Older phone poorer memory

I woke up in good time this morning to upload the first Morning Prayer video I prepared on Saturday, after listening to 'Thought for the Day'. Accidentally, I posted it to an individual rather than to the Parish daily prayer WhatsApp group, but spotted the error before the upload finished and cancelled it. When I tried uploading it to the correct destination, my phone stalled and complained that it was running out of memory. It a problem I often have, as factory default apps I never use can't be removed from the phone. They take up too much space. I have to limit the number of apps I install, and not allow data that can't be installed on the removable SD card to accumulate in the phone's internal memory. Redundant data needs removing to avoid the kind of problem I encountered. I had to do this before successful in uploading the 50mb video file of the day.

This week's uploads take up 500mb of space on the SD card, but when files are uploaded to WhatsApp, copies remain in the WhatsApp / Media /Video / Sent sub folder occupying much needed memory space. It wouldn't matter if I had a newer phone with 16 or 32GB of internal memory, but why should I? I prefer to take photos and make videos with a camera, not with a phone. Normally I don't need vast amounts of internal memory as I haven't needed to make phone videos until last week. Receiving a lot of videos on WhatsApp causes the phone to choke up, so I make a regular practice of removing almost everything I receive once it ceases to be of use or interest, or storing it on the SD card. I'll have to make a check each day this week to ensure this doesn't happen again.

I had a short walk before lunch and a longer one after lunch, and spent time writing and adding photos to my digital collection of pictures stored on hardware I own and not just on-line. Then an evening in front of the telly, with nothing better to do. 

On-line Advent

We've seen a heartening increase in the number of parents with children at St Catherine's recently but this morning there were fewer, as there's a Christingle service at St John's this afternoon, booked to the full capacity allowed of eighty people. Now that's encouraging to know in these tough times! Mother Frances is on leave for the rest of this week, and has been busy attending to necessary details to cover in her absence - tiring in itself. She sent me a briefing email on safety protocols for church based funeral services, as I have my first one in St John's twelve days hence. 

Funerals directors must provide a list of mourners and contact numbers in their family groups who'll be attending, so that the verger can check them in on their arrival. I don't know if the same applies at crem funerals governed as they are by public health regulations. A list may need to be provided, but I've never seen a attendant checking mourners into the crem chapel. Some enter beforehand, others follow behind the coffin. 

Life is more complex when it comes to church services, as the dioceses are eager to impose strict safety conditions to minimise  contagion spread.  It's true that there are instances of funerals, weddings and other church services being 'superspreader' events before contagion dynamics were properly understood, and since then by groups wilfully, if not piously putting God to the test by denying the problem and ignoring the dangers, but these are the exception rather than the norm. 

Anglican traditional culture has long emphasised the importance of everything being done 'decently and in good order', despite the risk of seeming conventional and dull. Being a safe and stable foundation for communities of faith, innovating and adapting carefully, perhaps too slowly for the impulsive natured believer, has seen us weather centuries of harsh and hostile times of expansion and decline.

I'm surprised it's taken so long for church leaders to complain publicly about the government closure of churches during lock-down. It's in the interests of justice to demand evidence that stricter church service management regimes add to local contagion statistics, especially when churches actively support Track and Trace mechanisms properly with a steward signing worshippers into services. A one size fits all closure approach does nothing to help identify and sanction churches that don't comply. It is of course impossible to do anything to control the behaviour of worshippers once they have left church grounds where they are free to obey or break the rules and risk infection any way they want to, but it is vital that Parish congregations continue to act in an exemplary manner, for the common good.

Talking of church regulations, when I walked to the Cathedral straight after lunch today, I saw a notice displayed on the board outside about a petition for a Faculty (the church recognised equivalent to civil planning permission) to install cameras at four points in the Cathedral whose purpose will be to record or live stream worship services. Bravo, at last! This would have been beneficial earlier in the century, but video technology is so much more sophisticated, affordable and acceptable now that the pandemic forced so many more people throughout the world to rely on new technologies to communicate, socially, domestically, scientifically and economically. 

I remember meeting Fr Mark in the Cathedral one Sunday afternoon, and him talking about learning to record a Sunday Eucharist for on-line consumption during lock-down. What this revealed was the enthusiastic reception for the Cathedral's offering by a range of people, duty bound or housebound and unable to attend, plus extending the ability of ministry to reach out to a new audience ordinarily out of range. I hope we'll see this kind of initiative taken up at Parish level, the more affordable it becomes.

I got back from my walk early enough to listen to Evensong on Radio 3, except that it was an Advent procession of Carols  live from St John's College Cambridge, beautifully sung. In fact, as I was a couple of minutes late, I found the programme on BBC iPlayer on my Blackberry, rolled it back to the start, and listened with the phone plugged in to the dining room hi-fi. A lovely treat.

After supper, I accidentally came across a surprise music programme on Sky Arts, all about a London concert in 1985 by Rockabilly legend Carl Perkins and his band. He wrote and performed several songs which were huge hits for Elvis Presley, including 'Blue Suede Shoes'. The event seems to have been set up by South Walian rocker and music entrepreneur Dave Edmunds, brother of Ricky Dee who deejayed the parish discos at St Andrew's Penyrheol in the late sixties early seventies. Dave was there performing on stage as a guest star along with Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton and George Harrison. An amazing hour of music which took me back to my early teens and got me on my feet trying to sing along to lyrics half remembered, to fantastic live versions of songs unlike those on the '78 or '45 recordings of my youth. 

An unusual way to begin Advent indeed!

Tech' sweatshop day

 Another Saturday lie-in and pancake breakfast to start the Sabbath! But not much of a day of rest for me. I was determined to prerecord all six services of Morning Prayer for the coming week to upload daily, rather than take the risk of doing it live each morning and having unforeseen technical failure or me failing to get myself properly organised to broadcast the live feed on WhatsApp. 

I've had an unprecedented run of good days since the operation, and it's been a joyful relief to get through each day with minimal discomfort or pain, and plenty of energy to enjoy everything I do. Unconsciously however, I remain on the alert against a reversal of fortunes, just when I least expect it. 'So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall!', as St Paul reminds us. It's happened before and it was upsetting and demoralising. I expect this mindset will change eventually, if the final op is the success hoped and prayed for, but making fairly fail-safe plans is what I need to do for now, and I'm not ashamed of that.

Having already prepared the texts for each day, producing around thirty five minutes worth of recordings took me the two and a half hours that remained of the morning before lunch. The sky was overcast and I had to juggle with lights pointing at the ceiling to give the illusion of being in the full daylight. As editing footage wasn't possible due to the video rendering problem I failed to resolve yesterday, each day's video had to be done in one take. It wasn't as easy I as thought. 

My eyesight is deteriorating due to the cataract in my camera viewfinder eye. I need a very strong light to read fluently these days, and technically it wasn't possible to put a light source close enough to me and not affect the video recording. If it had been bright and sunny outdoors, I could have got away with it. I noticed in the playbacks that I fluffed some of my words and didn't quite get the sentence flow right, normally not a problem. But it was a good idea record them in advance. Doing it live in the early morning, when my eyesight is often at its worst, would not be such a good idea!

I certainly needed a siesta after lunch today, so it was starting to get dark by the time I got home have my afternoon circuit of the Parish streets, occasioned by a trip to the chemists to get some Tea Tree cream. On my way around I had a conversation with Mother Frances, about including the Church in Wales special prayer for Advent in the daily office. I explained that I'd recorded them which surprised her I think, but she understood why once I explained myself. I promised that I'd make a supplementary audio recording of the prayer, with accompanying slides of the texts, which I though I could do easily enough. Famous last words however.

The slides were easy enough to create, and I used a couple of photos taken of the NHS prayer station outside St Luke's which has stood in the locked porch of the church since early in the pandemic. I thought I might be able to use Google's old Picasa app to make the audio and slides into a video. I did the job fine until it got to the rendering stage, working as intended, but consistently failing to complete the job, getting stuck at 98.9% and not saving. Bizarre. 

Then I tried using the online Google Photos, having succeeded with stringing together some stills of Kath and Owain leaping into the air on Oxwich beach into a crude stop motion video. Another fail here however, as this app offers lots of themed templates of photos from your collection trawled together by their fancy image recognition AI Cloud software. As for letting the user decide what photos they wish to make into a slide video, forget it. There's no custom option, or at least none that is plainly visible on the otherwise user friendly interface.

