Cardiff City of Angels

20/01/2024

Llanishen reservoir doesn’t just contain water!

21/02/2023

Very happy today to have walked with the Tuesdays’ walking group that meets outside Cathay's Library every week at 10:30. Tea in a local cafe afterwards too for interesting discussions.
I learned a lot from the group which included an elderly Cardiff man who as a boy used to play in the cemetery during ww2. He was 11. He recalled how a friend was killed by a falling stone while they were playing hide and seek although the friend was hiding in a stonemasons works opposite the cemetery gates where the tragedy happened. He also told me that he could see from one side of the cemetry to the other in those days as the trees and shrubs were nowhere so tall and it was much better kept. Also that his parents watched a parachute mine drop into the cemetery thinking that it was just a parchutists until it exploded and destroyed a large section of the cemetery near the demolished Catholic Chapel. Our leader showed us a number of interestiing graves including the one of Willam Frame who was an assistant to William Burges and after his death went on to complete the animal wall at Cardiff Castle 1888.
As we approached Cathay's Library that vast section of lines of graves were cleared in the 70's by well meaning workers who wanted to make it easy to mow the lawns!
One grave designed by the painter Augustus John was apparently one that was taken away for the sake of efficiency and many very ordinary marker stones are all that are left of other interesting gravestones as a result of their misguided work!

18/10/2022

New bird identification board at Roath Park!

17/12/2021

I gave a lesson at Whitchurch High School on Supply yesterday and told the students about this motto and how it tied in with the intended launch of the James Webb telescope at the weekend (now delayed).
How lucky we are to be living at a time where we will find answers fundamental to our understanding of the universe.
The RAF motto is used by other Commonwealth airforces but was first used by the Royal Flying Corps in 1912 (it's also the motto of Birmingham university incidentally).
What does it mean Per Ardua Ad Astra?
Through Adversity (or struggles) to the stars.
It seems a rather ambitious motto given the Wright Brothers had only taken to the air in 1903 and we all know they didn't get very far. But then the James Webb telescope is named after a leading NASA administrator in the Apollo program that put a man on the moon in 1969 less than 60 years later.
So here we are today on Our Way to the Stars with an amazing telescope less than another 60 years on.
Given that I was meant to be teaching an English class you may wonder how I linked this all in.
Actually I started my class with a poem published in 1806 by Jane Taylor of Essex. I think you know the first verse already but maybe dismissed it as childish. Look again and you can see that for someone writing in 1806 she was a long way ahead of her time and understood about stars and how we should thank them for their tiny spark lighting the way for us travellers in the dark!

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.

When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.

Then the trav’ller in the dark,
Thanks you for your tiny spark,
He could not see which way to go,
If you did not twinkle so.

In the dark blue sky you keep,
And often thro' my curtains peep,
For you never shut your eye,
Till the sun is in the sky.

'Tis your bright and tiny spark,
Lights the trav’ller in the dark,
Tho' I know not what you are,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

If you want to look further than this then you will find a link too to the poem written in WW2 at St Eval airfield in Cornwall that was used in the movie The Way to the Stars. It's by John Pudney who was squadron intelligence officer at RAF St Eval at a time when many in the RAF gave their lives, like this 23 year old D Griffiths of the Women's Auxiliary Airforce buried here in Cardiff among the Angels and brambles.

For Johnny

Do not despair
For Johnny-head-in-air;
He sleeps as sound
As Johnny underground.

Fetch out no shroud
For Johnny-in-the-cloud;
And keep your tears
For him in after years.

Better by far
For Johnny-the-bright-star,
To keep your head
And see his children fed.

You can find out more about RAF St Eval in a piece I recently wrote on my North Cornwall Coast Path Walks page!

Finally, it's sobering to think that if Jane Taylor had managed to copyright her words then she and her estate would have been very rich indeed!
Happy Birthday to You, written a hundred years later in 1912, used to fetch $700 for a single use all the way up to 2010! Money isn't everything but that made it the highest earning single song in history!

11/05/2021

Guess Who is filming here today? That’s right...Dr Who. Not sure if that’s vaguely funny but the National Museum and part of Bute Park are locations today. Recently they’ve been in Cardiff Castle too but they are preparing today for Eid celebrations tomorrow or the next day depending on moon sightings.

05/04/2021

You won't be surprised that the wasteland around Ikea and between the rivers Ely and Taff near Grangetown used to contain one of the biggest landfill sites in Britain. It got so big that by 1994 they closed it as it stuck up some 20 metres above the surrounding area. From the top today you can see most of Cardiff. It's called Grangemoor Park now and worth a visit to see the sculture called the "Silent Chain" and the view!

05/04/2021

https://photos.app.goo.gl/zhWyT2R8zXN6EYbj8. .This is "Wife on the Ocean Wave", by sculptor Graham Ibbeson (1993) at Cardiff Bay. It's not often seen although only a stone's throw away from Technoquest. It'll make you smile and as Ibbeson explains:
I have always tried to use humour as a tool to draw people into my work, to enable them to look at themselves through laughter. My work has changed over many years of moving forward through the creative landscape, however, my motivation remains the same. I am influenced by the absurdities of this life and the people who inhabit my world. The small, tiny things that make up the whole picture, hoping as always, that humour opens a path to the truth.

05/04/2021

https://photos.app.goo.gl/6thnXPAh5JgyRawm6

04/04/2021

Cardiff is exploding at this time of year! Bute Park a favourite but streets like this take your breath away too.

Cardiff springtime with magnolia tree lined street

14/03/2021

Another one bites the dust! The massive pine tree must have blown over in the recent storms but the space is letting light in on a one armed angel whose been living in the shadows for many decades.

13/03/2021

See my previous post to find the connection between The One and A Discovery of Witches!

13/03/2021

Netflix series The One was filmed across various locations in Bristol, Cardiff and Newport. I was there to watch them filming in Cardiff last year and now, in the UK at least, you can watch the series on Netfilx.
Slightly connected too, a year ago, we met Teresa Palmer - the amazing Australian actress, writer, model and film producer on the other side of this building taking her kids for a walk. We didn't know who she was but she said she had a small part in a TV series about Witches and was to be in and around Cardiff for the next year. You can catch her work too on Amazon Prime in "A Discovery of Witches"!

12/03/2021

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread"
This phrase was coined in a poem by Alexander Pope and reminds us that the rash or inexperienced will attempt things that wiser people are more cautious of.
As far a rushing into Cardiff to film is concerned then this week has been a busy one.
Cardiff if often used as a stand-in for London and on Tuesday I watched a London Bus and taxi in a bike chase scene being filmed by Alexander Gardens. It was part of the second season of Alex Rider which you can see on Amazon Prime at some stage. In the City Hall round the corner they had all the Dr Who crew filming inside for the BBC.