Disturbing omission

No two days are ever quite the same when it comes to managing this complaint while a wait for an operation date. Of this, still no news. I had a follow up appointment for the nurse to take my blood pressure in the surgery this morning. With increased medication, it had been almost what the GPs expected, taken at home. In the surgery, however, it was unusually, worryingly high. My daily dose of acute swelling in the groin had kicked off about an hour before. Having to sit still and ride on this lump while having a reading taken was in my view unlikely to produce a near normal reading. I said this, but I don't think it was noted. I asked the nurse if private treatment might speed things up, and was told there was no guarantee. It's just as I thought. The private sector probably rely on the same pool of MRI technical expertise as the NHS to brief their surgeons, who may in any case be NHS surgeons outside scheduled work hours. 

Later in the afternoon the wound became painfully uncomfortable. To get some relief I sat on a hot pack for half an hour. Then the wound exuded twice the amount of fluid as previously, and settled down, along with the swelling for the rest of the day. Meanwhile, I rang the surgery to ask for a telephone chat with a GP about managing this over the weekend, rather than spending hours of the NHS helpline outlining the problem to someone who doesn't know me and getting no help at all. 

Much to my surprise, I was offered a five thirty appointment slot, the last of the day. I'd planned to walk to St Luke's for the St Andrew's Day Mass, but had to abandon that idea after a twenty minute GP session instead of the usual ten. More GP worries about my blood pressure inexplicably peaking, no hope of getting an analgesic ointment to quench that sudden alarming pain. It's as if nobody really does old fashioned nursing advice these days, not even nurses.  Perversely, these worries may motivate them to keep chasing the hospital surgical team.

Later on, as I went to take my evening medications, I discovered that I had failed to take my usual blood pressure medication at breakfast as I routinely do. Heaven knows why. Juggling so many pills correctly whilst remaining active with other things to give attention to should be a matter of routine, but beware or disruption and distraction, I am learning! I don't think the surgery reading would have been quite so high if I'd kept on course. How embarrassing to have to confess to next week!

Connectivity restored

As she was leaving for school this morning, Clare saw a big builder's lorry at work removing a dump of rubble from the street a few doors down. It's been there for over a month, doubling in size, taking up nearly three parking bays this past week. A major remodelling of the back of a house has been going on during this time, with the sound of hammering penetrating two sets of walls to reach us, six days a week. No builder's skip was used, and the height of rubble reached over five feet in places, posing a safety risk as well as parking 'claim jumping'.

Was it being done with official permission I wondered and enquired of our local councillors, who weren't exactly forthcoming about it. It was a relief to see the back of this - all those loose bricks and pieces of rubble, so easily accessible, would be so easy for a mischief maker to make trouble with, or some kid to treat as a little adventure playground when no adults are watching. Not all who building workers are quite as considerate or safety aware as they should be for the common good.

Finally, at ten thirty this morning, third time lucky, a visit from an OpenReach telephone engineer to sort out our connectivity problem, 22 year old Liam from Ammanford, four years on the job since leaving school, and only recently moved up to work in Cardiff. 

He needed no elaborate diagnostic devices to start with, he'd spotted the problem by the time he got to the front door. The line running from the pole in the street into the house dates back to 1961, and has deteriorated with the passage of time. It wasn't changed, when the switch was made from old style wooden poles which had to be climbed, to hollow easy to manage metal poles. Overhead lines running to individual houses are now accessed through a small ground level hatch in the pole which connects each to an underground cable linked to the area digital relay cabinet. I haven't seen anyone work on this kind of equipment before so I watched with interest from porch, in the rain. Once a new line had been run into the house, a series of electronic line tests were run, and our broadband is now running at 16mbs down, 9mbs up.

I queried why the speed dropped to less than a tenth of what it should be. Liam explained that if an auto-diagnostic process reveals that if the signal to noise quality of a line drops, or connectivity is intermittent for some other reason, a cut out mechanism operates to forestall a potentially damaging power surge. Our line quality has been poor for quite a while, but gone un-noticed until I ran a few online speed tests. What I thought was the just due to our computers slowing down under Windows 10's excessive and un-necessary recourse to internet resources, and unable to handle two devices updating or uploading at the same time was mainly a line problem. Windows doesn't now run much faster, perhaps a little smoother. From boot to working document page is still 2-3 minutes. Anyway, it's such a relief to have this problem sorted at last.

I cooked lunch for Clare, returning home after teaching a morning session, and before returning to school for a staff meeting, then I went for a four mile walk as the light was fading fast. I collided with a small traffic bollard obscured by deep shadow, placed right on the footpath I was taking at the edge of Llandaff Fields to prevent cars being parked on the path and grazed my shin. ThankfulIy, I didn't fall, but I was reminded of the collision with a buttress I had in the dark on the footpath at Territet a year ago. I guess I'm still in denial about being less able to see as well in low light as I used to, and still don't carry a torch. But I am starting to use a smartphone flashlight if I'm less than confident of ever familiar routes, once it's dark. Feeling my age, damn it!

  

  

Funerals present and long past

This morning, I attended the Eucharist at St Catherine's, then returned home and changed, ready to be collected for a funeral service at Pidgeon's Chapel, then the crem. It was well attended, as the deceased had been a member of Canton Liberal Club for over forty years, and worked locally as a painter and decorator. It was an unusual occasion, as immediate family members made comments to me and each other during the service, in quite a participatory way, as they might if they were in the audience at a club stand up comedy event. There was no disrespect intended and it wasn't disruptive, it was just inhibited good humoured participation, as it does naturally in pentecostal churches as well as comedy clubs. It was a refreshing change from the stony passivity of congregations at most conventional funeral services. I think it encouraged me to be more relaxed and spontaneous, in my usual quite formal exercise of ministry among strangers.

When I got home, I started thinking about the router access problem, which has been bugging me for days. There was one thing I hadn't done, which I've had to do several times when attempting to log into wi-fi when first arriving at chaplaincy assignments in Spain and that's take a photo and magnify it to see if I misread anything. Sure enough there was. The ambiguous password letter wasn't zero or big O but Q with a tail printed so tiny it looked like a blemish on the label. Instant success revealing nothing out of order, normal functioning, confirming lousy connectivity. Thank heavens for this much at least.

