Loss of an old friend

By the time 'Thought for the Day' was on the radio, my weekly video Morning Prayer upload was posted to the church WhatsApp. Then I got up and made breakfast. A bright start to the day but clouds and rain soon returned, with a strong wind too. I think it rained for much of the night too. I went to St John's for the Eucharist, calling into Tesco's on my way to buy food bank contributions, and just making it to church as Mother Francis started. Through the prayers I learned that Fr Chris Reaney, a friend of mine for the past forty years has recently died. We had a chat over coffee together in town just before Christmas and I thought he was looking better than the previous time we met. It comes as a shock. He's only just 65. 

Back in the eighties, he and his wife Bev were members of a USPG Root Group, a sort of missionary cell of people living and working together and helping the church in the Rhondda to grow its community. He went on to train for ordination, and Bev followed him to ordination later once the church decided to admit women to the priesthood. He was always a humble quiet grassroots pastor, at home in a poor Parish. Sadly the Bishop under-valued him because he had long term health issues, and he was pushed into retiring early last year, as part of a ministry area re-formation plan and was still finding his feet and thinking about what to do next. I think he was very poorly treated. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.

After the service, I walked down to Pontcanna Fields, and found that the Taff has breached its banks again, as it did the year before last, water spilling out from just behind Blackweir bridge into the fields behind to the left and the right of it. Last year the river banks were cleared of vegetation and some work was done on clearing the islands of pebbles that accumulate in the river bed just below the weir, but evidently not enough. The water level this time around is higher and may be backing up and overflowing at this spot simply because of the volume of flow. As the water was ankle deep on the path so I couldn't risk going through it to reach the river. Water was flowing across the fields in the same direction of flow as the river, and pouring over the path and down the banking. There'll be more rain. Will it go any higher I wonder?

I returned home after squelching through waterlogged turf, just in time for lunch. Afterwards, I completed and edited next week's Morning Prayer video, and the stitched together the video clips I'd taken of the Taff and uploaded them to YouTube

After supper I watched the final episode of 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy', then took a call from Owain about the demand from the mortgage finance people for a picture of my bank statement which had more detail about the bank account number showing, to meet their criteria for correctness, Both Owain and I weren't happy about this and earlier in the day he spoke with the head of the verification body, who explained this was a requirement under anti-money laundering regulations. But he conceded it was not obligatory for the entire account number to be shown, just the first half of the eight digit number. OK, I suppose, like they do on debit card purchase receipts. So I had to rescan the latest bank statement and edit the image accordingly a fiddly job which took ages.

I'm still not happy about the stringency of this requirement. Money laundering is happening on a vast scale around the world involving property bitcoin and finds ways to elude banking safeguarding. I see why it's thought to be necessary, but given there is so much information about private individuals available on-line, it can't be that difficult to establish a personal profile of someone non-intrusively which indicates the extent of the personal resources and whether or not they are in a position to guarantee delivery of a sum of money adequate to pay a mortgage deposit. If someone sets out to deceive they may well find ways to do this anyway.  How can you prove you're trustworthy, that you life truthfully in a culture that is habitually distrustful in the name of safeguarding. What a horrible world we've created to inhabit. It has the Mark of the Beast all over it.