Half term break - part one

The week began with a funeral, end of Monday morning, at the Stone & Ham funeral home followed by burial at Western Cemetery. The organist, a Tongwynlais parishioner, told me how the congregation was enjoying having Phil, one of my tutees on placement with them. Nice to have this to feed back to him. Then after lunch, I went into the CBS office for a few hours before going into College for the Family Eucharist, at which Phil gave the address. It was his first since arriving. He said he was nervous about it, but in performance he was relaxed, confident with a straightforward message and engaged the children's interest in an original way.  

Tuesday I spent working in my new office in College, getting started on devising rotas for next term's staff involvement in running worship and preaching before the tutor group met. Being half term week, there was no Chi Gong class to attend, so for a change, Clare and I went out together to dine at Stefano's Italian Restaurant just around the corner from home, in Romilly Road.

Wednesday morning I went over the St German's to celebrate the ten o'clock Mass, as Fr Dean is taking a much needed half term break. I get to stand in for him again, at St German's and St Saviour's, the Sunday before I leave for my Taormina locum duties. I'm looking forward to that, as it's nine months since I last spent Sunday in the parish, before he was inducted.

I went straight from the altar, down to County Hall, to a meeting called by senior officer Martin Hamilton to review the work of Cardiff Business Safe after three and a half years of digital RadioNet operations. The Business Crime (prevention) Partnership of which CBS is the public face is due soon for a constitutional overhaul. This meeting was the first opportunity since setting up the new service, for us to be able to report properly on the development of the organisation from scratch. I felt my presentation on finance and strategy was well received, and reassuring to participants. 

There'll now be a further meeting in three weeks time, assembling original stakeholders, to obtain their approval for the constitutional revision. It means more preparatory work to get done on a tight schedule, which is rather unfortunate since, after the meeting, I returned home to collect luggage and set off with Clare for a few days of a half term break in East Anglia.

Our cross country drive via Gloucester and Oxford to stay at the Menzies Hotel north of Cambridge on a two night bargain break special offer. It took all of five hours, the last hour and a half was in the dark. Clare was able to swim in the hotel's spa pool. I forgot my trunks and went to a nearby Tesco superstore to see if I could buy some, but there were none in stock - out of season I was told. So, I settled for half an hour's Chi Gong/Tai Chi at the side of the pool instead, and then we dined in the hotel restaurant. 

Getting on line to check mail afterwards was a nightmare, as my BT wireless dongle would only deliver data at old analogue modem speeds for no reason I could fathom. This is the same dongle I used for skyping and surfing in Spain this time last year, via a third party service providor at broadband speed, albeit slowing. The BT blackberry office phone worked OK, but it was much to small and fiddly to use to respond to as well as read incoming mail. In the end I gave up and went to bed, leaving it to the morning to collect the wifi password from reception, as it hadn't been included in the room's hotel handouts.