Saturday tech and movie time

Owain departed after a late breakfast this morning. I spent some time 're-purposing' a work phone made redundant by the continuing upgrade cycle. It's a Samsung Galaxy III, functional and in good condition. Clare's phone is a Samsung Galaxy III Mini, just like mine. It's slightly newer and has more memory, but its connectivity has never been as good as mine, and no remedial fix has ever been effective, so it's probably a hard to detect fault in the aerial, as all else works fine. The new phone works just fine, but will have to wait until Monday to check of it can be used straightforwardly with a different network SIM card from the one the phone was first registered with.

In the afternoon, we walked in the rain to Staples on Western Avenue, to buy an Epson wireless printer and a Toshiba CR 104 Chromebook, like mine, for Amanda. A little shopping around had determined a price on both that was good enough to pay for an extra set of ink cartridges for the same price I'd have paid elsewhere. Carrying the kit back involved a capacious rucksack, long arms and patience. We got wet, but that was preferable to losing our parking space in the street, always crowded on weekends.

After supper, I used iPlayer to catch up on the first episode of 'Hinterland', set in the cefn gwlad up behind Aberystwyth, in and around Llanafan Parish uplands, which we discovered the summer before last when we visited our friend Margaret LeGrice, Vicar of that six church benefice. The lead actors in the series are melancholic, serious, preoccupied, in keeping with the often bleak storyline and stark landscape. It's beautifully crafted, and best of all, as normally bi-lingual as the social environment in which it is set. It's must-watch for Welsh people everywhere. The portrayal of the environment, the dialogue in either language and the relationships between characters are honest, resonant, authentic. A triumph of Welsh film making.

Then we watched together the ever comic and colourful with dark undertones second episode of 'Young Montalbano'. Much more complex threads in the storyline, but each thought provoking. Best of all in this episode was the banter between Montalbano and the parish priest about attending marriage preparation classes. It was very true to life, the excuses busy men make to avoid have to sit through life coaching sessions from someone they believe have no direct experience to draw upon in talking to them about intimate relationships.

After this I finally got around to writing and printing the baptismal homily which I'd devised in my head one very late night this week, and scribbled a few notes before falling asleep. And was late to bed again, thankful that I don't have an early start tommorrow.