Yesterday evening and tonight, Channel 5 has treated us to a feast of archaeological discoveries, excavation projects as they are happening this year. It's hosted by actor Tony Robinson who hosted the archaeology programme 'Time Team' for 25 years. He's an enthusiast for what he's presenting, and you're naturally drawn in by his fascination. The photography reveals stunning landscapes in gold green and blue colours, enough to get me pondering about a trip to Egypt. Tony talks straight to camera, and is followed into the most awkward of physical locations. There must be a strong bond of trust and mutual respect between him and his

Tonight's episode was filmed mostly at the Necropolis on the hill above the Nile at Aswan. Previous digs over the past century have uncovered many sites which indicate the grandeur and status of this city of the dead, but so much more is buried under drifting sand after twenty centuries. The site dates back 4,500 years and may contain thousands of tombs, some with grand processional entrances yet to be uncovered. I wonder what sort of ritual and ceremonies were carried out on the day a tomb received its occupant? What's so amazing are burial chamber walls covered with frescoes that have not seen the light of day for three to four thousand years and yet appear fresh and bright as they did on the day the tomb was sealed after burial, if not when it was robbed. I wonder if there'll be any more programmes to follow up, after this outstanding two-parter?

On the case

I stayed in all morning, awaiting the arrival of the promised Open Reach telecoms engineer but once more nobody came. I reported this to TalkTalk, and eventually was given another appointment, this  Thursday. When I was out walking, later in the day, I saw a team of six Open Reach workers at the corner of Rectory and Romilly roads, about 150 metres from the main telecoms cabinet for our sector. One was digging a hole and five were watching. I told TalkTalk about this, but they didn't seem to get the real-life joke, and responding by stating that the infrastructure work had no impact on my connectivity failure - as if I didn't know. It's got to be the line outside our property which is behaving badly, as all else has been eliminated, except being unable to log into the router software. 

I took an afternoon appointment with Dr Benjamin the third doctor in our GP practice team whom I haven't seen for a few years. I thought it might be good to have a physical examination by a male doctor for a change. He had a letter on his desk from the UHW surgical team responding to a GP letter on my behalf seeking to prioritise surgery. It explained what I already knew about the delay in processing scan results. But it shows the GP team are on my case. Indeed, he promised to write again, saying my affliction was slowly worsening. 

Last weekend's swab test results confirmed the presence of a low level infection, and he gave me a week's course of a different antibiotic, which I believe may be designed to tackle what sister in law Ann describes as 'deep tissue infection' which may not show up in blood tests until it breaks out of its confinement. As my blood pressure has gone up somewhat worryingly of late, symptomatic of the immune system doing battle as much as additional stress from the discomfort and uncertainty, he also doubled the dose of the newest hypertension medication add-on I've been given. I could be far worse, if I wasn't fit and active and not confined to bed, so I must be grateful, as well a patient, and feel confident others are working on my behalf.

Friend reunited

We attended the eight o'clock Eucharist at St Catherine's this morning, to be sure we were ready to leave by half past eleven to drive up to the New House Country hotel at the bottom of Thornhill for the Friends of St John's annual luncheon party. It was lovely to see the familiar faces of old friends. We were honoured to eat at Sarah, the new Vicar's table, with the church wardens, the President of the Friends Sir Norman Lloyd Edwards, choir leader Vanessa and her husband Keith. It was a lovely occasion with good food and conversation. There were three dozen of us. 

I was saddened to learn of the recent death of Dorothy Wilkins yet another ancient St John's stalwart who was ninety nine years old. Though forever seemingly frail since I first met her eighteen years ago, she was alert, lively and active right into her years. After giving up her family home a decade ago, I understand she moved house three times, rather unusual, given the impact this can have on people, the older they get. Is it constitution, temperament, mindset, making one person comfortable with change and another averse to it?

After an uncomfortable day yesterday, I wondered how I would cope with sitting so long, but in the event, I had no problem. It's the furthest afield I've been for a while, and I was glad to be out of Cardiff (just) for a change of scene. The fields falling away below the hotel were tinted with mist and the sun shone where we were, while central Cardiff was still under miserable thin cloud, typical of this time of year.

Another episode of Little Drummer Girl in the evening. It's a bit of an effort to keep up with the plot in the way the movie is put together. I keep wishing I could remember the book, which I must have read thirty years ago. I don't have a copy now, and don't feel compelled to care enough about the story or the characters to go out and buy one.

  

All talk, nothing doing again

I went to St Luke's by bus and on foot to celebrate Mass this morning, but nobody showed up. I said morning prayer and then returned home. We went to the Parish Christmas Fair in St Catherines Hall after lunch. The place was very busy with cakes and other goodies on sale, second hand books and records, and lots of parishioners working hard and apparently enjoying themselves in this congenial atmosphere. I found and bought the Bob Marley CD 'Natural Mystic' on the second hand books and records stall. The songs I remember well from the streets during our time in St Paul's Parish Bristol, though I didn't buy the album. Clare objects when I play music too loud, so I have to wait until she's out to enjoy the benefit of reggae from my hi-fi. Even my ears can't take it quite so loud these days, as in younger days.

After late evening Direct Message to Talktalk last night, complaining about the engineer no-show, another booking slot was agreed for next Monday afternoon with only a vague explanation being offered for yesterday.  Yet another unresolved concern to have to wait patiently to get dealt with.

I had another lengthy Direct Messaging conversation about the router password not working. I still couldn't get a straight answer about any possible change in Talktalk router security policy. I posed the question of whether the lockout could be due to the device being maliciously hacked, and this was dismissed as unlikely, despite us being the target of so many scam calls purporting to come from Talktalk in the time since their big data hacking theft two years ago. The perpetrators were in the news this week as they received prison sentences for their crime. But the damage it caused still rolls out, nevertheless. The only half explanation for router inaccessibility offered was that it was due to the, as yet undiagnosed line fault, a somewhat lame idea in my opinion.

As I was experiencing an unusually high level of swelling and discomfort. My blood pressure was consistently much higher than usual, using a new sphygmometer I bought earlier this week, despite it having been satisfactorily lower than usual when I finished the course of antibiotics I was taking until Thursday last. This bothered me, so I called NHS direct, and had a long conversation in which I explained my recent medical journey and reason for present concerns. This was followed up an hour later with another conversation with a 'nurse consultant' in which I imparted the same information and received no practical advice in return, apart from "Call us if it gets worse, or else 999." That's another couple of unrewarding hours of my life I won't get back. Tough it out until Monday, then go and see my GP. The alternative would be hours and maybe tests in a crowded A&E department with a further risk of no outcome and more wasted time.