I stopped to watch this week's double episode of 'The Valhalla Murders' on BBC Four and eventually, settled for using Windows Movie maker, going strong since Windows 7, and installed on my Windows 10 machine alongside a newer app that does the same thing but has a mystifying user interface. This did the job nicely. It didn't take long, and ran as expected in WhatApp. Altogether, it was an annoying frustrating evening, but I was relieved to have everything resolved by my my usual midnight bedtime.

Time wasted

After breakfast I knuckled down and made a couple of efforts at a first video service recording. The first was too long and that meant pruning texts I'd prepared yet again to get them the right length. I second try was OK, but with a second or so of irrelevant footage at the end I wanted to trim away. No a problem in a video editing suite on my Windows 10 PC, except that the rendered edited file wouldn't play full screen on a phone and was a tenth of the size it needed to be. It tried every rendering option I could think of, to no avail, and wasted hours trying. 

Just as annoying was the fact the the PC wouldn't recognise my phone. I had to save the edited video file to a SD card, to transfer it to my Linux laptop, which has no trouble at all recognising my phone and its supplementary storage. As a result of losing so much time, my daily walk started mid afternoon and finished in darkness, and it was even colder still today, so tomorrow I'll go out in my ageing ski jacket and wear gloves. Time to give up wearing sandals for the winter too.

I tried every method I could think of to trim the end of that video without success. I have wasted so much time on this today, without success. That imposes even more pressure to record each service in one straight take. I'm dreading it. Only late this evening did the PC finally decide that it could and would recognise my phone, long after I found a workaround and gave up hope. I wonder if it will remember again tomorrow,

Usefully occupied

I ended up going to bed late last night and sleeping late this morning, but I was out and about in time to go to the Eucharist at St John's. There were nine of us. I cooked lunch when I got home, and later went for a good long walk. Each day it seems to be just a little colder in the afternoon. There's sunshine but it's really humid, so it's hard t dry washing and the cold clings to you., something I remember well in my first month in Ibiza, as I hadn't packed enough warm clothes to take with me, expecting it to be milder.

The rest of the day was given over to working out where how to shoot videos of Morning Prayer using my phone, and trying out the texts for length. Five or six minutes are recommended. It was much harder than I imagined, and I had to set about pruning one text and then experiment with a video. It's less than straightforward. The pressure is on to get all six done in advance and post them on WhatsApp one a day, as I'm doing for the Daily Reflection I'm posting to WhatsApp this week.

The thought of recording live video on the day without making errors, and the uploading the finished product by eight in the morning is far too much pressure. As my phone with WhatsApp on is four years old, it's not got a video editing app, and not enough memory to make a video editing app work properly. Better to get them all done  in advance and avoid the stress. But learning how to achieve the desired result is taking up a lot of time.

I've had a request to take a funeral at St John's in two weeks time on a Friday, Mother Frances' day off. It'll be the first funeral in church I've done since restrictions were lifted. How this is going to work with restricted numbers and social distancing, I have yet to learn. Interesting times! 

Retirement Deferred

A chilly morning, with clouds and sunshine. On the way to St Catherine's midweek Eucharist, I called at the surgery and picked up my prescription and took it to the chemist's opposite. There were a dozen of us for the service, in which we commemorated the 16th century Anglican priest poet John Donne. Mother Frances read us his sonnet beginning 'Batter my heart three person'd God', a nice touch.

After lunch I went and collected this week's organic veggie bag from a new pickup point in Conway Road which replaces the one in Chapter Arts Centre. It's out of use for a while as it's located in an enclosed outdoor area no longer directly accessible from the Chapter car park. Another pandemic casualty. It's only recently Chapter has been able to open at all, and thenonly in a limited way. It's a disaster economically and socially, as it's much used as a community eating and meeting place as well as for cultural activities. 

Then I went for a walk around Llandaff Fields and down to the weir, where I took a couple of photos of a heron stretching its wings on one of the long reefs of stone in the middle of the river. As they were about forty metres away from me, I had to use almost full telephoto reach with my little Sony HX90, and was surprised they both came out with negligible motion blur. Sometimes you just get lucky! 

When I got back, the clock told me that the regular Wednesday choral Evensong was still running, but three quarters completed. I listened on BBC sounds, as it allows you to roll back to the beginning. A very traditional service with some modern musical settings of the responses and canticles. The Old Testament lesson was beautifully read by a young man with a north country accent. This really suited the use of the King James Version of the Biblical text. The second was equally beautifully read by a young woman with a gentle rural Ulster accent. The service came live from Clare College Cambridge, so live that a very loud fire alarm went of for 15 seconds during the lesson. She continued reading perfectly without any lapse of concentration as if nothing had happened. Very impressive.

Mother Frances is away next week, and as both her colleagues are off work at the moment she asked if I could cover the Parish Morning Prayer services on WhatsApp. It's the first week of Advent, so I'll enjoy putting six services of fiver or so minutes duration. I also get to celebrate two of three weekday Masses in the Parish, another unexpected pleasure. I started work on the content this evening, but the delivery is of more concern - how to present a video in a way that isn't annoying or distracting. I'd be a lot happier if it were just audio, but hey ho, another little challenge. Retirement is on hold again, and I'm happy that the op has freed up some energy occupied for too long in keeping low level infection at bay. I have a lot to be thankful for. 

A small creative milestone

Today's early news announced that three households can meet from 24th to 27th December to celebrate Christmas together, all over the UK. Given that restrictions on indoor home meetings seem to be a key factor in curbing infection rates, according to epidemiologists, this is something of a risk. In the other hand, the Oxford research group has produced a vaccine which is 70-90% effective, according to how it is administered. It's easier to produce in volume, and distribution can begin one regulatory approval has been granted, possibly as early as next month. Is this part of the Christmas risk assessment I wonder? Everyone is desperate for some sign of hope that his plague can be brought under control. 

Having kept an eye on all scientific developments in the news since the outset of the pandemic, I thought early on that instead of taking several years to roll out a new vaccine, we'd see first signs of progress by the end of this year, but the pace of research and development leading to roll out of effective products, and several of them, has amazed and delighted me. If only the world's political leaders could collaborate as effectively as its scientific leaders!

After Radio 4's 'Thought for the Day', I uploaded to What'sApp the first of my daily reflections to the Parish daily prayer group. Image and text must be added separately. The first time I got it wrong and had to delete and start again. Luckily I started on time because I remembered. The daily notification I put on my phone last night didn't materialise and I had to add it again. I have no idea why this happened. It's reassuring to think that at least some of the time, my brain is more reliable than my phone.

I cooked lunch again and went for a walk into town again. A lot of work is being done on new footpaths in and around the SWALEC stadium, Sports Centre next door and the temporary Sophia Gardens coach station site. Whilst it's a good idea to improve safety with by separating vehicles and pedestrians in the public realm, it does mean tarmac covering more soil, less surface area to soak up torrential rain, with the prospect of run-of adding to flood water levels in the Taff. Surely there must be a better way?

 I took more photos in town, especially of the bus station construction site. A huge high rise building is rising above the entire ground level area given for a new bus and coach terminal, apartments and offices apparently. It'll be much bigger than I thought, overshadowing the BCC Cymru HQ next door, now in use at last, and totally dwarfing the main railway station, dating from Brunel's day. It was called 'Cardiff General' when I was growing up, but re-branded 'Cardiff Central' by British Rail in 1973. Prefer 'Cardiff General', as it's more distinctive, but that's not a name Brunel would have known as it wasn't changed until 1924. Before that it was simply 'Cardiff'. 

In the evening, we watched a fascinating programme on BBC Four in the 'Britain's Lost Masterpieces' series, showing how cleaning and restoration work on a painting in Derby's museum revealed that a landscape without provenance was an authentic painting by eighteenth century English painter Joseph Wright, whose portrait and narrative paintings are considered on a par with that of Rubens. More great detective work, and for once, nothing to do with crime!

Before turning in for the night I decided to work on the end of my novel. Half an hour turned into an hour and a half, but when I had written the final sentence at half part midnight, and re-read it, I realised it brought the story to the end which had been eluding me for some time. At last it's possible to discern a shape to the entire narrative. It will need much revising and re-ordering in due course, but this was an important moment for me, as if a weight had been lifted off my mind. 

I've done a lot of writing in my life and still enjoy it enormously. I have a one work of Christian apologetic, written and revised up to publication stander over fifteen years, for which I couldn't find a publisher, some children's stories not revised to publication standard, and several other unfinished projects which never completely took shape. To have reached a point where the novel has a shape which I can recognise is good place to be, even if it requires a lot more work and may never find a publisher.

