I didn't succeed in turning off completely the rising main stop cock last night, but the pressure was low enough to stop water dripping from the pipe into a bucket, as long as tap above it was left open, allowing a remaining trickle of water to exit from the sink. Clare and I both got up once in the night within minutes of each other to check nothing had changed. When I got up at eight, Clare was phone queuing for a GP appointment, and then she started looking for a plumber. She got lucky finding Mike, as she rang him by accident, and minutes later he returned her call.
He said he'd be with us mid-morning which meant I'd have to miss going to church, as Clare already had a surgery visit booked for eleven. Mike turned up at ten fortunately, and was on his way by ten thirty, so I was able to go late to the St Catherine's Eucharist after all. Roger arrived with a kilo box of marmalade oranges he'd bought in error, wondering if anyone could make use of them. I volunteered to take them and make a batch of marmalade. There'll be a few jars for him, and the rest can go on sale for church funds.
Clare cooked rice and stewed savoury vegetables for lunch and wanted to add a tin of salmon. Easier said than done, as both the mechanical and electrical can openers initially failed to cut into the tin, due to the oversized lip on the top of the can. A second attempt with the electric can opener held at a more acute angle penetrated the tin once it got going. I don't recall having such difficulty opening a can before, but I was spared having to dig into the top of the tin with an old school can opener and risk injury from a slip of the hand. Thank goodness cans with a pull of lid are so much more commonplace these days.
I went into town to Santander Bank to register the new PIN code for my Edge credit card as required, on one of their ATMs. It's my first trip into town since receiving the bank's letter with the new PIN before Christmas. I arrived just as the branch was closing - 3.00pm nowadays. Heaven help anyone who can't leave work in the afternoon to visit the branch. Admittedly footfall is down in live branches, as most clients use online or mobile apps these days.
I also went to John Lewis' top floor, out of curiosity to see what new tech stuff is in store. Every quarter there's a rotation of stock and discount offers. Not that I need anything extra. It seems to me from the number on the bargain shelf that the store overstocks Chromebooks, five times as many as Windows laptops. Proper cameras seem to be a thing of the past. A line of new trendy Polaroid cameras has taken over the dedicated shelves. A small number expensive lenses and DSLRs are stored under lock and key to be tracked down in store by online enquirers. Cardiff's only proper camera retailer is still in Morgan Arcade, its two rivals have closed in the past decade. Cardiff Camera Centre got into online retailing twenty years ago, and its store is an Aladdin's cave, not only of the top camera brands, but second hand stuff, both digital and film, which, like vinyl records has become a popular retro fashion. I popped in there as well to see if there was any used kit of interest, but it was all too expensive.
I took a bus back into Canton to walk home from there, and called into Beanfreaks to buy nuts and sesame seeds. I noticed a bearded man standing at the entrance to an Asian style clothes shop. I could hear him chanting quietly in a way that indicated he was reading the Qu'ran from his phone, unashamed of his piety, feeling safe to express it openly, not showing off, just being himself. I like that. It's Ramadan after all.
A couple of years ago I gave Owain a small format HP Windows 10 PC with a terabyte hard drive to archive his audio files. It was a bit slow and had a sealed case, which meant it was impossible to swap the hard disk for a faster solid state drive, so I replaced it with the Dell which I have now converted to run Linux Mint. He never got around to using this, and now has the much faster Windows 11 Dell to use, so he gave it back to me. It still works, but won't upgrade to Windows 11 anyway. Out of curiosity I used my bootable USB Linux version to see how it would run, and was pleased to find it ran so smoothly. I'm not sure how I will make use of it however, but converting it to Linux will ensure it has a future.
There's a photo management app called Digicam for Linux which I found useful in times past. I've now added that to my workstation. There's one more app I need to install for managing music files, but I don't recall the name of the one I used before, but that can wait for the moment. My workstation has a working sound card, but I need to be able to relay the signal to the hi-fi kit in my study to amplify the sound. I'm not sure if I did this in times past, and need to investigate if there's an input line I can use. Now I'm not so busy with church affairs, I have more time to devote to tech' tinkering, and sorting out my study. At last!
After supper, I spent the evening reading 'Una Muerta Imperfecta', by J J Fernandez, which I started yesterday evening, before it became obvious where the water leak was located. Fernandez is a Valenciano who lived in Britain. His story is set in Britain, and unusually is narrated by a female protagonist, who is dissatisfied with police accounts of her uncle's unusual demise, and starts investigating herself. It has quite a different narrative style to that of Carlos Ruis Zafón, leaner more colloquial, and for me at least, it's easier to follow. Checking the meaning of words for clarity's sake is more worthwhile. Zafón's work seems padded out with descriptive words adding no more than an extra touch of atmosphere to the narrative. They are guessable, but also skippable to get to the point where the action continues. Reading a story in Spanish is good exercise for the mind, and an enjoyable alternative to watching telly or streamed series.
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