The last episode of 'Beck' on BBC Four this evening, an all too short series this time, sad to say.

More broadband blues

Yesterday lunchtime I officiated at the funeral at Thornhill crematorium of an 'ancient mariner', a man in his late eighties whose working life had been spent working on board ship, including his war years. His coffin was bedecked with the flag of the Merchant Marine, which was pleasing to see.

Over recent months our domestic broadband speed seems to have deteriorated significantly. It's most noticeable when Windows is updating or I'm uploading photos, which renders other networked attached devices almost unusable, as they're so slow. Running speed tests on Chromebook Windows and Linux devices, shows 1.4mbs download, and 0.7mbs upload speeds with an average seek time of 21-22mbs, occasionally much less. Is it a router fault, an incoming line problem or what? There are also times when the internet goes down altogether for 20 minutes, several times a week. A service which isn't as good as it used to be, and less than I pay for.

In addition, a while ago I tried attaching a storage device via USB and then a network port to the router, but couldn't see it on my computer network. I wondered why the router failed to recognise and attach the device, so tried accessing the router's software to check this detail, but the admin password printed on the router's label wouldn't let me in. I concluded this was a change in Talktalk policy to secure domestic devices, and gave up trying. Now, I'm starting to have doubts. 

This morning, I tweeted a complaint about speed to Talktalk, on by Blackbetter, form the attic, the only place where a reliable signal can be obtained direct from the mast, not from our internal phone signal via router device. It led to a diagnostic conversation via Direct Messaging, without resulting any improvement. I asked about password lockout but got no answer. An afternoon visit from an Open Reach line engineer was booked, but nobody showed up. Maybe an engineer overwhelmed by unresolved Friday calls on his services?

Market pictures

Yesterday morning, after a brisk walk in the chill air to the bank to get out some money, I walked to an appointment with chiropractor Clive. Since starting to take the antibiotics, I find I have more of a spring in my step, and enjoyed the exercise. The session, working on my back and neck was good too, and I got home feeling refreshed. While I was out I bought a second solid state hard drive to fit in one of my laptops and install Linux Mint. The six year old laptop I fitted a SDD with Linux for Clare works a treat with power on to an open Libre Office document ready to use in half a minute.  On a good day Windows 10 accomplishes this in 3-4 minutes, if not longer. quickly    

Later in the afternoon I went into town, to take photos of the Christmas tree outside the castle, the illuminations and outdoor craft market stalls. It all looks very bright and jolly at this time of year. So pleasing to see a tall Norwegian fir tree bedecked just with white lights. Natural simplicity works. St John's Church on the Working Street side is hemmed in by German style bars and fast food stalls, it may look like fun but the cooking smells in the air are far from pleasant or evocative of a traditional British winter evening outdoors. 

Still, tourists and shoppers come and go in good numbers. I hope the trade stallholders do justifies their attendance. Some, I recall from previous times, come for a week and then visit other regional Christmas markets. I guess business tails off after initial interest, or maybe it's a matter of affording the stall rent for a long enough time to cover costs and earn something in addition. I think I am too risk averse to ever have made a living like that. Mobile market traders have my admiration!

I attended the midweek Eucharist at St Catherine's this morning and went back into town in the afternoon to take more photos. My sister June reminded me that I'd promised some photos of the indoor market which I took with great pleasure. It's ten to fifteen years since I last did this and I have photographed several different covered markets in Spain with great interest over the past five years. This time I applied myself to the task with the same energy as I would if I was visiting an unfamiliar market to take pictures. It made me aware of just how much more colourful Cardiff market is and how almost all the stalls are occupied nowadays, compared to fifteen years ago. Someone must be putting an effort into promoting trading opportunities there, and about time too. My two days worth of photos can be found here. 

Our broadband speed has started to fluctuate and has dropped from around 1.8mbs down and 0.9mbs up down as low as 1.2mbs down and 0.6mbs up. When one device is uploading photos or doing a Windows update, other network attached devices become almost unusuable. It was impossible to see what might be causing this, as there's been no physical changes in the set up since installation, some two years ago. I contacted TalkTalk via Twitter and Direct Messaging (which I found clumsy and repetitive to use when the line dropped out. Their engineers ran some line tests and router diagnostics, but in the end I had to agree to a house visit. Something is seriously wrong, but what?

The new regime of pills requires that I take them at least two hours after eating and an hour before another meal. Doing this conscientiously has proved a little difficult given the variability of each day, and the meeting challenge of getting out of the habit of nibbling nuts or fruit in between meals if I feel hungry, as I often do. As a result of changes in diet over the past year and reduction in size of portions, I have a healthy appetite and good digestion. I'm grateful for that, when I think that some people my age don't have such pleasurable good fortune. 

I still have a couple of medical issues to sort out, however. Today I rang the colorectal surgical team administrator, and learned that there was a delay in processing MRI scan results, so there was no news about the operation I await. It seems the radiologist examines and interprets the scans in order to brief the surgical team, who then establish their treatment plan and arrange an appointment. Four to six weeks wait time, it seems at the moment. Not what I hoped to hear. Being a patient means having to be patient and wait to be treated and to effect a recovery. There's just no alternative.

   

A royal feast of music

The temperature has dropped over the weekend and stays low, more trees are now stripped of their leaves, so it looks and feels more like winter. This called for a brisk walk to the GP surgery early this morning to deliver a sample swabbed from my wound with Clare's kind help yesterday evening. Not a bad idea to test this in case there's anything unexpected to be spotted, I guess. From there I went down to the bank to pay in some money before walking home.

In the afternoon, I took the bus to town to buy a new sphygmometer for measuring blood pressure. I've come to the conclusion that the variation in readings it gives may have as much to do with the reliability of the device, as it does with my physical variability. I was pleased to pay only twenty quid, roughly half the price they were when I first considered buying one a decade or so ago. If fact, a lady working in St John's tea room gave me one she'd given up using, so that one could now be twenty years old. The new one is smaller, batteries only, and it memorises thirty readings in sequence if you don't have paper to write your readings down, as I must before recording them on a spreadsheet for the sake of my GP.

