Invasion of Snoopies

Another overcast day. The town centre was busy when I drove through on my way to St German's, with people arriving at the castle for the second day of the Tafwyl festival. I celebrated the Mass of Corpus Christi, a real pleasure with a few moments during the Eucharstic prayer when the sun peeped through the clouds. 

I take the sacrament first to people in the congregation who cannot walk up to receive. A man was there with his carer, severely disabled by a stroke. When I reached him, he'd fallen asleep. A few minutes later, as I was communicating the last of the congregation, the carer joined the queue, and told me Peter was now awake, so I went down to him a second time. It's lovely to be in a church which is so relaxed in prayer, that nobody pays any attention when something unusual happens.

I talked with a lady afterwards whose husband died during the pandemic, but not of covid, but due to his unexpected reaction to the second dose of vaccine. He was diabetic, and receiving the injection seems to have coincided with rapid deterioration of his vascular system, requiring amputations and eventual heart failure, all in a couple of months. It sounded to me as if the trauma of those months left more of an impact on her than she might realise. It's good she's coming to church and finding a welcome and a place of peace where she can be carried by the prayer of others.

Home for lunch, and then, while Clare had a siesta, I recorded and edited next Thursday's Morning Prayer audio, ready to finish off tomorrow. We then walked to the National Museum, hoping to see the painting of Sir Tom Jones, but it's still on loan to the National Portrait gallery in London. I asked in the shop if any postcards of the painting were available, and was told they're not sold, as the copyright is owned by Sky Arts TV which hosts the Portrait Artist of the Year competition. What a shame!

Outside the museum, all forty of the Snoopy sculptures which proved so vulnerable when on open display in public spaces, are assembled and displayed for this weekend in a temporary enclosure, labelled 'Farewell to Snoopy'. 

It was a completely surreal sight, all these brightly coloured fibre glass pooch replicas in serried ranks. There was a charge of four quid each to get inside the enclosure and walk around among them, but I didn't see the point of that, when I could take a few photos from outside to mark this bizarre occasion.

We called in to the Tafwyl Festival at the castle - four stages and dozens of fast food vans and tents of other organisations showcasing Welsh language artistic endeavours. The festival has grown in size and popularity in recent years and is clearly no longer just a Cardiff thing with people travelling in for this fiesta of Welsh language music and snacks in the hand. While we were there I received phone calls from Owain and Rachel to wish me a happy Father's Day. This, plus a card from Kath leaves me feeling very blessed.

We had a cup of tea, then listen to 'Brigyn' or at least, one half of the folksy duo, substituting for a band scheduled to appear which had to pull out at the last minute due to illness. After twenty minutes listening we caught a bus to Canton Cross, then walked home the last half mile.

After supper, another programme on BBC Four about the history of British music making in the 20th century with a feature on violinist Yehudi Menuin and sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, illustrating the impact of Indian music in the sixties, and the innovative fusion of different styles of music which began in that decade. Then there was a live concert from the Hoddinott Hall at the Millennium Centre from, with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, with Mendelssohn's violin concerto and Tchaikovski's Fourth symphony. 

At nine I switched over to watch the first double episode of 'Suspect', with some powerful acting and the tragic story about the death of a detective's estranged daughter. He's convinced it's murder when outwardly the evidence points to suicide. Who is right? We shall see.

Secrets of the Museum - in the flesh

This morning after breakfast, Peter collected me to drive to the National Museum's Industrial storehouse in Nantgarw for a tour especially arranged by Mike. We picked up Richard on the way there, and when fully assembled our group was fourteen strong. The first half of the visit was a session with one of the conservators showing us how she and her colleagues set about conserving and restoring a diverse range of historical artefacts donated. It was just like being in a live episode of TV's 'Secrets of the Museum' one of my favourite regular must see programmes.

We were told about a Guest Keen and Nettlefold iron works World War One memorial to fallen employees, recovered from a demolition skip by a police officer, remaining in his garage for twenty years. As the centenary of the Great War approached, he finally got around to offering it to the museum as an item of industrial heritage. After half a century covered in a layer of black pain, the brass memorial is in pristine condition again. Bronze casted in a single mould, it's possible this was made by craftsmen colleagues in the same works. Its full provenance has yet to be discovered, however.

Then we were shown  a rather ugly decorated clay pot with a grinning man's head on it. The pot's lid was broken in several pieces and was put together so skilfully that it was impossible to see the pieces where it had been broken. Then there was a small silver object, a statuette of a horse mounted on the hoof of a horse which belonged to a horse that worked in Senghenydd pit at the time of the 1913 fire that cost over four hundred lives. Hence it was in the hands of an Industrial artefact conservator. Finally we saw some photos of a restored bardic chair from an eisteddfod in Blaenclydach, held on Good Friday in 1903. At this point our session ran out of time, so we didn't get to hear about is provenance, except that it was won by a local miner. It seems to have been customary for Non-Conformist chapels to hold an eisteddfod on Good Friday (a bank holiday and day off for industrial workers in  those days).

