After breakfast this morning I prepared and printed all my material for the funeral I'm taking tomorrow, then in the afteroon I walked into town, and took photos of construction sites around Central Square, then called into John Lewis' out of curiosity to see what's on offer in the summer sale. It's troubling to see how many more empty shops there are in St David Centre, in the Arcades, and main streets. Restaurants and pubs are open and serving outdoors, but weren't that busy. I guess that the return to office work isn't really under way yet.
Boris Johnston is promising to end all covid restrictions in England three weeks from now, making mask wearing optional in places where it is currently mandatory. Opinion polls are showing that over two thirds of people surveyed don't approve of this and will ignore this permission. Trades Unions and the Labour party have expressed criticism of his intention. Mark Drakeford isn't promising anything at the moment, sensibly cautious in the light of the spread of the covid delta variant, preferring to rely on a review of the latest Welsh evidence before announcing a lifting of the restrictions.
People break the rules anyway, and act inconsiderately, putting others at risk. Abandoning mandatory regulations, leaving it to common sense by making safe behaviour optional is tempting providence to my mind. Whatever changes are made I'll maintain the habit to follow the existing rules as best I can for the sake of others. Even a compliant person forgets sometimes. Obligatory rules are a 'red line' challenge to us to stay alert, to avoid getting or transmitting infection.
Owain is out of quarantine now, with no sign of having caught anything. He managed to work out with his 'pinged' social group that the infected person was a visitor without symptoms who only stayed for an hour, and he had no direct contact with them. So all's well that ends well. We look forward to seeing him on the weekend ahead.
We watched a lovely programme about Pembrokeshire wildlife with Iolo Williams. It showed a little of the Cleddau Estuary and Slebeck Park, which has awakened ideas of a visit there when we can. Then we watched a programme on Sky Arts about Iranian culture, which was of particular interest in its portrayal of Zoroastrianism, the religion of Persia before Islam. We were shown its temples, and some of the amazing massive bas-relief rock art of mythical figures dating from the third century CE.
I was fascinated to learn that a quarter of the world's hundred thousand Zoroastrians still live and practice their faith in Iran, where the religion came into being. The majority are in India, some are in North America. The finally the last episode of season 16 of NCIS, rather odd in that it featured appearances of a ghost of the ex-wife of both Gibbs and Fornell, and an appearance by Ziva warning Gibbs of imminent danger to his life. She's not a ghost, despite being officially dead. Her death several years ago was faked to cover her disappearance. Or so we were told.
