Rain all day of varying intensity right into the evening. After breakfast we drove to Llantwit Major for a full rehearsal of the Fountain Choir concert we're going a week next Sunday, ten pieces of varying levels of difficulty, plus discussion of stage layout and acoustics and hospitality arrangements. Anna recruited a church member to look after ticketing and welcome arrangements. The programme should last about an hour. I'm still not utterly confident of myself, with so much Latin text and phrasing which challenges the habitual sense of rhythm, as it's early medieval music and some of the tunes are definitely dance measures. A lot more work to do then, in the next two weeks.
It was lovely to meet up with Father Edwin the Ministry Area Leader, for the first time since he preached at a funeral I attended in St German's a few years back. Having had a good long stint as a country Vicar, doubling up as Diocesan Director of Education, he's now pastor in chief of St Illtud's Parish Church, one of Wales' foundational sites, dating from the sixth century when Illtud established a monastery there which trained pastors for evangelising wherever they went within the travel reach of Celtic Christianity, in effect most of the western Atlantic seaboard Galicia, Britanny, Galway the Western Isles, if not beyond. He loved his involvement in schooling, and his eyes shine brightly with enthusiasm for the emerging potential of his remarkable everyday workplace. He's much loved.
Inevitably, with the retirement of Bishop June this week, the subject of electing her successor came up. He's one of the two electors I have known for many years. I made my pitch for choosing a candidate who is of the Church in Wales with a deep knowledge of our tradition and culture, both sacred and secular, not another import from the Established Church the other side of Offa's Dyke. The difference is an asset to be celebrated, and we're not short of people for the role in this time and place, women and men. In fact Edwin would himself be a suitable candidate, well known with a credible track record. But could he bear to part company with Llantwit, any more than Llantwit could bear to part company with him?
After the rehearsal five of us chatted over lunch together at the Two Swans pub, to far from the church. One Italian, two German and two Welsh, discussing the terms in respective languages for different coffee brews, after a remark about the appearance of lengthy coffee menus in some coffee shops in recent years. Well, the variety has always been there, but its systematisation in coffee bar menus is a phenomenon of the age we live in.
When we reached home there was nowhere to park the car in our street or in the wider neighbourhood. I ended up parking the other side of Thompson's Park with a ten minute walk in the rain back to the house. Any Saturday in the rugby international season the city is invaded by thousands of extra cars carrying fans and shoppers who would rather than than use the city's park and ride facilities use any space they can find in outlying residential areas. If you go out by car for a few hours shopping, you can expect to lose your space for the rest of the day, if not the weekend.
It continued to rain unrelentingly until late evening again, but I was determined to get some exercise, rain notwithstanding. I walked to Tesco's to get wine for the weekend, and then walked in Llandaff Fields for an hour. This required a change of rain gear, one lot sodden by the short walk to Tesco's, so on my second outing I used the free brolly received when I bought my latest pair of Ecco shoes. I've yet to find time to wear them indoors to find out if they fit as well as I thought they did in the shop.
After supper, I extracted the SIM and SD cards from my Blackberry and installed them in the new Moto phone. Both worked without issue. All that needed to be done was find my habitual ringtone and deploy it in the new phone to avoid any confusion at the moment of receiving a new call. I took me a while to work out how. Now Moto has replaced Blackberry and given me a fresh Android user interface which works well for me.
One surprise, on re-installing Duo Lingo on my new phone was a complete overhaul of the user interface, demanding that a rather lazy routine user like me face the challenge of learning new stuff and paying more attention rather than just going over new stuff. Now I know the big learning algorithm has been tracking me and found me out. It's rather fun, this kind of digital prod, especially as I ready myself for a spell of work in Fuengirola where I'll be able to get involved with the ecumenical social outreach work of Lux Mundi, some that that would be been unimaginable when I was last there eight years ago. Amazingly all things work together for good.
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