Found in contempt

Another bright sunny start to the day with the temperature rising into the twenties early in the day. For the first time this year, it was hot enough to leave the house without wearing a jacket. First I went to Tesco's and bought supplies for our food-bank donation then attended the Eucharist at St John's. There were seven of us present. My ride to Thornhill crem for the funeral at midday collected me from outside the church. 

By the time I arrived home for a Clare cooked curry lunch, news reports were arriving about the findings of the Parliamentary Privileges committee about activities in the Prime Minister's office during the covid lock-down. It couldn't have been more scathing, and critical of Boris Johnston, more so as a result of the written remarks in his resignation letter, deemed to be contempt of Parliament. The severest of sanctions were recommended against him. What's amazing is how many parliamentarians and well as interviewees feel he's been unfairly treated, still under the illusion that the leader of the government should be allowed to act above and beyond the law. It says a lot about the decay of shared common values in modern Britain. A vote to accept the findings of the report may take place tomorrow, though it's not yet certain in the tense political climate of the Commons at the moment. 

After lunch I walked to Llandaff village to make a bereavement visit for a funeral the week after next. The widow now lives in a retirement home, having moved a few months ago from Creigau, where she'd been a member of St David's Groesfaen congregation. The more we spoke the more her face seemed familiar. On a few occasions, I covered services there not long after I retired. As a busy steward and welcomer she wouldn't have remembered me, but I remembered her. That's the gift of a good visual memory, I guess.

When I got home, I spent the rest of the afternoon and much of the evening preparing and recording next week's Morning Prayer video to have as much time as possible free for Jasmine's stay with us. The Cardiff Singer of the World song recital competition wasn't on live at the earlier time tonight, but scheduled as a recording between ten and midnight. Too late for me. I started getting ready for bed as soon as the evening news finished after a tiring day, exacerbated by the wax build up in my right year. It always gets worse in the heat of summer, and these days you have to to pay to get treatment. Our GP surgery doesn't offer the service, the way it used to.

Bye Boris?

Slightly cooler overnight. I slept well anyway. The hottest part of the day passed, washing and drying a few clothes, working on next Thursday's Daily Office Reflection, after receiving Ruth's weekly Morning Prayer text email. Again I cooked two days worth of a main dish to have with rice. This works well, as scaling down to cooking a one-off portion is not something I'm good at. Cooking for two saves work also. 

It was tea time before I ventured out in search of a pharmacy, or at least somewhere selling antiseptic and shampoo, both of which I was running low on. There's a sign for a Farmacia near the Policia Locale on the main road, but I couldn't find the building and walked on as far as the Marina roundabout, where I saw a signs for a Carrefour supermarket, plus a Farmacia up the hill behind the main road. 

The Carrefour was tucked away, not very visible in the townscape until you got close, but it turned out to be a reasonable size, like Tesco Metro, or the main Co-op in Canton, except this one is at ground floor level in an apartment block with is own parking lot and plenty of parking outside on the side-street as well. Easy access for car drivers, which may explain why I've seen few people walking, carrying shopping bags from there. Here I was able to buy both things I needed and didn't bother to look for the Farmacia.

When I got back I listened to news about the Tory leadership election with Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss as the MPs nominee for voting on by party membership around the country. In their different ways they'll ensure the country will be governed by centre right policies, though it's unclear how this will work out for them, any more than it did for Boris Johnson. Today he performed his final parliamentary question time session as Prime Minister, boasting his achievements, immune to criticism and unapologetic for his moral failings and mistakes. He bowed out defiantly quoting Schwarzenegger's Terminator often quoted line. 'I'll be back.' But will, he if Uxbridge votes him out at the next general election? That day cannot come soon enough, in my  opinion.

After supper, and a chat with Clare, I walked down to the beach and back as the sun was setting joining all the others making their paseo in the cool of the evening. And so to bed.

