Christmas already in view

A warmer and sunny day today despite cloud on times. I woke up late, so it was eight thirty by the time I posted today's Morning Prayer YouTube link on What'sApp. After breakfast, the piano tuner arrived and I stayed upstairs out of the way until he finished. Then I worked on next week's Morning Prayer video and uploaded it before cooking lunch. I languished in the chair rather than snoozing afterwards and eventually walked over to the Aldi store on Western Avenue to buy a bottle of brandy for feeding the Christmas cake which Clare is about to make.

The tarmacking of Penhill Road from the Half Way pub to the end of Llanfair Road was completed last night. The last hundred yards up to the traffic lights remains to be done tonight after dark. Finishing work on the pavements will take a couple of weeks more I think. Then we'll know if reshaping and narrowing of the carriageway will make a real difference to traffic congestion, or been a waste of a few million quid.

Rufus messaged me this evening to say that he's been shortlisted for the Missions to Seafarers chaplain to work in South Wales coastal ports. I'm thrilled for him, as the Mission is one of the few Anglican agencies that have kept faith with their traditional calling and continued to work innovatively. It's 197 years since the world first Seamen's Mission station was established in Avonmouth Bristol. It's spread world wide from there since. As the mainstream church continues to founder, this is one of the enterprises which has continued to work effectively at industrial mission globally, while conservative and liberals wing continue at loggerheads and veer into schism. A good place for Rufus to be, if they'll have him, as he's become disillusioned by the way his diocese has been managed since he was ordained ten years ago.

After supper, I watched a couple of episodes of a Finnish drama on More Four called 'Seizure'. It's rather slow moving and switches sometimes obscurely between the investigation into a group abduction and deaths of four asylum seekers, and PTSD flashbacks experienced by the two lead investigators. If this is a psychological thriller, no amount of eerie dramatic music can make up for the yawn factor. Whether it's from impatience or end of day fatigue.