A Google own goal

Getting started in the morning is troublesome at the moment, since I resumed taking the Doxazosin extra medication to control high blood pressure. The side effects seem to be more pronounced this time than on previous occasions when I used it - light headedness, but not quite giddy. It's the same whether I take it at bedtime, or if I take it with the other pills at breakfast. This effect continues for a couple of hours and slows me down, as it's un-nerving.

Fortunately it was warm enough to sit out in St Catherine's churchyard for the Wednesday group coffee and chat this morning. There were eleven of us, plus Emma's bairns, but few of the regulars. Hopefully they'll return when midweek Communion starts up again.

I had a Zoom bereavement meeting to plan Paul's funeral scheduled for two. It took twenty minutes to get started as there were problems with account access, which took that long to sort. I talked with his wife and son, and came away with the task of writing a eulogy, as I've known and worked alongside Paul for over seventeen years. If it was just a family group at the crem, a eulogy might be redundant, maybe replaced by poems, but as the service will be web-casted, followed by scores of city centre colleagues, they thought a tribute might be appropriate. 

It's a new challenge for me, but one I am honoured to accept. He was a man I much respected and admired. As I suspected, I learned that he worked at home during lock-down, even on his deathbed. The Wales Online obituary misleadingly spoke of him as a former City Council worker, which is a pity. He knew how much needed to be done once lock-down restrictions were eased, as he saw the whole moving picture of city centre life in detail and wouldn't give up until he had to.

Writing this tribute took most of the evening. I also wrote to my GP as well, concerned about the high blood pressure reading I got. Despite the antibiotics and doxazosin it's not yet returned to normal. Time for some blood tests I think.

Google Blogger has now forced the new user interface on me as the default. I resent having to relearn a user interface with which I am well experienced after fourteen years of blogging. Lots of its features are tucked away in drop down menus rather than immediately visible, they are slower to react on my ancient Chromebook which means the new interface is more resource hungry. Just like the new Gmail is slower to load than the old version. Sure it'll look good on a tablet or phone, but little is gained when using it in a computer web browser. As far as I'm concerned this is an own goal on Google's part.