Young Jazz excellence showcased

Blue sky and sunshine for our walk to the United Benefice Eucharist at St Catherine's this morning. It was meant to be the Parish Confirmation day for the candidates who have been preparing for the past nine months, but the Bishop's visit was cancelled. With so much uncertainty about public worship and extreme caution exercised over every liturgical event, it's not surprising. I don't know when regular confirmations will resume. 

One of the young candidates was baptized however, and Mother Frances spoke to us about the course they'd been through together, almost all on-line. It's a long journey back to normality of any kind. We still don't know what kind of Advent or Christmas celebrations will be possible in church or at home, with only a month to go, but a late evening report on my news feed says up to four households can meet for a few days over Christmas, so that may make a difference. We'll see.

After lunch, Clare and I walked up to Llandaff weir. Sections of the footpath were a muddy swamp after a week of rain, treacherous without hiking boots, which stubbornly I wasn't wearing. In the park and in house gardens most of the leaves have fallen. In some tree lined streets there's been a Council supported leaf clearing campaign by residents. I don't recall seeing activity this last year, and the consequence then was blocked drains and huge pools of water in gutters which took ages to soak away. Many more benefit from this communal effort than just the people who live in the street. It's good to see it happening.

Another musical treat on BBC Four in the evening, the finals of the Young Jazz Musician of the Year competition, with five outstanding instrumentalists: two sax players, a string bassist, a guitarist and a pianist. They were all superb and engaging to listen to. One of the judges suggested that they'd make a wonderful super-group, playing together, a great idea I thought. I spotted the winner, a pianist called Deschanel Gordon from Hackney. He was so creative in his references to a range of jazz piano styles, but in ways so original that kept springing surprises on the listener. Jazz improvisation was always good at quoting well known melodies and playing around with them in original ways, and this art is as alive now as it was in the time of J.S. Bach. All the finalists exhibited the same skill. A two hour musical treat!

Before bed, I added another page to the final chapter of my novel, now inching towards closure, and the moment when I can start the lon awaited top to tail review and revision of my effort, praying for 'grace to see the whole' as Pope Gregory the Great used to say. 

More musical refreshment

Needless to say, I got up late, enjoyed our usual Sabbath pancake breakfast, and then went back to bed. There was nothing inviting about the weather, on a day which started with sun and then low drizzly cloud enveloped the city. I cooked a pasta lunch with His and Her sauces, then walked to the surgery to deliver my prescription renewal request. 

Clare joined me for a circuit of Llandaff Fields, then I did a circuit of streets on my way to Tescos for a few items of shopping. When I came to pay contactlessly the shop card reader asked for my PIN number. The same had happened to the lady in front of me in the queue, and she was having trouble remember her new PIN and needed several tries at it. The checkout guy said this was not an anomaly, but that banking systems run an occasional security check on contactless card use to be sure the card hadn't parted company with its owner. A coincidence that it should happen to the customer in ahead of me?

After supper, I watched last night's Jazz 625 programme again together with Clare, as I so enjoyed the music last night. Then a came across a half hour music documentary programme about a Puerto Rican virtuoso musician called Edwin Colon Zayas, player of the cuatro a traditional stringed folk instrument of the island. It's based on the mandolin, but has five pairs of strings. It got its name from the fact that the instrument was named when it only had four pairs of strings. 

Cuba has a similar instrument called the tres cuatro, with three pairs of strings, although the Cuban version now has four pairs like the early Puerto Rican instrument. It was a delightful programme in which Zayas was interviewed and performed half a dozen songs he'd composed, some of them with his brother and sister in deeply rural settings. To finish the day, I watched the first double episode of a new Icelandic crimmie on BBC Four.

Jazz feast

Another damp grey day, but after lunch I made an effort to walk into town, and take photos of the latest changes to the layout of the public realm areas of Castle Street. The road closure still continues, although the sheltered dining area down the middle has now been removed. The carriageway has been narrowed, with one complete lane turned into a raised yellow coloured pavement extension on the side where there are several pubs. The same is happening in Westgate Street too outside licensed premises, so that chairs and tables can be laid out for outdoor drinkers. Indoors, everyone has to be seated, so making a properly delineated space where people can stand or sit in the street makes sense. Heaven help passing pedestrians.

This year's Winter Wonderland year end funfair has been relocated from the lawns in front of City Hall and the National Museum to the Castle interior and the open area in front. The grass is boarded over and cordoned with fencing, and there's a large bar/restaurant at the east end corner, all themed as an alpine ski village, with small chalets along the wall next to it, to provide sheltered dining and drinking spaces. It's all very nicely done. Inside the Castle are a selection of popular rides its been possible to make covid safe, plus a large fenced off oval with a raised walkway, which was intended to be iced over for skaters to use. A nice idea, but it failed understandably on health and safety grounds. Treating anyone who had an accident would be a nightmare in present circumstances for first responders.

I bought some packs of Christmas cards, then headed for home in the drizzle. I'm several weeks earlier in making a start on the annual round of festive greetings, although Clare was ahead of me by several days, and was ordering presents on-line when I got back. I began thinking about our annual family news letter, and spent the evening making a first draft, while watching music programmes on BBC Four. One was a contemporary re-take on the old Jazz 365 programme from the days of black and white 1970's TV telling the story of a British Jazz renaissance happening now, thanks to a community of young black musicians, male and female, mostly based in South East London. It was an amazing hour and a half of superb original music, innovative in combinations of style, cultural influences and use of instruments.

The music making was polished and adventurous, full of joyful energy. In the concert footage shown, the audience was on its feet dancing, participating with gusto, rather than still and silently attentive. It could have been a rave or a rock concert, and illustrates a big difference in the way jazz is appreciated today, and the audience for these performances are mostly teens and young adults. I recall reading an article on the new East London jazz scene a year ago. This is the first chance I've had to listen to the music. It was most impressive.

The programme following this was a documentary on the life and music of trumpeter Miles Davis told by several of his musical contemporaries, and using texts from his personal journal. So many pieces of his recordings played in between interviews I remember vividly, having heard them in my late teens at the home of our local scoutmaster, when I first became a fan of his. Love of Jazz ran in the family, even though we didn't have a record player that took LPs when I was growing up. When I was in Ibiza, Owain sent me a couple of Miles' albums in MP3 format, music unheard for fifty years. Tonight there was more of it, More joy, even though it meant going to bed later than usual. 

Tentative cause for optimism

Eight days after the op, and I'm feeling the benefit of the surgical work done, even if it wasn't the hoped for final round. I slept comfortably enough to wake up only twice in the night; three spells of two and a half hours sleep instead of five or six spells of up to an hour and a half to go to the toilet. Relaxed, like being on holiday, and waking up feeling fresh!

A morning of clouds and sunshine, and a walk to St John's for the midweek Eucharist. There were eight of us today. Just after I got back the heavens opened and Clare had to rush out and rescue a life full of damp towels before they got soaked through. It didn't last long, and she was able to put them out again to dry under a bright blue almost cloudless sky. Even so, it's been cold all day, five degrees C after sunset. Walking in the chill clear air after lunch was very invigorating, I had the energy to walk further than my daily quota but decided not to over-stretch myself. It'll take time to build up lasting stamina.

It's pleasing to hear that the third covid-19 vaccine, developed in Oxford not only has a 95% success rate but is as effective in people our age as it is with people half our age. The experts are still entertaining us guesses about how long it'll take to vaccinate most of the planet's population of neediest people, and how family Christmas gatherings are going to be possible without dramatically increasing infection rates, as it will be the middle of next year before vaccination will impact on the statistics.

After supper I worked on the last chapter of my novel for an hour. I've had to wait a week for inspiration to propel me nearer to closure. Still not there, but satisfied with what I wrote. Then Clare and I watched the second half of 1948 rom-com movie musical 'Easter Parade' starring Freda Astaire and Judy Garland with music by Irving Berlin, part of a classic season of old movies on BBC Four this autumn.

Much of the movie is set on a vaudeville stage with spectacular solo and ensemble dance set pieces with artistically crafted stage backdrops, a Technicolour feast for the eyes in every sense. It had songs in it that I half remembered from hearing them in childhood. Lots of fun, cheerful escapist nostalgia for a chilly night in covid times, and not a face mask in sight anywhere on screen with all that dancing cheek to cheek,

Pandemic history

I woke up in time for 'Thought for the Day', then fell asleep again until past nine o'clock. Bishop James Jones reminisced fondly in his talk about a discussion on the environment he once had with Rabbi Lord Sacks, which revealed the depth of Jewish insight into scripture. He said that for Christians, stewardship of Creation starts with the stories in the first two chapters of Genesis, whereas for Jews it began with the Torah in Deuteronomy where the Law states all trees be cared for, conserved not destroyed. A beautiful concrete environmental obligation. 