Another Boris crisis

After breakfast this morning, I completed the on-line check-in for next Tuesday's flight and downloaded the PDF of the boarding card to my phone. Then Clare reminded me of the need to carry a vaccination certificate as well. That was less than straightforward. Initially the NHS app failed me, as it's less than clear at the outset that NHS Wales is not served by the app. You have to look for the NHS Wales website and follow the procedure from there to obtain the vaccination certificate PDF, delivered by a mobile phone text message containing a web-link to the download. It could be more straightforward than it is. Anyway I have all the necessary travel documents now. All I have to do now is sort out travel money, and that's for tomorrow or the day after.

Clare had a dentist's visit mid morning, so I did the weekly grocery shopping trip to the Co-op, and then cooked lunch. I had chaplaincy emails to respond to after lunch. It sounds as if I will be collected from the airport instead of having to take the coach to Estepona. I'm grateful for this as there's likely to be a higher risk of catching covid on a crowded coach than on a 'plane with a much higher standard air conditioning system. One risk is better than two. I just have to stay away from busy crowded places this week. We won't see Jasmine as everyone around her has covid, but not her so far, but the risk she'll catch it and transmit it is still high. It's very sad but inevitable.

We went for a walk around Llandaff Fields and down to Blackweir for a drink at the TukTuk cafeteria, a motor tricycle equipped to sell drinks, which parks the other side of the bridge. The guy running it told us he's an architecture student, and we had an interesting chat, with him telling us as he lives with dyslexia for which he has developed a successful coping strategy.

There was a fascinating programme on Sky Arts this evening about the 20th century artist M C Escher whose extraordinary body of paintings and prints featuring unfathomable geometric patterns with tricks of perspective embedded in them. His art has been influential on designers as well as other artists since the sixties when he came to public attention by designing an album cover for a Rolling Stones LP.

Today's news centres yet again on a crisis around Boris Johnson's leadership and judgement in appointing MP Chris Pincher as Deputy Chief Whip when he was known to have a reputation as a sex pest. He's accused of two sexual assaults last week, and when this came to light he resigned his position and had the Tory Whip withdrawn. During the day Johnson has been openly criticised for lying by a retired senior civil servant, and lost two senior members of his cabinet. He's made excuses for his action in appointing Pincher that were hardly credible, and is coming for criticism from all sides. Opinion is turning against the Prime Minister in conservative media and among the public. There's no sign of Johnson resigning, so it remains to be seen if the Tory Party finds a way to dislodge him.

Industrial innovation in Watchet

Sunshine deserted us this St Luke's Day, clouds, drizzle then light rain until evening. Parliamentarians gathered in the Commons to remember Sir David Amess MP, murdered by another closet jihadi going about his constituency business two days ago. He was a practicing Catholic and it was appropriate that the sitting ended with a service in St Margaret's Westminster, Parliament's Parish Church, and not in the Abbey, as was announced on the Today programme this morning. Such factual ignorance at the heart of the BBC's newsroom is inexcusable. 

Elected representatives these days are subject to so much abuse and threats to their lives ands their families, it makes their everyday job a misery and raises huge questions about the security and freedoms we regard as our birth-right. The era of social media has fostered widespread use of intemperate and abusive language in the place of reasoned debate. It reveals to extent to which many people are ignorant of the moral value of respect for others. There was a time when even nominal adherence to Christian faith made a difference to how people speak and act. The country now pays the price for mass apostasy.

I went to the harbour this morning and for the first time noticed the island of Steepholm out in the Bristol Channel, through the port opening, north east of Watchet. Normally we view it, looking south west from the coast path at Penarth, so it's good to see it from the opposite side. It's twice as far from here as it is from Penarth.

I prepared a pasta sauce for lunch but Clare only wanted a snack as she was scheduled to swim at two, so we kept it for the evening. After her swim, we went for a walk in light rain half way up the Mineral Line footpath to Washford before turning back. Yesterday, I noticed that behind the derelict buildings of the Wansborough Paper Mill on the valley floor below St Decumen's church, the sound of an electrical hum issued from a building and there were two new stainless steel storage tanks on the site as well. 