After supper, we walked to Chapter Arts Centre to see the movie 'Bohemian Rhapsody', the bio-pic about Queen and Freddy Mercury. It was a wonderful, faithful production, conjuring up the seventies and eighties, climaxing in the Live Aid Concert for Africa, and full of familiar songs portrayed in the making or performed on stage. When we got home, we looked at original footage of Queen's performance at Live Aid in Wembley stadium in 1985, and realised just how historically faithful a recreation the film presented. What a musical feast! I didn't our couldn't get into Queen at that time, have nonetheless been exposed to the music in every decade since. But I still haven't memorised any of the lyrics. I never was good at that, unlike my amazing singing daughters. 

A paradigm shift Taizé embodies

We attended the Parish Eucharist at St Catherine's this morning. Worshipping in the congregation is less comfortable for me at the moment than celebrating, as a priest stands for most of the service! Even so, I appreciate more as I get older the sense of fellowship in worshipping among people, rather than leading them. There's an element of loneliness in leadership requiring a priest to be the voice of the whole praying community. One has a different relationship to 'The Fellowship of the Spirit' when out there at the front. 

The liturgical structure of almost all churches, their architecture, the way we use the buildings to perform our rituals is theatrical in nature and quite hierarchical, we might say, by necessity. Even in far less formal acts of group worship, over time, a structure evolves that makes clear the distinction between the leaders and the led. It gets embodied in church architecture and furniture. But must it  be like this? Must performers and performed always be separated for worship to work? 

Certain kinds of experimental theatre explore the question of separation in their own context, as does the phenomenon of the 'flash mob'. Seemingly spontaneous, but brilliantly, quietly organised outbreaks of group singing and dancing in public places proves both powerful, entertaining and attractive to some, even if others are left bemused, and it breaks barriers between those who act and those who watch. The church doesn't often explore this possibility, with one notable exception. 

I found myself remembering and reflecting on worship at Taizé today, with the community seated together, surrounded on all sides by worshippers. Leadership tasks and roles are well distributed, but despite an east end sanctuary and free standing altar, the conventional church 'tribune' layout, with presidential chair and/or pulpit is absent, there is just the free standing altar table, and it's only used briefly when clergy stand there to say the Eucharistic Prayer. It's the focal point for just as long as it's needed.

This change in liturgical design has proved possible to implement with large crowds of worshippers, thanks to the use of modern sound systems. Seeing the person is hardly important in comparison to hearing them attentively, and this experience is all-encompassing and independent of where people choose to sit. 

There may be few or no seats in Taizé worship spaces, but the design is effectively implemented (given an appropriate sound system) in all kinds of sanctuary, ancient or modern, as witnessed to in the great Pilgrimage of Trust events around the world. Taizé continues to commend itself to rising generations of young people seeking faith. Perhaps this change in approach to how worship is offered could represent a paradigm shift in the life of the church whose significance would be far reaching eventually.

In my lifetime we've recovered a healthy sense of the importance of baptism in relation to our own discipleship and to the life of the church, as the source of our shared identity and purpose. We're learning how to share responsibilities in God's mission as equals, how to play our part in decision making and how our particular gifts can be exercised in serving others. We still rely on hierarchy, but as service to others, not as controlling or forming us in dependency.

Mutual interdependence of equally valued people is how we're learning to understand membership of Christ's Body, in a world where most are better educated and have unprecedented access to knowledge. Worship at Taizé expresses prophetically a transformation of human relationships in society and the church, made possible in this new era of communications and self-understanding. Movement towards achieving greater participation has been happening in a variety of ways in every form of worship over recent decades, but the manifestation of hierarchy still prevails, with the exception of Taizé.

  

Parkland refuge

I celebrated Mass at St Luke's this morning, taking the 61 bus to Victoria Park then walking through the park grounds, bathed in golden leaves and morning light. Fr Mark, opened up the church for me, on his way to a clergy meeting, and we met at the door. He told me that the charitable foundation St Luke's Healthcare is the successor to what was St Luke's Hospital for the Clergy when I had a hernia repair done there in September 2007. This could fund or contribute to funding private surgery done locally. They were certainly ready and willing to support him in his hour of need last year, although in the end the NHS, after a long over the preliminaries wait did the job. So, when I got back, I spent the rest of the morning writing an account of the background to my request, in the hope that this will prompt an early yea or nay before the actually process of making an application is required.

Clare and I went for a walk in the afternoon around Thompson's Park, just as it was closing for the night at three thirty, an hour before sunset. It's a pity on a sunny evening for people to lose an hour of outdoor recreation, whether feeding the ducks with their kids or out strolling to enjoy the colours, but there won't be too many Council workers charged with the task of opening several each evening and it does take time to ensure nobody gets locked in, or can get away with camping out, if they're homeless. 

Having said that, there's a lot of open parkland around the city center, where tents are pitched in secluded corners, refuges for some, once soup runs are finished for the night. Some unfortunates coping with mental health issues, possibly hardened by army experience, prefer to stay outdoors as long as the weather permits, as some hostels can be anarchic places after hours, with outbreaks of violence and thieving which impact terribly on vulnerable people, that have lost confidence in the 'care' which society is offering them.

Society never seems to have adequate resources to invest in mending a multitude of poor and broken lives. Never is enough demand, moral or practical, placed on those who acquire more they they could ever need for a comfortable life. The injustice is perennial. No revolution has ever succeeded in redressing the imbalance between rich and poor, but without this the true measure of healing needed will never be achieved.

Another episode of 'Beck' on BBC Four this evening. Peter Haber, who plays Martin Beck doesn't appear much or say much. He's almost in the background, portrayed listening thoughtfully, commenting or advising sparsely, acting mainly with facial expressions. The focus is on members of his team of detective and how their different personalities, skills and styles work together, or don't. It offers an excellent study of positive group activity, set against the chaotic and dysfunctional lives of the people who become perpetrators or victims of crime.
    

Bleak worldview

This morning I went for a brief examination of my wound condition with one of the GP team, who seemed satisfied that it was in good order, but needed reminding to take note of and inspect the swellings which are the main subject of my discomfort and concern. I hope this has been entered in my medical record. 

When I returned, there was a letter from the GP I regard as my GP, stating that it would be made available for use if I were go down the private surgery route. Whether or not the new batch of antibiotics make any difference remains to be seen. In the meanwhile, I'm coping, and able to get out and about, with another long walk around Pontcanna Fields this afternoon. 

I caught up on Thursday's missed episode of 'Berlin Station' on More Four in the evening. None of the characters seems to have any sense of honour and decency, everybody lies, cheats and betrays everyone else. A bleak portrayal of existence in the post-modern era. How true to real life is it? How can anyone tell?