Then Rabbi Sacks went on to speak about Jesus and what made Him a prophet. His most important words were "But I say unto you ..." In other words, no matter what is accepted the status quo, or accepted truth was, Jesus dared to stand out, go against what was commonly accepted, to reveal new truth and insight. That's what prophets do. A truly remarkable man of faith and biblical teacher, whose death last week is a sad loss to thinking people of all religions and none.

Early rain and overcast skies gave way to clouds and sunshine, driven by a chill wind from the West by lunchtime. I cooked again, vegan sausages for Clare and a lamb chop for me, stewed in a tomato sauce with onion, carrot and mushrooms. Delicious cold weather food. 

Afterwards, I walked to Aldi's and bought some wine. For once, it wasn't very busy. I noticed that the Wickes DIY store across the tarmac from the supermarket has closed down. Not enough business to keep two stores running in Cardiff, I suspect.

In the evening, there was an interesting historical documentary on the Great Plague of 1665-66 centred on London, during which a 100,000 a quarter of its population then perished. It's now understood to have been transmitted by infected clothes mites and fleas, rather than by rats, as was presumed, before it was possible to model the behaviour of contagion spread, from city records. We also have Samuel Pepys' diary and Daniel Defoe's Journal as eyewitness accounts. 

It was commonly presumed Bubonic Plague was an airborne infection. Plague survivors were those who had learned social distancing. Tracing and quarantining those showing symptoms was enforced by law, resisted by some, and as ever, it was the poor that suffered most. Those rich enough to afford to change their clothes often were less likely to get infected, but it didn't work so well if tailors or launderers were infested, but business suffered as the death rate soared exponentially and those who could self-isolated instinctively. It was the second of three programmes. The third is tomorrow night.

One by one, the more then two dozen challenges to the US Presidential election results by Trump's lawyers are being dismissed for lack of evidence, but he still refuses to concede. Some commentators are seeing this as a strategy for retaining the attention of his fan base, in preparation for his next project, to build his own media empire. First, however, he has to survive several prosecutions which could land him in prison. It's stranger than fiction, still!

Autumnal words recalled

Another uninviting rainy overcast day. I fell sound asleep after saying morning prayer following breakfast for nearly an hour and a half. I think I'm going into hibernation mode! As Clare said, I must need the extra time out, as the post-op bruising has been quite painful these past few days, though it is subsiding now.

Finally I got around to making a batch of annual charitable donations in-line, using a debit card which I don't often use for this purpose. The first two payments went through OK, the bank security system stalled on the third. I called their hotline and the robot asked for account details and a telephone banking security number. I'm not sure I ever set one for this account, but used one I thought might be correct if I ever did. After three tries I was locked out of the system but got through to a real human being, who was patient and friendly towards a highly irate me. 

It seems that HSBC's 'Verified by Visa' security routine for card payments has changed, now texting a one time pass-code for any transaction to your mobile number, a routine I'm used to with Santander Bank. Once sorted out, the third payment went through automatically, and I was able to make a fourth using the new system immediately. I also registered for voice recognition i/d to save hassles with security PIN codes in future. It seems my account details didn't include my mobile phone number, even though I've had that number since I was given my first phone, an old Nokia, back in 2001. When I start the phone, it still displays 'Orange F' before switching to EE, as the phone was first registered to me when we were in Monaco. A curious but treasured quirk of my personal tech' history.

In the afternoon, the rain slackened to a drizzle and then stopped once we'd put on our rain trousers for a walk around the park together, but it remained dark and overcast. Two lines of autumnal poetry have been going around in my head recently, things I learned in school, but couldn't properly recall, let alone identify the authors. Clare's memory was equally deficient, although she too had studied them, either in school or University. 

I yielded to the temptation to google the respective lines, and found that one was the opening line of Grey's Elegy in a Country Churchyard: The curfew tolls the knell of parting day. The other line was from an autumnal Shakespeare sonnet: Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang. That's a good description of most of the big trees in park now. It was lovely to re-connect with these classic poems sixty years after O Level English.

We watched a lovely nature programme on S4C in the evening shot entirely in low light conditions after sunset and before dawn around the year, showcasing in spectacular video footage the range of nocturnal creatures that inhabit the wilder parts of Wales. Hedgehogs are the exception. The rural population has decreased worryingly, whereas numbers in domestic gardens and urban parks have grown, perhaps due to the greater biodiversity they conserve, and the willingness of householders to feed them. There are foxes too, well established in urban areas, where they raid rubbish bins for food like the hordes of gulls that no longer live on our sea shores but forage and breed inland, and make a nuisance of themselves.

More covid news

When I opened the bedroom curtains at sunrise, the sky was pale blue, dotted with pale yellowy-pink clouds high up, very beautiful. It didn't last long, however. By breakfast time a layer or low lying rain cloud moved in, and it rained as long as it was daylight before the sky turned clear again.

We used a portion of Clare's sourdough bread dough from yesterday to make two pizza bases, and I cooked different veggie toppings with vegan cheese for both of us for lunch. A tasty result again.

It rained throughout my afternoon walk and again my rain jacket but also my shoes got soaked through, this time it was my new rain jacket, whose seams aren't waterproof, I discovered. The majority of trees in the parks around have now lost their leaves, although there are still some trees which seem to have lost hardly any and others whose leaf cover is thinning out very slowly. It would be interesting to know the reason for these differences.

In the evening a most interesting documentary programme on Sky Arts channel, a biography of French Impressionist painter Edgar Degas, as he's known. In a brief glimpse of the family tomb in which he was buried, the inscription on the lintel stated that the family name was 'de Gas'. Joining the two like that is improper. I believe that the use of 'De' instead of 'de'- the so-called 'nobiliary particle' - isn't French. The joining of particle to surname and use of a capital 'D' is, however, found in Italy eg Dicaprio, Dinozzo. Now that's something new I found out today. The paintings shown in the programme, and sometimes the detail within them were very beautiful. They look better on TV than in reproduction postcards and prints and that's not something I often say about colour TV imaging, which often seem to be too bright and over-saturated, slightly unreal.

News today of a second covid-19 vaccine reported as being even more effective than the first announced last week. It's a different type of vaccine two that interacts with the body in another way. The greater the variety of efficacious vaccines, the better will inoculation programmes be able to reach a wider range of ages and ethnicity. Meanwhile, Boris Johnston is back in quarantine up stairs in number ten, as one of the MPs he had a meeting with last week has since tested positive for the virus. 

The Prime Minister's official residence is claimed to be a 'covid safe' zone, so how come this happened. Nobody in an official press photo of the meeting with half a dozen others was wearing a mask. It's as bad as the White House in Washington. The likelihood of Boris being reinfected is quite low, but he still has to self-quarantine, and set a good example. Who knows what'll happen downstairs while he's tucked away for a fortnight. 

Sounds of our times

It was good to return to public worship at St Catherine's Parish Eucharist this morning, although we did have to leave together and walk to church half an hour earlier than usual. Feeling better and having more energy made that much easier. Clare and I were on duty together, She took names of attendees beforehand, then read the Epistle and Psalm. I was on the welcome desk inside, reminding people to hand sanitize and offering them a service sheet card. Several people entering wanted to know how I fared with the op, as I've been on the Parish prayer list in recent months. I was touched by their interest. 

Fr Rhys celebrated and preached about duty and stewardship in relation to the Parable of the Talents. We were altogether twenty nine communicants and nine children. After the service, we helped Sue to sanitize the pews, ready for next Sunday. No Wednesday service as Emma is off sick, I learned later in the day. Our clergy have made huge efforts to develop an alternative programme optimising what can be offered regularly via the internet, wither or not church services can happen, but adjusting to such a change in working practice is stressful and tiring, as I found in Ibiza.

The second walk of the day was at four. I headed for Thompson's Park only to find the gates being locked and a new official notice stating that closure is at three thirty. It's a pity to lose the hour in the park before sunset, but I guess it's necessary to start well before it's dusk, for security reasons. Enclosed parks do have locked gates at night. Leaving them open would provide a convenient opportunity for fly tippers to do their worst. Access roads around Llandaff and Pontcanna Fields are securely gated, but pedestrians can still enter at night, and there are secluded areas when the tents of homeless people appear from time to time. In this wet weather I can't imagine anything worse. I walked out in my rain wear, again, as it had rained earlier, but breaks in the clouds appeared, no rain came and sunset bathed large grey clouds with subtle tinges of pale pink. Beautiful.

