I blog therefore I am

Looking around, things in the electronic media are a little grim and a great deal less than edifying.

I'd display a link to the latest L'Oréal insult/ advert from the Vatican, but the English language version has been removed.

There was a time when blogging was very helpful to me in lots of ways and the mood was buoyant.

2015 is looking to be a very busy year and I have lots of things in the pipeline, several of which will be taking up a great deal of my time beyond the working week.

The list of subjects and activities in which I am involved that are unsuitable for this blog is now so long as to make it a nonsense.

For me, the time for blogging is over and my time will be better spent grafting in other ways.

Happy New Year.

Talking sense on the family

Talk to a two year old.

The crib is completely natural if you are two, because *hopefully* the basis of your world is mummy, daddy and you.

Who is the most important person in the scene? The baby!

Add in some animals to boot and kings with presents and there we are.

Now to teach my nephew the lesser Christmas fact of Auntie Leutgeb's birthday.
He can help me blow my candles out.

Christmas thank yous

Quite frequently, Christmas cards get used as a means of thanking people, so

In the spirit of Christmas thank yous ... ( that's a plural you haven't seen before.)

Thank you to all the priests who have said all the Masses I've been to.

Thank you to all the priests who have said the Masses I haven't bothered to go to.

Thank you to all the priests who have heard my confessions.

Thank you to all the priests who have sat in confessionals when I didn't bother to go to Confession.

Thank you to all the people who do jobs in churches that no-one ever sees.

Thank you to all the religious in enclosed orders praying for the world.

Thank you to all the people looking after children.

Thank you to all the people caring for sick and elderly relatives.

Thank you to the people who look after people who are not their relatives.

You can "chime in" with some thank you in the com box if you like.

Bedraggled pigeons

Not being familiar with the literary device that places a woeful, rain drenched bird, widely regarded as vermin by Londoners, at the start of a piece of writing as a means of captivating and enthralling the listener, I'm sticking with the book by Alfred Delp S.J., which contain his Advent reflections.

Rather than battling the drizzly capital, he was arrested after the August '44 bomb plot and was hanged on Candlemas 1945.

For the First Sunday in Advent 1943, he starts by saying that they have lit the first candle, not knowing if they will be alive when they get to the Fourth Sunday; Munich was being bombed heavily at the time.

Turning back to the beginning

Almost time for this again.

Confession British Style

Was talking to a friend yesterday and the subject of where do you go to Confession came up and I said, mostly Westminster Cathedral.

We both agreed we like the queue there. A lot.

I also like the anonymity, the proper box and labour under the idea that I get the priest I need/deserve.

So in the spirit of democratic memes:

Where do you prefer to go to Confession and why?

Only positive reasons will be posted.

So no horror stories, thanks.
We all have one of those t shirts.

Getting a bit of context

So having read the chatty book on St John Paul II, it's time to get some perspective on post-war Europe, behind the Iron Curtain.

Enter Anne Applebaum.

Didn't know quite how many people were arrested by the NKVD, post-45, how many people disappeared into the Gulag system or were placed in newly vacated German concentration camps.

Then there's the huge population movements as those pesky millions who live the wrong side of the border or who are ethnically German or perhaps have a German surname, but haven't spoken German for a few generations get booted about the place.

And I've only read the first third.

Quiet City

Conducted this last night, amongst other things.

Commemorated in perpetuity

By the Commonwealth War Graves Commission on the Thiepval Memorial.

Lance Corporal Michael Higgins MM, RIP
7493 Second Battalion Irish Guards.
Enlisted Ennis, Co Clare
Killed on the Somme 15th September 1916

My Great great uncle.

His brother, Thomas, returned with a damaged foot.

His brother, Richard, my great grandfather returned with frostbite and shell shock.

It's good to think that one of the poppies at the Tower of London is for him, one of the 888 246, British and Commonwealth war dead from WWI.

Veritatis Splendor

Is what I was reading on the train last night, because I'm not in a light reading frame if mind.