  

Bereavement calls

I celebrated Mass at St John's this morning, and the after lunch walked across the parish to make a bereavement visit to prepare for a funeral in two weeks time. While I was sitting with the family my Blackberry rang. The caller was making contact to brief me about arrangements for another funeral I've been asked to take next week. No preliminary visit is possible as the deceased was in a nursing home quite near to us, and remaining family members are widely dispersed. 

This is characteristic of our mobile era, yet people still need and want some measure of personal service, so it's important to have at least one careful conversation in advance to  understand the life and the dying of the person being remembered. I promised to call back, as soon as I could, and after leaving the house, while I was walking home, we spoke for fifteen minutes. This would have been  an unimaginable thing to do so easily before the new millennium started. My first mobile phone was a nearly new Nokia, given to me by a church member when I worked in Monaco, some seventeen years ago, worlds away from here and now.

Having had a few extra uncomfortable days managing my condition which seems to be getting slightly worse, I decided to contact my GP surgery and ask for a telephone consultation. The thought of waiting another month before an appointment with the surgical team is worrying in this situation. I had a call before five and was promptly offered another antibiotic prescription, and an appointment in the morning for a physical examination. I walked straight over the the surgery and was able to collect the medication and start taking it straight away. I hate bothering the doctors, as I know how busy they are all the time. They certainly do make the effort to stay on top of the caseload, but every now and then, you just have to make the demand and add to their burden.

Class Mass and a Llandaff fiesta

Fr Phelim asked me to celebrate the St German's 'class Mass' this morning, and I was delighted to be free to stand in for him. Apart from doing a funeral there in July, it's a year since I was last here for this service, and sat in the congregation. Storytelling with a class of kids in church and singing with them was always a favourite with me when I was working and on retirement locum duties. I was so warmly welcomed back by the regulars in church and the day centre. The highlight of the service was a child losing one of her milk teeth during my address. Everything stopped for the first aid kit to come out and a spare plaster wrapping found to slip the tooth into for safe keeping. Delightful! 

As this is St Dyfrig's feast day, I looked at Wikipedia in advance to fill in my knowledge gaps in his story. It seems he was born in a village near Hereford, and was a enthusiastic young theologian of the fifth century, who taught Illtud and Samson, and founded monastic places of learning, including one at Llandaff where his bones lie, since the building of the Cathedral in the 12th century. He was named Archbishop of Llandaff by St German of Auxerre during his visit to Wales to teach against the Pelagian heresy popular it seems among Celts at that time. If I knew that before, I never properly took it in. It was one small curious semi-historical fact to share with the children.

Fr Mark has asked me to take on another funeral for him, a week tomorrow, and tomorrow's Mass at St John's. I'm glad to be active. I find coping with my condition much harder if there's nothing to distract me. Telly is not nearly as good as activity, social or physical.

Again this afternoon, I was feeling pretty tired, so I had a siesta and then sat in bed catching up on blog writing, with a HP laptop which runs Linux on a solid state drive I bought and installed a couple of weeks ago and forgot to mention at the time, as I haven't got around to using it until now. It's amazing quick, booting and opening Open Office ready for work in 30 seconds, on a seven year old device, which takes about three minutes to do the same under Windows 10. I have another laptop to convert, but being newer, it's trickier to open up and swap out the hard drive, plus it's a damned UEFI motherboard, which also make sit fiddlier to do.

At four twenty-five the house was plunged into darkness by a power outage which lasted until five to five. I posted a query about the extent of the outage on the local social media 'Next Door' website, as I still had an indoor phone signal at the back of the house on my Blackberry. Quickly half a dozen reports arrived stating that the area surrounding Cathedral Road, up Penhill, and East Canton had been hit. I don't remember when this last happened, perhaps once, since we've been living here.

There was only the burglar alarm to stop screaming and the cooker clock to reset. The router came on automatically, but internet connection and our internal mobile phone signal booster which relies on internet connectivity were both flaky for several hours afterwards, and strange to say they only settled down once we switched on the telly, which also relies on the broadband signal. Not that there was anything on worth watching tonight. Talking of which, our Talktalk broadband has been pitifully slow of late. Speed checks revealed that it's now a quarter of the up and down speeds we're paying for. Must chase this up, as it slows photo uploads to a very annoying extent.
  

  

MRI dismay

On the way to her morning study group, Clare dropped me off at Llandough Hospital at a quarter to ten this morning for a MRI pelvic scan. At half ten I was escorted to a mobile scanner unit located in the yard outside the Orthopaedic Unit, and subjected to five scans over the period of an hour. The last time I had this procedure was when I was about to shed a kidney stone, at New Year in 2009. Then I had to undress completely and leave outside any metallic objects. This time I wasn't required to undress, just uncover my pelvis to make room for a device which fitted over the area to be scanned, possibly to focus the magnetic field that generates the resonance images. 

The scanner made five passes. Three with the machine making one frequency noise, then two more in a slightly different position at another. I think the second two were directed at my liver and right kidney to probe the anomalous signals registered by last week's ultrasound. I asked the scanner operator how long it would take for the report to reach the surgical team who had commissioned the scan and was disappointed to hear him say four or five weeks. Not much urgency there, I thought. I must ask my GP to chase it up. A long wait isn't improving things and may be taking its toll on me.

I walked out of the hospital an hour later and within a few minutes boarded a 95 bus. This dropped me at the end of Lansdown Road in Canton, a fifteen minute walk home. It conveniently offered an opportunity to do some shopping and then cook lunch in time for Clare's arrival. The inflammation today was worse than usual and I had to rest and recover after lunch. Then I wrote to my GP and took the letter around to the surgery, to get some exercise. Then, another evening in front of the telly with unseen episodes of NCIS and Bull. Rather too much of Michael Weatherly for one evening to be honest.

Another birthday girl

This morning Rufus came over for a chat, so we sat in Cafe Castan overlooking Llandaff Fields and drank coffee for an hour and a half, sharing thoughts about ministry and teamwork, as the Church in Wales rolls out its new area ministry plan. He's brought a good deal of experience with him moving from social work into the church in his fifties, but he is fired up with enthusiasm for a life of pastoral care in the community, flavoured with a healthy dose of practical realism. He keeps his feet on the ground with lots of domestic DIY jobs, furniture restoration among them. He told me how pleased he was to have taken a broken stained glass door panel and modified the intact portion to create a window light to go above a door frame. It's great the church has such all round capable people in its service.