I was comfortable enough to sit in the lounge and watch telly after supper, part of a Queen live concert in the seventies, then a hilarious biography of Frankie Howerd, made up of audio and movie clips of his masterly comic performance. A real treat. Then finally, the last half hour of The Who's live performance of the rock opera Tommy from April 2017, the only time they've ever done this, as the original was just a studio album. Brilliant musicianship and energetic showmanship, though Roger Daltrey's voice sounded hoarse and tired, but then he and Pete Townshend are over seventy now. And the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger soon turns eighty I believe. We're all in the same age bracket, and still alive, thankfully.

Clare and I were reflecting after the telly was switched off on the extraordinary period of history we've witnessed in our lifetimes, with times of change and upheaval for everyone as radical as those of the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago.  

Sacred freedom

A slow start to a rainy day with pancakes for breakfast. I don't know where the rest of the morning went, as the next thing I was doing was cooking a veg stir-fry with prawns for lunch. It wasn't quite the success I hoped for, as I overdid the chili. I'm fine with cooking a paella or a risotto, but don't recall solo cooking a stir-fry before so it was an experiment that nearly worked.

Straight after lunch I went for a walk around Thompson's Park for an hour. It was dry when I set out, but two heavy showers left my rain jacket sodden through by the time I got home to shelter. I changed my jacket, and donned rain trousers before resuming my walk in the Fields for another hour. It didn't rain, the cloud began to break up and the sun briefly put in an appearance. I never have rain trousers on when I most need them, and if I put them on, it rarely rains, or stops fairly soon, or so it seems.

The wound remained quiet throughout exercise. After return, I sat down in the lounge to relax befote making a cup of tea, but I sat down on a awkwardly placed neck cushion, which normally provides some support for the sitting bones and relieves pressure on the most sensitive part. This time it was subjected briefly to the full wright of my body, which was excruciatingly painful. As Clare pointed out, there was going to be bruising after the op anyway. But it's taken four days to appear.

After supper I watched TV on my Chromebook lying in bed, rather than sitting up. The last couple of episodes of Danish crimmie 'DNA' were quite complex and not easy to follow as two interlocking story lines with flashbacks came to their surprising resolution. Crimes were committed by well meaning folk, compounding errors and betrayals. A tragic narrative, but the conspiracies weren't the work of organised crime, but pious decent folk whose zeal to do righteous things led them astray. Things aren't always what they seem, or what you'd like them to be when you see the whole picture. Or think you do. 

It seems this is an important message for our time, for religion and society alike in a time when conspiracy theorists speculate around selected facts, and believe their conclusions are 'scientific', and immune to scrutiny. The aim seems to be the undermining of trust and confidence in the disciplined logical processes of empirical enquiry in which frames the questioning of theories and data quality in all branches of science. Better the freedom to doubt than the prison of utter certainty.

The BBC fact checking team has published a detailed account of testing allegations in one example of electoral fraud Trump announced he'd litigate over. A database of dead people voting plundered from public records, disregarding parent and child namesakes, where the child lives at the address of the parent, or a deceased namesake exists in another state with the same date of birth as the one who voted. Faulty data harvesting, faulty method, creating an illusion of certainty, yet treated as if a certain fact by the so-called leader of the Free World. Such foolishness!

Things that go bump in the night.

Another day of quiet routine, a walk to the shops, a walk around the park, but conscious of having more of a spring in my step. The wound continues to remain quiet, hardly any pain or discomfort. The latest round of surgery, although focused on attention to detail, seems to be leading to a general improvement. I think my body isn't having to keep that low level infection at bay now, and it leaves me feeling years younger than I really am, rather than years older!

We were out in the garden this afternoon, discussing the local garden birds with our neighbour Liz, when she asked if I heard a bump in the dark before dawn. I think I must have been sound asleep at the time - being more comfortable at night now means some of my sleeping spells are pretty deep. Also as it's the eve of Diwali, fireworks had been let off earlier. She pointed up to the roof above the bedroom I sleep in. There was an object projecting from the gutter. 

I checked this out from the attic window, and sure enough there was a flat grey piece of stone lodged there, about six inches long and two inches wide, with a rough surface and edges. It had the colour of our native Pennant sandstone. It landed with a noise loud enough for Liz to notice, but there was no sign of impact damage on fragile slates above, or a bang with a scraping noise if it then slid down the the roof. How very unusual! Where did it come from?

There are no Pennant sandstone surfaces on any of the buildings in our immediate neighbourhood. All back yard wall surfaces are concrete rendered, slate or brick. Some of the garden walls in the lane are Pennant however. Acid rain and frost does cause stone surfaces to flake. That can account for the kind of stone in the gutter. Nobody was about, or could be within throwing range of a gutter thirty feet up. Only a big gull or crow would be able to pick up and object and fly with it before dropping it, and they can be active just before first light. A loose flake of stone with a snail or two stuck to the inside could perhaps be dislodged by a big birds beak and carried away to remove the edible content, then dropped. It's the only explanation I can come up with.

Clare was a bit nervous about sending her song video files to the Carnival band website, as it meant having to sign up to the 'We Transfer' file sharing site. I sat with her while she followed the instruction sheet she printed off, but she completed the task without much more than encouraging noises from me. All, I hasten to add, because of the simplicity and ease of use of her Linux driven PC which never nags or distracts or confuses you at inopportune moments with messages irrelevant to the job in hand. Also the replacement solid state drive makes the device run faster than one ten years younger.

 

Celebrating yesteryear

Watching Angela's funeral on-line yesterday meant missing the first Eucharist at St Catherine since the restrictions were lifted, so I went to St John's this morning and joined a dozen others for the service. It's over a month since I was able to go there and so lovely to be welcomed back by the regulars. 

Afterwards, I bought some flowers for Clare before going home to cook lunch. She's still busy recording videos of her self for the Carnival Band community choir contribution to their virtual concert. When I copied the trial files from her phone on to her laptop, the sound quality of some of the videos was poor as if a fault is developing. It may mean she needs a new phone, but in the meanwhile, mine can be put to use, when she makes another attempt tomorrow.

She drove to Llanrumney for a hairdo appointment with Chris after an early lunch. I intended to go out early for a walk, but fell asleep and lost an hour. At four we were due to watch another on-line interview arranged by the WNO Partners programme, so I only had three quarters of an hour to walk to Blackweir Bridge and back, but that was enough to meet my current exercise target of the day. The conversation was about theatrical staging in the different genres, theatre, musical theatre and opera. Quite fascinating to hear what creative interpreters of text and libertto have to take into account with different performers and productions.

I see from the news feeds that Trump's lawyers are encountering strong criticism as well as dismissal of of his claims of electoral fraud, as there is no supporting evidence beyond hearsay. One postal worker who did claim to be witness to a fraud has since recanted, saying his story was false. Trump's inner circle are said to be trying to persuade him to admit defeat but so far he hasn't conceded victory. He is however talking about a possible future in broadcasting aiming at destroying Fox news, once his number one fan base, and now among his critics. His immediate future occupation is most likely to be determined by the criminal lawsuits which will be brought against him when he steps down. His billion dollar empire may well come crashing down around him as a result. A guy who has always been a winner and never a loser in the end will pay for the mistakes he refused to admit or learn from.

After supper BBC Four showed the 1949 musical 'On the Town' with a very young looking Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly, with some superb set piece song and dance routines, shot in glorious 'technicolor' and a few location shots of New York. The music is by Leonard Bernstein, and you can hear melodic traces and harmonic suggestions of his later masterpiece 'West Side Story' in the score. Like old colour photographs colour movies of this era have a natural quality about them. They are gentler on the eye than modern digital colour rendering. I can understand why there's a resurgence interest in using colour film for photography and then digitizing the result, and why more sophisticated digital cameras have settings which emulate the look of images taken yesteryear. 

The movie was followed by a historical documentary on the Queen Mary liner, now residing in Long Beach California and used as a hotel and museum, a major tourist attraction. Its classic twentieth century high quality interior design evokes the era of leisurely travel in days before high speed air travel for the masses became routine. The pandemic has decimated the new holiday for the masses cruise industry and many ships have been retired early and sent for scrapping, while scores of others wait at anchor offshore until their future can be determined. But it's not only the pandemic that casts a cloud over their future. It is now being noticed what huge carbon footprint cruise lines with several thousand passengers generates. Is a sustainable future possible without returning to the drawing board? Time will tell.

