After breakfast I rang the School of Optometry to request an email copy of my eye surgery referral letter from Ceri the senior optician. Unfortunately, she has contracted covid and is off work this week. I was promised someone would investigate and see if it's possible to respond to my request. I wonder if anyone will?
Disappointing that today, such emphasis is given to the Roman priest martyr Valentine for religious and romantic reasons, when today is also the feast of Saints Kyril and Methodius, apostles to the Slavs whose work rendered the Slavonic language into a written form with an alphabet invented by Kyril, to form the basis of a translation of the bible and then the Byzantine LIturgy in the ninth century. For this reason, the two are regarded as cultural heroes in Russia and Eastern Europe. As their careers started in Rome, their memorial if not their actual tombs is in the Roman basilica of San Clemente. Russia and Ukraine both use cyrillic script yet here these countries are at the moment, on the brink of war, if geopolitical news reports are true. Ukraine may well look as much to the West as it does to Russia, but historically and spiritually a common language, literature and spirituality binds them together. Yet there seems to be little recognition of this in the way things ae viewed by the watching world.
At least today we had some breaks in the cloud and sunny periods in a week of promised deluges. While starting the weekly rounf of housework, Clare discovered that the steam mop for floor cleaning had died and needs replacement. After doing my stint of carpet hoovering I walked into town to buy a replacement, but had no success. I also bought a train ticket for a trip to London tomorrow to see my sister June. An off peak ticket in both directions plus tube fares costs only ten quid more than the price of petrol for the trip, as fuel prices have risen so steeply of late. It's worth paying extra for the speed and comfort of travel. I can't remember when I last drove to London to see June, maybe it was more than a decade ago. Amazing to think that thirty five years ago I'd commute to USPG HQ once a month.
I was late back for lunch, but Clare kept me a generous portion of lentil curry with brown rice. Afterward, I went out and bought some Valentine's day tulips for Clare, half of them still in bud, so they should last until the weekend. I had an email from Mthr Frances assigning me to a Good Friday midday service at St John's. It will be with a congregation but may also be live streamed, subject to Andrew's availability. He's the parish video streaming wizard. I need to check with him. If he's unable to be there, I have the idea of rendering the full service as an audio slide video scheduled to appear on social media at the time the church service takes place.
Some ideas about a sequence of Passiontide biblical reflections was already been brewing in my mind from a few notes made the other day. When I started writing, the whole structure of the service emerged to go with the theme. Now I can enjoy taking my time to develop it to fruition.
After supper, a wonderful hour of Winter Olymic ice dancing and ski aerobatics to watch on telly before this week's new NCIS episode. It's the first one made during the pandemic years to reflect the ethos of the pandemic, and it is revealed that in the early days, Jimmy the NCIS Medical Examiner has lost his wife to covid without being able to say goodbye to her in person. There's an interesting crime detection story told, but the sensitively shared experience of bereavement is what distinguishes this episode, and one in which Gibbs speaks in a new way about his own experience of bearing grief over the past thirty years, something he has hardly ever done before. Timely and impressive as fictional realism goes.
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