Over the weekend I was asked if I could do a funeral in a fortnight's time. I was busy with funerals when I returned home from Malaga in the summer. I may well be busy again now we approach the threshold of winter.  

The weekend rain and cold has changed many trees that remained green until lately giving them extra shades of yellow and gold to add to the reds and browns. Utterly lovely when the sun shines. This long drawn out and fairly mild autumn has been quite spectacular, but even the best of photos doesn't fully capture this.

Hot on the heels of Rachel's birthday last Friday, today is Jasmine's birthday. She's twelve already. We spoke to her on WhatsApp just before bed when Rachel was driving her home from school. She was having some friends over in their evening to celebrate with her. It's sad we see so little of her.

   

Centenary Armistice Sunday

I celebrated and preached at St Luke's this morning. Getting the eleventh hour timing right on any Remembrance Sunday is a matter of choosing lengthy hymns and if available longer readings. Today's lectionary set were all short, as were the hymns. Even at a leisurely pace we reached the end of the Gospel at ten to the hour. So, I started to preach, knowing it would take me longer than ten to reach my conclusion, hoping to find a right place to pause. Thankfully, but more by luck than design, I'd reached a place in my sermon text where a pause would work, so we went into the Act of Remembrance bang on time. Honour was satisfied, and that matters to me. 

We've been treated to several excellent documentaries featuring interviews with World War One veterans on TV lately. It's so good to hear their personal stories of first hand loss, plus those of people on the home front, not just the tales of top generals, politicians and industrialists, whose collective decisions inflicted such tragic scars on people in Britain, Europe and across the world. When will we ever learn?

After a post lunch siesta, a walk around the park again as the sun was setting. The third part of Le Carre's 'Little Drummer Girl' novel dramatized was on in the Sunday evening prime time slot on BBC 1. The plot is rather convoluted and not presented in a way that's easy to follow. Even so, it captures the seventies ethos very nicely - a trip down memory lane for europhiles at least.

 

A different kind of street poetry

Clare needed to collect some tickets from the Royal Welsh College box office for a show in early December, so we walked over there and intended to have a bite to eat in the cafe. Unfortunately my daily dose of pain and discomfort was quite bad and I didn't feel like eating there and then, but Clare ate and we both had a drink, before walking on and visiting the castle, busy with visitors on the eve of Armistice Day. I added a photo to the collection I look on Wednesday this week of visitors walking around in the field of crosses, bearing dead soldiers' names. By the time we reached home, I was out of my discomfort zone again. Exercise improves it. I am so grateful to be fully mobile. Sitting down for any length of time is what gives me grief.

The second episode of Beck was on BBC Four in the evening. Out of retirement he's now finding his feet at Superintendent of investigative teams, mentoring and deploying resources. It's being portrayed rather interestingly, I must say.

 .

I have started reading a book in French, 'Une Rose et un balai' written by Michel Simonet about life working on the streets as a town centre balayeur (street sweeper) in the Swiss city of Fribourg. In his youth, he studied theology, but he found through this a contemplative calling to pursue a much more down to earth métier. His loving attention to detail describing the daily mess he clears up and the people he meets is full of warmth and humour, also word play and poetic alliteration. 

French as it's taught and should be spoken but rarely is can be dry and pedantic. How it's really spoken and used poetically is another thing altogether. This is a beautifully written book, albeit challenging because of its word play and mix of vocabulary. It comes from the pastoral heart of a lowly curator of city streets, interested in the environment, in people and their habits, for good and for ill, finding wonder in all things. I wish it was available in English for a wider audience. It's a masterpiece of incarnational spirituality. Here's a brief interview with him from YouTube.
 

Shots in the dark

It was Rachel's 45th birthday today. Clare and I recorded ourselves singing her a 'Happy Birthday' on WhatsApp after breakfast, and sent it to her so she'd receive it when she woke up some eight hours later in Arizona. We were spoke to her in the late evening just before we went to bed, and she was setting out to collect Jasmine from school. A small consolation for being so far away. It's at times like this you really regret such a distance between you and your nearest and dearest. 

I walked into town mid afternoon and met Ashley for a cuppa and a chat in John Lewis' top floor restaurant. It was dusk when we parted company and the traffic was moving slowly, so I walked back along the largely unlit riverside path, busy with pedestrians and bike commuters armed with dazzlingly bright LED lights. It made me wonder how many collisions occur at winter evening rush hour.

I took with me my trusty seven year old Lumix LX5, handy for photographing townscapes. Nearly all my Central Square photos over the past three and a half years have been taken with it, but on this occasion, the natural light was waning by the time I arrived.  I took a few on the path along the Taff walking home, by way of an experiment, so see what Google Photos web editing tools could make of them. Maybe if I'd used the camera's ability to take uncompressed RAW format images to edit, I would have had more better results, but I've only ever worked with JPEG images, whose quality in low light on a camera of this age isn't good anyway. Three of the five I took were keepers, for interest's sake. Next time I'm out with it in the dark, I'll experiment.

 

News at the surgery

I was pleased to stand in for Fr Mark and celebrate the Eucharist at St Catherine's yesterday and then  this morning, I stood in for Emma at St John's. She had a meeting elsewhere this morning with a small group of Saint Padarn ordinands she's been invited to work with, in the same way I worked with a small group at St Mike's five years ago. She said how delightful and inspiring she found their enthusiasm for ministry. It's great to have an arrangement where priests active in early ministry can help nurture vocations, and share their own fresh exploration and discovery of parish life. 

The new training placement arrangements are an improvement. While I enjoyed my time working with such a group, I found the academic hothouse ethos, similar to the one I endured fifty years ago, no longer as necessary for sound formation. Today many people come later to ministry, and are more mature with a lot more experience of life. It can mean some are set in their ways, and a few less open to a range of different ways of expressing faith, as it's commonly found throughout the church these days. Both the exchanges in College and in the parishes help broaden understanding and perspective, helping students to learn to live together with differences, and focus on serving others.

I went into town in the afternoon and visited the Castle to take photos. Sister June said she'd not seen any pictures I've taken before. When I checked my archive, I discovered it was ten years since I last did so, and that was before I started to use Picasa Web (of blessed memory) and then Google Photos. I was delighted to discover how my Sony Alpha 68 with its new wide angle lens worked, as its broad field of view invites a photographer to step forward toward the subject to fill the frame, rather than step back. New things to learn.

