Sway challenge

I woke up to sunshine just in time for 'Thought for the Day'. After breakfast, a walk to St Catherine's to celebrate the Eucharist of St Tydful's day with ten others wondering with them if this Celtic saint about whom next to nothing is known, except that she was a princess who was murdered in a fifth century war between pagan and Christian tribes. We know only of her death and burial in an unknown location at the head of the Taff Vale, where some time later a village sprang up bearing the name Merthyr Tydful. There's no story told of defiant heroism witnessing to her faith, as is the case of most early Christian martyrs, by her name persists a yet another testimony to the brutality of violence against women down the ages.

After coffee and chat, a walk over to Chapter to collect this week's veggy bag then home to cook lunch in time for Clare's return from a visit to the Royal Welsh College to buy tickets for five different shows there over the next three months. Then I needed to collect my summer jacket from the cleaners on Cowbridge Road, and decided to continue a small errand started earlier at St Catherine's, taking photos of the three Canton Churches to turn into a banner image to use for the Sway publication. Fortunately I have keys for all three churches.

Before going to St John's, I called into Tesco's and bought this week's Foodbank contributions to leave in church. After opening a couple of visitors from Pontarddulais came into church to look around. They said their son lived nearby, and although they'd visited him before they'd not found the church open. I'd already taken the photos I needed, and sat quietly while they had a good look around. A group of young pilgrims from Germany are stopping over in the church at them moment. The Lady Chapel chairs had been removed and the floor was covered in sleeping bags. A special meal was laid on for them tonight after time of worship streamed on-line, which I didn't get around to watching as I was busy with Sway.

Next, I took a bus to Victoria Park and let myself into St Luke's to take a few photos there as well, then took another bus back to get to the cleaners and pick up my jacket before returning home. Inside the bus shelter by the park, I noticed that a new improved LCD display bus timetable had been introduced. I've seen these elsewhere, but the roll-out across the city has been slow. I wonder if the network carrying the real-time data to the display is an improvement on the former unreliable device? We'll see.

Having collected my newly cleaned coat, my first task when I got home was to edit the photos and make a collage of church exterior images. Back in the days of the Picasa desktop app this was straightforward, but its successor Google Photos produced a non-editable collage which for my purposes was useless. I had to resort to making a presentation slide with Libre Office Impress and converting it a jpeg file which would fit where I wanted it in Sway. This was what Google photos wouldn't do.

Doing this, and completing this week's edition ready for distribution took me a couple of hours before supper and an hour afterwards as well, but not before I'd made a batch of bread dough ready for baking. Two loaves were cooked and filling the house with their aroma by the time I'd finished by digital labour.

All I need to be fully operational is access to the Parish Mail Chimp email list. It's been quite a lot of work learning a new tool and producing with it these past few days. Time to turn in already.