Intrigued by this, I did some googling when we got back and was surprised to learn that a group of bio-tech entrepreneurs calling themselves 'The Onion Collective' has launched a start up project there. This aims to process bio-mass materials using the ability of mycelium, a network of fungal threads that grow underground producing mushrooms to yield other useful by-products. It can neutralise toxins and digest certain plastics, and could provide a source of new materials for manufacture. It's an industrial research and development venture whose successful presence could attract manufacturing enterprises to the site to make use of the new raw materials produced on site. It's an interesting endeavour to regenerate a site with a 250 year old industrial history in what has become a deeply rural area living mostly off tourism.

I walked down to the quay while supper was warming up, and got chatting with a visitor who had grown up in Watchet. He had observed a smallish but powerful boat moving up and down through the water of the outer harbour on the same track. Strange to say, I'd seen the same craft doing the same in the marina yesterday, and wondered what it was doing. He said it was a way of displacing sea bed sand and silt, washed in by the tide. The craft has a high pressure hose directed into the seabed to disturb sediment, as the tide ebbs. Loosened sediment washes back out to sea and thus not allowed to accumulate and require dredging by a bigger craft. Little and often is the order of the day, letting nature do the work. 

A relaxing evening, not watching telly, or listening to music just thinking quietly.

Ethical reminder

The five UK Anglican Archbishops have spoken out together, strongly criticising the government's post brexit Internal Markets Bill which makes room for a unilateral breach of treaty obligations arising from the Good Friday agreement. At last! Following the example set by Welsh, Irish and Scottish devolved parliaments, rather than giving a prophetic lead. It didn't take long for a handful of opinionated people to weigh in with the usual meme about not mixing religion with politics. But this statement is not as much about political policy as about legality and ethical integrity. I quote:

“If carefully negotiated terms are not honoured and laws can be ‘legally’ broken, on what foundations does our democracy stand? We urge lawmakers to consider this Bill in the light of values and principles we would wish to characterise relationships across these islands long after the transition period.”

Justin Welby has also been outspoken in the House of Lords

Politics must not be reduced to “raw majority power unleashed” that normalises law-breaking" he warned. "The UK will suffer great harm, and peace between the home nations will be compromised."

Underlying this outspokenness is pastoral concern about the impact of government policies on the well being of all citizens, especially the poorest and most disadvantaged. He also says:

“There is no watertight door in relationships between economics and constitutional issues. They overflow from one into the other.”

Pope Francis has for much of his papacy has given a global lead and spoken out on behalf of the poor and challenged the morality of unbridled accumulation of wealth and power. In his latest encyclical 'Fratelli tutti' he warns against the dangers of populist politics. I'm tempted to say to Anglican leaders, "What took you so long?", but that would be unfair. The pandemic has taken an enormous amount of time and energy to address pastorally, overshadowing brexit fall-out. The media are often very selective  and superficial in reporting what church leaders actually say, because of the view that a weakened church in decline has nothing much to say of interest, apart from the occasion curious, bizarre or dramatically sensational tale. It's the marginalised and weak, however, the 'voice crying in the wilderness' that may deliver unpalatable truths about our world we most need to hear.

Not brexit, but All Hallows Eve

Well, we got to Brexit day, and we're still in the European Union. Despite the blustering rhetoric and political gaming of Boris Johnson and his cronies, the rule of law and persistent critical efforts of most parliamentarians has so far prevented Great Britain from being hoodwinked into a departure from the EU, which one way or another will lead to continued imbalance in wealth, power and social injustice, no matter what 'deal' is brokered and push on the referendum majority.

Whatever sacred status is given to a first past the post referendum, it should never be regarded as more than advisory in my view, an expression of public opinion to be taken seriously, but weighed against the consensus of expert analysis of what is really in the common good for all citizens. It's bound to be complex and a difficult to reach a stable conclusion in an ever moving social and economic global environment.

After three years of trying to establish what the country really wants from brexit, and hopes for in an autonomous future, it's still worryingly unclear what lies ahead apart from a damaging impact on the British economy which may take a decade to recover from. Only opportunist optimists are convinced we'd be better off freed from the checks and balances of Europe wide governance and accountability.

