Litter picking resumed

More sunshine, clouds and showers today. We were promised strong winds today and the speed at which the clouds moved easterly was just a hint of what was to come from mid morning until early evening. It wasn't just a persistent strong wind, but gusts of fifty miles an hour or more, lasting for a few minutes and then fading away, all quite unpredictable and challenging to stay upright walking to the shops when Clare and I went out together.

We went to the medical appliance shop on Cowbridge Road East and bought a thick wedge type cushion to use on chairs whose seat angle promotes wound discomfort even when using my existing ring cushion. The combination of the two proves an instant success, which means I can sit and write for much longer without discomfort or damage. 

A also bought one of those 'Reach/Grabber' devices - a pincer on a long arm that enables the user to get things down from a high shelf or pick things up off the floor. In reality I have no need to use it for either of these reasons. I bought it to use when out in the park for hygienic litter picking. I've not done any since I returned from Ibiza, and some days litter discarded hundreds of metres from the nearest bin the previous evening spoils my walk. The evidence of lazy greedy consumer selfishness tempts me to resent and hate not love my neighbour. 

It's only a small minority of park users, and it's just about balanced by the number of park lovers who pick up litter - elderlies, parents teaching their young to care about the environment and help to maintain it for the benefit of others. The Council has risen to the challenge of increasing bin emptying to match increased public use of the parks. There's even a worker called Richard who patrols early, spot collecting before the rubbish collection lorry arrives, but volunteers also contribute to the perpetual park clean up, although less so to keeping the streets free of litter. They often look neglected for weeks at a time. 

I notice where bottles and cans get dumped - in gutters, on garden walls, street side window sills, telecoms junction cabinets, even within sight of a bin. The use of street sweeping machines is never enough to do the job properly, and accompanying workers find it hard to keep up because of the mess generated and left when gulls break open bin bags and scatter the contents when searching for food.

I took my Grabber with me for my walk in the park at the end of the afternoon. I was surprised at how clear of litter it was. Others have been at work cleaning up in the past few days and there have been far fewer people socialising outdoors due to the rain and wind. One can, three plastic bottles and a glass one in a spot where it lay unnoticed where it had been discarded over the weekend. Because of the high wind I also collected several plastic shopping bags which had been blown and got caught in bushes or fences. One of them contained discarded paper and plastic. Perhaps a fellow collector had lost their grip on a bag which blew away in the wind? It easily happens if they inflate. 

Young saplings recently planted in the park either snapped in the trunk or had their support stay wrenched from the ground, more or less ensuring eventual shearing off. Some of the big trees lost branches too, and a lot of smaller branches littered the grass, travelling a distance buffeted like tumbleweed before the wind.

I had a GP phone call in the afternoon. It seems that my blood count is returning to normal. I have been prescribed a slightly lower dosage of Doxazosin to see if that mitigates the side effects and still helps to reduce and stabilise my blood pressure. I have started using an ear wax dissolving solution as hearing with my right ear is particularly poor, and I think I've been having inner ear problems as well, which seem to amplify, if that's the right word, the medication side effects. The effect or starting to use it is that my ear is even more blocked tonight with the dissolving fluid. Hopefully it will pass as the stuff does its job.

Sunny autumn Sunday

I presided and preached the Eucharist at St Catherine's this morning. Now that the Sunday school has re-started after the summer break, congregation numbers are returning to normal, with around thirty communicants, twenty children, and remarkably half a dozen young adults accompanying children who come up for a blessing. How to engage with them further and bring them to confirmation and full church membership is a key pastoral challenge for the parish. I think about this whenever I start preparing a sermon - not that this group hears me preach as they're normally in Sunday school with their offspring.

It was a lovely warm afternoon again when I went for my daily walk. For the most part, trees are still green, though with flecks or patches of golden leaves here and there, and occasionally a species that turn yellow earlier than others. The weather draws out groups of people picknicking, sometimes with games equipment for volleyball or rounders in between bouts of sandwiches and drinks. Saturdays, several cricket matches are played. 

I think the teams playing reflect local Asian language groupings. When passing the children's playground, I hear English and Welsh spoken, but also recently Spanish.  There are at least two young Spanish families in the vicinity of the park. Passing one picnic group, I heard the sound of a single acoustic guitar and a female voice singing a folk song in English. It could have been from a summer in our youth fifty five years ago. 

It's great to see our parks so well used these days. The litter bins fill to overflowing by Saturday, but not emptied until Monday, which is a pity. Most groups in the park tidy up after themselves. What we do suffer from a great deal is casual litter dropped by people passing through, as on the streets, every day, and occasionally, evidence of a small group sitting down with a supermarket pack of drinks, and leaving their litter behind on the spot - glass and plastic bottles, cans, paper and plastic cups, etc. Any day I go walking I expect to collect up to a dozen pieces and take them to the nearest bin. There are a fair number of bins in the parks fifty to a hundred metres apart, but on the streets one can walk three to five hundred metres without finding one. With the passage of time, I'm getting to know where each one is located.

Toxic consumerism

I celebrated the Eucharist with a dozen people at St John's this morning, then went to the clinic for a dressing. My clinic visits are reducing to three a week now, and if I'm running out of supplies, I can call in during working hours. Healing continues slowly, but it's still quite uncomfortable to sit for any length of time. Even so, already it's better than it was a couple of weeks ago. I look forward to a time when I can get by with just a minimal dressing, as I did for several months at the outset, as that would allow me to look after myself and not need to rely on Clare or a nurse to keep clean and safe. I'd then be able to go to London and see my sister June. It's more than a year since I last visited her.

Following my afternoon siesta I walked over to Victoria Park and back, for a change. Along Romilly Road I picked up a dozen discarded cans and bottles over a half mile distance with three litter bins. It's almost automatic for me to pick up something rolling around on the pavement which others might trip over if they don't notice it. It's the only way I can stop myself being resentful toward those who have no sense of public pride or self control to carry a container as far as a bin. These can be discarded often within yards of a litter bin. It's as if bins are invisible to the guzzling classes. 

What also disturbs me is the number of drink containers, both alcoholic and soft, from which only a few mouthfuls have been taken before abandonment. Was the person thirsty or not? Did the drink's taste not meet expectation? Is this a kind of consumer sickness, with an impact beyond the individual? 

