Weekend goings and comings

Saralee's London bound coach was due to leave at eleven this morning. We learned from her ticket email notification that the Sophia Gardens coach station was closed and that coaches would start their journey out in nearby Cathedral Road, although the email map was imprecise about the actual location of the temporary coach stop. We took her in the car down to the side street by the Church in Wales Representative Body buildings, and walked her and her case the last 250m to where a line of departing coaches were parked, accompanied by a host of National Express uniformed staff, helping travellers to find their coaches.. 

This was well organised and worked well, although no signage was visible for people to identify from a distances that they were in the right place. Walking back to the car, after saying our farewells, I noticed a road sweeping vehicle patrolling the street, which was notably clear of cars in the vicinity of the coach stops. There wasn't much for it to sweep up. On the other hand, litter was abundant on the pavements occupied by pedestrians getting on to buses, therefore a zone which the vehicle could not enter to perform its designated function. If only someone in Cardiff Council has the imagination to employ a few people to walk around as litter pickers, on a busy day like this. What must visitors think of our dirty city?

After lunch we went over to Bristol to see Amanda, and for once the travel weather was bright and clear. We were delighted to find that James was also there, on his weekend visit home to Mum. It was good to catch up with the two of them, and find them both in good spirits. Our return journey was surprising. Traffic on the M4 throughout the journey was lighter than at any time I've travelled on it during the daytime lately. With the UEFA Cup match being sold out in advance, and with the added security precautions surrounding Cardiff city centre, I suspect many casual weekend visitors may have been deterred from making the trip. The shopping centre was very quiet yesterday when I visited. The weekend may be good for hotels and pubs, but I doubt whether retailers will have much to rejoice over due to this world sporting event in the city.

In the BBC Four prime time crime drama slot this evening, the start of a Canadian series entitled 'Cardinal', named after its leading detective. It makes a change to have a New World series that's in English which isn't American English, and doesn't need subtitles. I find the similarities with Euro-crime film noir interesting to observe, for example, the sound track music, and the use of winter landscape and townscape shots as mis-en-scene. For once, however the environment portrayed looks different from that of Europe, and that's somewhat refreshing. The double episodes are half an hour shorter than usual, and from my viewpoint that's no bad thing, as it means I get to bed earlier. Will I be able to watch on line next week when I'm in Malaga, I wonder?

   

Bute Park lockdown

This morning at St German's I celebrated the Solemn Mass and afterwards the baptism of three year old child. There were three times as many people present for the baptism as there were for the Mass, and it was an effort to get everyone to join in with the responses correctly. Some repeated what I said rather than giving the answers, an indication that they were unused to participating in a liturgical act, or unused to having to follow the text from a service sheet. But, they all behaved respectfully. The child seemed less than used to being surrounded by so many people and being the centre of attention. She looked suspiciously at me when I spoke to her, and cried when poured water over her head in the baptismal act. 

It was one of those situations where the mother came to church after Mass one Sunday to fix the date, but as far as I recall, hadn't brought the child with her. Even though we encourage parents to attend ahead of the service with the child and familiarise themselves with the environment, if its unfamiliar to them, it's impossible to insist, as this is interpreted as rejection. St German's tries to be welcoming and unconditionally accepting of families seeking baptism for their children, and develop a pastoral relationship from that starting point. Being a locum priest means this is hardly possible for me to do. The best I can offer is a positive experience and interpretation of the service as it proceeds.

When I arrived home, Kath, Anto and Rhiannon were there, having arrived a short while before me. It was warm and sunny enough for us to have lunch in the garden, making the most of Clare's fresh bread rolls and special cheeses from the Cheese Pantry stall in Cardiff Market. After a brief siesta we walked to Bute Park and returned through Pontcanna Fields, marvelling at the size of the 'tent city' overflow, and speculating about who wuld occupy it.. 

Preparations for next weekend's UEFA Champions' Cup football extravaganza between Real Madrid and Juventus extend right into Bute Park itself, with a three metre metal wall enclosing a large portion of the space where some of the hospitality marquees have been planted. The Castle grounds are also covered with marquees. Sponsorship and other commercial interests in the two sides playing call for the city to provide this, plus a high level of additional security. It like to think of such exclusive areas as 'back-scartching zones'. 