The Castle's annual Garden of Remembrance with its field of crosses had been dedicated in the morning, as befits the ceremonial home of the Royal Welch Regiment. At the opposite end of the grounds a special Armistice centenary art installation has been created which resembles the layout of a Commonwealth War Graves cemetery in Flanders. A superb idea to touch the imagination of Cardiff visitors who have never see such a cemetery in real life. I was there just before four, and witnessed the evening flag lowering ceremony, carried out, I believe by a senior and two junior members of the Regimental museum staff. I felt privileged to be there and my photos are here

This afternoon I had a GP appointment, ostensibly to review my blood pressure medication, but it was an opportunity to review what's been happening with my various recent medical appointments and tests. To her surprise as well as mine, the ultrasound scan report had arrived. It seems I have one 4cm stone in my gall bladder, meriting an operation to remove it later on. Thankfully, adoption of a dairy free low fat diet is keeping pain and discomfort at bay, so it's a matter of 'watch and wait', and get through the MRI scan and fistula removal operation to follow. I'm managing that problem fairly well at the moment, limiting pain and discomfort to several hours in the middle of the day. I can work around this, and keep making an effort to stay active. Exercise does me good.

I'm still watching 'Berlin Station' on More Four, but find it somewhat difficult to work out who's who among the spooks, much of the dialect seems to be delivered sotto voce through gritted teeth, quite undistinctly. I fiddled with the TV sound settings to see if I could improve things, but it didn't. Also, considering the American CIA dramatis personae are all supposed to well trained and educated, the office dialogue is littered with the F-word. 

It's not that it's so offensive these day. You expect it in violent movies maybe, but in a 'corridors of power' mise-en-scene, it feels out of place and smacks of poor dramatisation. Nor am I entirely clear I can follow the various plot lines, as there are so many mysterious hunky 'men in black' fornicating their way in each episode, it's hard to work out their roles. It's not that it's a spy mystery, but rather that its obscurity fails to retain interest.

     

  

Scan date

At nine this morning, a brisk 25 minute 2km walk to Llandaff's Rookwood hospital across the Fields and past the Cathedral to be given an ultrasound scan on my gall bladder. It was better than waiting for a rush hour bus and walking the last part, and I walked back as well. I arrived fifteen minutes early, waited another half an hour to be seen. The scan man had little to say, he just got on with the full scan survey of my thorax, instructing me when to move, and when to take deep breaths. That was all. The results will reach my GP surgery in about a week's time, he said, when I enquired.

It's the first time I've visited Rookwood since we were in Taormina at the end of 2012 and learned about Sir Edward Hill, industrialist of Rookwood House Llandaff, and his remarkable philanthropic daughter Fanny, who did so much for earthquake orphans, education of the poor, raising funds for an English church, and restoring the parental winter holiday home in an old convent to its original purpose by turning it over to be a home base for Franciscan Missionary sisters. 

Rookwood House has had several purposes since Fanny's parents died and it was sold, all to do with care for the disabled and sick. The distinctive late Victorian house has been extended and some ugly ancillary buildings inserted in the grounds. Although the main facade is recognisable, it's hard now to imagine how elegant it once looked, standing alone at the heart of a small arboretum of trees selected by the Hills. Many of those old trees still survive however, and are well looked after.

Later in the afternoon, a call from Ashley to say the banking Ombudsman's case adjudicator wanted to speak to me about the complaint we made about HSBC's incompetent handling of a necessary account review which has caused CBS many unnecessary problem. The bank admitted liability after we presented them with the evidence, but had not taken further action. Their letter to us came many months after our complaint to them was made. We warned that if we got no response we would take this step, and the Ombudsman's letter confirming they were investigating arrived the same week as the bank's letter. Why should we withdraw? Aware as we are of thousands of SME bank accounts being dealt with in a similar unsatsfactory way, we want to put on record the unseen impact the bank has when it doesn't maintain high professional standards of competence with all its clients.

I called the officer in question who listened with interest to my account of the catalogue of errors which created a situation yet to be resolved satisfactorily. He said it would give him perspective as we worked his way through the dossier of evidence we provided. Fortunately, it just involves an account which has been inactive for the past year anyway, but this still poses problems we could do without, for our public accountability. 

A Tudor fireworks night revisited

Bonfire night passed with some very loud bangs emanating from the parks area, but this didn't move us to go out or watch from the attic. It wasn't such a good day for me, festive eating paying me back as I feared it would. Nevertheless, there was an interesting programme to watch, reconstructed the huge fireworks party arranged by the Earl of Dudley at Kenilworth Castle when he was wooing Queen Elizabeth the First. Those ruins are familiar to us, as we often go past when we take a family walk up there). A contemporary record gives a plan for the display, and other books of the period record the required know-how for different kinds of firework making. 

It was presented by historian Lucy Worsley and materials scientist and enthusiast Zoe Laughlin who attempted to reproduce sixteenth century fireworks recipes with original materials as far as possible, the only exception being the use of modern electrical remote detonation mechanisms, for safety's sake. She has a series of her own about the materials which make our modern world what it is. For the most part, the live firework display that climaxed the programme was a success. Many of those invited to watch wore period reenactment costumes, except for Zoe, who appeared in her all black garb throughout the show. A timeless, stylish and striking contrast. As the 'engineer' of the key element of the reenactment, it was quite appropriate, I thought.

Surprise birthday party and an unexpected bill shock

I celebrated and preached at St Catherine's this morning. There were over forty adults and twenty children present, several of the adults joining the children to receive a blessing at the altar, not just sending them up with another parent at ease with the practice. Good to see this happening.

For the second Sunday running we drove to Newport to have lunch with Martin. All his extended household have returned home now. Karim from Afghanistan, Chris and the lads from visiting family in Canada. It was Chris' birthday, and we only found out when we arrived. His Uncle and partner plus several friends also came. It was a delightful occasion with good food and conversation, even if I did eat a bit more than was good for me. My present condition requires me to eat carefully and moderately all the time or I can guarantee I will suffer if I don't. So serves me right.

Late evening I had an email from Neil, one of the churchwardens at St John's Montreux to say that a bill had been received addressed to me from the medical centre where I was operated upon some six weeks ago. He agreed to open it and send me a scan. It turned out to be a list of treatment charges not covered by the bill I'd already paid before leaving. I had forgotten that the timing of the Swiss admin cycle is different from ours. I had paid the surgeon in full, but not the other things. Worse still I went ahead and made my insurance claim on the mistaken assumption that it covered everything. I wanted to clear things up and just focus on recovery, but acted too quickly in submitting the claim. I doubt if the insurers will revisit this. I'm very upset about this. As a French speaking foreigner, the staff presumed I was more acquainted with their health system than I now am. Seventeen years have passed since I last lived in Switzerland, and much has been forgotten. And I'm now paying for this particular memory lapse.

