Midweek bargain

Wednesday morning, I celebrated the Eucharist at St Catherine's, and we observed the Feast of St Barnabas a day late. There were just half a dozen of us present. After lunch, I walked through Bute Park into town and then walked back to the Natural Health Clinic for an acupuncture session. Despite wearing my comfy new sandals, my feet were killing me when I arrived, but after treatment the walk home was fairly pain free. It wasn't just a matter of having an hour's rest, however. I discovered on other occasions that acupuncture really stimulates kidney function, making them able to remove from the bloodstream that much more efficiently impurities that cause the soles of the feet to ache like that. I'm fortunate in that my body responds well to this kind of treatment.

Thursday morning, I celebrated the Eucharist at St John's. We learned that one of the regulars absent this week on holiday with her husband in Portugal has been taken ill with a virus, and is in hospital out there. How unfortunate, especially as they're only there a week. We prayed for her, naturally, and I sent her husband a text message. At this distance there's little more one can do.

After lunch I met Fr Phelim for coffee at Cafe Castan on Llandaff Fields, and we chatted for an hour before he went off to pick up his kids from school in Llandaff. It's lovely to see him settled and happy at St German's and St Saviour's. It's quite something, coping with two churches in a populous area where 25 years ago where would have been four clergy working full time. It's reassuring to see that he knows how to pace himself, and that lay ministry within both congregations is evolving gradually in new ways. I'm look forward to covering for him at both churches in a couple of weeks time.

Later in the afternoon, I went into town, and went to Cardiff Camera Centre to buy a Sony HX90 to replace the HX50 which died on me last December. I've waited this long as I didn't urgently need another, as I don't need the convenience of a pocket sized camera at the moment, when I'm not going far from home. At the start, I was ill enough to wonder quietly if I was going to survive, and whether there was any point in adding an unused new camera to my legacy of goods and chattels. So I haven't been into the shop since the day I went in to enquire about prices. 

I bought a factory refurbished model for two thirds of the list price. I gathered from the official refurb serial number detail on the box that this particular camera had been imported into the Norwegian market, and probably was on display, and hardly used. After a certain time span, these are returned to Sony's European distribution centre and checked to ensure they can be guaranteed as if they were new, then sold at a big discount. I paid thirty pounds less for this new improved model than I paid for a discounted HX50 five years ago. I hope it will last long enough give me another 10,000 pictures as its predecessor did.