According to some, it appears that one no longer need acknowledge the enduring absoluteness of any moral value. All around us we encounter contempt for human life after conception and before birth; the ongoing violation of basic rights of the person; the unjust destruction of goods minimally necessary for a human life. Indeed, something more serious has happened: man is no longer convinced that only in the truth can he find salvation. The saving power of the truth is contested, and freedom alone, uprooted from any objectivity, is left to decide by itself what is good and what is evil. This relativism becomes, in the field of theology, a lack of trust in the wisdom of God, who guides man with the moral law. Concrete situations are unfavourably contrasted with the precepts of the moral law, nor is it any longer maintained that, when all is said and done, the law of God is always the one true good of man"

Via ipieta.

But then I got home and read Bishop Athanasius Schneider. :-)

Nos Da

Ar hyd y nos.

Holl amrantau'r sêr ddywedant
Ar hyd y nos
"Dyma'r ffordd i fro gogoniant,"
Ar hyd y nos.
Golau arall yw tywyllwch
I arddangos gwir brydferthwch
Teulu'r nefoedd mewn tawelwch
Ar hyd y nos.
O mor siriol, gwena seren
Ar hyd y nos
I oleuo'i chwaer ddaearen
Ar hyd y nos.
Nos yw henaint pan ddaw cystudd
Ond i harddu dyn a'i hwyrddydd
Rhown ein golau gwan i'n gilydd
Ar hyd y nos.

Calendar Confusion

Today being 2nd Nov is:

Rome. All Souls Day
E&W All Saints Day (OF)
EF everywhere 21st Sunday after Pentecost

Next Sunday in the OF, is it

The nth Sunday in Ordinary Time
The Dedication of the Lateran Basilica
Remembrance Sunday?

Or d, 'none of the above'?

'This year celebrated on,' is a brilliant way of communicating the shifting sands that the Church has chosen to build herself on just now.

Why not go the hole hog, fix Easter and move Christmas to the third Sunday of December? I'd have suggested the fourth Sunday, but that would sometimes clash with New Year's Eve and we can't do anything that might upset the secular applecart.

Another non-question

Who should pick the music?

It's already been picked.

P.1724 LU 1961

Introit for All Saints.

If you want to pick music, you need to be the conductor of a secular ensemble or choir.

We spend a lot of time at work discussing repertoire, editions and how we are going to source the score and parts. Then we have to crow bar rehearsals into a packed working week.

On Monday, I conducted an extract of a Haydn oratorio at Prize Day. You will be fascinated to know that the orchestral parts were printed off IMSLP, my HoD sourced a continuo part for the chamber organ we hired, from I don't know where and I got the full score (Dover Edition) from Schott's Great Marlborough St. The choir parts, he did.

St John Paul the Great: his five loves by Jason Evert

I just glanced at the title and read, 'five loaves.' Right. No sign of the fish.

If like me, reading a book containing relentless positive anecdotes about someone who keeps people waiting by disappearing into Blessed Sacrament Chapels, is a good thing, just now, then may I recommend this book.

Not at all high brow, but takes your mind of other stuff and is of good heart.

Back from my travels

Back from my trip to Paris. My house to gare du nord is three hours even allowing a generous driving time to Ebbsfleet. Early train on Saturday morning and you can easily be at the 12.30 Mass at the rue du bac.

This time I got to go to the Missa Cantata at S. Eugène sung by the Schola Ste. Cécile on Sunday. I was a bit early, so snuck in as the previous OF Mass was ending.

The great thing is there is nothing to say. Aside from the fact there were lots of people, the church is beautiful, the music very fine indeed and yes, the congregation sing all their bits too,all you could say is that everything went along in a completely predictable fashion.

And I got the newsletter for Zephy.

#synod14

If you need to hear something to restore your faith that everything has not gone completely mad, listen to the soothing balm of Cardinal Burke.

Then there's Mr and Mrs Grygriel.

#synod14 can't end quickly enough.

La La La

Comedy gold here

Peter K rounds on the article and points out that the basis of the argument is fickle.

I will just point out two things.

That Gregorian Chant is monophonic is not an accident and is not so because people in the past were thick.

Think about it.

In the OT there are references to plucky stringed instruments.

So no-one ever plucked more than one string at a time. Ever.

People who lived in caves had bone flutes.

The Romans and Egyptians had trumpets.

Ye olde Danes had lurs, see the packets of butter.

But people never played more than one pitch at a time.

Nope.

Until organum. Yay!

That the musical expression par excellence, of the Catholic Church requires us all to share a single melody line must be telling us something important about what it means to be a Catholic.

So rather than junking it, perhaps some effort to involve ourselves and experience it might be worthwhile.

