A day of non stop cloud and rain after rain overnight. From the news I learned it was Al-Ahli Anglican Hospital in Gaza City which was hit by a missile in a devastating blow yesterday, taking hundreds of lives, as the place shelters many refugees as well as patients. I was unhappy no mention was made by the BBC of the historic nature of this Christian institution, founded in 1852, serving all-comers in need. Llandaff Diocese has raised funds for the hospital's mobile eye clinic for many years. I hope there'll be a fundraising appeal from the Bishop to help meet the most urgent needs there.
It's the second time the place has been hit by a missile in the past few years, according to the hospital's own website. Different Hamas spokespersons said in interviews that 200 or 500 people were killed, and blamed Israel for the hit. After a delay of several hours, while investigations were carried out, a rebuttal of the claim was made, based on the fact that no mission was being flown over Gaza city at the time, and that video footage showed no impact crater or blast damage, pointing to a explosive ground fire possibly caused by a faulty missile launched within the city itself failing and crashing just after takeoff.
Whatever is eventually shown to be the cause it's a humanitarian disaster, causing political shock waves internationally, particularly in the Arab world. President Biden cancelled a meeting with Arab leaders in Jordan this morning and flew to Israel instead to find out what happened and urge Netanyahu to stop military action at the Rafah crossing from Egypt, to allow humanitarian aid to be taken into Gaza. While Biden is there, the Israeli army remains on standby. It's another tragedy as painful and difficult to absorb as the mass murder of Israelis in border towns two weeks ago.
It was a matter of walking through pavement puddles, avoiding flooded gutters and getting splashed by passing cars, to reach St Catherine's to celebrate the St Luke's Day Mass with seven others. Then a walk to a busy Chapter Arts for the weekly veggie bag before returning home to cook lunch. Clare was out, leaving a note to say she'd miss the meal, as she was out learning about volunteering at a local charity cafe, and would eat whatever I cooked for supper. I stewed some lentils with onions, and steamed some veggies, and put half of it on a plate for Clare to reheat later.
After lunch, I recorded and then edited next week's Morning Prayer and Audio, having modified the prayers to name Al-Ahli hospital. Then I realised tomorrow's upload is already on YouTube and makes no mention of this, so I recorded the prayers again and edited them into the existing sound file, then re-opened the video slideshow, added the edited soundtrack, and posted the modified version on YouTube. It was possible to do this as I preserve all current work projects just in case a change of this kind is needed. It was a fiddly job to make tomorrow's prayers current, taking me an hour, but hopefully it's worth the effort. At least it helped me to deal with my own shock and distress.
When Clare returned, she went out into the rain again to collect her weekly order from Beanfreaks, then it was my turn to brave the rain and shop for groceries at the Co-op. I couldn't find my new rain trousers but dug out an ancient pair I once used to ski in. I forgot the waistband elastic band no longer effective, and had to remove my trouser belt and use it to hold up both pairs. So annoying! It was gone six by the time I returned to unload the groceries.
In the evening, I got out my ten year old Linux laptop and used it to rip the Daniel Martinez CD into nine separate files, changed the file type and re-ordered the file sequence in Audacity then transferred them to my Windows laptop to edit them with Audacity, to correct the error in the original sound track editing, I mentioned yesterday. Another fiddly, if satisfying job, but not hard to do as I use Audacity regularly, at least once a week. The .ogg files are now on my computer, on Google Drive share with Anto, and on my phone's SD card to take with me everywhere.
Enough mental gymnastics as well as physical exercise for one day. Now to bed.
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