A strange 'four seasons' weather day with sunshine, clouds, gusts of wind, rain and bouts of hail catching us out across much of the country. A day too when more of the covid restrictions are being lifted around the nations of the U.K. Wales is now at Level Two in the hierarchy of restrictions. This permits pubs and restaurants to serve people indoors, small groups of people, not just those in your family bubble to meet, hug each other. Weddings and funerals can take place with thirty people as well as the infection rate is now as low as it was last summer.
Having said that there are still infection hot-spots where the Indian covid variants are multiplying fast, and being tackled with a fast response in terms of test track, trace and isolate, plus mass vaccination in critical places. The news media talks about it being done with military precision and accuracy. Perhaps that's because the military's logistic resource and management is the basis upon which medics, both civilian and military can deliver this vital intervention and head off another wave of infection. The government has promised easing of restrictions on this date, but warned it isn't risk free. If there was any sign this tactical intervention to curb the Indian variant wasn't working, it might be necessary to halt progress. It's still a time to 'be sober be vigilant, because your adversary ... is about ...' But, so far so good.
While the British Army is focused on helping to save lives, the Israeli army is taking lives and destroying homes and community structures in the Gaza Strip. 212 Palestinians killed among them about 40 children, and 12 Israelis killed, among them 2 children. There is no justification on either side for the loss of these lives, whether or not the adults regarded themselves as civilian or military. A dialogue of the deaf has gone on for the past eighty odd years between essentially tribal cultures that have been opposed to each other on record in the Bible for the past two and a half to three thousand years. Distrust and resentment seems to be embedded in their collective DNA. Will reconciliation between the historic tribes ever be possible? Or are they destined to play out this pathogenic script until the end of time? It's unfathomable.
Here at home, emails have been exchanged over the past 24 hours between volunteers in the Parish willing to join a rota to maintain on-line Morning Prayer, once Emma and Benedict have gone to their new duties. It's a good initiative to support Mthr Frances when she returns to duty. She won't need to 'hit the ground running', as the saying goes. I'd like to see us switch to on-line audio, and keep video for presentations in which the visual is a key element. Just doing audio is much simpler and less resource hungry, when WhatsApp on a phone so quickly eats up available memory, and requires frequent maintenance. Unfortunately, the habits formed in the past year aren't easily given up. At least it's clear the Parish on-line offer needs reviewing and revising now restrictions are being lifted.
Thanks to the antibiotics prescribed yesterday, the inflammation of Clare's eyelid has started to subside, and she has an appointment tomorrow morning at the School of Optometry to check this out, and to pick up a new pair of bi-focal specs.
I spent time this evening getting my Windows PC up to date and trying to get it to run faster, after reading an article with a series of suggestions about tweaks to achieve this. It needs such a lot of maintenance to optimise performance. According to articles I've read lately my machine is under-powered to meet the demands of current users for slick on-line conferencing and learning, not to mention video editing. The more we expect these devices to do for us, the higher the specifications needed. Linux would make better use of the system resources. I'm thinking that I may be better off making it a dual boot system, with a data partition in common, so that I can continue to use the Windows video editing apps I've learned how to use. Better than finding a Linux open source equivalent and spending hours mastering it. But do I have enough confidence and know-how to go the dual-boot route? That is the question.
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