Cutbacks in municipal budgets have led to reduction to the services delivered by the Council's Waste Management department when it comes to street cleaning. One day, on my walk back from the clinic I chatted with a couple of crew members emptying litter bins and tidying King's Road. Two workers are now doing what used to be done by three, and crews are expected to cover more ground as well. They may have to go without a lunch break to complete their target schedule. The city centre is well looked after from day to day, but less so the outlying residential areas.

One thing I find comforting is learning that some other older people also pick up litter in the street on their daily walkabouts. Neighbourhood groups and friends of public green spaces also organise weekend litter picks too. If politics and the economy fail to provide services which help to maintain civic pride, community voluntary action is necessary to fend off demoralisation and indifference to the environment. But the heart of the matter is the pernicious change in personal behaviour wrought by modern consumerism, and it's poisoning individuals (due to the impact on health of over eating and drinking), as well as the public domain and the common good.

Evening Taffside walk home

I walked to St Luke's to celebrate Mass with four people this morning. Fr Jesse Smith attended, on his way to meet the Archdeacon. It's ages since we last met. It's great to see him looking fit and well after a challenging bout of serious illness several years ago. At that time I did some locum duties in his Parish, though we got to know each other when he was Team Vicar in Central Cardiff Parish 16 years ago. He left us for a Tyneside parish. I remember going up there for his induction, a six hour journey. I was delighted that after a spell over the border he returned to the Parish where he's been incumbent now for ten years.

I had an email request to take a funeral a week Thursday. I won't be able to meet with the family members until next Monday to discuss the service, but that gives me plenty of time to prepare. 

This evening we went to choir practice, and numbers attending were thin enough to conclude that it's now time to stop rehearsals for the summer. Instead of learning new pieces we did some voice exercise work, which to my mind is a good thing. Mine gets well worked in the course of leading services but doesn't really get stretched by new demands. I have a little idea now of what I need to be doing to remedy this. I've lost a few bottom notes, but it seems that it's never too late to recover them, if I make the effort.

We went to choir by bus, but there were no buses timetabled for eight thirty when we were ready to set off for home, and nobody going in our direction to give us a lift, so we walked back 5.3km along the Taff trail, after buying a picnic supper in the swish new Llandaff North Lidl store. It was a very pleasant summer evening walk, marred only by discarded cans and bottles. I couple of items I could not pass by, I carried 400m to the nearest bin. Sometimes the distance between bins is greater. More are needed to cope with the problem caused by the couldn't care less members of our throwaway society. More bins require more maintenance staff, and city budgets have experienced terrible cut backs. 

Last week I completed a local council on-line survey to give feedback on its public cleansing services, as I expressed an interest in the issue many moons ago. In this era of enforced austerity in public spending, I believe it's necessary to make it easier for volunteers to work on keeping litter under control, by making collection resources available to them - temporary bins, bags, gloves, tongs etc. Is this too hard to consider, I wonder?

  

Geeky downtime

A lie-in followed by an idle day was just what I needed. I frittered time away attempting to convert an old Memory Stick Duo into a bootable Fedora Linux live medium in a USB card reader. A couple of days ago, I downloaded the latest Fedora ISO, both 32 and 64 bit versions to start with, aiming to try out on live the five year old Acer Core i3 laptop bequeathed me by Kath, currently running Linux Mint rather sweetly. 

I reformatted the Memory Stick and used a Mint utility to install the ISO on it. Neither 32 nor 64 bit versions worked. With trial and error, I realised Fedora's ISO wasn't happy loaded on a FAT16 or FAT32 filesystem. I reformatted to EXT4 filesystem, and the 32 bit ISO proved bootable. I must have a go at the 64 bit version eventually, to see if it will work on this old Core i3 machine. Being able to run any live version this way proved satisfying. I like the way Fedora's Gnome user interface works, and its reasonable performance under the circumstances. So then, I attempted a full installation of Fedora, not on the Acer's hard drive, as I didn't want to mess up Mint, but on the spare hard drive I've had sitting in a USB dock, since I retrieved it from the deceased Dell XPS.

Everything worked fairly well eventually, although Fedora's Anaconda installer bewildered me when it came to assigning full disk space, as I didn't really understand what it was asking me to do, as the drive in question was already partitioned ready for a Linux install, though not in a way Fedora was prepared to make sense of. Deleting the drive partitions and leaving Anaconda to do the rest worked, however, and in the end I was in possession of a bootable USB hard drive. It seems a little slow running to me, but maybe if physically installed in the machine, it would perform better. On the other hand, Gnome is not a lightweight user interface, compared to Mate on Linux Mint. Well, we'll see, when I next have an opportunity to tinker.

At teatime, I went out to Chapter to return two weeks worth of canvas carry bags for our organic veggie order, due tomorrow, then walked to the NatWest ATM on Cowbridge Road, to draw some money out. Since the start of the Triduum, I've had neither time nor opportunity for litter picking. On this journey of just over a mile, I picked up forty four pieces of litter. The forecourt area in front of the bank boasts a generous wheelchair ramp. There was an amazing amount of litter, paper cups, fag packets, a few cans and bottles, paper and plastic in this area, I admit that I wondered when it was last cleaned. But, as this is private property, not public realm, I made no effort to pick anything up. I tweeted about the mess instead, in the hope someone will notice.

After supper, a telly free evening, for a change. Plenty to read and think about, with Teresa May calling a General Election in the hope of increasing support for her brexit intransigence. I keep wondering what the possibility is of the electorate expressing concern and displeasure at the entirely foreseeable consequences of the referendum, and a government unable to agree, announce and implement a coherent strategy, by voting them out of office. A rainbow coalition of opposition parties might succeed in bringing Britain back from the brink, but that would be a miracle of co-operation beyond belief as the campaigning begins. But in these days of social media, six weeks is a very long time in politics, and many things can can, both for better and for worse.

Holy Week Monday

Having previously missed out on getting a 'book on the day' GP appointment by telephoning for one at eight o'clock, I walked to the surgery and waited for the doors to open, to get a 10.00am slot, to learn about findings from what was, in my opinion, an unsatisfactory 24 hours spent with a blood pressure monitoring device, during which it made many more efforts to take readings at odd times when it wasn't programmed to. 

After breakfast I returned to meet another doctor, not the one who'd commissioned the use of the device, and got the usual lecture about my systolic reading being too high, which I knew anyway, as it's been like that for years. He urged me to accept extra medication to treat the condition 'aggressively' to get that reading down, to avoid a fatal stroke or heart attack, and was evidently displeased when I questioned the value of the readings provided by the device.