The second half of the tour was with an engineering conservator, who showed us a collection of motor vehicles with stories to tell, including the engine from the famous land speed record contender 'Babs' which crashed making a record attempt on Pendine Sands killing Parry Thomas the driver. The wrecked car was buried on the beach for forty years before its remains were retrieved. Apart from the engine a number of large plastic tubs and crates hold the rest of the bits and pieces, awaiting attention.

There are three Gilbern saloon cars - the only car to be designed and made in Wales, a Wessex air sea rescue helicopter, an Edwardian tram, an electric trolley bus, a horse drawn hearse, a couple of steam engines, motor bikes and ancient bicycles, railway carriages, not to mention many industrial engines used to power manufacturing equipment - almost all in need of restoration. There are decades of work for conservators, if ever funding should be available. There are tends of thousands of artefacts great and small in storage here. A fascinating insight into certain aspects of Welsh industrial heritage.

Amazingly, the lawn at the side of the building complex, left to grow wild, untreated with weed killer has produced a rich diversity of wild flowers including two orchid species. I was delighted to see a Common Blue butterfly for the first time this year, and get a slightly blurry photo of it. We had lunch together at a nearby pub called The Pottery, in honour of the original famed Nantgarw pottery nearby. My photos of the visit are here.

Then Peter drove us home, in good time for Clare and I to set off for Kenilworth for an overnight stay. We arrived just after six, and after supper I had time for a late evening walk around the lake down at Abbey Fields, to listen to the birds at twilight. Among the reeds along the side of the lake patches of bright yellow bog irises stand out at dusk, a lovely sight.

Easter gifts

How lovely to wake up after a comfortable night's sleep in a familiar bed and bedroom once again! After a quick breakfast I walked to the GP surgery to get the appointment everyone's been nagging me about, to get my chesty cough due to chronic bronchial catarrh these past few months checked out. I'll have to wait two weeks. Either that or it's 'book on the day', queuing or phoning in to a busy surgery line at twenty past eight in the morning in competition with dozens of others who want to be seen sooner rather than later. Today was already fully booked. It's too much of an effort to compete with so many others who may or may not be sick needier or worse than I. All I know is, I'm improving very slowly, and a change of environment is already influencing the daily progress of the catarrh slightly for the better. I feel sure it was the totally different range of pollen varieties as well as dust and other urban pollutants that I was reacting to in Spain. The next few days will show if there's a sustainable difference.

On the way into town to rendezvous at the National Museum for a chat with Dr Laura Ciobanu visiting once again from Bucharest, I called into Constantinou's at Canton Cross for a hair cut, to look respectable for a driving license photo. Stavros was out of the shop when I arrived, so I was welcomed by his son Stefan who cut my hair. Dad returned before I left so I was able to greet him with 'Christos Anesti' before leaving. There was no bus in sight to catch, on what's normally a busy road, and being a little behind time, I walked in to the Museum, which was probably much quicker. It only took me fifteen minutes. 

Laura was waiting for me and we spent an hour and a half chatting in the Museum entrance hall about Christian historic art and faith. It's a place she's fond of, and always makes a point of visiting the exhibition of stone Celtic crosses. She brought me a Romanian Easter loaf she'd baked, brioche, laced with chocolate and pears, also a jar of rose petal confiture, with the most delicate aroma and flavour, another Romanian speciality. It was a lovely meeting, which ended with me praying over her and giving her a blessing right there. I no longer have inhibitions about doing things like this in public, especially when I know that the faith of the other person shields them from any sense of embarrassment.

As I was leaving, Clare called to say she was in town, so we met up in Marks and Spencer and had a snack lunch together before I make my way to the main Post Office to get my driving license photo card application processed. There's now a special counter queue called 'Identity Services' where you present your form, get a digital photo taken, and a digital signature, which are then processed electonically. The DVLC then mail the license and photo card back to one's home address. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes.

Several more hours in the office followed, preparing for a meeting with new senior staff in Cardiff Council and South Wales Police in the coming weeks. And after supper, several hours more work needed to be done on the CBS company constitution, that separately defines our structures and way of working as a not for profit social enterprise. I started this task last December, and this is the first chance I've had to resume. I had almost completed it, but it needed careful going over. Nice to be fresh enough to return to this with fresh eyes after a long break. I was quite pleased with the result.