A very public farewell

Back into College to replace laptop plug adaptor this morning. Unable to access internet however. Not unusual in this neck of the woods. As College IT services are now managed by the Representative Body of the Church in Wales, I suspect that the increase in capacity of the system may be a fraction of what it needs to be for present purposes. Glad it's not my job to sort out. I wonder if the churches will benefit early or later from the promised super-fast broadband provision trumpeted as one of Cardiff's recent gains in bidding for new services?

Much local internet excitement last night as Cardiff City Football Club qualified for the Premier League. It's reckoned to be capable of bringing about an uplift of the local economy because of media attention and additional visitor spend. No doubt city centre management colleagues will today be starting to think about changes that'll need to be made to cope with the influx of football supporters for attention grabbing matches in the season ahead. I hope they won't be disappointed. Cardiff City football supporters are very happy today, if not suffering from hangovers.

Before lunchtime I listened on the radio to the broadcast of Margaret Thatcher's funeral, resonant with classic texts from the traditional Prayer Book and Catholic liturgies. Much of the design of the service was her own. It was a long way from the plain Methodism of her upbringing at one level, yet, at another it expressed thoughts of abiding value about the meaning of life and death as our common British culture seeks to voice them. The Bishop of London, Richard Chartres did a good job on the sermon cum eulogy in expressing the core Christian convictions to which her active life gave witness. I rarely agreed with any of the ways in which she implemented her convictions, and regret their outcome to this day, but whatever the limits of her vision or sensitivity to the impact of her decisions, her integrity is worthy of respect.

As the funeral cortege was finally leaving St Paul's Cathedral, I met with four others for the monthly Ignatian meditation group, which I was asked to lead. Such a refreshing contrast to all the other things which occupy my life. I leave a meeting of this kind reassured that pondering on scripture and waiting for insight and inspiration to come compensates for the poverty of communication and trivialisation of language which besets both the church and society in much of today's world. Then, a journey into town to spend the rest of the afternoon in the CBS office, wresting with words and phrases that will discipline our organisation and its policy decisions, and undergird our fitness for purpose.