Dec 7th

What a strange morning ...
When we walked into Pontcanna Fields, we saw the sun rise. It looked like a gigantic orange balloon, right on top of the Millenium Stadium. It was cold, crisp and dry. There was hoar frost on the grass and the dogs rolled in it.
We walked along the hawthorn hedge which is the boundary to the horse paddocks. Then we turned North to Blackweir Bridge and walked eastwards along the little lynchet between the upper and lower fields. There are still lots of yellow leaves on the oak trees, and the tops of the willow bushes look golden still.
But as we walked on, the sun had vanished, as if a curtain had been pulled across the sky. When I looked back over my shoulder, I saw that thin mist was creeping over the hawthorn hedge. And right in front of us, the fog became denser and started to veil the holmoaks at the boundary to the cricket grounds.
As we walked back, the fog got denser by the minute, and the sycamores at the top of the hawthorn hedge became ghostly outlines. Other dogwalkers seemed to vanish...
This all happened within 45 minutes. It felt a bit oppressive.

Later, it occurred to me that this could serve as a nice symbolic illustration to the current political happenings:
Here we have a new political leader - David Cameron, who yesterday got elected as chairman of the Tories. He is young and charismatic (or so they say).
A bit like the rising sun, isn't it?
Today he had his first PM Question Time - he quite rose to the challenge. (Pun intended ...)
So, will the fog of party politics cloud over this new sun, and will everything become grey and oppressive - as usual in politics, and as the weather was today?

St. Nicholas

Today is the day of St. Nicholas.
In Germany, children used to find a few sweets in their well-polished shoes when they left them outside their bedroom door. Don't know if that is still happening.
St. Nicholas is also a name for two villages I know in South Wales. One is West of Cardiff in the Vale of Glamorgan, the other is in Pembrokeshire.
The Pembrokeshire St.Nicholas we used to walk to when we rented a cottage at Aberbach. This ist the small beach next to Abermawr (mawr = big, bach = small, aber = beach, in Welsh).
I loved sitting on the headland, looking across Aberbach out to the sea and to the islands further south along the coast. the weather changed quickly and one could see the rain approaching from the Southwest.
I understood then why the celtic legends tell of islands which move, because depending on the light, the time of day and the weather, the nearest island, which was called Ynys Deullen (I think ...), looked to be further away or quite close.
On Aberbach I collected fantastic pebbles washed in from the sea.
Now you know ...