Wednesday 8 February 2017

Waxing eloquent

For once, no road works congesting traffic in the city centre as I drove to St German's for the 'class Mass' this morning. Once more it was very chilly in church so we did some 'action singing'. Even so I was feeling very chilled by the end, and glad to wrap myself around a radiator in the hall with a coffee afterwards. I taught the children to sing a simple Sanctus melody in the form of a melody that can be sung as a round. I'll try and teach other classes to sing it simply first, then try to make it work as a round thereafter. I have about six or eight more sessions with them before handing over this treasured spot to Fr Phelim, when he takes over as Priest in Charge.

As my blocked ear was giving me much discomfort, I returned home for lunch I spent much of the rest of the day languishing and annoyed that I hadn't been able to find relief. Yesterday, however Dianne had told me about a specialist clinic dealing with ear wax removal by microsuction technique up in London. With a little encouragement from sister June who's been talking to Dianna about this, I googled and found there's a clinic offering this in Llanishen. I have noticed over the years that GP practice nurses are increasingly reluctant to work ear wax removal. I've now learned that it's not done at all in some practices because it's not considered a cost effective use of time. This forces sufferers to pay for private treatment, or just keep suffering. What would Nye Bevan have made of this I wonder?

In today's post a notification from our energy supplier arrived about the roll-out of Smart Metering in our street, with an invitation to make contact and arrange a date for installation. All well and good, I suppose. It promises economies, but will it deliver? The information states that it relies on available wi-fi or mobile signal strength to send consumption monitoring data to thee company's data centre for processing. This makes me curious. Mobile signal strength our side of the street is very flaky, and we rely on a phone signal relay device which is attached to our domestic router, to be able to make mobile calls inside the house. So, will this metering device be utilizing our internal signal relay, or even our wifi? This is what I hope to find out when I get around to making that first call to the action line. How secure would this be, piggy-backing off a domestic router I wonder? Given the range of security concerns raised as a result of hacking and malicious misuse of 'Internet of Things' networks, all kinds of possibilities are imaginable. Will the booking personnel and/or help desk people have answers? Will they understand the questions? We'll see.
      

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