An eclipse of the moon happened just before dawn. I didn't wake up at first light and there was in any case a thin veil of high cloud, so I would have missed it anyway. A good night's sleep anyway. After breakfast Clare went off with a friends for a walk by the sea. After Morning Prayer and haiku writing, I contacted TalkTalk via Direct Message to enquire about returning my redundant router. The message dialogue was very slow, first presuming that the delivery package had included a return label or bag, which it didn't. A simple request took half an hour to get one posted to me. The connection kept threatening to time out as responses came so slow. The messaging service must be busy today. I wonder how many others have had a similar query to mine?

I went to St John's for the Lent lunch and chatted with a few people, including Andrew who returned from UHW where he works as a counsellor to take his lunch break with the other loyal church members who turned up. He's starting to train for ministry full time this autumn, so he won't be in a position to join in Parish activity on a regular basis, as he'll be sent elsewhere to gain experience of other churches and take a different leadership role as an ordinand. He'll be missed.

Kath's school friend Kate the travel agent responded to the email I sent her last week while she was trying out a Danube cruise. We'll talk through cruise options suitable for us some time soon hopefully. While I was walking through the woods on the Taff west bank listening to birdsong very close to me, although tree branches are still bare, I had difficulty spotting birds a few feet above my head. When I did finally spot a great tit, the photo I took was poor, perhaps because it wasn't quite bright enough. Auto-focus takes a bit more time to make up its mind in such conditions. 

Rachel rang up while I was putting my camera away. Initially the phone signal wasn't good enough to sustain a WhatsApp conversation, so I called her back when I got to Blackweir Bridge where the signal is consistent and strong, then we talked for an hour until just after I got home. Then she said it was time for her to get up and start work making truffles for her next order. It's breakfast time for her in AZ after all.

I cooked thick  steaks with brown rice and veggies for supper, poached slowly with olive oil, a clove of garlic and lots of lemon juice. Thinly sliced tuna steaks need flash frying, a minute in the pan or less, but an inch thick steak needs a different treatment. Fortunately I got the timing right and the flesh stayed succulent without hardening. The residual jus was perfect with rice and veg.

When I came to transfer the photos I'd taken after supper, I couldn't find my camera. I searched all the room I'd been in when I returned with no success and wondered if I might have dropped it while talking to Rachel without noticing. Eventually I found it hanging by the strap on a coat peg in the hall. It's something I have done before on a specific peg, but I'd already looked there. This time I parked it on a different peg  while taking my coat off and it hidden by jackets sharing the same peg. It made me realise how distressing I find any disruption of routines and regular habits. All part of getting old I suppose, along with needing much more sleep to enjoy feeling well all day.

I didn't feel like settling down to watch something as I was tired and I didn't want to stay up too late. Then I wanted to share with Rachel the recording of a Great Tit made earlier but extracting it from the recording app in order to send on WhatsApp was tricky. The sound quality wasn't good so reducing the noise seemed a good idea. Audacity declared it a faulty MP3 file and refused to load it. Fortunately the 'Twisted Wave' cloud app used by Chromebook had no problem loading it, eliminating background noise and producing a file Audacity accepted and I completed the edit with a sound boost. Well, that's good to know, but I got to bed later than I intended.