The Grey Returns.

Today has been grey and sometimes wet.

Yesterday afternoon, when the pharmacy had its half-day, I discovered I was out of one of my painkillers. First thing this morning I walked to the pharmacy to find out what had happened to my repeat prescription. And there it was, it had been ready for over a week, crisis averted. But I was annoyed because when Peter went there two days ago he asked if there was anything for me and was told 'no,' When I complained all I got was a 'sorry'. It's no good them sending me the notification because I don't turn my phone on (it sits in a basket unless I'm going in the car.) so they send both sets of notifications to Peter.

After a late breakfast I cycled down to the community gardens for C&C. I brought my heavy duty gloves with me so that I could carry on hacking back the brambles that were making their way across the paths. Today's cake was a Lebanese cake made with tahini, semolina, coconut, almonds, lemon and orange. It was interesting and tasted like baklava. C who makes the cakes said the recipe was very unclear and has found a different recipe for this cake which she will try another time. I came home with more cooking apples which I've already stewed, and a couple of eating apples.

Later, C's son who was doing some gardening for my next-door neighbour, brought round a load of arum lily tubers which he'd dug up for me from my neighbour's garden. They are now at the end of the front garden where hopefully the calm green leaves will tone down the vivid yellow of the euonymus. The rest of the afternoon was taken up with sorting out the gatepost for the new gate. My first attempt wasn't secure enough to hold the heavy gate. This was mainly because the granite blocks it needs to be screwed into are very uneven and the post wasn't lying flat. Also I need more and longer screws. This afternoon I chipped away at the granite to level it down and also found a strip of wood to act as a wedge near the top of the post. The next step is to drill more holes in the granite blocks, a long process but doable.

At choir we are practising songs for Sing for Water, a nationwide charity event to raise money for WaterAid projects in Africa. About 100 of us will be singing in Aber in October. One of the songs we are singing is Water is Life, a beautiful song which was written as part of the protest against the Dakota access pipeline (Standing Rock). Such a sad sign of how money triumphs. The initial protest were successful but the following administration overturned the ruling halting the pipeline.

We've recently begun watching 'Hinterland' on tv. We'd finally caught up on 10 series of Silent Witness and I thought that a crime drama based in Aberystwyth might be interesting. It was made for S4C (the Welsh channel) 10 years ago. Most of the dialogue is in English with about a third in Welsh. Although I can understand words and phrases I still need the English subtitles. Imagine my excitement when the opening shot of the first episode was the view down the hill road into Borth with the village and beach spread out beyond. That first episode was set in Borth/Ynyslas and Devil's Bridge so we recognised lots of places. One character kept getting interviewed outside his workshop which I go past every time I go to the zoo or the community gardens and according to the sound effects there were a surprising number of trains running through Borth. The funniest thing is when they cut in different locations that are nowhere near where the characters are supposed to be or they travel along lovely scenic roads that don't lead to where they are supposed to be going. So far about half the episodes have been heavily based in Borth/ Ynyslas, we do have the beach, the bog, the river and film worthy boat yards. The hinterland settings are harder to identify, okay I haven't recognised any of them but the scenery is very familiar. It's taken a few episodes for me to realise that one of the two main characters lives in a house just along the road from us which in real life is the home of R who teaches the Pilates and aerobics classes. It makes it all fun to watch.