Letting the cat out of the bag

Following recent national and local events, various people have declared their hands and it is now even clearer how to get on with things.

My Graduale Triplex and Liber App look on expectantly, as another chapter of chanting begins.

Keeping going

Things have been a little surprising and perplexing recently.

Twitter is ablaze.

Strife is everywhere.

Time to hunker down.

I'm off to St Cecilia's this weekend, the following weekend is the Rosary Rally and the LMS Pilgrimage to Aylesford - simultaneously and then for me it's half term and a trip to St. Eugène and the Schola Sante Cécile on a Sunday and the rue du Bac.

Because some things don't let you down. :-)

Dressing the part

LMS Chairman yesterday makes reference, in a sage article, about a recent episcopal resignation of what happens to teachers if they involve themselves in relationships with pupils.

The law has been tightened and it is now illegal for a teacher to have a relationship with any pupil. That includes sixth formers. It seems that there has been a recognition that the pupil-teacher relationship is always a power relationship and that it is up to the one with the power not to exploit the one without.

Although being checked out for convictions/ cautions etc is a drag every three years, teachers are party to a huge amount of confidential information as well as access to hundreds of children and teenagers, so it is as well to be careful.

I am not allowed to give my mobile number or private email address to pupils. Any email that I write referring to a pupil can be requested by parents under the Data Protection Act.

We have a dress code at work. On Prize Day, I must wear a suit and academic dress. For concerts, I wear black.

When an exceptionally casual parent addresses me by my Christian name in an email, the reply is signed Miss Initial Initial Surname.

All these things create and maintain the correct environment in which pupils can safely learn and I can safely teach.

There are occasions where pupils need to be able to say and do things that place them in a vulnerable position and they need to be confident that they are not going to come to any harm. Their parents have a right to the same level of confidence.

Dominus est

I have been lent copies of Bishop Athanasius Schnieder's two books by a friend.

It's a slim volume, so I am reading it slowly.

It seems that Bishops who have been tested in the fire make for better and truer teachers.

Yesterday I went to the Juventutem Mass in London.

The Celebrant, at the High Mass, was a nearly ordained priest, so the congregation was able to receive a first blessing.

Blessed be GAAAAD

Cardinal Burke @ Vespers and Benediction at Brompton Oratory, whenever that was.

Then he swept past in a Cappa Magna on the way to the Altar dedicated to St Philip Neri.

Catholicism.

I expect the best of everything.

From human charity, to sacrificial love to beautiful music.

:-)

La Rentrée

Taught everyone now, so no more lessons that start with giving out books. :-)

We have a great app that uploads our timetables and class lists to our iPads. random pupil selector seems to be a hit with the boys, or at least a novelty.

This week our ensembles restart and each year, rather as with sports teams we have to get them to work together and turn them into orchestras, choirs and jazz bands.

Over the summer I did orchestral conducting bootcamp and so am looking forward to using what I learned. It was hard core, but a great week. The other 35 or so participants were all very interesting and there was plenty of camaraderie and funny stories, mixed in with standing on a rostrum and being publicly humiliated each day, by three tutors. And I got to play the horn a lot in the class orchestra, which was 20 of us plus two professional pianists.

Tomorrow I do the first full orchestra rehearsal which is always a bit crazy, trying to get 45 boys sat down ASAP, tuned and playing and I set out the chairs, stands and music in advance. Fortunately, the routine with any orchestra is identical, so once they can do it at school, they can do it anywhere in the world. I do feel I am the equivalent of an infant teacher, passing on those crucial skills like how to hold a pen and form letters. It's just I deal in making sure your bowing matches your section principal. How to follow a conductor, especially if you sit at the back and play something loud. And never playing an open E string unless the conductor explicitly asks for it. Which I don't as a rule. :-)

August holidays and review of the year 2013-4

This was 2012-3.

We sang 60 EF Masses (Several big Feasts fell on a Sunday this year - Immaculate Conception, Candlemas & SS P&P, for example, which explains the lower total.)
2 OF
The Carol Service

We learnt:
Stabat Mater Sequence
Te laudamus
Anima Christi
Inviolata ave Maria
Lots more of the Propers for Candlemas
Audi benigne conditor
The office hymn for the Sacred Heart

In the Autumn, lots of Marian Feasts fell on a Sunday, so lots of Mass IX.
In the Summer, we sang lots of Mass IV.