What is sovereignty in reality? The reins of power in Britain are in the hands of a successful moneyed elite that can manipulate the way in which common people perceive the world, through control of the mass media. How much do they really know, let alone care about the privations of poorer people?

We are now faced with another general election, and already the media seems to be framing this as an opportunity to vote in a parliament which will 'get brexit done', another content-less mantra like Mrs May's 'brexit means brexit', inviting trust in those who got the country into this mess in the first place, by proposing a referendum.

It was intended to free Britain from the inevitable difficulties faced in its continued dialogue with a European system of governance that many Europeans already agree is highly unsatisfactory and in need of reform. Disengaging from that process is the last thing Britain should have considered.  But it happened. Whether we brexit or not in the New Year, Europe will not be any better for the absence of a critical British voice in the collective conversation, and Britain will be harder to re-unite that the same opportunist optimists think. It'll take more than World Cup Rugby glory to do that.

More low cloud, strong wind today and chilly dampness in the air. I needed more wound care supplies, so in the afternoon we drove to the nearest pharmacist in the village of Scurlage on the way to Port Eynon. We wanted to look around as well. It's twenty five years since we holidayed there, on leave from Geneva. It's changed very little but all the houses look more spruce, better cared for. The car park was empty, and the wind was so strong, blowing at us from the sea out of white mist and low cloud, that fine sand was piling up all around the roundabout on the car park approach road. A slightly dystopian image of a seaside holiday resort - admittedly without the usual litter!

In Scurlage, opposite the village mini-market, is a modern GP surgery with a pharmacy attached. It's called 'The Well Pharmacy' - a completely new name to me, but it turns out that Co-operative group of pharmacies changed hands and was re-branded as 'Well', and its the third largest group in Britain now, and the largest in Wales. An interesting discovery. We were 'well' impressed by the service we received.

Mission accomplished, we returned and then walked to the village shop to have a drink and buy a card to send to Emma and Nick, congratulating them on the safe arrival of their daughter of Eleanor Renee. It's been a tough pregnancy for Emma, and it's just great to know that everything has turned out the way we all hoped it would.

Imagination at Llandaff Cathedral

After a sunny Sunday, it rained for most of yesterday. I did the grocery shopping in the morning, cooked lunch, then kitted out in full rain gear, went into town on the bus and walked home in the afternoon. I wanted to find a book I'd heard about for Clare's birthday present, and was disappointed to learn that it has only been published in the USA. Even if ordered on Amazon, it's doubtful that it'd arrive by Saturday. I'd prefer to buy from a real bookshop in any case, Instead, I found a CD that I'm confident she'll enjoy, and a card that'll make her smile. Job done. 

It drizzled most of today as well. Not that it bothered me much, as I was absorbed by the news about the High Court unanimous decision to rule as illegal Boris Johnson's action in proroguing Parliament. This is unique and unprecedented in English history. The consequences are likely to be far reaching.

I walked up the Taff calling in at the Cathedral when it started to rain. There was an exhibition in the St David Chapel presenting course work from eight local architecture students, whose brief was to devise a project proposal with drawings, to transform the site of the Prebendal House, or the site of the ruins of the nearby mediaeval Bishop's Palace into a centre for community music education and recitals, a church hall and offices to support the Cathedral's mission through music.

It's such an imaginative thing to do, given the desire to improve the facilities used by the Cathedral choir, which are less than fit for purpose when it comes to developing new initiatives. Engaging in dialogue of this kind is a creative way to start a conversation in the Cathedral community about what will best serve the future development of its work and witness, and get everyone to take an interest. Much more lively an initiative than any paper consultation exercise!

The choir director and choristers passed through while I was looking at the exhibition, on their way to rehearse for choral evensong. I listened to them singing Wood's Magnificat in D and Burgon's Nunc Dimittis, but didn't stop for the service, as I was only a quarter a way through my walk, and didn't want to get back too soon. The latter piece of music was hauntingly familiar, as it was used as theme music for the BBC version of John le Carre's 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy' forty years ago. This is the first time I've heard it used in worship since then. Incredible coincidence or crafty homage to an old TV masterpiece? 