I was surprised to learn that I've been on blood pressure medication for eleven years, since that fateful year when the closure of St James' Tredegarville church became inevitable, and I was left to pick up all the piece and dispose of the contents prior to sale, one of the most stressful times of my entire life. 

In all those years, I have never had chest pains, headaches, seizures of any kind, nor dizzy spells, nor the kind of physical symptoms associated with so called 'mini-strokes', only an occasional nose bleed. One or two early hypertension drug trials, not to mention statins did give me unpleasant side effects, and I had to insist on trying something else instead. I know my blood pressure is high, and have done everything I can to get it down naturally, weight loss, alcohol reduction, diet and exercise, relaxation. Little has changed. I'm a decade older, and blood pressure tends to go up anyway as you get older. You can't win. Nosotros somos todos mortales, like it or not. So why the big worry? 

The contemporary epidemic of longevity is resulting in a major medical, social and economic crisis. Doctors furrow their brows and write notes about problem patients no doubt, if you challenge their world view that more must to be done to prolong lives drawing to a close. Can they cope with the idea that life is a gift to be cherished and eventually relinquished naturally, not a mechanism to be maintained as long as possible? 

To be fair, it's not a digital equation. A stroke or a coronary, even if untreated may not end life but prolong it, with lengthy and expensive treatment and years of infirmity. So, reducing the risk is reducing the medical bill, maybe. The statistics are very complex, so risks and costs will, in any case vary, from person to person. Having a decent conversation about this range of issues with medics working hard to deliver a service in limited time slots is impossible. At least I can debate with myself in this blog.

Anyway, I conceded to a month's trial of a supplementary medication before I next leave for Spain, to get some idea if I'd have adverse reactions to the drug, before leaving the country. Our local pharmacy is opposite the surgery now, so I submitted the prescription immediately and had a interesting and quite reassuring conversation with the pharmacist. He's engaged on a research project into hypertension medication, and needed an opportunity to discuss with me the drugs I've taken for the past decade, as I'm a regular customer. Now it's a question of getting on with the new regime of pills, and seeing whether or not it makes any difference.

Meanwhile, back on the streets, I collected forty four items of litter walking to the surgery and back. The haul included several beer glasses carried away by drinkers and dumped some distance from the pub in question. Considering I walked the same route to church at eight o'clock yesterday collecting just ten items, the increase represents mainly Sunday leisure time consumption. Later I went to Pontcanna Fields, and collected a staggering eighty one pieces of litter, mostly from one large football pitch area. One particularly telling indication of the culprits was a line of half a dozen Lucozade Sports energy drinks just behind one pitch touchline, plus the plastic packaging which had held bottles together prior to sale. I try to avoid feelings of outrage at this defilement of public space by careless self-centred people whatever their age. I just feel a lot better when I can rest my eyes on a cleaned up sea of green.

At the end of the morning I had a call from Ashley to take him to Chepstow again, as a follow up from last Friday's visit. I picked him up from the CBS office with another batch of radios for inspection, and we went there and back again in three hours. Getting home from the office took far longer than I would normally expect. Traffic going out of two at four thirty was very slow moving. After an early supper I set off across town again for the evening Mass at St German's, and thankfully the roads were clearer and traffic was free flowing again. There were half a dozen of us at worship, and once more, I enjoyed expounding the scriptural texts freely and spontaneously, rather than preaching a prepared homily. It's not because I didn't have time to write one, but more that I wanted to explore spending time on the texts in situ with a small group of faithful people I know quite well. Will it make a difference?

    

A new arrival and a litter storm

As usual, I went to St German's to celebrate the midweek Mass. This morning, it was just half a dozen of us in the Lady Chapel. Tomorrow the whole school will come in for a Lent-East celebration, which I persuaded Fr Phelim to do, so that he has an opportunity to introduce himself to the whole school, as it will be a key context for his new ministry to people in its Adamsdown and Splott catchment area. He will be moving house after Easter, and licensed in May, presuming we have a new Bishop by then.

After the service, PCSO Andy, his wife Michelle and their eleven day old daughter Millie, snug in her carry cot, called into the church so we could chat about the Christening. Actually it's going to be two Christenings, a Michelle expressed an interest in being Baptized when I officiated at the wedding a year ago. Once she became pregnant, she decided to wait until after the birth. I was so delighted when she emailed me to announce Millie's arrival and discuss dates. I discussed this with Fr Phelim, and he's happy for me to see this through with them, for continuity. With Andy working in the community, he'll get to know the family as time goes by.

Women in the church Day Centre were delighted to welcome Andy and Michelle's baby, and several of them gave Millie a cuddle while mum and dad were chatting with Father. I settled for giving her a first blessing, there in the church hall, before taking my leave of them, and drove home smiling to myself. It was a lovely morning.

I got home at noon. Clare suggested a walk and a picnic, to we went over to Blackweir and followed the Taff up-stream to Llandaff North, calling into Tesco's superstore for some sandwiches and a drink. Contrary to habit, and partly so we didn't have to hang around to be served, I used a robotic check-out, and got very annoyed with it, as it wouldn't scan some items submitted, and nagged me about using the wretched 'bagging area' for purchases - butt of jokes in stand up comedy. 

It turned out I'd used the one on my left side instead of the right. I was not aware of signage indicating which area belonged to which till. If you're left handed like me, it doesn't come as naturally to pass goods from left to right as it does from right to left. A big directional arrow over the till would have helped. For a few moments I felt helplessly stupid, annoyed with myself and the world. An assistant tried to help me, but presumed I was having trouble getting started rather than being stuck half way through purchasing, only making matters worse, until I rebuffed her and got a telling off from Clare. 

We continued following the riverside path on the Gabalfa side, stopping for a picnic half way, and turning round in Llandaff North village after stopping for a drink at Coffi Cwtch on the High Street. Along this stretch of riverside I was surprised how few litter bins there were until we reached Hailey Park, which had several. For a change, however, there wasn't much to pick up in this stretch, half a dozen pieces. By the time we walked back down river, over Blackweir Bridge and across Pontcanna Fields to home, I'd picked up another seven times as much.