We were paid a visit by some seminarians from L'Instituit de Bon Pasteur, who sang beautifully and came to our practice. We we also visited by our friends from Spanish Place on All Saints and paid them a return visit on Christ the King (OF).

We spent quite a lot of rehearsal time revising music from previous years and singing it better.

Thank you to everyone who sang.

The last Sunday we sing is 27th July, followed by our traditional August break.

There are sung Masses on Sat 2nd August and Friday 15th August.

We then bid Fr Finigan farewell with Mass on Wednesday 27th August at 7.30pm.

Sunday 31st August, Father's final Sunday in Blackfen, will also be a Missa Cantata.

Gregorian Chant Hymns - initial responses

Gregorian Chant Hymns

Counter Cultural Father A brave soul, not averse to straying into the dangerous territory of the quilisma.

A detailed review from The Chant Café by Dr Jennifer Donelson.

CMAA Musica sacra forum

Schola Sanctae Scholasticae, incidentally, consists of the four of us who all run choirs in parishes and then sing together sometimes.

We spent two days in the summer of 2012 at St Cecilia's Abbey recording with various of the sisters under their choir mistress, with whom we have been studying for several years, and then did some more recordings in London that autumn.

Since then, one of us (not me) has knitted it all together into a website and done all the hard work, making sure everything that needs to be attributed is.

The idea is that all that basic basic stuff that you want everyone to know and have access to in every ordinary parish everywhere is here in a form that is accessible. All free.

Notation

Recordings

Translations

PDFs

JPEGs

MP3s

It fills a gap and compliments my favourite chant resources.

Propers
Corpus Christi Watershed I like the fact that they print the Gloria Patri complete for every Introit.

Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest<\a> - lovely edition of the Requiem Mass, for example.

GABC A wonderful tool if you want Propers, maybe even with some psalm tones. The advantage over the Rossini Propers is that it uses four line notation and you can choose the tone.

Office Hymns in nice editions
Society of St Bede.

Ordinaries and most other things
The Parish Book of Chant CMAA

The CMAA also have the Liber Usualis 1961, The Gregorian Missal Solesmes 1990 and an enormous amount of other stuff available as free PDF downloads.

There is a huge amount out there.

Our new website is ideal for people wanting to make their first steps in chant.

Gregorian Chant Hymns

Gregorian Chant Hymns

Gregorian Chant Hymns has just gone live.

It is a resource for those pieces of Gregorian Chant that form the back bone of Catholic devotional life.

The site provides, text, notation, translations, recordings and the means by which one may produce booklets for use at home or in church.

It is entirely free.

If you are seeking to introduce chant back into your parish, it could be a very useful resource for you.

Congratulations and thank you to Dr Candy Bartoldus for several years of work producing it.

Eurochant

As a counter to the mash up of nonsense apparently on the telly on Saturday night, the choir propose Eurochant.

We will sing Regina Caeli jubila.

The programme that the European Broadcasting Union put out of Christmas music from a variety of countries, broadcast on a Sunday before Christmas and in the UK on R3 is worth listening to.

We join our colleagues on Lithuanian radio [ murmuring in Lithuanian ] where the blah blah chamber choir of Vilnius are singing in some cathedral with a very resonant acoustic.

The Lithuanian voices continue murmuring, some applause as the conductor comes on, a few last minute coughs and off we go.

If anyone looks a bit out of the ordinary, who is to know? It's radio.

Orfeo by Richard Powers

Oodles of years ago, but in reality probably only ten, I read Time of our Singing, enjoyed it a very great deal, lent it to a friend and forgot all about it.

Then I saw a new novel with a musical name and whistled it up on the kindle app.

If you like musical novels, then this in The Guardian review will please you

Powers has not wholly solved the problem of writing about music without resort to technical language. To be fair, it is probably insoluble. The novel's evocations of musical pleasure will work best for readers who understand what, for example, suspensions or "strident minor sixths" are; but a lot of the musical description accomplishes impressively imagistic things with the most familiar possible terminology: names of instruments, "crescendo", the kinds of spatial metaphor with which music is always already riddled. ("The sopranos chase each other up a cosmic staircase, driven higher by the lurching vibraphones.") Cleverly, Powers makes sure to use as many vocal analogies as possible, since everybody knows what the human voice does: its verbs are as familiar to Lady Gaga fans as to creators of squeaky-door opera.