Rush to judgement

How annoying! When I got up this morning, I didn't switch my phone on until after breakfast, and so  missed the calendar alert to take the car over to N G Motors in Splott early for today's MOT text. This left me with not quite enough turn-around time to go to St Catherine's to celebrate the Eucharist. Fortunately, Clare was free and able to do this instead of me. I could just as easily have forgotten to look at a paper diary and have found Google's Calendar app an invaluable replacement in retirement now I'm no longer steered through the working week and year mostly by a set pattern of events. There's a fair amount of routine in my life even so, due to interregnum duties. Just enough to balance the freedom I also value.

Eighteen years today since the destruction of the New York Word Trade Centre towers, an event that changed the modern world irreversibly, and not for the better. It was a violent revelation of the failure of dialogue between modernity and traditional culture, festering wherever people felt marginalised and powerless, and emerging in pathological form in islamist extremism. The Gospel at the Eucharist was that of Jesus a the deaf mute man, a story which for me is chiefly about a miracle of communication which is revealed by his extraordinary ability to look at people and understand what's needed to get through to them, reaching into their isolation and setting them free. He looks, listens, then acts and speaks. He looks without prejudice, without stereotyping the other person, and this is what transforms the man's life.

I arrived at church from listening to a Radio 4 feature about Amanda Knox, accused of the murder of Meredith Kercher in Perugia twelve years ago. It took eight years for Knox to be acquitted of a crime there was no forensic evidence she had a part in, and for which she was initially tried and imprisoned. Her involvement as an accomplice in the crime was attributed to her attitude when confronted by interrogators. She was out of her depth as a 20 year old, and didn't know how to react it seems. 

A psychology research project demonstrated how it's possible in a high proportion of cases to identify a guilty party under interrogation from their body language, whereas this is not so with an innocent party, whose reactions are naturally more ambiguous and influenced by confused feelings about being under examination. An interrogator may read this confusion as evidence of guilt or complicity, but it's a presumption which may not survive scrutiny. It's all down to how we look at and listen to someone, and whether we think we already know about who they are and what they think.

In this era of sound-byte news when information is over-simplified for popular consumption, it's no wonder that Britain is in such a mess of brexit. Dialogue is overwhelmed by simplistic confrontation, and extremists are pushing the country towards open conflict. Parliament is wildly condemned by some for betraying 'the people', who just want to 'get on with it', whatever that means. Parliament is struggling, despite efforts to curtail its responsibilities, to maintain dialogue in a situation of great complexity which cannot be reduced to simplicities, that take time to ensure justice for all. It's taken three years so far and may take much longer to resolve in a way that achieves true common good.

The country's most senior lawyers are considering whether Boris Johnson's proroguing of Parliament for such time is legal or not, and opinion is divided even at the highest level. What best serves the common good? is the issue behind the legal debate. How is is possible to look at this with fresh eyes, without prejudice, without vested interest, without presuming this is typical rather than unique. It's a conversation which needs to happen between people of opposing views throughout our divided land. Urgently.

More political upheaval and uncertainty

One of the builder's craftsmen came yesterday to finish off a few small outstanding details on the renovated rear of the house. Both walls have been painted right up to the roof in magnolia and a little extra light is reflected into the garden as a result. A tree surgeon wielding a chainsaw was at work in the garden opposite ours, reducing the size of some of its trees. This will also let in a bit more light, although it will mean less cover for small birds until they grow back. As we saw after several gardens were drastically pruned a few years ago, this leads to a reduction in small birds and the dominance of gulls, crows, pigeons and magpies, not to mention cats. Vegetation grows back after a couple of years but sadly, small birds are slower to return.