This is Varsity Sports Week in Cardiff, and students from the three Universities are out on the streets and in the parks in force, wearing supporters tee shirts, getting drunk and being rowdy as some do. But worst of all on a sunny day like today, groups sit out on the sports fields for picnics and/or drinking sessions, and leave their rubbish behind. At just one abandoned party site, I picked up ten bottles and cans, and there were half a dozen other groups scattered across the playing fields still enjoying the air and drinking. Heaven knows what it will look like tomorrow. I collected a total of fifty items of litter out walking today. 

Our parks are well maintained and supplied with litter bins that are well used though rarely full. Some people just walk away and leave their cans, bottles, cups and food wrappers behind. What kind of social education or training are young sports people and their fans getting, that they can exhibit such disregard for an environment they share with people of all ages? In the days of military conscription, many men who regarded themselves as having learned next to nothing as they grew up, were subjected to what would be regarded nowadays as harsh and rigorous training, and education for self reliance and disciplined living. They learned how maintain high standards, to look after themselves and take care of their environment, or suffer if they didn't. Society may no longer feel military conscription is necessary or relevant, but it hasn't replaced that kind of disciplined personal formation for adult life in any consistent way that makes responsible citizens out of individualistic adolescents. More's the pity. 

What sort of mess of a world is little Millie going to grow up in?

  

   

O unhappy day

At lunchtime yesterday I walked to our GP surgery to acquire a blood pressure monitoring device to wear for the next twenty four hours, so that a better idea can be obtained of the apparent fluctuations in my blood pressure through the day. As long as the doctors express concern, I have to go along with this, though it's hard to see how this can be changed. I've lived well enough with this without my life being impaired for a long time. I accept that ageing means slowing down, and limitations on what's possible to consider doing in life. Yet there's still an enormous amount I can do, as long as I sleep well and eat enough and no more than my body needs, and I'm grateful for that.

Ceri, the Practice Nurse initialised the device, fitted the sensory cuff to my upper left arm. There's a digital monitor connected to a pump that drives the sphyngmomanometer, and it's got flash storage to harvest readings at given periods of time during the monitoring exercise. It's about the size and shape of a 200 gram tub of butter, and is packed into holster with an adjustable shoulder strap. Once kitted out the challenge is getting one's clothes back on tidily without disconnecting the the tube joining the components. I decided not to examine it and see what information it could display, and just wear it for twenty four hours. 

Before taking a reading, the device inflates slightly as a one minute warning to get ready, meaning sit down or stand still while the device is working. No sooner had I walked out the surgery than it let me know its intention. The best I could do was stand still. I stopped until it finished, then walked on. But within a minute, a repeat performance. Within another couple of minutes, another repetition. To me it suggested a read failure. Once I was settled at home, writing, it started again, and fell into a rhythm of twenty minutes between readings. 

I felt there was every reason why I should have a normally active day, and not just sit around waiting for the device to take a reading, so I decided to re-start Tai Chi classes. It would be a good test of the stability of my dodgy knee. There were more presumed read errors walking there and back, although I stopped each time I got the signal. During the class it went off twice at the prescribed time, and I just stood still, always easy to do in class, and it seemed to work as prescribed.

I think the device was programmed for a longer timing sequence when I went to bed, as I only recall it taking readings as I was falling asleep, and at first light. There may have been more, but after a marvellous class, starting to learn a new sequence of Tai Chi movements, I was very relaxed and slept well. It didn't seem to be active during breakfast, perhaps it was still programmed for night sequence. I noticed its clock was still set at GMT rather than Summer Time. When I started driving across town to St German's for the week's 'class mass', it started working again, with the same pattern of presumed read errors, and this continued during Mass as well.

After the service I went to check on the office PC, still downloading and installing a year's worth of updates at a stupidly slow pace. If this continues, I'll just take the thing home and update it where I can make sure it doesn't keep choking on the process. I took my jacket off while I worked and in the hour that followed noticed that the device resumed working normally. That was how I discovered that the cuff doesn't like any kind of coverage. The sleeves aren't tight by any means, but basically the device won't work underneath anything except the lightest clothing, which implies that it's usage is going to be restricted to quiet stable environments, unlike real world conditions. At home or in a hospital ward, it's going to be fine, but taking readings from a normally active no sedentary daily life, is another matter altogether. Ah well, now I know. I wrote a note to my GP about this and sent it with the device when I returned it to the surgery.

I walked to Chapter Arts Centre before supper to collect this week's organic veg order, and collected thirteen pieces of street litter on my way there and back, most of them flattened discarded cans from the gutter, including four Carling lager cans strung out along the street where they'd most probably been drunk in between purchase and home. And so many energy drink cans too. As if imbibing their content impairs the awareness of the consumer of the proximity of litter bins, or of any conscience about fouling the environment. A dozen pieces yesterday and Monday as well, while out walking. It's hard not to feel angry about such greedy self-centred carelessness.

Today the formal notification of the UK's intention to quit the EU was delivered. I've listened to the minimum amount of news as the endless reportage on the matter is like having sandpaper rubbed endlessly on the skin. I am angry, frustrated, powerless at the electorate being conned by lies and phobic propaganda from the mass media and the politicians. Around three million expats refused a referendum vote and a matter of high concern for them as UK citizens abroad, and a referendum vote on a simplistic majority rather than a two thirds majority, as is common in other European countries. 

Even the Church in Wales has a two thirds rule for electing a Bishop. The process failed to deliver in Llandaff diocese, and the Bench of Bishops has made a mess of using its executive powers leading to the whole process now being subject to legal scrutiny. Falling just short of the two thirds majority could have been read by the Bishops, if they couldn't agree on an appointment, as a sign of the need to re-convene an Electoral College and let them try again. Or even not appoint until the Electoral College can agree. It may come to a re-run of the Electoral College anyway in the end. If it does, it won't be without rancour and bitterness en route. 

Narrow simple majority voting is like a statistical game of chance, and the margin in either direction can fluctuate, for all sorts of reasons unconnected with the purpose of the vote. When there's a clear consensus speedily reached, it's reason for rejoicing. But life isn't always so simple, so reaching a consensual position in any kind of decision making may take more time and be inconvenient, but it does causes people to think further, to be more aware of a breadth of issues and consequences which may be obscured by fears or ambitions at the the start. 

