to negotiate before bedrock and sand is reached. The Jurassic limestone shows remnants of fossil shells, and occasionally dinosaur footprints appear in big slabs which have fallen from the often dangerous cliffs, or been exposed by the action of the sea. Although the rock is hard it has a tendency to fragment over time so the cliffs are subject to a considerable amount of erosion over decades. The Vale coast and inland is rich in bird and insect life. On the climb back up to the village, I recorded a song thrush hidden in a bush nearby. Exquisite!

We stopped for a drink in the garden of the Horseshoe Inn in the neighbouring village of Marcross on the way back, then drove to IKEA in Grangetown so that Owain could buy himself a summer duvet. My fit-bit told me that we walked the same distance around the store as we walked from the car park to the beach and had to queue for ten minutes to pay and get out. Waiting in a long zig-zag snake queue reminded me of going through airport security.

We bought takeaway fish and chips for supper, then watched Paddington 2, a delightful comic fantasy movie, which mocks Britishness in a whimsical way and makes superb use of computer generated imaging to tell its story. Over and above that the editing and production of the film used a vast array of sequences shot in crime drama or action movie, mocking every kind of filmic cliche - a masterpiece of cinematic parody. To finish the day I walked for three quarters of an hour while the sun was setting, and so did Owain, who decided to go out after I'd left. A lovely day all round.

Saturday a workshop and a financial drama

I drove to Penarth this morning for a morning's Tai Chi workshop for regular class members in Albert Road church hall. It was a refreshing and stimulating session, and good to meet with several long standing Tai Chi players whom I've got to know over the fifteen years I've been attending Christie's classes. Clare met me afterwards and we walked up to Penarth Head, then down to the pier to have coffee and sandwiches for an al fresco lunch before walking for a while on the beach and then back to where the car was parked. The sun shone and there was cool fresh breeze, a most enjoyable couple of hours after the workshop. I picked up fourteen items of rubbish, mostly from the beach, in the course of the day.

We were surprised at how relatively few people were out walking the promenade or on the beach or the pier given the fine weather. Clare wanted to call at IKEA in Grangetown to buy some curtain material on the way home. When we arrived the IKEA car park was almost completely full, suggesting that the store would be just as full with crowds of weekend shoppers, so we drove out again without stopping and returned for tea. We were out of buns, cakes and biscuits, so I walked to the Coop and bought some hot cross buns. By the time I returned, Clare had made some spicy bun dough and was preparing hot cross buns of her own for next time. Always better than shop bought ones, if you have time to make them.

The last two episodes of 'Follow the Money' were screened on BBC Four in the evening, in which all was satisfactorily resolved and a major financial crisis involving the catastrophic devaluation of the Danish Kroner was averted by our investigative hero doing a secret deal with a powerful British financial 'robber baron'. The baddies got their come-uppance, the selfish and foolishly ambitious were chastened, and survivors returned to family life grateful for a break from all the nastiness. A happy ending, sort of, with just enough key characters making it to the end to make possible a  third series, maybe. 

In one scene, financial crisis was precipitated by speculators betting on a devaluation of the Kroner, which the very powerful had deemed to be over-valued, and used a series of corrupt and illegal initiatives to bring about their aim of profiting from this movement. I found the words "The Kroner is over-valued" chilling, as it mirrored opinions voiced in the media by leading British financiers about the pound in the wake of the brexit vote. It makes me wonder to what extend this kind of strategic financial corruption may have been a driving force in getting euro-skeptics and their media backers to mount an anti-EU campaign riddled with lies and fake news. Anyway, this was well crafted and worth watching throughout, and was good in how it conveyed the human impact of financial crisis on the micro as well as macro level.