First of the year

Thankfully, a day without rain, a little colder due to a wind from the west, but not as cold. From Poland to Spain average temperatures are being recorded ten degrees higher than we'd expect for early January. Very much a symptom of global warming. After breakfast I walked to St Catherine's to celebrate the Eucharist with five others, and then chat over a cuppa in the church hall afterwards. No veg bag to collect this week, so I went straight home and shared cooking lunch with Clare, as she'd bought me some pork loin steaks to prepare in whatever way I fancied. I stewed them slowly with tomatoes and onions and was pleased with the result.

She returned home with the first three kilos of organic bitter oranges from Seville for this year's first batch of marmalade. Later in the day she cooked and de-pipped them and cooked them until they were jam consistency, eight bitter-sweet jars worth! It'll be my turn next to make the second batch.

John at Pidgeons called about a funeral for the 27th of this month, which I won't be able to do as by then I will be in Fuengirola re-orienting myself for the weeks to come

I went out for a walk afterwards, retracting my steps from two days ago to check if any of the new growth of winter flowers had emerged any further. I found a few scattered snowdrops with buds on slender stems just about to open, also one narcissus in bud but not about to flower. 

Not quite as early as last year judging by a photo I took on the second of January last year, but still a couple of weeks earlier than expected. Lots of fresh grass growth is visible in places, pushing up through the brown layer of dead leaves, and there were a few hazel branches with tiny catkins on them as well.

On the way out of Llandaff Fields at the end of my walk, a man was standing outside Cafe Castan in its sheltered space juggling with coloured plastic balls which lit up - a striking sight. He said that he'd worked as a juggler over the years and now taught juggling and circus skills to children. I tried taking photos of him juggling but wasn't pleased with the result with my Sony Alpha DSLR on auto-setting in poor light, I didn't know how to adjust the shutter and ISO speed manually on the spot, and in the end attempted to take some video clips instead. With these I got this result after editing two clips together with MS Clipchamp. It's the first time I've used this camera's video capability since I bought it six years ago next week.

After supper and the Archers, I couldn't find anything of interest to watch on telly, and spent the rest of the evening just sitting quietly and pondering.

Marmalade all made

After a clear night with a full moon, a cold clear day with a funeral to take at Western Cemetery entirely in the open air, at the request of the deceased. His widow was in a wheelchair and the service had to be short simple and said at three degrees centigrade. Early cloud parted and the sun shone on the fifteen mourners gathered before the open grave. I was pleased that those present responded with Amens to the prayers and said the Lord's Prayer together with me, rather than just being uncomfortable dumb spectators.

As I had no lectern to hold my service sheet, I picked up a stiff black backed notebook from my bookshelf, to contain the service sheet. I was driven to the cemetery from Pidgeon's funeral home, arrived early, and waited in the car for the family to arrive. The notebook I'd picked up turned out to be my last handwritten journal from the autumn of 2004, giving my account of the week's flamenco course I took with Anto at the Carmen de las Cuevas school in Granada - a present from our spouses. We were there during Michaelmass weekend, and watched the procession of the huge trona de San Miguel from the Parish Church up the hill to the local hermita and back. A wonderful experience. Autumn in the following year was when I opened my Blogger account, and with a few changes of name it's been the repository for telling stories about my life ever since.

I cooked mussels and rice with veggies for lunch when I got back, right on time for Clare's return from her Tuesday group. She discovered that one of the second kilo batch of Seville oranges waiting to be cooked for the past week was covered with mould, so she got them ready for pressure cooking. I got them started, and cooking for fifteen minutes then went for a walk in the park while they cooled. The sunset was spectacular while I was out, and I got some good photos. Then it was a matter of cutting up the oranges and lemons, de-pipping the pulp, and cooking them with sugar until the jam was ready to be potted. Six and a half small jars and three large jars this time, to add to the seven large jars produced last week. All done in time for supper and the Archers.

Another amazing Winterwatch programme was showing on BBC Two, and I divided my time between this and completing this week's Thursday Morning Prayer video for uploading to YouTube. I expected somehow to feel very tired and stiff after a demanding weekend of fresh air and exercise, but so far so good. Today has been satisfyingly productive too.

Remembering times past

Another damp dark drizzly day, making my long for sunnier climes. This prompted me to walk down the 'The Salad Bowl' greengrocer's shop to find out if this season's Organic bitter Seville oranges consignment had arrived. I was delighted to find out that they'd come in after Christmas and were now on display in the store. I bought two kilos worth, and later in the day Clare bought three kilos of Demerara sugar for making our delicious dark marmalade. There's just one jar left of last January's batch, to move from my stash of extra jars that tide us through the lean season of autumn.