Refreshment Sunday

Yesterday was another sunny day, so I took the bus into town and out to Penarth at the end of the morning, and after a walk through the parks above the Esplanade, I returned on foot along the rocky pebble strewn foreshore and crossed the barrage, before picking up a bus from the Millennium Centre to town, and then a 61 home. Coping with loose stones and rough rocky surfaces was a good test for the stability and resilience of my knee, above and beyond regular walking on metalled roads, and passed without incident. I expect I'll have stiff legs over the next few days nevertheless.

On the beach I collected just half a dozen plastic bottles over the majority of its kilometre length, then in the last 200 metres of beach and 100 metres of footpath to the car park, the most frequented patch, another dozen pieces. The only waste bin in sight was on the opposite side of the road beyond the car park. The beach was relatively clean as the tide was receding, but among the few items of plastic found at the high water mark, were several that were oily and may have been tossed overboard from a passing ship. I could have picked up more if I'd had a bigger bag. This beach is litter picked regularly by local volunteers. It just goes to show that the stream of visitors lacking concern for the environment continues unabated.

Aware of the arrival of summertime, I put all the clocks forward early, and restricted myself to just one of the two episodes of 'Follow the Money' before turning in early for the night. A nine o'clock celebration at St John's Canton would still be eight o'clock according to my body clock. At the service Sam, one of the two ordinands on placement preached the sermon. It was good to listen to him with a view to making an assessment - something I haven't done since my St Mike's sojourn. It was also good refreshment for Refreshment Sunday to have a respite from preaching.

After the St German's Mass and distribution of Mothering Sunday flowers and cards, followed by a brief check on the state of the office PC Windows 10 updates (now reaching 50%), I took Communion to Angela at home. She's glad to be home and looked after by nurses, family and friends, rather than still being in a recovery ward waiting to be moved into a regular ward, as she was for a week after her urgent shoulder repair. Now she's all trussed up with her arm and shoulder immobilised, similar to the way Clare was after her operation, but cheerful nevertheless, and trying to figure out how she can use her PC to catch up on her administrative backlog after two weeks of down time.

While I was cooking lunch after my return home, Owain called to say he was on his way over to give his mum flowers and chocolates for 'Mothers Day', as he insists on calling it to wind me up. He had forgotten that Clare's in Kirton over the weekend, and called only after buying his ticket, poor lad. Even so he came over and we spent a couple of hours chatting. I walked with him down to Cowbridge Road when he was leaving. Before taking a bus into town, we called into the 'Calabrisella' restaurant, for him to get a pizza, as he'd missed out on lunch earlier. Having eaten a few hours earlier, I didn't feel like eating a full meal, so just shared his tasty arancino and couple of tranches of pizza. An unexpected treat at the end of the afternoon.

While I was waiting for Owain to arrive, I sat down do do my daily Duo Lingo Spanish drill. Before I could get started, fell asleep. When I woke up, an hour later, I completely forgot to continue. It's the first day in months that I missed practicing altogether. Despite going to bed early, I was more tired that I realised.

I discovered a new BBC 1 TV series of 'Call of Duty' about a police anti-corruption squad was on at nine, and that gave me something new and interesting to watch. Just after it finished, I had a message from Jane, the Churchwarden in Montreux, to confirm that I'm wanted for locum duty there the second half of August and all of September coming. I was surprised to discover that it'll be six years since we last spent time in Switzerland. The place is so vivid in my memory that it still seems like yesterday when we were there. I say the same about Spain too. Beautiful places are so nourishing. I need a lovely landscape for nurture and inspiration.

Still no news about the appointment of a new bishop for Llandaff diocese. It's worrying.
    

The shadow of terrorist violence falls again

Yesterday was uneventful, unmemorable, a day of rain showers mixed with sunshine. I went for a walk in Pontcanna Fields during a bright spell in the afternoon, but got soaked in a sudden shower on my way home. Unusually, I didn't spot anything to pick up from the streets on the way there, but along the river path collected thirteen items, half pulled from briars in the undergrowth.

Before this morning's 'class Mass' at St German's, I took the car to N.G. Motors for its MOT test. After the service, I went to check on the church hall office PC, which we'd left running on Sunday to address the update backlog problem. It was running, but had stalled, in need of permission to continue. Once rebooted, it completed a lengthy update process, lasting twenty minutes, then declared that another batch was available to download. So, it was a matter of setting it off and leaving it again. 

The internet link is stable enough, but very slow, which may mean the Powerline network set-up is not being as efficient as usual in sending a receiving data. Is a workaround possible, apart from relocating the machine elsewhere in the building nearer the router, at least for the purposes of updating? The church hall ring-main is extensive. At present the distance is forty metres, so who knows what electrical interference may be affecting transmission?

By the time I decided to give up on machine minding for the day, Clare had received a text and sent one to met, to say the car was ready for collection. This was most fortunate as it meant that I didn't need to go home and return at the end of the day, or possibly next day if any repairs were needed, to collect the car. So delighted my venerable auto is still roadworthy! It meant I could call into the Lidl's on the way back from retrieving the car, and stock up with additional food items for the coming days, during which Clare will be with sister-in-law Ann over in East Anglia from tomorrow. 

As I was relaxing after lunch, a brief but urgent phone call came from my sister June to switch on the telly, as a major incident had been declared in London. That's how I learned about the terrorist incident outside the House of Commons. Given the gravity of the 7/7 bombing, I feared the worst as I switched on. With four deaths reported, including a policeman, it was an appalling incident, but I was grateful that it wasn't worse involving a truck bomb or lethal toxic attack. Paramedics were on the scene very quickly and police had the area under security lock-down very quickly after the initial incident had concluded. The assailant's car, used as a simple lethal weapon was travelling on public roads, with possibly the best video surveillance and policing in Britain. It's impossible to scan minds for deadly ill-will, however. The stories of all those involved will dominate the media for days to come. 

This week, some airlines working on Middle Eastern routes are starting to ban electronic devices larger than a phone from cabin baggage, due to reports of terrorist techies disguising explosives to resemble batteries used in laptops. Placing them in the aircraft's hold in robust containers would limit damage from any undetected device. Working out exactly how to manage this, so that no passenger has their electronic baggage stolen in transit to or from the flight will be challenging. I don't suppose it'll be too long before this becomes ubiquitous on the majority of flights, even though the risk of an attack on an airport terminal is regarded as far more likely than successfully detonating a bomb on a 'plane, in the light of rigorous security  measures already in place. It's a strange 'new normal' we've had to get used to in over the fifteen years since 9/11. 

What a hostile world we've created for our descendents, despite all our best idealist intentions!

