Another sub zero night, getting up late in bright sunshine. It was when I left the house after breakfast to go to the Eucharist at St Catherine's that I discovered there'd been flurries of snow earlier on, turning to rain as the temperature rose just above zero leaving a layer of slush on frosty ground. A potentially treacherous surface to walk on, so I had to tread with caution all the way to church and dare not hurry. I arrived several minutes late much to my annoyance. There were nine of us at the service and all but one stayed for a drink ans a chat in the hall afterwards.
No veggie bag to collect this week. It was raining lightly as I went to the GP surgery to collect my extra month's medication prescription for my time abroad, and took it to the pharmacy across the road. In the time I was waiting to collect it, the rain abated, so I didn't get wet, walking the rest of the way home. Clare was cooking a tofu stir-fry for lunch as I arrived, just in time to eat.
After lunch I completed work on the Lent Course for St Andrew's, getting into print read format, and sent it off to Caroling and Jen to look over.. It's taken a while to get it into shape. I look forward to see what response I'll get, whether or not it needs more work.
Then, I called my sister to sing her Happy (88th) Birthday. Her friend Elaine had already started to transfer the SIM card from June's old Nokia phone to the Samsung I sent, which arrived on Monday, but was having problems getting it to fit and to work. I think she succeeded in fitting it in the end, but I gave a strange error message for a Pay As You Go card - 'SIM locked'. It is possible to lock a phone and a SIM separately so the two can only be used together as when the original device was bought, but it's less than usual nowadays when SIMs can be bought without a phone and phones can be bought without a SIM and neither is locked.
I wondered if there was a solution which could be effected remotely, so I walked over to the Tesco Extra on Western Avenue when I knew there was a Tesco Mobile phone shop. June's phone had Tesco mobile PAYG SIM working in it, and was able to receive text messages, but won't work in the Samsung. I needed to ask if anything could be done about this. There was only one sales person in store and he'd just started with another customer, so I had to wait twenty minutes to be told nothing was possible without info that was written on the SIM and the phone. Elaine and I had already agreed that I should sort of the problem and so the phone will be mailed back to me tomorrow for troubleshooting.
What a wretched nuisance, for such a simple routine task to be fraught with a mystifying complication. June isn't pleased, naturally, as it's something she was dreading have to get to grips with, but it was a necessity, as the Nokia isn't that easy to learn to use and remember how to use if you don't need to so often. An Android phone is easier as it can be set up for the simplest of uses, and gives easier to notice and read incoming messages. It's a shame I hadn't thought to ask Elaine to remove the Tesco SIM and mail it to me to fit in the first place, then I could have set it up at home, ready for delivery in person or by mail. It will just take that much longer to sort out now.
My expectations weren't all that high of a quick answer, but I though it was better to find out before the phone and SIM card were posted back to me. It wasn't a wasted journey however, for on the approach to Blackweir Bridge going to the supermarket, I saw a circle of about fifty small birds feeding together in the grass near the path. Something disturbed them and they flew upwards in this formation, crossed over the double line of trees, and settled in the grass in much the same formation on the other side of the footpath to continue feeding. Initially I thought they were starlings, but their backs and wings weren't quite so dark. A few that I could see on the periphery of the flock had much lighter speckled breasts, but were too far away for me to photograph. They were smaller than starlings, and their flight formation was different, not as variable as that of starlings.
I came to the conclusion they there were redstarts. They've arrived around this time of year, at least since I started noticing them first about five years ago, but in numbers of six to eight - one family perhaps. This is the largest number I've ever seen. I wonder how long they've been here and how long they'll stay. I believe they're migrants from the east, possibly Scandinavia, over-wintering here, but as for breeding here, I don't know whether they do or not.
After supper, two outstanding BBC telly programmes to lift the spirits - 'Winterwatch', showing otters, beavers, badgers, hares, and some amazing photos of raptors taken by enthusiastic viewers. There was also an interview with an a man who suffered badly from PTSD due to his service career, first as a soldier and then as a policeman, who'd got his life back from watching, then photographing garden birds, and moving on from there to walking the Cairngorms stalking and photographing mountain hares. He spoke about the healing power that wild nature had revealed to enable him to get his life back from the brink. This rang bells for me, having been close to burn-out several times in my life, and brought back to normality by time spent outdoors. Since I no longer have to work for a living, no day would be complete without a couple of hours spent outdoors, though preferably not in the rain, unless really necessary.
Then, my favourite science presenter Jim Al-Khalili, telling the story of the birth of astrophysics, and the discovery of Big Bang theory, conceived by Father George Lemaitre a Belgian academic in the Catholic University of Louvain in the 1920's. The concept contradicted the traditional notion that the universe is a stable constant entity, and was largely dismissed by academics, even by Einstein, whose Relativity theory Lemaitre had been working with. Hubble's astronomical observations didn't make sense unless traditional assumptions were questioned, and after several years, Lemaitre's work was found to interpret the findings in a way that made sense, and Einstein conceded that he'd been mistaken. By the time Lemaitre died in the early 1960s, new observational findings about the existence of background microwave radiation from the Big Bang proved Lemaitre's theory to be correct in reality. I wonder if he knew before he did that his work had been vindicated by actual evidence. Beautifully presented by Prof Jim, in some lovely surroundings, La Palma, and from La Saleve above Geneva, instantly recognisable. Ah! Most rewarding.
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