Up early today, although I had a late start time for the twenty five minute trip to St Edwards to celebrate the Eucharist. I had time in hand to do some writing and was disconcerted to find that my Huwaei Honor Magicbook laptop (stupid name) wasn't charging as it should. I tried both USB-C laptop chargers in my possession, but neither worked with the laptop, yet both worked delivering a charge to a phone. This led me to conclude that the fault lay in the laptop innards. I had two hours of charge left, and fearing the worst, set about decanting all the data stored on the laptop but not replicated in One Drive on the Cloud to a backup drive.
It didn't take long, but robbed me of a tranquil start to the day, wondering about my next move, realising it would be expensive to repair, if at all possible, and maybe it was time to replace it. I bought the laptop in June '21 and it was probably around two years old then. The battery by the time I bought it lasted half the original length and the screen had a tiny scar, but it performed well. It's been my workhorse ever since.
There was a congregation of twenty six at St Edward's, including Jo a young man in an electric wheelchair who has been severely from childbirth. He suffers from part paralysis plus palsy, and cannot speak, but he is fully alert to his environment. He's in church every Sunday with a carer. I was completely surprised this morning when his carer re-positioned his wheelchair to face the congregation and held a tablet for him to use. He was able despite his constrained movement to work his tablet and deliver the epistle reading with a suitably reproduced man's voice.
I learned after the service that Jo had started attending a few years back and asked for baptism eighteen months ago. I imagine advanced technology showcased by Stephen Hawking had given his intelligence a voice, and ability to participate in normal life un-dreamt of when he was a child decades ago. I hadn't been alerted that this would happen. Nobody saw fit to mention it, as it's part of the inclusive normality this congregation takes for granted. I was deeply moved by this, and had to overcome my inner amazement to continue the service as intended.
It was five to one by the time I got home to cook lunch for myself as Clare was at St John's attending the farewell lunch for Mother Frances. I took another look at my laptop, intending to see if there was any data I'd not retrieved before using the remaining battery life to wipe it clean. That was when I discovered the charger had been inadvertently switched off at the wall, by an extension switch I didn't see was facing a different direction to the other switches on the extension. I don't know how I missed that, but it's quite a relief that I don't have to worry about repairing or replacing it. It's charged normally and starts up the way it's meant to once more. What an idiot!
It was gone five by the time I went out for a walk, having sat down for a rest after lunch and eventually falling sound asleep for over an hour. I walked until seven, returning in time for supper and 'The Archers'. I was going to watch another episode of 'Lolita Lobosco' but found an error message and an apology on the Walter Presents landing page, saying their servers had been overwhelmed by viewing requests. Is this an indication of traffic generated by enthusiastic programme reviews, or a denial of service attack on this Channel 4 website, I wonder?
Instead, I uploaded a batch of photos taken in recent days using my Alpha 68 with a 50mm prime lens in manual mode, something I've not done before. It reminded me of the years I used a Praktika SLR film camera, and got some decent results until the shutter started sticking during my visit to Jamaica in 1981.
Then I watched the first episode of 'The Woman in the Wall' on BBC1, a crime thriller set in coastal Ireland at the time when terrible stories about the Magdalen laundries started to emerge. It brings to light the terrible trauma experienced, not only by unwed mothers robbed of the babies but other young women labelled as 'delinquent' by idle gossip in days when the church served as morality police in the community and some religious people with power and responsibility for the vulnerable behaved in ways that caused many people to reject Christian faith altogether. A harrowing story.
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