  

Future travel prospects

Another wet morning. I was collected at ten for a funeral service in Pidgeon's chapel, and this was followed by burial at Western Cemetery. Light rain persisted throughout. I felt sorry for the small band of mourners at the graveside, huddled under umbrellas on waterlogged clay terrain. The water table on this site is a couple of meters below ground, but in wet weather, open graves frequently flood giving undertakers problems and mourners additional distress. It's not always possible to pump all the water out of a grave beforehand, and water can seep in again within fifteen to twenty minutes.

I was home and dry again by noon. After lunch I paid the balance over the phone on our Rhine cruise in May. I couldn't get the web payment facility on the website accept a card transaction, but a lady on the end of the Riviera Travel enquiry line was able to put it through, and it didn't take any longer. We're both looking forward to this greatly.

Then I did some more long drawn out Windows 10 computer updates, as each of mine at different times comes to the top of its particular queue. I also updated Libre Office on all my machines, the least onerous of tasks. Each new update brings improvements, some of them take a while to discover if you don't look at the published change-log. Improvements in speed however, are immediately noticeable and welcome every time. It's rarer and rarer that I ever have to use MS Word these days. 

This weekend I bought a copy of Linux Format magazine fro the first time in several years, as it had an up to date Linux Mint 18.1 distribution disk with it. These days I find that less and less of the technical content of the magazine is material I can understand. There's much about web computing and content management I have not kept abreast with, and have become less interested in how to do new things than I am in issues like user friendliness, or the social and cultural impact of media on life today. I still can and do troubleshoot computer problems for ordinary users, but that's now the limit of my expertise.

I whiled away a little time trying to run the live Mint distribution CD on a laptop with UEFI boot software, but without success. I am so nervous of making an irreversible change, which requires me to find and pay a real expert to put right. Progress, if it is progress, is leaving me behind, I admit.

By late afternoon the rain stopped and the sun shone, so I went for a walk to Pontcanna Fields before cooking supper, collecting a dozen pieces of litter on my way. So far, rough mental calculation still indicates that I pick up an average of half a dozen for each kilometre I walk. There's more than this on the ground for sure, but sometimes after rain, it's difficult to retrieve.

Just as I was getting ready for bed, I had an email from a churchwarden at St John's Montreux asking if I was available at the end of the summer. That's when I next have free time so I emailed my availability to her, and found myself quite excited at the prospect of an all new assignment, as I attempted to relax into sleep. I can hardly believe that it's nearly five years since we last visited Switzerland. My focus has been mainly on Spain since then, so the prospect of returning to a familiar and much loved part of Europe as a locum, and bringing my French back into use is going to be another challenge.
   

Disturbing church times

I walked to St St John's in the drizzle this morning to celebrate the eight o'clock Eucharist, rather than walk first to retrieve the car, parked in Greenfield Avenue where I'd been obliged to leave it overnight. On the journey, I collected a eleven pieces of litter, mostly cans and bottles, many of them discarded in the past couple of days. 

Meadow street was unusually full of cars over the weekend, with little movement in or out. This may have been a product of bad weather, and people watching the rugby internationals on TV at home rather than driving to a favourite pub. There was just one space free when I returned by car from St Germans some six hours later, after celebrating the Solemn Mass, followed by a baptism. By ten o'clock Monday morning eighty percent of the cars will have gone. Many working people live in our street and commute to work by car.

News that the episcopal election candidate Jeffrey John has not been included in the short-list drawn up for interview by the Bench of Bishops charged with making the appointment. He was two votes short of the necessary two thirds majority in the Electoral College vote, and the unanimous choice of Llandaff electors. I find this most disturbing. He seems to be feared by the Bishops as a potentially controversial candidate. He started ministry as a Llandaff ordinand, and the work he has done over the years marks him as an outstanding candidate. The fact that he is a celibate gay man in a committed stable civil partnership doesn't seem to have been a stumbling block for local electors, even though it seems to have been the reason for him being forced to withdraw from an appointment as Bishop of Reading, and passed over for Bishop of Southwark. 

The concern that he may not be acceptable as a bishop to a minority of traditionalist church leaders and faithful in Wales is one that can only be dispelled by making an appointment that challenges the reality behind the fear. In the past, traditionalist bishops outside of the UK have strongly objected to other gay appointments, and their threats to split the Anglican Communion over this issue, have been the cause of prolonged efforts at avoiding schism through dialogue. There is no formal schism so far, but many traditionalists continue loudly to denounce others who think differently from themselves, effectively admitting that living with differences of conviction is not their priority.

Jeffery is an outspoken liberal, and I wonder if he is quietly regarded by as being not 'orthodox' enough to be a mainstream bishop, as he's at risk of attracting allegations of heresy. It seems likely to me his views are no more un-traditional than positions held by many episcopal leaders, but it depends on who notices views expressed, whether in praise or condemnation. I wonder if fear of adding to polarisation between traditionalist and liberal tendencies is intoxicating the decision making of the Bench of Bishops at this time? How should the clergy and laity of the diocese respond if they think they have been disregarded? How can charitable behaviour prevail when the world, if not church members are sensing conflict in the air?
      

Midweek meditation

The sun lit up the interior of St German's beautifully during the 'class Mass' this morning. The class in church today seemed to have quite a few children unresponsive and in a bad mood. I had to work quite hard to get them smiling singing and moving about. 

No sooner had the class left after the service, than another class of younger children arrived to look around the church with their teacher and support staff. At the same time, a couple arrived for a preparation session for the christening of their year old son on Sunday after Mass. 

With a midday deadline to be home for the Ignatian Prayer Group, I had just enough time, after meeting them, to install another network plug and attach to an office desktop machine donated to the church. Thankfully it worked, but the Windows 10 PC hadn't been used for ten months. Many  updates are needed and now it's connected to the internet, it'll have to be left to complete those before it's of any use, as updating 

There were seven of us for the Ignatian Group. It was a welcome respite after a busy morning. I spent the afternoon writing a eulogy from the notes I took yesterday to deliver on behalf of the family at next Monday's funeral. Before cooking supper, I walked to Chapter Arts to collect the week's organic veggie bag. I picked up a dozen pieces of litter en route. The litter bin next to the Romilly Road bus stop is in a convenient place to deposit my haul, being near home. I wonder if the guys who empty that bin notice it's been more full than usual lately?