Great descriptions of Mozart 41, Kindertotenlieder and The Quartet for the End of Time, mixed in with what I read as a comprehensive ( and witty) trashing of the excesses of the 60s.

In other news

I've just had a lovely lovely day at a First Communion Mass and a fantastic party.

Great company.
Delicious food.
Fantastic weather.
Beautiful garden.
THE MOST UNBELIEVABLE CAKES.

Just in case you think I'm a mardy misanthrope and altogether closet miserable person.

:-)

No one reads blogs

Well not this one and I have the stats to prove it.

An interesting comment on Loving it from someone who claims that those important people who go to meetings and make 'policy' do not now consider how their decisions will be played out on blogs.

That sounds like the a comment by the 'chaplain' of the Catholic secondary school where I was the Head of Music, who wanted the school's feast day Mass in the school hall rather than the church 5 mins down the road because her liturgical ideas we somewhat out there. A church a constricting location for Mass. Right...

Of course most of the Catholic constituency is beyond their reach anyway; they would be the millions of lapsed.

As to the bloggers many are in the world doing various important things - bringing up children, looking after sick parents, that sort of thing, invisible on the interweb.

Other invisible activities that carry on even when you break all the interweb everywhere are the stoic Catholics like me who will go to Mass every Sunday however awful. I can now attend a Mass and tune out completely everything that is being said, sung and done. ( I am lucky in that I don't have to do that very often, but know that if I had to, I would all the time.) I will forget to put money in various collections. ( My diocese allows ACTA to meet in Amigo Hall, so they don't need my money. ) I will turn out for the relics of Ste Thérèse of Lisieux however little publicity. I will turn up at Cofton park for the Beatification Mass, even when I have to leave at midnight and sit in a rainy field from before dawn. Lots of other things that really are invisible. Actions speak louder than words.

The reason St John Fisher and St Charles Borromeo are outstanding saints is because of what they did, who they are and because they stand in stark relief compared to their contemporaries.

Whilst Deacon Nick has been blogging, lots of other things have been happening. In five years, I have provided the music for over 300 EF Masses.
The parish have learnt another five ordinaries. Lots of other people have done lots of other things.

In his letters from prison, Blessed Titus Brandsma describes how he divides his day up into a monastic t/t. He just carried on his Carmelite life.

We should be under no illusions that within the company of Catholics we will be treated well. In my experience - that is a lifetime of going to Mass, 14 years a pupil in Catholic education, and 12 years as a teacher, that is precisely where you will have people at you all the time. No wonder it's so hard to get anything done. (Aside from my lovely choir and a few others, you try doing anything musical in the Catholic Church. Watch the queue of people forming to bash you over and over and over.) All whilst telling you how well we treat each other. Really? Not compared to where I have worked for nearly a decade. Not compared to orchestras I am in. I have a clearly defined role. I do it. I have authority over some matters. I use it. I defer to the decisions of others where they exercise authority. The allegedly hierarchical Catholic Church has people in positions of authority who do not use it when they ought and then when other people step into the vacuum seek to close them down. Some people really need to get out into the outside world.

The absent lozenge

So whilst Miss Leutgeb was amusing herself colouring in rectangles on the MS1 form , which is where you record coursework marks before posting huge parcels to the exam board, Anne Maguire RIP was stabbed fatally in a Catholic school in Leeds.

Totus Tuus Maria

By Gorecki


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Some music

MacMillan Seven Last Words from the Cross.

Ebarme dich, from The St Matthew Passion by J.S. Bach

Silverstream Priory

Fr Ray has already highlighted their urgent need of funds.

All the details here with a PayPal link at the bottom.

They need to purchase their premises and the price goes up 12.5% per annum.

Their Prior says:

As you know, our particular vocation involves perpetual adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament in a spirit of reparation and intercession for priests labouring in the Lord's vineyard. The priests who have come to us for a few days of spiritual respite have gone away refreshed by the friendship of Christ and renewed in the grace of their priesthood.

World Down Syndrome Day March 21

A video on The Daily Telegraph website

There was a logo with the name Lejeune on it at the end, so I hope it's all good.

Book review bingo 3

Christopher Howse in The Daily Telegraph.

I like this one.