I spotted swifts and swallows foraging in the air above Pontcanna Fields when I took my daily work, also a family of pied wagtails, and the older heron, trying out a vantage point on the east river bank, different from its usual habitat by Blackweir bridge. The younger heron stand there on watch more often these days. I wonder if this is the younger bird ousting the elder (perhaps its parent?) from the prime site for hunting,

We continue to follow the Parliamentary crisis with astonishment and dread. There's simply no let-up in the uncertainty clouding the future direction of the country. Boris Johnson has lost a great deal of credibility this week in the eyes of party members who recently elected him. The speculation is that if he could call an election soon, his party would win, probably because of the support he receives from movers and shakers from brexit backing newspaper industry. 

Opposition to him and his plans grows, adding to divisions in the Tory party as well as in the country. Parliament has now voted to outlaw the no-deal conclusion the government seems to favour, and stop an election being called before the October 31st deadline. Given the lack of evidence of a realistic negotiating strategy for withdrawal, this throws a spoke into the wheel of the Johnson juggernaut. His tactics amount to little more than bullying and bluff. At last members of Parliament, even of his own party, are expressing their disgust, heaven knows where this is going to lead.

Another episode of 'Non Uccidere tonight, on More Four. This week's episode focused on a Tunisian Muslim immigrant family and the commnity context in which an honour crime was committed. It also portrayed an Italian man about to separate from his wife, converting to Islam, in reaction against the piety of his Catholic wife, having falling in love and having an affair with the crime victim. An interesting twist to the tale.
  

  

 

Failure acknowledged, but what have we learned?

News came this morning of Theresa May's resignation as Prime Minister. This was bound to happen, given the multiple rejections of the deal with the EU negotiated by her government team. She put her heart and soul into efforts to persuade Parliament that it's the only deal possible, but all this did was reveal the depths of intransigence and divisions among parliamentarians throughout the House. This has been coming for weeks, and the media hasn't been slow to speculate already about candidates to succeed her. 

As soon as her speech was over, as tributes from political leaders to her time in office were issued, the clamour of speculation about her successor soon overshadowed all else. The name of media darling Boris Johnston as most popular candidate was predominant. It feels as if the BBC and some sections of the press are lobbying on his behalf. Or is this just a public schoolboy journalism game to set someone in a pedestal in order the try and knock them off it?

Britain's social, cultural and ideological divisions have been exposed by the brexit affair. It's clear the Conservative and Labour parties will suffer badly in the European elections from the inability to reach a consensus or compromise in shaping relationships with the E.C. The political middle ground  has been laid waste by failures which are not entirely the fault of Parliamentarians. The constant clamour and pressure from news media commentariat and the demand for instant reaction to every question thrust upon them creates an unhealthy environment for reasoned discussion and reflection by our elected representatives. It takes time to come to a common mind. More time than politicians may get these days.

Clare had an in-service training session during the day, leaving me to fend for myself, as she had to leave early. It gave me the chance to try a day with a loose dressing instead of the usual plaster, after a night without one. The wound is at last becoming as manageable as it was just before the second round of surgery, and this makes it possible for me to manage on my own. I went into town to take photos of the last phase of the St David's House demolition, then walked home through the fields of Bute Park up to Blackweir. There's still about 20 metres of the building standing, and scaffolders were at work again dismantling another section of the screen behind which the penultimate bay of the old building is being torn down. I should think the remnants of the building will be levelled by this time next week.

   

Waiting on Parliament and on God

I've been following events in Parliament closely this past few days and will do for the rest of this critical week in European politics. I follow just as closely what media reports and the commentariat have to say about it. It's hard to know which group is the more worrying of the two. 

For ages it's seemed to me that MPs are dimly aware or ill informed on all the consequences of decisions they are required to take, often less interested in the common good than in preserving self-interests. Journalists and interviewers often seem poorly briefed, not quite up to date, and utterly devoted to over-simplifying every issue, and enforcing binary options to which an instant response is required from their unfortunate victim. 