Funeral of a friend, on-line

I had my usual broken night's sleep but slept for a good long time, nevertheless. After breakfast, Clare and I watched Angela's funeral live streamed from St Edmund's Selly Park in Birmingham, the Catholic church she had attended faithfully for fifty eight years. It was a lovely celebration, presided over by a parish priest of long standing in the community, who spoke warmly and personally about her as one of the church's most faithful regular members. 

A University friend and colleague delivered a thoughtful erudite eulogy that reflected her life and times, growing up in war-time Italy, and as a mother, scholar and poet during her married life in Britain, as the wife of an eminent Shakespeare scholar. Several of her grandchildren read or sang and played. 

Amazingly for a Catholic funeral Mass in a time of lock-down the service lasted an hour and twenty five minutes, which meant that we missed the Armistice Day Act of Remembrance, although I think we'd reached the post Communion silence at the eleventh hour. Three of her poems read at the service were beautiful and showed her mastery of written English. She retained her Sicilian accent throughout her life and didn't always do justice to her own work when reading them aloud herself, but her two grandchildren and her son did them justice. She was a remarkable witness to holiness in the everyday world of home and family. We knew her for forty eight years. We'll miss her.

I cooked a paella for lunch, pleased to be able to give as well receive again domestically. It was just as well. Clare needed time and space to work on video recording a few carols for the Carnival Band virtual Christmas concert on her mobile phone. A big learning curve for her.

For much of the day, I felt lethargic and sluggish, but went out tentatively for a walk in the park at three and the fresh air revived me, sufficiently to walk my daily quota in one. Clare came out and joined me. It was such an overcast day that it seemed almost dark an hour before sunset. The wound behaved and after walking for an hour and a half I had little discomfort or pain. That's an improvement. I daresay the after effects of the anaesthetic will be with me for some days to come. 

Day at the Spire

At last my fourth surgical appointment at The Spire private hospital in Pontprennau, courtesy of NHS outsourcing of a small number of day surgery cases to ease demands on Llandough at this critical time. Clare drove me there for an eleven fifteen start, but we were there by eleven. There's a special 'Green Zone' reception area for those who have completed full quarantine requirement and are infection free on other counts as well. In the entrance lobby there was a staff member with a big thermal imaging device which scans incomers at a three metre distance, before they can approach the reception desk. 

Once I'd been checked in, I was escorted to room 211, equipped to look after individual patients, and then went through the familiar routine of giving my name, address and date of birth to each person who came to interrogate me, first the lady who organises post-op refreshments, two nurses, the anaesthetist, and finally Mrs Cornish the surgeon. All were masked and in uniform and came at intervals over a two and a half hour period before surgery started. In between times, I paced around the room for exercise and to relax during a wait which continued until half past three.

I walked, escorted to the operating theatre to be prepared for surgery, then the next thing I knew I was in the recovery room feeling surprisingly awake. Mrs Cornish came and told me about what she'd done. In our pre-op chat I admitted that my expectations of this one being the end of the affair, as I felt certain the bout of infection had caused further problems, and I was right about that. She had identified a small pocket of infection, excised it, removed some of the obstructive over-granulation around the wound and changed the Seton's suture. 

There'll be another op in three months time, and before that a MRI scan to check if there's anything else hiding within. There's no certainty of complete healing in the long term anyway, but rigorous scrutiny before finally removing the suture and closing the wound improves the odds. The next op is planned to be in Llandough again. I imagine the pandemic crisis has required the hospital trust to improve facilities for day patient minor surgery with its own covid-secure zone and staff.

I was wheeled back to my room on the trolley used for the operation and was able to transfer myself to the bed. I was feeling find, with no noticeable pain, but my blood pressure was still sky high, so I had to wait an extra half hour until it reduced to a less worrying figure before the nurse would discharge me. 

I walked out of the front door at ten past seven to be met and driven home by Emma's husband NIck. Once it was clear that I wouldn't be discharged until after dark, Nick was asked to collect me, and kindly agreed. It was great to have a chance to chat with him. Clare had a lovely supper waiting on the table for me, and some hugs and kisses to welcome me home.

Looking forward to being able to walk in the park again tomorrow, hoping that the anaesthetic aftermath doesn't leave me too tired and lethargic to breathe fresh air again. I may not be fully repaired, but I get a physical feeling that the wound is going to be easier to live with while I wait for round five after today's outing to the Spire.

Staycation round two, day fourteen

A text message from the Spire hospital this morning, with a link to questionnaire cum declaration about quarantine compliance, and other preliminaries to admission tomorrow. All straightforward, except for a question which referred to whether or not the respondent was an 'in-patient' or a chemo patient. All the NHS correspondence refers to the recipient as an 'out-patient' or a 'day-patient'. A private hospital is entitled to build its own strict disciplines and develop its own vocabulary, but such a simple thing when dealing with NHS outsourced patients has the ability to sow confusion. I sent a message to the Spire to ask for clarification. 

I didn't receive an email response to my question, but later on the hospital phoned to asked if I could be there an hour earlier. I agreed we could, and then spoke about the web page ambiguity to the person who called, and asked if she could pass the feedback on. Whether it'll get reported or not is anybody's guess.

The weather was overcast, and I completed my day's walk outdoors early afternoon in a spell between showers. Before and after supper I spent on writing that elusive last chapter of my novel, a couple of thousand words, but the time I finished just before be, but still not finished, I'm full of questions about all that I've written. For the most part the story seemed to tell itself, slowly unfolding with all its twists and turns as I wrote. It's the story of an extraordinary person who lives an ordinary life, never becoming famous or rich, but enriching others nevertheless, with their creativity. Writing an end of life scenario is relatively simple compared to that of writing a brief account of the impact of one such life on others. That, I guess, is what I'm finding difficult to imagine. It's not coming naturally.

Good news about vaccine trial success. The media are reacting with great great excitement about the prospect of a return to some kind of normality next spring. It's foolish to be over-optimistic and to under-estimate the complexity of the mass manufacturing, distribution and application of the billions of vaccine doses required to made a substantial difference to the world's population. First there are priority health workers and most vulnerable people, working down to those who least need it. And there's still to be determined, how long the vaccine protects people in different age groups, and whether it will curb the ability of unwitting super-spreader victims to infect others. We've seen a superb breakthrough in getting a useable vaccine made in record time, thanks to international scientific collaboration on a scale hitherto unimagined, but there's still a long way to go yet, perhaps longer than we want to think. 

Staycation round two, day thirteen

A damp grey start to the day, listening to the Radio 4 Sunday Worship programme, from RAF Cranwell's chaplaincy, appropriate on this Remembrance Sunday, in the eightieth anniversary year of the Battle of Britain. Later on I watched the Remembrance ceremony at the Whitehall Cenotaph on telly.The Queen watched from a balcony above, while her sister, her son and grandson took part in the ceremony below. Prince  Charles laid a wreath on behalf of his mother, and a representative number of Commonwealth diplomats attended. 

It was all beautifully arranged with the hugely reduced number of participants safely socially distanced from each other. Quiet disciplined order give an extra sense of dignity to the occasion. This kind of social demonstration in a time of grave crisis and national lock-down is what characterises the United Kingdom rather than new footage of boozed up crowds thronging the streets of Soho, on the last night before pubs closed for the duration of the latest restrictions.

Beforehand, we logged into Facebook separately to watch the Parish Eucharist being celebrated from the Rectory this morning. Both of us had connectivity problems, picture freezing, or picture running without sound. It was most frustrating and distracting from prayer at a distance. Was this our internet connection playing up or an issue at source? Clare later heard from others on the Parish social network that we were not alone in experiencing this. I wish the Benefice would invest in proper digital streaming devices and a proper dedicated streaming web platform, not just get by with fancy phones and Facebook, which not all recipients trust or like using. It's hardly friendly to new users whose internet usage is limited. 

It's time to get used to the prospect of on-line broadcast services will be with us for the future. Even if the majority are eventually able to return to regular public worship, there will still be housebound people who want to continue benefiting from a local church service in a place they love, in a way they never could before.

My personal phone was switched off for charging for much of the day, and when I turned it on I found a text message from the Covid Test and Trace centre saying that my test was returned negative. Having been symptom free throughout the year, and living in quarantine or under restrictions much of the time for safety's sake, I was pretty confident that I had remained virus free throughout. So now due diligence has been satisfied, the op can go ahead on Tuesday. The text message delivered a code to insert into the NHS app on my phone, which I did, conscientiously, only to be informed in best big government Web-2 graphics that I didn't have the virus. What Ashley would call 'belt 'n braces' info, I think!