Basically on a blogging, Facebook, twitter break. Tutty bye.

Book Review Bingo 2

The Evening Standard.

Because there's more to life than Tube strikes.

Book Review Bingo

On 'The dark box,' by John Cornwell

First up, The Daily Mail, which goes for the idea that Pope St Pius X is the bad guy and that the Catholic Church in general is VERY VERY BAD.

Then we move to Prof Eamon Duffy, writing in The Guardian. He seems to suggest that Cornwell would have done better to leave the history bit to him and stick with the stories of anyone who has had a bad experience of Confession. And I'm not suggesting that nothing awful has ever happened, but would go for the notion that the the corollary to bad stuff has happened is not do away with the sacrament and the authority of the Church.

Finally, for the time being, The Spectator. This starts promisingly, but ends with a new definition of what constitutes a good confession and from a Cardinal.

And we are still nine days away from publication.

Do Germans think in black and white?

Says the headline on this week's Tablet.

Thanks to Westminster Cathedral for allowing me to read it as I worked past ..

Um well.

The answer?

A compound noun of course. KLANGFARBENMELODIE.

Episode the Third

Having done an inside job trashing Pope Pius XII ( Hitler's Pope with the great cover of Eugenio Pacelli during the Weimar Republic, see the CTS pamphlet if you are in need of facts ) and Blessed John Paul II ( The Pope in Winter as opposed to A Man for All Seasons?), it's now time to turn on the sacraments.

The Dark Box: Confession in the Catholic Church
By John Cornwell.

This is how Amazon UK describe the book, in case you think I'm being very rude about a book I have not even read.

Would you tell your deepest secrets to a relative stranger? And if you did, would you feel vulnerable? Cleansed? Or perhaps even worse than you did before?

Confession has always performed a complex role in society, always created mixed feelings in its practitioners. As an acknowledgement of sinfulness, it can provide immense psychological relief; but while aiming to replace remorse with innocence, its history has become inextricably intertwined with eroticism and shame.

The Dark Box is an erudite and personal history; Cornwell draws on his own memories of Catholic boyhood, and weaves it with the story of confession from its origins in the early church to the current day, where its enduring psychological potency is evidenced by everything from the Vatican's 'confession app' to Oprah Winfrey's talk shows. Since the 16th century, seclusion of two individuals in the intimate 'dark box', often discussing sexual actions and thoughts, has eroticised the experience of confession. When, in 1905, Pius X made confession a weekly, rather than yearly ritual, the horrific cases of child abuse which have haunted the Catholic church in the twentieth century became possible.

It is published on 20 Feb.

My reponse? I'll just carry on joining that queue of people going to Confession.

And book review bingo. When it comes out I'll see if anyone who actually goes to Confession reviews it.

Chalk

Almost time to change the date by the front door.

(The pic is from St Vitus Cathedral, Prague: my front door is a whole lot more grand....)

I also have friend, now living abroad, who likes to have a piece of chalk.

Last year I sent a piece through the post. The custom declaration was interesting to fill out, shall we say.

An Award - and then there were two

Thank you to Mac and Ben for nominating me.

So little do I consider my blog in the public sphere, that when a gentleman asked me about bara brith after the parish carol service, I did a double take. People actually read this?

On the blog largely reduced to pictures of cakes and saints since Feb '12, here is the stuff.

10 pieces of info about me.

1. My birthday is on Christmas Day.
2. I have two younger brothers.
3. I eat porridge for breakfast.
4. I play the horn, though far far less than I would like.
5. I gave my nephew a Richard Scarry book for Christmas, which he had read three times by 9am- he gets up before dawn.
6. My Dad likes bara brith and that is why this blog is so named.
7. I like growing stuff in the garden and then cooking people dinners using it.
8. Beethoven is my favourite composer or maybe Dvorak, Brahms, Bach or Mozart, Mahler, Stravinsky...
9. I like walking and swimming.
10. So far today amongst other things, I have been to Mass, had my hair done, put on two loads of washing, done some ironing, printed the Propers for Sunday and Monday, chucked some junk out, done some weeding, cooked soup and stew to freeze for term time and emailed my Dad a link about a new TV series about Wales. And it's only tea-time!

As usual, everyone who I might nominate has already been done, so if you are feeling left out, please consider yourself nominated and I will appreciate your blog, even if retrospectively.