Checking always necessary

As Father Dean is away on leave in Berlin this week, he asked if I'd do the ten o'clock Mass this morning, which I was glad to do. On the lectern I found a big shiny new edition of the new Roman Missal from which the prayers and antiphons were to be taken to match the weekday Lectionary readings. Here I stumbled at the first hurdle, as I read the Collect for the Day containing a fat subordinate clause and a grammatical error revealing that either the book had not been proof read properly, or those who'd prepared it for publication were not first language English literati. Our friend Mike on Friday last was lamenting its quality of content, and speaking about the poor reception by both Catholic press and many clergy and laity. It seems many still wonder what was wrong with the old translation once they'd got used to it. Although not without faults in the eyes of some, you'd be hard pressed to find grammatical errors or typos in the superceded edition. Doesn't the Vatican go in for grammar and spell checker plug-ins when text processing?

After Mass, I took friend Diana to Newport where we took part in the monthly Ignatian meditation group meeting at the house of the Deaf Mission Chaplain. After lunch there it was a matter of getting back home, parking the car and hading back into town on the bus to the National Museum to rendezvous with Dr Laura Ciobanu, who's here from Bucharest on her annual visit. We met at St John's one Good Friday seven years ago, while she was working at Llandough hospital, and have kept in touch ever since. She brought three beautifully decorated Easter eggs as gifts, plus some special Easter cake and a Romanian smoked cheese! Eating this will be something of an adventure in taste.

After the Museum closed, we parted company and I went into the office for an hour, as there were some financial queries from the auditor that needed checking against other records. Life is a lot easier these days, since CBS business banking internet archive access has been made available for reference in a way which ensures it cannot be misused, with an additional security layer to that provided by the bank. That's the only way I can feel comfortable about using it at all. If all goes well, we'll have all our business affairs audited and fully up to date by the end of this month. It's taken me exactly two years since I retired to achieve this. I'm pleased with the achievement, as it means we can demonstrate to all comers that the business rests on a sound and stable footing.