  

Lucky x-ray date

I rose at eight this morning to phone the GP surgery for a 'book on the day' appointment, to tell the story about my need for a knee x-ray to Dr Benjamin. I walked to the surgery, and after a brief conversation and inspection, came away with an appointment request, and a telephone number to call. Within minutes of phoning the appointments booking desk, I was given an appointment in Llandough mid-afternoon, fortunately free due to a cancellation. 

I was in and out of the hospital just three quarters of an hour, and this meant I could return home for a cup of tea before walking across the parish to make a bereavement visit, to prepare for a funeral next Monday. It'll be a week before the x-ray results reach my GP. Whatever the outcome, my knee joint has improved noticeably since yesterday. 

Walking through the parish today I picked up eighteen pieces of litter. It's only a fraction of what's there to pick up. Paper, cigarette cartons and paper cup get trodden flat and sodden in gutters. That sort of mess call for gloves and tongs, it's messy business, so I focus on removing things people could stumble over, and hope it won't be too long before the street sweeping machines do the rounds again.

  

Central Square Redevelopment Progress

I went to St German's to celebrate the 'Class Mass' this morning. Church administrator Angela tripped over her dog, fell downstairs and broke her shoulder yesterday. We prayed for her, aware that she was being operated upon at the same time. Afterwards, it was pleasing to hear reports that the church hall wi-fi network now covers the entire building. That gives me added pleasure.

I walked into town and back, late afternoon, to visit Central Square and take photos of the construction site. It's over a month since my last visit. All the lift shafts have been completed, and most of the steel building framework. The first giant plates of armoured glass that will cover most of the exterior walls of the building are being installed on the facade which faces Cardiff Central Station. Other photos taken  of the site today are here.

A few days ago, I found a video sequence of views of the whole development on the Media Wales website, showing that the site reserved for building a new bus station, will have high rise apartment blocks above it, extending above the current roof-scape of Lower St Mary Street. I'm not sure I liked what I saw, but it will undoubtedly be lucrative, and will result in continuing growth of the city centre population. The sad thing about this is, many of those who become residents, other than those staying in hotels, will be students or people who keep an apartment in town as a secondary residence, and live mainly elsewhere. Not exactly a recipe for building new community.

In the course of my walk down to Central Square, and back through Bute Park, I picked up sixteen items of litter, most on the way in, very few in the park. That's over 140 bottles, cans and paper cups picked up on daily walks since last Wednesday. 

The sun began to set as I walked through Bute Park. I heard more varied birdsong in the woodland stretch along the Taff than I have until now this year, and not surprisingly, with only a fortnight until Spring Equinox.

Shoreline reminiscence

This morning I drove Clare to her study group in Dinas Powis, then drove to Penarth, for a walk on the foreshore from the path at the end of the barrage. It's an unusual beach, interesting due to the geological strata in the cliffs above. In some places marl layers take a grey or green colour due to differences in the minerals leached by water out of deeper rock strata. But red limestone beds of crumbly stone of the Upper Triassic era predominate, shot through with layers of pink alabaster. Said to be one of the largest deposits of its kind in this particular stratum of rock.

This beach is one of the most popular places in South Wales for fossil hunters, with a variety of marine creatures caught long ago as they died and sank to a sandy seabed, which turned to stone thousands of years later. I found a slab of rock with no fossil in it, but containing a perfect imprint of sea bed, as it looked when the sea went out and never returned, leaving the mixture of sediment and mineral rich water to dry out and solidify.

This place evokes lovely memories of time spent here three years ago with granddaughter Jasmine (8 at the time) and Rachel her mother. Jasmine was fascinated by the variety of colours and odd shapes in the pebbles. We found a few partial fossils, but nothing special. We came home with five kilos of stones, and she was most disconsolate that she wasn't allowed to take them back to Arizona in her luggage, so reluctantly she left them behind, and later we returned them to their home on the foreshore.

I understand this pink alabaster, much of which is far paler than the above sample, is a popular feature decorating local gardens. It's soft as alabaster goes, and tends to break up with attempts to carve it. It's a striking feature of this stretch of South Wales' Jurassic coastline.

After lunch, I drove Clare to the Heath hospital for another post operative eye check-up, then I returned home and walked around Pontcanna. Today, I picked up fourteen assorted items of rubbish, just six from the beach, including a five litre plastic 'can' washed up by the tide. I could have collected more, but hadn't taken a bag with me, maybe just as well, as I would have ended up being late, and not having time to enjoy the geology.

End of a retail era

For the second time in a few days, I slept awkwardly and woke up with a stiff neck and shoulder which also gave my a painful ache in the scalp. An 8.30am  phone call from Clare got me out of bed suddenly, telling me that our cleaners were standing on the doorstep waiting to be let in. I hadn't heard the bell. It took me all morning to recover from this rude awakening and coax the spasm out of my muscles.

Clare arrived home just after lunch, and soon went out to do the week's grocery shopping without me noticing. I think I must have dozed off on the sofa before she left. Then the doorbell tang, and it was a neighbour who was seeking signatures for a petition which Iona our local City Councillor encouraged her to circulate. This expresses concern about the likely disappearance of our local Post Office, which is embedded in a mini-market in Pontcanna Street owned and run by the Patel family for decades. 

The elders are retiring and selling to the Co-op, which only a year ago opened a new local store on the Old Dairy site at the top of King's Road. It's very well used, and convenient. Is there to be yet another Co-op, some three hundred yards away? Or a relocation? Nobody seems to know. The embedded Post Office franchise is registered to the Patels, and it's an open question as to whether or not the Co-op's development plans for the site include a Post Office. Iona is meeting the Co-op regional managers to discuss the matter, and a public expression of concern about the need for a local sub-Post Office will be worth by good support.

Late afternoon, I walked my usual route around Pontcanna Fields again, collecting an assortment of 40 plastic water bottles, cans, paper cups and plastic wrappers used to package dozens of water bottles. When there are matches, it's not unusual for team coaches or supporters to bring small water bottles to supply the players. There's no excuse for not taking the packaging way, or for discarding half empty, or even sometimes full bottles of water.

On the edge of the Fields is a suite of sports changing rooms. Here on the ground within five metres of a waste bin which wasn't full I picked up seven discarded cans and bottles. Walking the perimeter of the SWALEC stadium, I picked up another dozen pieces discarded in the narrow garden, un-noticed or deposited in the four days since my last visit. Mention anti-social behaviour and sport, and what comes to mind is tribal clashes between rival fans. Sports littering strikes me as being an almost daily issue, from recent observation, quite apart from the appalling mess of rubbish left in the city centre after every Big Match. Isn't it time this became an issue of public concern in relation to sport in the same way as racism and homophobia has become?