Then I drove across town to St Margaret's Roath for Allan Frampton's funeral. For a church with socially distanced seating and masks still in force, it was quite full. Along with his family, there was a cross section of his mainly elderly friends, colleagues from the building trade and St John's City Parish of which he was a member for sixty years, many of them as churchwarden, and Roath Parish which he became part of in the last decade of his life. It was a touching occasion, and it was good to sit near Alwena and Richard, St John's members of my generation among the few still around and active eleven years after my retirement.

After lunch I made a couple of bereavement calls and arranged a couple of local visits, one this afternoon. The daughter of the deceased told me that she chairs the Rotheram Minister PCC a notable 13th century church building, with a rare Snetzler organ of 1777, built by a migrant craftsman from Passau, south east Germany. The Minster has a fine mediaeval west window containing ancient glass currently being restored at a cost of 4.5 million pounds. So there's quite a lot for the church council to think about.

This evening, a couple of episodes of NCIS series 18, neither of which I've seen before, then a hunt for photos of Clare and I in the 1990's when we were in Geneva, to add to the brief biography I wrote and sent to Manel yesterday. I have hundreds of negatives from that period which I never got around to scanning. At some stage the photo prints were ditched because they took up too much space, so now maybe its time to get out the scanner and work my way through them all, and retried detailed memories of an amazing time in our lives. But not tonight, for sure. And I have to get the ancient negative scanner to work as well.

Twelfth night lockdown

A cold clear bright day. Clare was out for her daily walk  this morning while I stayed in bed, listening to the news and dozing, as I do habitually before getting up for breakfast. 

Today's news centres on the impact of school closures on children and families under new restrictions announced yesterday. Less prominent in the headlines are changes being implemented as a result of brexit. Lorry delays get publicised, but less so expats not allowed to return to their homes abroad because they haven't got documents updating their status as non-EU citizens. 

Some mail order companies in the EU, and other importers are stopping trade with the UK because they're obliged to register for UK VAT - time and money consuming procedures leading to the conclusion it's not worth bothering to trade with Britain. Announcements on line to this effect have attracted nasty comments from sleepwalking brexiteers, waking up to the reality of what they've been shouting for and blaming all others but themselves. We starting to pay the price paid for the fantasy of complete sovereign autonomy, and it well get worse as more unforeseen consequences emerge. As ever, poorer people will suffer most.

This morning I prepared the order of service for Thursday's funeral and accepted to do another one in two weeks time. Elderly covid patient deaths. Canton ward still has the second highest number of infections. A high proportion of elderly people in the population, several care homes, but also an area with a significant number of BAME households, and a densely populated area. So it's only to be expected, I guess.

When I went out for my walk around the Fields, neighbourhood pavements were strewn with discarded Christmas trees awaiting collection by the Council, a reminder that already it's Twelfth night. Clare stripped our little tree this morning, ready to go back into the garden, as it has live roots. I felt sad not to have a last burn of the candle stubs this evening before dismantling, but never mind. How quickly the festive season has slipped behind the cloud of covid angst. 

Nevertheless started by visiting the local greengrocer to see if he'd yet taken his delivery of this year's organic Seville oranges. Last time I called before Christmas, he though the consignment had been held up at the Channel crossing. I had to queue in the cold on the pavement for five minutes to enter but endurance was rewarded by the sight of a large box of naranjas sevillanas, by the counter. I bought three kilos worth for just under six quid, took them home, and left them for Clare, who was still having a siesta. When I got back the exquisite aroma of bitter oranges cooking greeted me and transported me to Andalusia despite lockdown. A wonderful Epiphany gift.

On the tree lined avenue through the park, I spotted the first daffodil shoots with buds about to burst and the first snowdrops fully formed and ready to open. That's five days earlier than when I noticed the earliest new year winter flowerings I'd ever seen five years ago, and posted them on Instagram, not long after I opened my account.

This evening, I caught up with another episode of the latest German crimmie in the oddly English titled in the Channel Four Walter Presents 'Nordic Murders', when it's set on the North German Baltic coast. The German heading for the series mentions the Nordsee Usedom archipelago as the story line setting. Not so difficult for foreigners, unless you're not so keen to advertise your location to movie buffs! Seven hours away by ferry is the town of Ystad, the setting for the Wallander stories, is now much visited by movie tourists. There's a price to be paid for becoming a real-life film-set, and it's not paid by the producers but by the locals. The well acted series continues to retain interest, containing a strong element of family and community relationships, sensitively portrayed, reaching back over decades. I have another episode in reserve, for the next uninteresting evening of telly viewing.

