Chaos recalled

Overnight bouts of rain petered out after sunrise, the clouds dispersed and a day of sunshine ensued, with gusts of wind. Slightly cooler, but quite refreshing when I finally went out for my afternoon walk in the park through Llandaff Fields and down to the river. The woodland path wasn't as muddy as I expected, so the wind did its job, drying out a long line of washing as well in the afternoon.

After breakfast, housework, then the rest of the morning spent on preparing this week's Sway edition and issuing the relevant reading texts for Sunday's Eucharist. I also finished recording and editing Morning Prayer audio for Michelmass Eve, and after lunch made the video slide show for posting to YouTube. A satisfying four hours worth of work before my daily round of exercise. 

I was annoyed to discover while editing that I'm only getting an audio signal delivered to one earphone of my headset. It took me a while to eliminate possible reasons. Was it a possible software glitch either in the Audacity sound editor I use, or the Windows operating system it works on? No. Was it an earphone fault? I needed to test them with the same sound file running on my phone and the Chromebook, to find out the headphones aren't faulty. Only one conclusion, the laptop headphone socket is faulty. It's happened before, and then righted itself, then started playing up again. 

With a set of Bluetooth headphones I'd get stereo, but is it worth the expense? The alternative is to shift to my office workstation upstairs, but it's not such a comfortable environment, it's a long way to the kitchen, and less convenient for a short break to make a drink, or even multi-tasking, making a meal while writing or editing. There's also the trouble which arises when passing through three different doorways plus stairs in between office and kitchen, and forgetting what you've set out to do. Yes, it really does happen to me nowadays. Anyway, I checked out my desktop workstation after supper, and can do all the editing work I need to, and listen to audio via headphones or through my office sound system.

Clare is thinking of spending some time in voluntary work, and went to visit the day centre for refugees that has recently moved into St German's Church Hall while work is done on the place normally used. It's still fairly new and temporary, so there's not been much contact yet with any church members, and they'd welcome more interest in their work, so I must see what I can do about this when I'm there next. 

This evening we watched the second part of Laura Kuenssberg's documentary 'State of Chaos', this week's episode was about the events of Boris Johnson's time as Prime Minister before and during the pandemic and the disturbing fanaticism and influence of special adviser Dominic Cummings, determined to subvert the work of civil servants government institutions and the established constitutional order. Johnson gave away too much of his power to Cummings, and defended him when his behaviour was indefensible. Doing this he undermined his own position and it contributed significantly to his downfall. But, the story of the political chaos in Britian over the last five years has yet another chapter to tell, and that's for next week.

Rachel rang up to tell us that Jasmine has been in hospital for an operation on her jaw, to fix a problem due to the wearing of a joint, which has gone untreated until now. She'll be recovering for a few weeks and then, hopefully, back to playing her saxophone once more. We sent her 'get well' messages via Instagram's Direct Messaging facility, one of her favourite chat channel like millions of teenagers world wide.