In other news

One thing that priests, and everyone else indisputably needs is time off with people they love in places that speak to them.

HG had had a rather stressful start to this term, what with exams and the inevitable switch-backs of student life, and I've known easier months myself, so yesterday was decreed a holiday for both. Atypically, I actually left Ch Kings bright and early,- only to be thwarted in my progress by cataclysmic traffic chaos around Gloucester, with a stretch of the ring-road closed altogether, and diversions sending us all off into the countryside. I was only marginally fussed by this, until I realised that the diversion I was following had led me back into the chaos a few miles further on, this time heading in the wrong direction, with no possibility of a turn-around.
So it was that 2 hours after leaving home I found myself only 4 miles from Cheltenham, driving away from my goal...
Is this, I wonder, in any way a paradigm of life??

If so,- there's hope for recovery!
I did eventually get to Cardiff and HG and I decamped to the nearest stretch of real coast...at Barry. In the summer, I fear that the assorted tourist attractions will make this a Very Unpleasant Experience, but on the last day of January it was just perfect. We were one of 3 cars in the carpark, and apart from a couple of distant dogs and their owners, we had the whole beach to ourselves. It was really fun to walk across the tidal harbour, nearly up to the boats that are "moored" there. Hard to believe that they'll float off at high water, but the wet sea-weed on the harbour wall was proof that they would. Not really beached high and dry, no matter how it might appear.

When things get too much for me, please someone remind me that what I really need is a day by the sea.