Walking Backwards

Cold, damp, cloudy and dull, but none of the heavy rain threatened. I was up early to drive Rhiannon to the station for a quarter to nine train. Expecting commuter traffic, I left at eight, and got her there half an hour early. The roads were clearer than anticipated. Clare cooked a gammon steak for me last night which I didn't eat, so I had part of it for breakfast and the rest for lunch, as it was too big for me to enjoy eating in one sitting. A real sign of me getting old!

I worked all morning editing input for Sway, arriving in anticipation of Christmas Events. I now have the problem of too much information to deal with to retain visual interest. I'm thinking of trialling a special Sway edition of Advent to Christmas services posters, covering the whole Ministry Area, and linking this into the usual weekly cycle of material, for easier reading. It's a bit more complex, and I don't want to do anything that's going to mess up the routine output, so I'll to use a second Microsoft OneDrive account to make the supplement and link the two. Fairly risk free, hopefully.

I cooked lunch, couldn't snooze in the chair afterwards, despite insufficient sleep last night, and went out for a walk in the park. On the way back I met Clare with her friend Ruth, who was walking backwards when I saw them at first, experimenting to see if she could do so. I was singing Spike Milligan's classic Goon song 'I'm walking backwards for Christmas' for much of the way home after that!

In the evening news about Gaza, criticism grows internationally of the siege that is depriving suffering Palestinians of vital fuel supplies to maintain communications equipment and power water desalination  well pumps and sewage plants. The work of the UN refugee agency has had to stop completely for lack of transport fuel, and hospitals unable to function. The Israeli army has conceded to pressure and is going to allow in a third of the minimum amount of fuel needed. Netanyahu insists that Hamas has fuel and food stocks in its underground tunnel network and is depriving Gazans of supplies and refusing to take responsibility for the chaos, suffering and death his own military policy is creating. The Gaza death toll is now heading towards 12,000, and set to increase due to disease and starvation. In the West Bank, deadly violence againt Palestiniand by Israeli settlers is increasing, in danger of spiralling out of control. The daily horror is unremitting. It's heart breaking.

Back to work on the material I spent most of the morning on, before and after supper. Quite tiring really. Stopped at nine to watch last in series one of Norwegian crimmie 'For Life' on Walter Presents, and then another of 'The Sketch Artist' before bed.