Smartphone takeover

It was an early start for a Monday morning, collected at nine fifteen for a funeral at Thornhill. There were just three mourners, one the solicitor handing the affairs of the deceased, another a former neighbour and the third was a fellow church member and contemporary, also 92, from Butetown Methodist Church. She told me their church was about to close and become a community centre, although there may still be a monthly service. So she was mourning at different levels. 

In conversation with the three of them beforehand, I learned the deceased had travelled the world in her youth, performing as a wing walker on bi-planes in post war years. They knew no more than that unfortunately. Sad to think nobody gathered stories of her adventures. She was widowed in her sixties and I guess there were no children or relatives to tell stories to.

Not long after I returned home there were two emails about Wednesday's funeral, one from the Funeral Director about the order of service, which I thought the next of kin making the arrangements would pass on after receiving and agreeing it with me. The other was from the man himself with a photos of a hand written list of funeral attendees for Track and Trace purposes. This will need sorting out so that Eileen the Verger can easily read it. 

After an early lunch, I drove Clare for an osteo treatment with Kay in Newport and walked for an hour while waiting in nearby Beechwood park again under cold grey skies. When we got back I walked for another three quarters of an hour in Llandaff Fields, to complete my daily quota, while the sun was going down. It was even colder than earlier and quite an effort to keep going.

At tea time, I received half a dozen photos of handwritten text of the eulogy. All were neat and readable but need transcribing correcting and turned into a script to read from. That took me an hour to do after supper. 

It's reported that 96% of the population of the UK are now said to own a smartphone. But do they use them? Demand for laptop and desktop PCs has diminished, and tablets as much can be done conveniently on a smartphone nowadays. If anyone can't learn how to write or email using a smartphone or tablet, then rather than take time to learn how to, photographing handwritten text to email is a convenient alternative. 

Optical character recognition apps for converting handwritten text photos into a digital text file can be quite sophisticated, but can be error prone if its quality is poor, and need as much attention as manual transcription. Speech to text is also evolving beyond anything that could be imagined twenty years ago, with the benefit of AI learning algorithms. Interesting times for consumers as much as techies.

I watched this week's new episode of NCIS and the news before turning in. More allegations emerging of socialising under lockdown in the prime minister's Downing Street office, also of islamophobia in the Tory whips' office. What a shambles.