Cathedral broadcast tech'

Last night I set the alarm for seven, as I needed to be up and running extra early to get to St Catherine's to take the once a month eight o'clock Communion service. Normally there are five or six present but today there were only four of us. I went home for breakfast, then returned for the ten thirty service. As I was approaching the church Archbishop Rowan caught me up. He'd walked from St John's only to find that he had mistaken the start time and the Eucharist there was half over. He was rota'd to preach while Fr Rhys celebrated. 

Unfortunately the layout of the bi-monthly rota sheet isn't a model of clarity. I always need to double check before entering assignments into my diary, as I too have got confused and nearly missed services in times past. As I'd already presided at eight o'clock, I asked if he'd like to preside instead of me, then I would just read the Gospel and preach. I enjoyed ministering together with him, it was relaxing and less demanding than being responsible for everything. It's not so often clergy are in a position to do things together nowadays as the demand for services taken is greater than the clergy supply.

Home for lunch afterwards, and a snooze in the chair before walking up to Llandaff Cathedral for Choral Evensong. The singing was sublimely beautiful, and there was in the congregation a visiting group of clerics and parishioners from three different ministry areas of Margam Archdeaconry. I know few people in the west of the diocese, so didn't recognise anyone to chat with at the end apart from Fr Mark, now Vice Dean of the Cathedral, also known as the Precentor, our former Rector in Canton. We haven't seen each other since late last year. 

He told me proudly that his son, who one of the Cathedral's vergers, was responsible for the new CCTV system which is used to relay services on the internet and on an array of large video screens in the nave. All the cameras are remotely controlled from a mixing console to display who is praying or preaching, or even playing the organ at any time, a cut above the average CCTV security system. Because the video feed reaches the screens via the internet there's a tiny gap between the live sound you hear and the image you see, so lip-sync is a permanent problem that cannot be overcome with this system, but it's only noticeable if you look at a screen carefully. I'd prefer not to have the screens at all. It's hard to find a place to sit where none of them can be seen.

On my return, I put together a slide-show to go with the audio I recorded for Ascension Day, which is this Thursday, and uploaded it to YouTube after supper. Then I caught up on Friday's episode of 'Astrid - Murders in Paris' and the last two episodes of 'All the sins', in which a rather complex story over eighteen episodes was more or less happily resolved in the last half hour, with a video cum still slideshow set against a homily and a reading of 1 Corinthians 13, as the whole storyline involved the Finnish Laestadian Lutheran sect, dark secrets of sinning and being sinned against. It was rather confusing, as there were sub plots involving so many protagonists that it was hard to recall who was who. Ah well, at least there won't be a fourth series as no room was left for another. I hope.