St Sylvester's Day

What a pleasant surprise to learn this morning that Jan Gould, Vicar of 'The Res' Glan Ely is awarded the British Empire Medal in the New Year Honours list recognising her amazing musical work with children and young people in the locality and city in the Making Music Changing Lives project. It is modelled on 'La Sistema', the Venezuelan music education project among poor people, which has been going for a quarter of a century and touched half a million lives. Jan and her co-workers have shown this way of working translates well from third world to first world. At a time when state funding for the arts and music education falls prey to economic austerity, it shows what voluntary community enterprise can achieve.

Clare returned from shopping with a bag of Seville bitter oranges, which have just arrived in our local greengrocer's shop. By tea time, the first batch was done. I went out to get my regular prescription medication, only to discover the local pharmacy re-located during the week to a former delicatessen store opposite our GP surgery in King's Road. After Clare had done her recipe calculations, another expedition was needed for some lemons and a few more oranges to make up the right weight for the number of empty jars to hand. 

While we were out, I bought a new cover for my Samsung J3, having given the one I bought last week in the shop on the corner of Severn Road to Owain. When Clare gets her J3, I'll be in the same shop again to get one for her. The shop is, I believe, run by a local Pakistani family, always helpful, cheery and polite. Posted at the side of the doorway is a notice apologizing for regular Friday lunchtime closure. The shop is generally open long hours, why bother? It's a simple statement reflecting the fact that attendance at Friday Prayers is built into their trading norms. The local mosque is a couple of hundred yards up the side street from the shop. I have the highest regard for that. Nobody should have to apologise for living their faith in work or out of it.

Today is New Year's Eve, or St Sylvester, as it's known in much of Europe, after the early church Pope commemorated on this day in the Latin rite Calendar (John Wycliff, translator, in Anglicanism). People tend to dine out on St Sylvester, as they also tend to dine our ot feast at home on Christmas Eve across the Channel, rather than Christmas Day. Anyway, Clare fancied dining out this evening, so we went to Stefano's for an Italian meal fairly early, in order to be back in good time, just in case the children started calling us early before going out to see the New Year in. Which they did. Connectivity is not so good tonight, whether talking to Andalusia or to Arizona. All the world is wanting to call up and greet someone, around the clock from sunset to sunrise, whatever time zone that may be in.

The noise of Fireworks has been punctuating the air all evening. We've both tired enough to go to bed and not bother to see the New Year in, rather sleep off the horrible old one. But how to get to sleep with all that random noise in the background? It's hard to imagine what 2017 might bring, but vital to be ready for anything, in a spirit of good-will, compassion and helpfulness, resisting the indulgent greedy, selfish spirit of the age. I wonder how I might be able to make some difference for the better, and not be part of the problem, for as long as I'm fit and able? Having finally moved on from CBS after nearly seven years, I start 2017, looking for a fresh challenge to awaken my energy and imagination, before I become totally addicted to a soporific lifestyle.

  

Advent giving way to Christmas

Father Mark our Vicar asked me if I'd stand in for him at this morning's 10.30am Eucharist at St John's, which I was happy to do, and to stop for a chat and a cuppa after the service. Best of all, I was able to buy some jars of home made marmalade, from the church's permanent fund raising stall, as our stocks ran out months ago. Our local greengrocer says he expects his annual import of bitter organic oranges from a supplier near Seville, to arrive just after Christmas. Last year, we were late buying, so stocks were nearly finished, hence we were unable to make a year's supply in one go.

It was too dreary and wet to venture out for an afternoon walk, so I made an effort to make a digital card to accompany the annual newsletter, which will go out by email to another fifty people in addition to the cards posted yesterday. I found an icon of the Nativity I liked, and some words from an Orthodox hymn that matched it.

After an early supper we drove out to Russell and Jacquie's house in Dinas Powis for their annual Christmas soiree of readings, and carols around a candle-lit tree, reflecting on the meaning of the incornation. It was a gathering mainly of well behaved careful adults, so with the usual precautions, the tree posed a minimal health and safety risk to participants. The main risk was from over indulging in delicious treats provided afterwards. About twenty people came, most of them associated with Cardiff Steiner school in various ways, many of them old friends. It was an enjoyable evening, rather more thoughtful than the average Christmas party, I'm glad to say.