A cold but sunny day. Paula came by after breakfast to rehearse one tricky aspect of Sway, go through the Mailchimp routine and send it out from her computer. She's mastered Sway quicker than I did. Mailchimp is another story, however, and take getting used to. We'll continue to meet next week and the week after to repeat this together for practice, but in effect I'm now hands off, free of the editorial role. Now I can relax and ponder on the future of my own ministry in retirement for the first time in ages.
Coincidentally, Clare went early to the surgery for a blood pressure check-up this morning, and I went too later, just Paula and I parted company. Thankfully both of us are showing normal range readings now, but Clare has been prescribed a different hypertension medication for the first time, and so far no side effects.
Our National Trust membership cards expire at the end of the month, so we drove out to Dyffryn Gardens for a snack lunch and a walk around the estate, clockwise for a change instead of anti-clockwise. It gave a set of views of the garden landscape different from the ones we're familiar with. The grass is decorated with a sprinkling of Celandines just now, tulips are coming out and as the magnolia blossoms fade and fall other flowering trees take their turn to show off their colour.
The place is ready for Easter holiday visitors and children's Easter egg play activities, and the grassed parking area outside has acquired stretches of metal decking to denote walkways next to which cars can line up and park. A pleasant three hours in the middle of the day. We've decided not to renew our membership as we don't use it enough to justify the expenditure any longer. If we return on occasions, we'll have to pay the normal entrance fee. After we reached home, I walked to Tesco's to get flowers for Clare.
I've been struggling to get used to my Lumix TZ95 lately. It took some lovely photos at Dyffryn, but it doesn't always behave in a way I understand. It's very sophisticated in what it can do, and its menus are complex so I'm unsure of what I am doing. It has a touch screen which allows one to determine the focus point of the subject you are photographing. The trouble is that when you look through its viewfinder, your nose touches the screen and sets the focus point in a place you may not want it to. Sometimes touching the screen causes the camera to bleep, which I take to be an error message, but what kind of error isn't obvious. Finding and retaining the setting that will deactivate a facility I don't need or want is proving very frustrating. Googling the subject is unhelpful. I will have to work my way through the handful of video talks about the camera on YouTube and hope to glean the information I need to prevent my nose from setting the focus point.
While I was investigating this, Clare was cooking supper. We had baked potatoes with lava bread from Ashton's in the market, with smoked herring from Tesco's, a delicious combination of seafoods worth trying out. I carried on searching after supper and made a little progress, but not enough to feel I have any real control of the camera. I stopped at nine to watch this week's new episode of 'Astrid - Murders in Paris' and then continued writing this until bed time.
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