Under the cloud at Ascension

Ascension Day, with the whole region under a layer of cloud, rather than under blue sky and sunshine, as is hoped for in mid-May. I did my daily reflection upload to WhatsApp on waking, then walked to Saint John's to celebrate the Eucharist. Fifteen of us were present, the most since Thursday services resumed last month. I wonder when Sunday services will resume?

On my way to church I noticed a vehicle queuing at the Canton Cross lights with a camera mounted on a telescopic pole, in hi-viz livery. At first sight I thought it was a Google Street View camera car. Closer inspection revealed it was a Cardiff Council traffic enforcement vehicle. I think it may be patrolling to identify vehicles which are parked where they shouldn't be. Number plate recognition would identify the vehicle for the issue of penalty notices. Traffic wardens could then be directed to the vehicle to place the penalty notice under the windscreen wiper - this still happens locally. 

What interests me is whether this technology is used in relation to the huge delivery vehicles which so often block through roads, if not park on pavements obstructing pedestrians. They may only be parked for a few minutes, but this can still generate congestion, and put walkers at risk. Using large delivery vehicles creates economies of scale in moving goods around, but who is costing the congestion and pollution that results. A radical overhaul is needed to the way our economic infrastructure works in our crowded cities.   

Clare was in kindergarten again this morning, by the skin of her teeth. The bus she takes to get there was unable to ge through, due to congestion caused by a traffic accident. Waiting at the stop with her was a doctor going to work at a hospital on the bus route, with a scheduled appointment ahead of him. In the end he called for a taxi, and gave Clare a lift to school, so she got there just in time.

New housing developments north west of Cardiff are already leading to increase traffic flow into the city through Llandaff. Now things are getting back to normal, people are moving around more normally and with the change to traffic flowing through the centre, there's additional congestion at junctions a mile or so out of town. The impact on local traffic is noticeable already and it's several years before the those new suburbs will be populated. It's hard to see how public transport networks will adapt to compensate. 

At the moment covid precautions are limiting the number of bus and train passengers that can be taken or want to travel. I suspect it's going to get worse. At certain times of day already, pollution from traffic is much more noticeable after a year of limited travel leaving the air a lot fresher. It makes you realise what we got used to living with, and it's no good for anyone's health.

I had lunch ready as Clare arrived home. Afterwards, I sat down to relax and fell asleep. When I woke up and thought about going for a walk, it was raining, and kept on raining into the evening, so I had to wear my rain-gear. It amazes me to see several football games in such wet and slippery conditons. I guess players are so glad to resume, that rain is no deterrent to them.

I watched one of the earliest episodes of the first season of NCIS after supper. Interesting to see how the various permanent characters presented themselves, compared to now, eighteen years on. What got my attention even more was the kind of technology in use then, as compared to now - clamshell mobile phones, PDAs (remember them?), CRT monitors with webcams perched on top of them etc. Two decades of technical development portrayed in a crime based soap opera!

Congestion miscalculation

I went to bed far too late last night and woke up having lost at least an hour's sleep. These days I find that I don;t get along so well on less than eight hours a night.

The bright sunny blue sky weather continues, but it's deceptive. I went out without a top coat and hat to walk down to St John and celebrate the Eucharist this morning, and felt the impact of a chilling breeze. The loss of sleep affected me as well. At the beginning of the service I twice reverted to the modern language rite instead of the traditional one mid-sentence! I had to re-start the Gloria, as people were rather confused, but thereafter I was OK. The funny experience gave me a pretext to talk about how the Word is communicated despite language confusion and even through faltering broken speech, thanks to the Spirit speaking heart to heart, whatever else is going on.  

Again we were thirteen people. We would have been fourteen, but one lady came, and as she was getting water to freshen up the flowers, she dropped her hearing aid into the sink, and was compelled to return home and dry it out immediately, hoping that it wasn't by damaged by the inundation. She has difficulty hearing, even with a hearing aid. It's one of the trials of old age which so far I have been spared, except for the occasional miserable wax blockage. 

With Clare in school this morning, I cooked lunch on returning home, and then had an hour and a half of a siesta which perked me up, ready for my walk in the park. Opposite the riding centre stables is a very rich area of well cared for mature allotments. It hosts many different garden bird species, more than any other part of the green zone at the heart of the city. It's a real treat to stand under the trees by the hedgerow and listen to chaffinches, wrens, robins, blackbirds, thrushes, starlings plus other birds singing I still cannot identify. I made me appreciate just how fortunate I am still to enjoy good hearing. I had a few good lucky bird photos too. This one was the best: a missel thrush, I think.

Having had a moan about traffic congestion caused by Castle Street restrictions yesterday, I was pleased to see an article on just this subject posted on this morning's Wales Online website. I must get busy and write to Caro Wild our local ward councillor who has been involved in road management changes this past year. While the objective is to reduce pollution in city centre hot-spots the solutions tried so far simply lead to the distribution of congestion and queues to other inner city zones, with longer journeys and delays leading to more pollution distributed more widely but a general increase in the carbon foot of city traffic associated with slow moving traffic.

With preparations for tomorrow's funeral complete after supper, I decided to go to bed really early, relax and watch a couple of episodes of 'Non Uccidere', in an effort to catch up of missed sleep. Hopefully I'll be on better form tomorrow, when we're having our second covid jabs just after ten. It's terrible to see the rate of virus spread in India at the moment a third of a million a day in the absence of universal lock-down (maybe impossible to enforce anyway) plus the continuation of mass gatherings for pilgrimage rituals and political rallies. Inadequate reporting of fatalities in some impoverished regions may mean that the true scale of covid deaths may never be known. 

Mass religious gatherings would be hard to stop anyway, as pious people are often stubborn with it, but political rallies could simply be cancelled by the prime minister. It's hard to fathom such foolishness, and we've seen so much of this in the past year. So many avoidable deaths ultimately due to egotistical populist leadership.