  

  

Match day in town

A Saturday afternoon walk into town with Clare, while the Wales v Scotland rugby match was on, leaving the streets relatively quiet. She wanted to buy some new boots, I just wanted exercise. Then  tea in the top floor restaurant at John Lewis before walking back home, having failed to identify if or from where buses were running, just as the match ended, and the streets began to fill with happy Wales supporters, going out to celebrate.

It was dark when we passed along Wood Street. The new buildings are all lit internally. and on the east side of number three Central Square, soon to be fully functional as the headquarters of BBC Wales, a large Boots store has opened, and a Greggs. There's now an alleyway running past them with the construction site of the long awaited new transport hub (aka Bus Station). Little seems to be happening there. I'm not sure if a final plan has been agreed that contractors can work on.

The evening's viewing saw a new Scandie crimmie on BBC Four, series seven of 'Beck', which I find enjoyable watching. It deals frequently with topical issues. This episode dealt with two issues; one the impact of Islamist terrorism on a Turkish migrant family, another was working in retirement.  His quirky sociable neighbour is back. Now they while away their idleness playing chess together.

Beck quit the force at the end of the last series. This time he is in the throes of trying to settle into a new lifestyle when he's called on to advise the team tracking a terror threat, since Beck knows the suspect's family from times past for other reasons. It was lovely to see former colleagues teasing him over his new status. As expected, his experience and knowledge is instrumental in solving the case. Then, he's invited to rejoin the police, but not in his former role - he was always happiest working within a team - but in a more senior supervisory role. Does he really want it? Will he, won't he? We wait until next week to find out.

Requiem consolation

This evening, Clare and I walked to Llandaff Cathedral across the Fields for the Solemn Requiem Mass for All Souls Day. I noticed yesterday on Twitter the time of the service stating that Faure's Requiem was to be sung by the Cathedral Consort choir for the celebration. Faure's rendering of the traditional liturgical texts for Masses of the Dead was slightly at variance with the official one, as he was somewhat more universalist and generous spirited in his theology than was the Roman curia, so it didn't get official approval for use in church and thus was mostly performed in concert like some of the other earlier great but lengthy requia of previous centuries. It has been used liturgically in some Anglican places of worship, however, as it's not exceedingly long.

The music was sung with disciple and great passion by the choir, and the ceremonial was just what it needed to be, using the vast space of the Cathedral choir and sanctuary in a clean and simple way. Beneath Epstein's Majestas a table was set up containing sand trays for candles, the Paschal Candle and Gospel book behind. After the Dean's homily the congregation were invited to receive a votive candle and place in one of the trays while remembering people they love but see no longer. For me it was a matter of remembering my dear friend Mike who died last summer, brother in law Eddie who was buried on this day three years ago, also Mary Jones and Pauline Grainger of the St John's City Parish church who both died earlier this year. On the way there, we walked along the perimeter path close to the family grave in the Cathedral cemetery where Pauline is buried. It still saddens me that I was out of the country when the funerals of three of them occurred, apart from Eddie. An All Souls day experience like this allows me to revisit and pray through the sadness in that numinous space created by the combination of great liturgy, music and architecture. Such a gift, to be grateful for.

A glorious, but also fateful day

I celebrated the All Saints Day Eucharist at St John's for a different dozen people this morning, and Emma sat in the congregation, until she had to leave, as she was being picked up and taken to a conduct a funeral service just after. 

Ashley called at the church at the end of the service and we walked and talked together. He said that he'd only received formal official notification in a letter received at the the Motorpoint Arena reception desk yesterday morning, stating that as of today, South Wales Police are no longer going to be responding to calls from RadioNet users but answering calls exclusively from the commercial radio system backed by 'For Cardiff' since the breakdown in relationships between Cardiff BCRP Board and its Chairman and Crime Manager, despite previous Council and Police undertakings to the contrary.

Some of the top people running 'For Cardiff' are ex-cops. They were only willing to hear the account of the breakdown given to them by fellow ex-cops. There's been amazing indifference about this on the part of Council officers, to whom it was reported, when a formal complaint was made. So much political time and energy was expended in launching the Cardiff Business Improvement District scheme that spawned 'For Cardiff', that investigating the conduct of 'For Cardiff' management so soon after its launch would have been highly embarrassing, given that continued use of RadioNet, was endorsed as an existing asset available to the project at an earlier stage. 

The Police claim not to prefer one radio system over another and earlier gave an undertaking to respond to calls from both radio systems,  but reality tells a different story. 'Operational reasons' or 'lack of resources', can always be used and there's no obligation to account publicly for this change of decision. It would be a different matter if Cardiff Business Safe had launched a civil court action against all parties involved, but as a voluntary not for profit organisation, no funds held in reserve were ever set aside for litigation, only for outlay on the radio system in the event of a breakdown. 

There's always the possibility of trial in the court of public opinion via social media of course, but I doubt there's much interest in these issues out there on anybody's part. It would only ever come out if a major catastrophe or breakdown in public security involving secure communications failure occurred in the city. Then it would only be part of the inevitable blame game achieving nothing.

For ten years Cardiff Business Safe did its utmost to provide the best quality of service and equipment  to the city centre through RadioNet. Now this comes to an end. Let's hope all those who promoted this initiative won't live to regret it and have their reputations damaged, their trust and goodwill undermined behind the scenes, in the way that of Cardiff Business Safe was dealt with.

To cheer myself up after this news, later in the day I went out and bought a wide angled lens for my Sony Alpha 68 DSLR camera as I promised myself I'd do once the insurance reimbursement came through.  I also bought a solid state hard drive to install Linux on and fit to one of my laptops. If I'm satisfied with it, I may convert another. The price of SSDs has come right down this past year.

Christmas puddings have been cooking all day today, two of them, one big and one small. And yes, we did get around to making our 'Stir Up' wishes a month ahead of time. Clare has also made a start on Christmas cake too, soaking a second lot of fruit, ready for cooking tomorrow. Kitchen aromas are arouse seasonal anticipation, way ahead of the wreath on the door, and candles on the table.