I find myself reluctant to trust the majority of public voices, whether elected or employed in the media, to speak the whole truth in the service of all citizens. It's argued that all this disagreement, division and harsh debate about the way forward for the country is what democracy is about. What I see is elite groups struggling for control, not for a unifying consensus, setting a bad example that exacerbates existing social division in the population. It's recipe for civil strife if many on both sides of the brexit debate feel their voices are unheard and don't get what they thought they wanted from the outcome of this agonising process. 

Britain is no longer a society in which Christian moral values and spiritual influence set the tone or give a lead in nurturing a more just and equal society. We have become to a much greater extent a multi-faith and plural culture, tolerant in some respects, but overly lax and permissive in others. The total proportion of people of any faith who practice their religion and apply its teaching is perhaps a quarter of the population. To have a secular environment in which all believers enjoy equal respect and treatment can be beneficial to the common good, but at what price? To have secularism as a dominant ideology fostering individualism, striving to discredit and exclude religious thought and influence from the public debate, poses a grave danger. 

It's all too easy for cultured despisers of religion to dismiss the faith perspective on the grounds of differences in beliefs and the awful conflicts these have generated, and ignore elements of different religious paths on which believers do unite in pursuit of truth justice, equality and goodness. The idea of Christendom is a lost cause, but the spiritual reality of God's kingdom, and human beings as God's children transcends culture and religion. I believe it can and should be worked towards by all people of faith, thinking and working together for the common good, regardless of differences. And to make any fresh impact on the wider world, every household of faith has to set its own house in order, purge itself of deceit, corruption and exploitation. Believers in God have lost so much of their credibility, it's easier said than done to restore it, maybe beyond us humans, but not beyond God. So, it's a matter of watching and waiting on God for the kingdom to break through - yet again.

Street naming, political theater and a fig tree

One small but noticeable change that's occurred since I was last here is the appearance of shiny new name plates on street corners, giving an identity to most of the Calle (or Carrer if you prefer the Valenciano) of the housing areas along the Costa Norte. The development of housing along and behind coast road dates back at decade if not longer. Area maps identified streets by an alphabetic letter and houses by plot identification numbers that can still be seen on tiles embedded in boundary walls of fincas here and there. Confusingly, developers' plot numbers eventually gave way to house numbers designated by the local planning authority, so new number plates were added by owners, without necessarily taking down the plot numbers. 

It's a nightmare for visitors, for deliverymen, but not necessarily for council officials or the yellow clad Corrreos post lady who tours the area on her yellow scooter, dropping off letters in the boxes wherever they are bunched. No letter box delivery hereabouts, and they've probably had an updated plan to learn from. So, Casa John Phillips, as the chaplain's residence is known in tribute to its founding priest, which used to be Carrer D, is now Carrer Llatina in urbanización Saldonar. 

There's no equivalent word I can find in Castilian Spanish, but in Catalan this means 'Latin Street', and Valenciano is close to Catalan, one is a dialect of other, depending on which side of the riu Senia you view the world from. Neighbouring Carrer C is now Carrer Llata, and that's one I can't find in any dictionary.

It's been a day to spend with the news on in the background most of the time, to keep up with the unfolding political events in London. Suddenly there, no longer an election for Tory party leader, but an effective coronation for Teresa May, with the withdrawal of the only other contender. Then, very quickly, Cameron announces that he'll bring forward his resignation to Wednesday this week, which will precipitate immediate action to implement the brexit vote, under new leadership. In the meanwhile, criticism of the process, and legal challenges to the government trying to take short cuts and by-pass parliamentary approval are bound to continue. 

It's such a pity that the Labour Party is rendering itself impotent by its members of parliament doing their utmost to oust Jeremy Corbyn, with the forcing of its own leadership contest. This is an unhappy time to be British, European and radical. This isn't just muddling through, but a chaotic loss of common purpose, despite all the noble idealistic rhetoric.

It was a little cooler and cloudier this afternoon. Once the news frenzy abated, I walked into town and out along the port north wall. There's a wild fig tree that has grown to maturity among the huge boulders of the sea defences on the north, and bears young green figs. The aroma it gives off when the sea breeze picks up is as exquisite as it is unexpected. A Mediterranean delight.