All roads across town are equipped with heavy duty metal gates for planned road closures and there are gates blocking streets affording pedestrian access to the city centre to permit security screening of shoppers and football fans alike. It hasn't been like this since last year's NATO summit meeting came to Cardiff. It's been months in planning, and isn't a reaction to last Monday's bombing in Manchester. Normal life in Cardiff grinds to a halt when global big business or the war machine comes to town. This is profitable city hospitality, always at the expense of the locals.

Disdain for globalised capitalism didn't, however, prevent us from playing a game of Monopoly after a superb pizza supper, washed down with bottles of German and Italian red wines. It was great fun, and I came last in the scoring league, having invested too much in bricks and mortar. 'Woe unto you who have many posessions ..' I hear you say?
 

Bank Holiday Weekend - again

I spent much of yesterday, as the previous day, uploading and writing some key captions for the 900+ photos taken on our Rhine cruise, I only discarded a couple of dozen bad pictures. It's a tribute to the reliability, ease of use and responsiveness of the Sony HX50 and HX300 cameras I took with me.

Many photos required no editing at all. A few were taken in situations where conditions confused the camera sensor leading to underexposure, but this could be rectified using the old desktop Picasa, still a versatile easy to use app. For the most part, however, Google Photos on-line editor provided all the tools I needed. With poor connectivity on the cruise, uploading, let alone editing was impossible, so my spare time since arriving home has been taken with making an album for each day's photos.

Encouraged by Clare, I also made a couple of web albums using just a third of the available photos covering the trip in two halves, so as not to exhaust the patience of viewers. You can find the first of these here and the second here.

Owain came over to visit in time for supper after work and stayed the night, returning to Bristol in the afternoon, as he has a gig to prepare for tomorrow.. It was good to see him, and enjoy our evening meal outdoors in the warmth of the evening sun, drinking a bottle of Alsacian Gewurztraminer for a change. Before lunch, he took us to Luffkin's Coffee Roasters a tiny cafe in a King's Road back alley next to the evangelical mission hall calling itself the 'Church of God in Cardiff'. The cafe offers a few select single estate grown filter served coffees from Africa or Latin America, and offers a breakfast featuring several different special kinds of bread. A foodie's paradise. 

Further down the alley is the popular local Pipes micro-brewery, whose beers can be found in several places across the city centre. The alley also boasts a small select farmers' market stalls on weekends - organic veg, bread, cheese and a dried meat and sausage stall. It's the first time we've had occasion to explore this alleyway properly when fully in use. I turns out to be a hidden treasure of our Parish.

In the evening after supper, I walked around Pontcanna fields. The entire north football field area is currently enclosed in Heras fencing, and half of it covered with tents - a hundred four person and a hundred two person tents, plus wigwam shaped marquees and toilets. This is the 'Tent City' which is being prepared to accommodate surplus visitors arriving for the UEFA Cup Winners' cup final in the city centre's Principality Stadium next weekend. Apparently all hotel are already booked, and a large crowd of Spanish fans are expected, as the finalists are the two top Spanish teams. There's an unprecedented high level of extra security measures being taken in town as well, planned for a long time, and not just in response to last Monday's terrorist incident in Manchester.

The British Airways total IT systems failure has been headline news all day, bringing to a halt all their operations at Heathrow and Gatwick. Every one of the airline's activities is so heavily dependent on use of networked computers and phones, that nobody could communicate with anyone else, and passengers were left stranded in departure lounges and on aircraft, unable to move safely without the appropriate forms of clearance. It's been attributed to power failures at the server farm level, and thankfully, not to cyber attacks. This high level of electronic dependency and reliance on the core of the system never failing is a disaster waiting to happen.

IT workers unions criticised the redundancy imposed on 1,200 BT computer system staff last year, and outsourcing of their jobs to Indian company Tata Consultancy Services. Cardiff Council made the same move several years ago, as a money saver, and on a couple of occasions I know of, the entire system went down for much of a day. The technology is new, state of the art, but this doesn't mean it's been tried and tested to the extreme limit of reliability. This couldn't have happened at a more critical time, Bank Holiday weekend. One can only hope questions are asked and lessons learned about long term sustainability from such disastrous experience.