Tracking Santa at peak time

Yesterday morning I finalised sermons for Midnight Mass and Christmas Day services. In the afternoon, I helped Clare with last minute preparations, while Kath and Rachel drove to Newbury to collect Jasmine from her Dad. Anto returned from Kenilworth, Owain came over, and we all sat down to supper together. Rhiannon and Jasmine were so thrilled and excited to be together for Christmas. 

We had some fun visiting the NORAD Santa tracking site but as the evening progressed our TalkTalk internet connection slowed down with global traffic congestion to the point where it became unusable. It's not supposed to happen but it does. The big service providers promote the virtue of faster connectivity, always at a price. That's not unreasonable for it provides extra heavy duty capacity for shifting audio and video files quickly, if this is considered necessary by a user.  

Billions of internet enabled devices are in use at any time, and when the world goes into leisure or crisis management mode, there are bound to be peaks of demand to access particular sites, no matter how much cloud capacity gets expanded. In the physical world, motorways are fine until lots of people are on the move at the same time, converging on particular destination. Having a faster car or bigger lorry makes no difference to the existence of congestion hot-spots. So who do the promoters of faster internet think they are kidding? There's always a gap between the ideal and the reality.

By eight the girls were in bed, and by eight thirty I was on my way out to join former colleague Jenny Wigley for the Midnight Masses at St John's Danescourt and Christchurch Radyr. I preached at both and celebrated as well at Christchurch. There were three dozen at St John's and around ninety at Christchurch at eleven. It doesn't seem long since I was there for Holy Week. 

Driving between churches, I started remembering last year's unique Christmas Eve in Taormina, with a praesepio (nativity scene) in half the shop windows along the town's main street. Then I started thinking about the Andalusian Belen scenes I'd seen just before I returned home from Spain at the beginning of this month. By the time the second service started I decided not to repeat my sermon, but to ad lib a reflection around these experiences instead. I'm always nervous about going on too long or losing my thread, but on this occasion, the outcome was more satisfying than just repeating my earlier effort. By one o'clock, I was home again, enjoying half a glass of Rioja and a slice of cheese in a very calm and quiet household before going to bed.

The little ones were awake at four, and finally up opening their stockings at half six. Clare and I got up at a quarter to eight - she to start cooking Christmas lunch and I to get ready to leave for my nine thirty service at All Saints' Llandaff North. There were fifteen of us there and no organist, so I led unaccompanied singing, and wonderfully, the sun shone in to brighten a chilly church. It was great to be home again just after ten thirty and free of duties for the rest of the day. It meant that I could be kitchen slave and help in various ways to get the Christmas dinner on the table punctually.

It was a great meal, meticulously masterminded by Clare with help from Kath and Rachel in preparation, and Owain in carving and serving. Rhiannon and Jasmine decorated the table. We stretched the eating over several hours taking a break, after the main course and a red wine and cheese interlude, for a short entertainment called 'Red Santa' devised by Rhiannon to introduce the exchange of presents. Then we returned for the pudding, pies and a second round of cheeses with a sweet white wine. A wonderful happy family affair for which I thank God and all the participants.