Just as I was putting my phone away for the night at bed time, I had an email from Basma, excited to have received positive news from the lawyer handling her case at the immigration tribunal. It seems he's been home to Iraq recently for a family event, and had learned things there which support her personal plea for asylum. She's excited, with the prospect of not having to wait much longer to be baptized, and fulfil a desire which has persisted in her for the past twenty-five years.
I woke up after a good night's sleep with the outdoor temperature at minus three and clouds starting to cover the sky. There's snow up north and we're promised it'll happen down south too, but will we get any here on the coast?
After breakfast, Clare's study group started to arrive. As she was welcoming them, her phone rang. It was Kath, video calling from a coastal holiday let on the border between the states of Victoria and New South Wales. What a delightful surprise. As Clare was busy with her guests, I had the joy of chatting with her about their journey along the coast, and the wonderful wild empty places they visited, of which we have already seen photos on Instagram.
She told me about childhood friends Katie and Karina who lived with us and then across the road when we were in St Paul's Bristol. Katie, a talented painter on the Melbourne scene, whose art works we often see on Instagram and exchange messages, Karina, a Hansard journalist in the State Parliament. Amazing for them to meet up forty years later. Amazing that Katie lives a few streets away from Seela and Mike, the friends they went to visit in Oz.
I walked into town and back mid afternoon, with no particular aim in mind, apart from checking the bargain shelf in John Lewis for an affordable discount Chromebook for Owain. I intended to walk home along the riverbank as the sun was setting, and headed in that direction past the Library. The way that the Wyndham Arcade entrance was lit called for an interesting photo. For that reason, I walked through the arcade. At the west end of the arcade is a big musical instrument shop. Seeing it reminded me that I need a new D string for my flamenco guitar which had broken. This didn't come to mind when I set out to walk to town, but somehow I ended up in the right place.
The shop had no D strings in stock. He told me that D strings are the ones which most frequently break , and he had just used the last they had to re-string a couple of display guitars. He suggested a quick visit to a smaller shop in Wharton Street before they closed and check if they had any. I arrived as St John's church clock struck five, closing time, and purchased two, just to be on the safe side.
It's interesting to consider why D strings should break more frequently than others, more often at the machine head end at the top rather than the bridge end. The D string is wire bound nylon. The wire used has to be quite fine given the weight of the string in comparison to the two lower wire bound strings. It has to turn through a few degrees of an angle to reach the fixing hole in the peg that secures and tightens it. Perhaps this adds small stresses that fatigue the metal to breaking point over time.
Another factor is string vibration frequency. The distance from the peg hole to the bridge at the top of the neck is perhaps a tenth of the length of the string that's played. It has a much higher resonance frequency than the rest of the string, and this generates stress when the string is plucked. Higher frequency G strings can be plain heavier thickness nylon, or they can be wire covered. This gives the string different tone. It's years since I use a wire bound G string, but come to think of it, I've never lost a G string since I made the change.
I the evening passed completing the web page design task while baking a batch of bread, having received information I was lacking. This enabled me to add the full set of basic pages necessary to serve what is effectively a public notice board on the web. It doesn't detract from individual churches websites, but provides another point of reference for them. The Church in Wales has a similar set of information displayed, but it's buried deep in its digital ecosystem, church by church, the Ministry Area is referred to in each, but there's no easy to read group display of all six of the churches. It's better to have an easy to find, easy to read set of pages for the Ministry Area to help establish the identity of an area based group ministry. That's why a second window on the info is necessary.
I tinkered about for a while trying to acquaint myself with Microsoft's Powerpoint. Files constructed on Libre Office work in Microsoft 365, but difficulties arise testing the product and making a standalone version. I didn't have much success with this, nor with finding a third party Powerpoint app that would read the file and display as anticipated. I'm not doing something right and can't figure out what it is. IN the end I gave up and went to bed.
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