In the evening we had a family Zoom call with Rachel and Jasmine to celebrate her 47th birthday tomorrow, and Jasmine's 14th on Thursday this week. I watched the last episode of 'Roadkill' on iPlayer afterwards. I found the ending somewhat obscure. The dodgy popular politician anti-hero makes it to be prime minister and doesn't get the comeuppance he deserves. His mistress dumps him, he owns up to a grown up love child, and his wife who has been party to his secret perversion of the course of justice, withholds the means to a cover-up to keep him on a tight leash, while both enjoy the privileges of life at Number 10 Downing Street. 

It seems each of the characters portrayed in the 'Westminster bubble' has something incriminating on someone else, but don't use it in order not risk losing their own privileges and status. Whether that is truth telling fiction, but it's impossible not to see Boris Johnston as a model for the main character. I wonder if this is a first series with another to follow? Often it seems these days a serialised story ends on a note that allows for the possibility of a sequel, even when one isn't planned.  

Staycation round two, day twelve

My worries about getting the vital covid test were dispelled when had a 'phone call from the mobile test team member after breakfast (Saturday pancakes as usual), to brief me and give an approximate ETA. Two young women arrived at half past twelve, one in nursing and the other in paramedic uniform, both masked and gloved, with the one administering the test wearing a visor as well, and the other holding the necessary disposal bags. Taking the throat swab only took a few seconds, a couple of light touches with the probe either side of the epiglottis, then the disposable PPE kit bundled up into a doubled up bin bag for disposal with our household waste on Monday. Five minutes, all done, such a relief!

I then walked indoors for an hour, and another hour outdoors after lunch. Cold with a thin layer of cloud today with the sun struggling to shine through occasionally, and the sky clearing after dark. People are still letting off fireworks in our neighbourhood. As we are within earshot of the city's rugby, cricket and soccer stadiums (or is it stadia?) it's not so unusual for there to be fireworks after a game. I'm not sure why, three days after bonfire night, when there's nothing much to celebrate about being in lock-down.

When I was doing my daily Spanish language drill on Duo Lingo, one of the ads it served up was a short video about lock-down rules in Wales. I haven't seen it before. It's not unusual to have location specific ads pitched up in between lessons, but this is a very good public health notice - clear, simple, to the point with good graphics. Somebody in the Senedd government is earning their keep!

After completing the second walk of my day's walk, I spent the afternoon watching CNN news on-line, for signs of an end to the agonising wait to know the outcome of the US presidential election. The media don't wait to witness the final formal declaration of an outcome in any state or county, as this can take days if not weeks. There is a complex art to predicting a winner, and if the votes on both sides are evenly matched and it's not evidently a landslide victory, care is taken not to rely on the projection from observed trends until the conclusion is irresistible. 

This moment arrived at about half past four our time, with the results of one Philadelphia County among several replicated a sustained growth pattern which increased Joe Biden's lead, to the point where it could be relied on to say that the lead was irreversible. Then CNN, NBC and Fox News channels 'called' the election in Biden's favour. Trump had already stated that he would be making challenges against the conduct of the election in the most inflammatory way, denying the evidence, refusing to acknowledge the result. Instead he went out for a round of golf. Unprecedented behaviour for a head of state in a democratic country.

It wasn't long before crowds of people of all ages were dancing with joy in the streets in many parts of America, speaking of the end of a nightmare for their country and the revival of common decency in public discourse. Clare received an email from our friend Saralee, a Jewish Democrat activist  in Seattle headed 'Hallelujah! Thank the Buddha!' For her even more hard work lies ahead to repair the damage done to the country, and not only be the impacts of coronavirus and climate change. 

On CNN, one of a panel of four commenting on the results throughout the day, Van Jones an African American spoke spontaneously and movingly with tears in his eyes about what the result meant to him. To have a president determined to treat everyone as equals and reunite the nation, enabling him, his children and his community to walk tall and no longer feel that they are under threat, but respected as people with dignity. He gave voice to the feeling of oppression which many non-white citizens have experienced under Trump. It was painful to hear, and powerful, something I'll not forget in a hurry. 

As soon as Biden is inaugurated he intends to reverse Trump's decision to take America our of the Paris accord on climate change. Clearing climate change deniers appointed by Trump from the corridors of power will take him longer and be fraught with difficulty, but it will make a difference to countries all around the world for America to become part of the solution again, not part of the problem.

In the evening, I watched this evening's double episode of the Danish crimmie 'DNA'. Not exactly light relief, however, as it's all about stolen babies and child trafficking. More emotive stuff, and with a strong tinge of religion about it, partly set in a convent baby home. I good watch however, with subtitles, and dialogue switching between Danish, English, Polish and this week French. Interesting again to see how English is a second language many EC members have in common. 

Staycation round two, day eleven

Glorious sunshine again today, all day. I walked indoors before lunch and outdoors afterwards when it was slightly warmer. Although it looks increasingly certain that Joe Biden has won the US Presidential Election, votes in the remaining key states are still being counted, and Trump, increasingly isolated with his key White House team continues to challenge the likely result by attempting discredit the process. So the wait continues with political pundits and broadcast media working overtime to fill the news vacuum with ephemeral opinions and reactions. It's surreal, like an over the top Netflix drama. 

I decided to email the pre-op assessment team at the Heath to alert them to the slightly bewildering information gap between their team and the Spire's team. It would be good to have some clarification. I got an auto-reply and no follow up phone call. The response said emails were checked daily, but didn't say if that included weekends. I guess I missed today's round. Let's see when I hear, or even if I hear.

Then I had another call from Karen at the Spire hospital to check on when I usually take my medication. From the conversation I got the impression that if it had been a morning op., I'd be asked to omit just the Losartan and take it later. As it's a confirmed afternoon appointment it seems not to be critical. It's something to do with being anaesthetised I think, and not having my blood pressure lowered too much as I go into surgery. It wasn'r an issue on three previous occasions when ops were in the afternoon. The conversation left me with a degree of uncertainty, as I was told it was up to me whether or not I take the Losartan when I get up as usual, or not.

I was expecting a phone call about tomorrow's planned covid-19 test, but none came, I called the surgery at tea time to ask if they had a phone number for the local test centre. When I rang the given number, I got a message stating the office was closed. Will it be open tomorrow or not? No information. How will I know if the mobile testing team has me booked in, as I have no written confirmation. I know better than to trust people promises when they are under pressure. 

More seriously, I have no means of checking tonight. The test has to be done three days before. Not knowing is a worry, What if is on my mind since I learned that the Spire had my home address down incorrectly. Who else has this error replicated in their diaries? I think I'll have to kick up a fuss about this if I don't hear tomorrow by mid-morning, as it would result in my op. being postponed again. 

Staycation round two, day ten

I rose early again before dawn, to a clear bright sky, with just Venus brightly visible in the east before the sun appeared over the rooftops, about half an hour after peeping over the horizon. Mercury should also be there, although I suspect losr from sight unaided in the growing strength of sunlight. A lovely crisp chilly day. I really enjoyed doing part of my daily walk in the garden once it warmed  up a little.

I spent the morning completing the reflections I've written for the Parish web offerings with suitable pictures representing the content. It took a lot longer than expected as finding suitable resources proved difficult. There wasn't much to my taste on-line unfortunately, but they're all done and dispatched to Emma now. I wanted to get it done before going in for my op, just in case recovery turns out to be too much of a distraction. It's so nice to be asked and I don't want to let anybody down.

This afternoon I had a phone call from an administrator at The Spire hospital asking if I had filled in a pre-op questionnaire. Twice I said, when I went for assessment at the Heath hospital. Then she asked if I had filled in their form. I went through the information pack I'd been sent and said I'd not received one from them, whereupon she proceeded to question me briefly over the 'phone. Five minutes later called again with more questions. I think she'd missed the questions on the back of the form. 

Had the surgical team at the Heath not sent the dossier, digitally or otherwise? I wondered, but dared not ask. With such increasing pressure on hospital resources I imagine the admin staff are having a hard job keeping up with immediate demands, let alone work required to out-source a day's surgical patients to another hospital. Still, it wasn't another postponement call.

All eyes are on the U.S.A. as postal ballots continue to be counted in four key states remaining. Trump is whingeing loudly as his presumed early lead is slowly eroded, alleging without evidence that there has been foul play and electoral fraud, causing serious embarrassment to traditional Republicans, outrage in sections of the media and among state civil servants, whose pride in their even handed fairness is being wildly slandered. It comes to something when three main news networks, some of them formerly Trump enthusiasts, cut across live broadcasts of his allegations saying his statements are unfounded or false. 

