Another hot sunny day, albeit a little cooler and cloudier than the rest of this week. There are warnings of thunderstorms and downpours ahead of us this weekend, but it's unclear which localities in South Wales will be affected, as the low and high pressure air masses meet up. It remains to be seen what the Gower's localised weather pattern will be. One thing is certain, all five of us are looking forward to meeting up, no matter what the weather does.
I didn't do much other than read news articles on-line, apart from a trip to the shops before lunch. Clare and I watched the first part of the Olympics opening ceremony together. I got bored once the athletes' procession started and went for a walk into town. Even so, the opening performance was beautiful to watch and listen to, wonderful choreography, use of colour and rhythms. There was it seems, even more astounding visual elements at the end when the Olympic (hydrogen powered) flame was lit, atop a symbolic Mount Fuji with a rising sun. The run up to the games has been full of contention due to covid surge fears. And there are a small number of athletes who have developed covid during or since arrival. The country is under lockdown and the Olympic constituency severely restricted in their ability to move around. They won't be seeing much of Japan this time around, that's for sure.
I set my mind on getting myself a small digital dictating machine, remembering that Olympus still do them. I was pleased to find that Rymans in Queen's Arcade sell them, but the item I wanted was out of stock, so with a bit of luck I'll be able to pick one up next Thursday when we get back from the Gower.
I'm fed up of the vagaries of using my phone's voice recorder. It's too easy to stop it by touching the screen accidentally, or an incoming call or message cutting into the recording. Also the digital file shows that there's a tiny pulse on the track which doesn't belong. It's almost inaudible, but certainly visible when working on a file in Audacity. It would be nice to have a good clean audio file to work with, and hopefully I can get that with a new piece of kit.
I also went to the Ecco shoe shop and found that they sell strong supportive leather insoles, better than any others I have seen in shoe shops, so I have ordered a pair, to collect next week.
A call came in this afternoon from a member of Carol's family, asking if I'd give the eulogy at her funeral. It'll be my task to gather together various contributions and deliver them. Depending on numbers, Clare and I may also sing with the St Catherine's choir. Mother Frances will lead the service. Carol and I first met when I was at St John's officiating at the funeral of a family friend, a perhaps for that reason my name was known to them, from times before I settled in as a member of St Catherine's.
This evening a spent several hours updating photo file folders and backups. It's three months since I last made the effort, a thousand photos ago. I watched this week's episode of Nordic Murders as I worked. It was a complex dysfunctional family whodunnit, with a couple of on-going interesting sub plots. As the setting is Usedom on the old East German-Polish border, this series reflects cross border tensions which EU membership and the Schengen Agreement haven't resolved. It's eighty three years since the Nazi German forces overwhelmed Poland, trashed it and wrought great suffering on their neighbours. The shadows of memory are never far away, and open borders still call for a proper respect towards human boundaries of other kinds. It must be an effort to live together without resentment, especially as Poland is in many respects still poorer than Germany.
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