Travelling home

Having readied the apartment for the arrival of the next locum, and needing to get up at four, never an easy thing for me, I slept uneasily on the sofa in my travelling clothes. At three fifteen, I had one of those 'checking everything, something's missing' dreams, featuring this Chromebook on which I write. Mercifully, I woke up realising that I hadn't packed the charger, still connected to a bank of sockets in the study. I retrieved and packed it, thanking my digital guardian angel, and went back to sleep for another thirty five minutes.

This time around I proposed not to book a cab or hail one, but to walk over the Calle Maestraza just behind the Plaza de Toros, where I'd noticed taxis park and wait by day and night. By twenty five past four I was on my way to the airport, and joined the dozen other early birds in the check-in queue at a quarter to five, and quarter of an hour before it was due to open. One desk was already open to receive bags. 

By ten to five, three desks were open, as the influx built up behind me. There are four early Vueling foreign departures, and the queue in the first hour of opening is very long. But the system is very well organised, as I found last time when I arrived over twenty minutes late at the end of that long queue and found eight desks open. Just before official desk opening time I was on my way to security clearance, through by five past five, and starting to relax into the wait, expecting to fly at seven thirty. 

Thanks to another French air traffic controllers' strike however, we left at five past nine. I'd made a picnic breakfast to eat on the 'plane, but ate it at the departure gate. Even cheese sandwiches can be a consolation with a three and a half hour wait to board the flight. Also Vueling's phone app proved to be a consolation, as it gave flight info updates on the delay every ten minutes, and a nine thirty departure time crept forward by twenty-five minutes. Heaven knows how that was managed!

I slept for most of the flight, but returning from a visit to the toilet, a fellow passenger called me out by name. It was Fr Stephen Ryan, recently retired as Team Rector of Neath, returning home from a month's in Torremolinos, a nice way to recuperate from all those fond farewells. Arriving in Cardiff at half past eleven, I didn't have long to wait for the two buses that would get me home by a quarter past twelve, in good time for lunch.

As ever, the first job was to start the two computers that need to run a backlog of three months Windows 10 updates, so many of them requiring checks and oversights that it took the rest of the day. By way of contrast, the Chromebook, likewise tablet and phones just functioned and instantly updated, save for resetting the time zone manually. There is a possible automatic adjustment, but I'm not sure how long these devices take to identify their new location in relation to the internet time server. 

Manual resetting allows one to keep the clock in a time zone in which you're no located at that moment. I believe there's an option to display more than one time zone too, but don't know how it works. Such things are possible, and for some users necessary for easily maintaining international communications. Google Calendar offers time zone options for engagement entries, but I still haven't figured out how this is meant to work, if you're entering data for use in another time zone. All this tech savvy business about keeping your life on track only works well if you have a real clue about how it works.

The weather here is fairly warm, but will get colder with rain to come. Time to hunt out a pullover. Opening three months mail will have to wait until tomorrow.