This has no precedent in American electoral history it seems. Joe Biden has edged closer to electoral victory during the day, but not declared prematurely, speaking with the dignified caution of one who has already served as Vice President. He may be old to take office, but for all that, he's far wiser than the old fool who blustered and lied his way through the past four years as head of state. No electoral threshold was crossed during the day, however. Tomorrow maybe?

It's Guy Fawkes/Bonfire night with the sound of fireworks and the smell of burning in the air, though no big display at the SWALEC stadium this year. I didn't bother to go out into the cold and take a look, idle telly watching in the warm won the evening.

Staycation round two, day nine

I woke up half an hour before sunrise to a bright blue cloudless sky. It lifted my spirit, and moved me to take my Sony Alpha 68 to the loft and shoot a series of photos as the sun emerged from behind the roof line of the terraced houses beyond the garden. For a fleeting moment I glimpsed a flock of starlings as the made their way from the night time urban shelter towards the countryside to the west. I often hear them in the late afternoon, but seldom see dozens in the sky together. Inevitably, after an early breakfast I fell asleep again during morning prayer. Thank heavens I don't have a schedule to keep these days.

Early results in the U.S. election indicate that Joe Biden didn't get an overwhelming number of votes. It's too close to anticipate a result while votes are still being counted. How long will it take I wonder before enough are counted and legitimized to be sure who won? Again the opinion polls have been wrong, Not enough people are yet sick of political populism and a bullying head of state to declare against him. 

The country seems evenly divided, on the basis of voting turnout said to be the largest in a century. No good can come from all Trump's lies and deceits, until enough people give up on  all illusory promises that end up dividing in order to rule. The world needs consensus and united action in order to survive pandemic and climate change, and at the moment we have neither.

I had to forego exercising in the garden today despite the sunshine. Clare took advantage of the weather to fill the washing line which runs along the path, so all my walking was indoors, listening to Radio 3. When I did pop outdoors, I noticed that the hawthorn tree in next door's garden, now stripped of leaves was hosting a large family of sparrows, nearly a dozen I think, and another family visited but seemed unable to find enough room to cohabit. 

Last week, and on other occasions this autumn, a solitary sparrow perched in that tree, cheeped loudly for ages then flew off. I wonder if it was advertising the space available? Before this tree was drastically pruned about five years ago, it was often hosted a large group of sparrows. Then there were none. This year they've nested in the hedge next door on the other side, and are hanging around much more.

Having taken such a lot of photos of four different cameras since the end of summer, I thought I'd add them to my PC's hard drive archive. It took me longer than expected to file them away in the correct folders this afternoon. Then, for amusement I processed ten sunrise photos into a video clip to send to the family. It's something I rarely do, so it took a while to figure it out first.

The surgeon's administrator at the hospital rang at tea time to check me out, wanting to confirm that my covid-19 test had been booked, and asking if I was well, really wanting to check I wasn't poorly and going down with some sort of sickness - possible even in quarantine I guess, if you ate something that gave you a tummy bug. So far so good, anyway.

Staycation round two, day eight

A lovely bright sunny start to the day, which lasted well into the afternoon. As the morning progressed it became dry underfoot, so I went outdoors for the first time in a week and walked for half an hour in the fresh air. It did me a power of good. Once I reached my daily target, I took photos of the same subjects with both my Olympus OM-10, and the Sony Alpha 68 to compare and contrast. It's not something that I have time to do, but I think it'll help me learn more about the best use of different cameras. 

This afternoon's Radio 3 concert was s performance by Paul Lewis of Mozart's Piano concerto in B Flat by the Orchestra Suisse Romande recorded live recently at Geneva's Victoria Hall which is the orchestra's home base. I remember it well! We occasionally attended concerts when we lived there. It's a cultural venture of renown in the rue General-Dufour near the park where the 'Mur des Reformateurs' is found outside the Old Town wall. 

Construction of the hall was sponsored by British Consul William Barton, who dedicated it to his Queen on the occasion of her diamond jubilee in 1897. It's a tribute to close ties between the Swiss Protestant city state and the U.K. since Reformation times. Unusually, especially for Geneva, coughs could be heard from the audience during the slow movement. It made me wonder whether or not it had been recorded recently, but there was nothing about recording date when I looked at the BBC web pages for Radio 3. Eventually the presenter mentioned that the concerts had happened this year and last.

I spent the evening working on the novel again until late. More attention to detail, only creeping towards the end, like getting blood out of a stone. I wonder how the US elections are going? The news media convey the impression that one way or another things will end badly. What's their game here? 

Staycation round two day seven

The sun broke through the cloud and shone brightly for a while a few times today, but for the rest of the time it just rained. It was never dry enough to be worth dressing up to walk in the garden. I spent several working on my novel in the morning and after lunch with exercise breaks in between sessions. Checking for inconsistencies in the narrative is a lengthy process. I'd hoped to make progress towards the ending, but reviewing a middle section for a fragment of detail, got stuck there with corrections and re-phrasing. It reminds me there's such a lot to do, but it's fun, learning how fascinatingly complex it is, inventing a life story for a fictional character. 

It's All Souls Day, time to remember family members on the other side, especially Pauline, Ivor and Lindsay, all of whom died between March and September this year, and none of them with covid-19 in this most deadly year for the over seventies. The government announced new lock-down plans for the next month in English regions today, in response to rising infection rates. If only they'd acted on advice given by epidemiologists earlier, in the way the regions did. Once more too late. 

The Celtic nations acted independently on expert advice earlier with new restrictions. Today our First Minister Mark Drakeford announced the Welsh Assembly Government's plan to get us through to Christmas without another time in lock-down, though there is an element of lock-out which will annoy residents of borderlands, with an active prohibition of people travelling into Wales without good reason, just for leisure or recreation. I expect London tabloids, and maybe even BBC News presenters will get belligerent about this.

A week in quarantine already, and as it happens a week entirely indoors. No dwelling in the past, no regrets about the present, no false hopes for the future was how Terry Waite described his strategy for living in the moment and staying sane during his four years as a hostage, I think. It works for me too. How did he reach that conclusion? Did someone tell him that as he entered on his mediating Middle Eastern mission - just in case the worst happened, I wonder?   

Staycation round two - the Lord's Day

Another grey wet day, another day indoors. All Saints day too, and no Eucharist to attend except on line.  BBC Four's All Saints day worship was from the Corrymeela Community in Northern Ireland, still going strong after fifty five years in its international ministry of reconciliation and renewal.

I was frustrated later by problems with finding Facebook's live stream of Mother Frances celebrating at the Rectory, and couldn't get either of the devices I tried to synchronise with Clare's iPad as we've done previously and sought to do today with social distancing. This really upset me. I listened, from hers at a distance. It was too small to read hymn texts, two metres away, but I could see that the audio lip sync was distractingly funny. Not good for prayer. It made me doubt the value of Mass facing the people in these circumstances.

After saying Morning Prater late, I visited the YouTube site of the Jerusalem Monastic community at St Gervais in Paris and watched most of last night's Solemn Vespers to cheer myself up. The audio stream is superb,  the camera work is an act of thoughtful devotion in its own right, and the music, makes use of Russian Orthodox chants for a rich vein of French monastic liturgical texts. A feast of beauty in which the mixed community of men and women plus a congregation, numbering about eighty people, all stood facing the sanctuary, with only occasional glimpses of their faces from the apse behind the altar. Only the priest reciting the collect at the conclusion was see full face on. Nothing distracting.

I wish the parish techies would use a different platform or a plain linked user interface. It would make worship more accessible to those of us who rarely use Facebook An interesting sermon however, making a point about the saints being part of a mysteriously inclusive 'cloud of witnesses' not a crowd, which can include or exclude, by friendly or hostile. I find Facebook's messiness excludes me. It may be better to use the Facebook app, but it's one of many apps I don't want on my devices.

Despite a better night's sleep I felt physically tired all day and did my pacing up and down in two halves morning and evening with a rest after each. Yesterday on less sleep I walked further. Today I paid for it. After lunch I finished editing the six reflections I'm doing for the Parish Facebook page for the week before Advent. I'll pass them over to someone else to upload this week.

I watched the third episode of UK political drama 'Roadkill' this evening. All four episodes are already there on-line. Everyday life is overladen with tales about the 'Westminster bubble' and dodgy wheeler dealing, I'll wait to watch the last.