On a more cheering note, the heron often to be seen near Blackweir Bridge or downstream from it, put in an appearance again this afternoon, after an absence of several weeks. It stood for ages no more than ten metres from the riverbank footpath in the shallows just staring at the water around its feet. It seemed not to notice me and I was able to stand in front of it for a while before it moved its head, and then flew off to haunt the fish ladder zone instead. An amazing bird.

    

Lenten Musical discovery

As I didn't have an eight o'clock celebration assignment this morning, I didn't need to rise early, and got up after nine hours of refreshing sleep. As I drove to St German's I listened to a Latin Mass for double choir on Radio 3 by Genevois composer Frank Martin, he of 'Le Vin Herbe' fame. I found it inspiringly beautiful, described afterwards by an announcer as being one of the great a capella choral works of the twentieth century. An opinion I certainly agree with. I'd love to hear it performed live in St German's with its perfect acoustic for choral music. 

Numbers at Mass were down twenty percent today. Over the years I've noticed in other places how church attendance often dips on the first Sunday of Lent. Not for the first time did I muse about people giving up church for Lent.

Clare is still in Kenilworth, so I returned home and cooked lunch for myself, some spicy vegetarian dishes which went down a treat. Later I walked around Pontcanna Fields, and decided that since it's a Sunday, I could relax my lenten litter picking discipline. It didn't stop me from spotting and collecting two nearly full plastic water bottles along the path, neither of them too far from a litter bin with a fresh empty bag. Discarded by people in the throes of sporting activity, I guess. So careless towards other people and the environment.

Watched 'Good Karma Hospital' again, always engaging, sometimes funny, or sad. Often it's thought provoking on social and ethical issues seen from a medical perspective, with the added savour of being set in an Indian beach holiday resort. I never watch British or American based hospital dramas, but this has my attention because of the window it gives on expatriate life and work in a third world country.

  

Spring around the corner

Today's my eldest sister Pauline's birthday, she's eighty eight, and still living independently on her own the house Bleadon Hill house which has been the family home for over forty years. I rang to sing her a Happy Birthday greeting. She once told me that when I rang last year and she was away, she'd kept the recording of me singing to her on the answering machine since then. How lovely. Just before I called, she'd opened the front door to discover her daughter Nicky and family, together with her son Julian, just arrived from Abu Dhabi where he lives. A complete surprise to her. I'd loved to have seen her face.

In the afternoon, I took a walk with my camera around Thompson's Park to take some pictures of the crocuses narcissi and different kinds of daffodils, some yet to burst into bud, others flourishing, some starting to wane. I've even seen a few primroses. A few early flowering varieties of cherry tree are out already, but no leaves yet. There'll be more blossom soon, but for now, everywhere there's grass, there are daffodils to be seen. In recent decades, all over Wales it seems, even along the motorway flanks, vast numbers of daffodils have been planted and proliferated, so the countryside seems to me even more colourful now in late winter, early spring, than I recall when I was growing up. Thompson's park was rubbish free, but walking the streets to shop at the Co-op later, I picked up a dozen separate items, unnoticed or dropped since I last passed that way a few days ago.

This evening BBC Four screened the first couple of episodes of a second series of 'Follow the Money', about the Danish finance industry and the police fraud squad. It's beautifully acted and filmed, and full of surprise twists and turns, despite the relatively slow pace, making for a sustained feeling of tension. After several months of repeats in the popular Saturday evening prime time foreign crime series slot, it's a relief to have a new must-watch series to look forward to.

Old assets, new uses

With a trip to St German's for Mass and Christian Aid Lent lunch at the end of the morning, I woke up thinking about the church hall wi-fi connectivity problem, then went hunting through my stored redundant technology bits and pieces to see what I could find. There were four Powerline adaptor plugs and ethernet cables, plus a box containing a complete wi-fi router, redundant after our broadband upgrade last year. That was about the time when I bought a wi-fi extending Powerline adaptor set, which was incompatible with the slower originals. I had to lay out more than I expected to complete the upgrade, and thus had a spare set working, in any case at a decent speed.

After Mass and lunch, I installed the kit and found that it worked as planned. The spare wi-fi extender that had been bought also connected, enabling the signal to travel to the furthest extent of the long steel and concrete building. This little success brought me no end of good cheer. I hate to see good working kit go to waste. There's still a lot more I wish I could find a use for, however.

On my afternoon walk, to the shops and the post office in two separate outings, I continued my Lenten 'wombling' effort, collecting this time thirty eight separate cans, paper cups, glass and plastic bottles, along my 3 km route. That's an average of a dozen pieces discarded per kilometre, much the same as I estimated yesterday. The number of slim energy drink cans among the detritus is remarkable, some of them tossed in the few days since I last passed by. As these beverages are marketed to sustain people who are being unusually physically active, I wondered if there's a correlation between this and total disregard for one's physical environment. 

As I was entering Tesco's, at Canton Cross, a mum and a granny emerged with a kindergarten age child in a strop, who dashed a small yoghourt drink from her lips, which hit my coat and splashed me with drops. They apologised but the child refused to, and refused defiantly to pick up the carton and take it to a bin two metres away. After I'd passed them I thought too late what I should have said to the child to bring home the fact that this behaviour was unacceptable - all the situation needed was to say "I'll tell your teacher you've been naughty!"

Within ten metres of the store entrance, curiously, there are no fewer than three litter bins, yet one can walk several hundred metres along Cowbridge Road and side streets leading off it, and rarely find a bin. It's no wonder people have got out of the habit of using them.

After supper I went over to St Catherine's Church Hall to collect some church keys I inadvertently left at St John's yesterday. The Parish youth club was in full session, with table football, ping-pong and an assortment of other table games being played, by over a dozen youngsters, and watched over by several parents, plus Fr Phelim. As the hall is a 19th century wooden building, an original temporary mission church in good repair, still finding use in the church grounds. I felt as if I was stepping back in time forty years to my days as a Curate. Even in these days of electronic devices and games, it's great that there's still a social space in which physical playful activities still continue to give pleasure and forge bonds between children that might even last a lifetime.