Stuart Herbert's Ramblings

Digging through my Flickr account, I came across 38 photos that I’d uploaded in the past, but until now had never made visible to anyone. With the one exception of the houses on the Isle of Lewis, all the other photos are from 2004, back in the days of my 4 megapixel Canon IXUS 400 and my 6 megapixel Nikon D100 SLR. That kit is obsolete by modern standards, but I think the photos have stood up to the passage of time extremely well

Looking at these photos this morning, I feel mixed emotions. The photos are a lovely personal reminder to happy times – walking in two of my favourite places in Wales or Scotland, and the amazing php|cruise 2004 conference in the Caribbean. But right now, as I’m still recovering from last summer’s car crash, I’m not really able to go walking, and I’ve had to skip conferences this year. Perhaps I simply shouldn’t write blog posts at 1am

Driving home from doing the shopping this afternoon, Kristi spotted this chimney out of the corner of her eye. Naturally, we just had to go and investigate, and with the last light of the day, we managed to snag this photo of what was once the East Glamorgan Hospital.

Built during World War II, the hospital was finally closed in 1999 after the opening of the new Royal Glamorgan Hospital over to the north-west of Llantrisant. Sadly, the handover did not go as smoothly as one would like, with human tissue samples reportedly discovered by the workmen who came to clear the site, and with patients of the mental health unit left with nowhere to move to.

Today, most of the site has been cleared for a large housing estate, but the iconic chimney still remains. Searching online, it isn’t clear what the site is used for today; the road shown in the picture has a sign insisting that the place is private and off-limits (which we respected), bearing the title of the Pontypridd and Rhondda NHS Trust. Their website is still online, but the trust itself has been replaced not once but twice … a damning inditement of the inefficiency in government-run organisations over the lifetime of the current government.

If you’re able to shed some light onto what this site is used for today, please leave a comment below.

As part of the process of recovering from my knee injury, I decided that it would be a lot safer for my knee if I tried to strenghthen it by learning to swim.

I never learned to swim as a child. I hated being in the pool, and even today cannot approve of what passed for swimming practice at the time. Making someone float face down in a pool of water that they don’t want to be in in he first place is a sure-fire way to make them panic. Badly.

Swimming twice a week has strangely become something that I really look forward to every day. In the water, I can move around without the knee hurting, because it isn’t bearing any weight. I get more relief from pain in the pool than even in bed at home.

I swim with my wife whenever possible, and being physically more active has lifted both of our moods considerably. I’m now managing around eight hours a week of activity, and once the knee has recovered enough for me to return to martial arts once more, that’ll go up by another five hours – and further still if I’m able to add a third Tai Chi class to my teaching schedule.

Every time I’m in the pool, I still feels very strange, very alien. I still swim like a brick, but I’m just pleased to be taking positive steps to coping wih the injury.

Now all I need is for the medical professionals involved to finally agree and execute the next course of treatment!