Overheard again

A Saturday lie-in and pancake breakfast to start the day, then we watched on-line the launch of the new Wriggledance Theatre show 'Squidge', which Kath Anto and Lucy have been working on over the past year. The innovative production is hosted Birmingham Hippodrome, and can be played to a live audience of parents and young children, or watched on line, with a pack of sensory resource material that enables children to play along in their own homes for schools. It plays with the texture and sensation of different substances - slime, feathers, bubbles, stretchy string using dancers and stunning visual effects, accompanied by Anto's musical creation. It's very beautiful and I'm in awe of the creative imagination and sheer hard work that's gone into making this. I hope and pray it will prove to be successful far and wide

Then, a brisk walk around Llandaff Fields before lunch. I had another one of those 'overheard' moments that stuck with me. One smartphone toting team saying to another smartphone toting teen "You should try this one, it's addictive!" I'm pretty sure he was speaking about an app or a game on his device, but what made me think was the use of the word 'addictive'. It's a word which often crops up in relation to games or box set movie series. The implication is that once you start you cannot stop using it.

Addiction to drugs, alcohol, pornography, sex, gambling, are recognised as pathological forms of dependency which are damaging to relationships and to personal health. Internet / smartphone addiction is also starting to be seen in the same category. I wonder if those who market products of any kind this way really think about how their promotions are damaging to the mindset of the susceptible, seducing users into trading their freedom for a dependency which seems exciting but detaches them from reality. We have to be so careful about our use of language, St James was right to speak of the dangerous power of one of the body's smallest members - the tongue.

After lunch we went to the first Parish post-lockdown social gathering, a tea and cake party at the Rectory. It had been warm with sunshine and clouds all morning, but rain threatened for the afternoon. There was only a brief shower while we were there fortunately. We went on from there at four, to a second tea party, a farewell one at Jacquie's. She moves to Stroud to live this coming Wednesday. The garden which her husband Russell tended carefully for forty years was looking lovely. I took thirty photos, and will turn the best of them into a photo book she can take with her to remember the place in times to come.

After supper, I finally got around to fitting the new cartridge bought last Saturday for the HP lazer printer. I works OK, although the printer software tells me that it's a non-standard one. I just hope the software doesn't impose sanctions and stop the think from working in future. At least tonight it printed my sermon for tomorrow without complaint.

I watched an episode of Swedish crimmie series  called 'Beck' on BBC Four The Chief Inspector of this name is now near retirement age but keeps working, though in the more recent series he's taken a back seat and the stories have played far more around the members of the team he heads. An interesting take I guess, but I found it slightly dull. Afterwards I went for a walk around Pontcanna Fields in the dark, in need of fresh air and exercise before turning in. Earlier there had been heavyish rain for a while, but it was drying up and the air smelled fresh and clean. I hoped I might hear an owl, but apart from murmured conversation far a away, it was blissfully quiet and traffic free.