Another Covid Winter Solstice

Already the shortest day is here, overshadowed by low cloud, and colder than it has been for the past few days. It'll take a month before it gets noticeably lighter in the afternoon, but at least the journey back to evening sunsets starts now.

Restrictions are now being imposed on crowd attendances at sporting events in an effort to slow down the spread of the omicron variant of covid19 and consequently reduce the rise in hospital admissions. Nothing is being said about theatre audiences yet, that would lead to the cancellation of tomorrow night's Carnival Band Christmas concert in Birmingham. We're driving to Kenilworth after Mass tomorrow to rendezvous with Kath and travel to the performance, in which both of them are singing. I admit that I'm nervous about it, given the number of commitments I have in the days following.

An email came from Montreux, from the family of Geoff Fookes, a long standing member of the St John's congregation to say that he'd died. His funeral is tomorrow, and can be watched on-line, though sadly we will be travelling when it's live streamed from the church. I first met Geoff and his wife Joy at Swiss Archdeaconry events while I was chaplain in Geneva twenty five years ago. When I did locum duties in Territet, Geoff would come to the 10.00am BCP midweek Communion service with his beautiful golden retriever, and sometimes that was all the congregation I had. It was only a few days ago that I emailed them my Christmas Greeting and Letter.

They welcomed me at their lakeside apartment,  for drinks and for supper during my stays there, and it was through Joy, an ex-nurse that I found a GP clinic where my abscess was diagnosed. Looking back in my blog and reading about those days in early September three years ago reminded me forcibly of how ill I was, striving to complete my tour of duty and not cause upheaval for the churchwardens. It awakened distressing feelings, as much physical as emotional which I found can only be dispersed by a good walk.

Before lunch I walked over to Lidl's in Leckwith to get some replacement packs of walnuts, as we use a lot of them, and I want to make a turkey stuffing using walnuts and apricots. Then I walked in Llandaff Fields for an hour, as the sun was setting which made me feel better.

My sister June has had heating troubles in her apartment for some weeks as a result of a botched routine servicing job. She was persuaded, perhaps un-necessarily into replacing her boiler for a more economical and eco-friendly unit, and after more administrative muddles and delay, this was delivered today with an appointment to install it tomorrow. 

Then, British Gas contacted her to say the engineer booked was off sick with covid. Scaffolding is required by Health and Safety rules to fix the new gas exhaust pipe into the wall at the back of the property, even though the job could be done with a ladder. Scaffolders now have too be cancelled and re-booked for a date when a fit engineer is available. You couldn't make it up, it's so crazy - no hot water or heating for weeks on end and not June's fault, but a British Gas engineer's. A disgrace.