Musical adventure

Yesterday, I had an email from Andrea Brown confirming that a group of students from the Royal Welsh College would come and sing a Byrd four part Mass and a motet at our All Saints' Sunday Mass on the weekend,  in response to a proposal I put to her recently. It's a challenge for one of their conducting students who is Chinese and unfamiliar with Christian liturgy, but keen nevertheless to experience what may normally be performed at a concert in the setting for which it was written. 

I found a suitable copy of the liturgical text and annotated it to indicate where each piece of music comes. Hopefully there'll be a chance for a face to face briefing before the pre-service rehearsal happens. Clare and Ann left me and walked east along the coast path. Later I caught up with them on the headland overlooking the harbour, and we went for a cup of tea in the East Quay arts centre below.

Kath arrived at six after spending the weekend with Owain and then driving down from Bath, where they'd spent the afternoon enjoying the spa waters. She's going to be with us until Thursday, as some film extra work she was recruited for failed to materialise for logistic reasons. The four of us had a lovely evening, eating and catching up, as Ann and Kath haven't seen each other since well before the pandemic.

After breakfast this morning, I drove Ann to Taunton Station for her 10h40 train back to Felixstowe. I was pleased to find my way there from memory without needing to consult a map, or Google.  We received a message from her just after three to say she'd arrived home. Remarkably nowadays Taunton to Paddington takes two hours, about the same as the run to Cardiff, thanks to line electrification. Liverpool Street to Felixstowe takes three hours and is half the distance. It's very much a rural stopping train service to East Anglia.

After lunch we walked west on the coast path as far as we could, to the place where a stretch of it has been closed because of a cliff collapse. It was very hilly, and good exercise. We had tea in Watchet's East Quay arts centre again, as we did yesterday with Ann before returning for another pleasant evening of catch-up with Kath. 

A glorious, but also fateful day

I celebrated the All Saints Day Eucharist at St John's for a different dozen people this morning, and Emma sat in the congregation, until she had to leave, as she was being picked up and taken to a conduct a funeral service just after. 

Ashley called at the church at the end of the service and we walked and talked together. He said that he'd only received formal official notification in a letter received at the the Motorpoint Arena reception desk yesterday morning, stating that as of today, South Wales Police are no longer going to be responding to calls from RadioNet users but answering calls exclusively from the commercial radio system backed by 'For Cardiff' since the breakdown in relationships between Cardiff BCRP Board and its Chairman and Crime Manager, despite previous Council and Police undertakings to the contrary.

Some of the top people running 'For Cardiff' are ex-cops. They were only willing to hear the account of the breakdown given to them by fellow ex-cops. There's been amazing indifference about this on the part of Council officers, to whom it was reported, when a formal complaint was made. So much political time and energy was expended in launching the Cardiff Business Improvement District scheme that spawned 'For Cardiff', that investigating the conduct of 'For Cardiff' management so soon after its launch would have been highly embarrassing, given that continued use of RadioNet, was endorsed as an existing asset available to the project at an earlier stage. 

The Police claim not to prefer one radio system over another and earlier gave an undertaking to respond to calls from both radio systems,  but reality tells a different story. 'Operational reasons' or 'lack of resources', can always be used and there's no obligation to account publicly for this change of decision. It would be a different matter if Cardiff Business Safe had launched a civil court action against all parties involved, but as a voluntary not for profit organisation, no funds held in reserve were ever set aside for litigation, only for outlay on the radio system in the event of a breakdown. 

There's always the possibility of trial in the court of public opinion via social media of course, but I doubt there's much interest in these issues out there on anybody's part. It would only ever come out if a major catastrophe or breakdown in public security involving secure communications failure occurred in the city. Then it would only be part of the inevitable blame game achieving nothing.

For ten years Cardiff Business Safe did its utmost to provide the best quality of service and equipment  to the city centre through RadioNet. Now this comes to an end. Let's hope all those who promoted this initiative won't live to regret it and have their reputations damaged, their trust and goodwill undermined behind the scenes, in the way that of Cardiff Business Safe was dealt with.

To cheer myself up after this news, later in the day I went out and bought a wide angled lens for my Sony Alpha 68 DSLR camera as I promised myself I'd do once the insurance reimbursement came through.  I also bought a solid state hard drive to install Linux on and fit to one of my laptops. If I'm satisfied with it, I may convert another. The price of SSDs has come right down this past year.

Christmas puddings have been cooking all day today, two of them, one big and one small. And yes, we did get around to making our 'Stir Up' wishes a month ahead of time. Clare has also made a start on Christmas cake too, soaking a second lot of fruit, ready for cooking tomorrow. Kitchen aromas are arouse seasonal anticipation, way ahead of the wreath on the door, and candles on the table.

All Saints day with Catholic and Orthodox flavours

Another mild autumnal morning, awake before dawn again and on the terrace doing Chi Gung exercises once the sun had risen - it's just warm enough. As no Eucharist was planned to be celebrated in the chaplaincy today, I took extra time over Morning Prayer, adding in the lectionary readings for the Mass of All Saints. In the course of checking my various internet accounts, I came across the Facebook page of a former colleague who converted to Orthodoxy when he retired. One of the articles he posted was on the history of the minority Orthodox church in China at the turn of the twentieth century, and how over two hundred faithful and clergy were martyred during the Boxer rebellion. That was a timely thing to read about on All Saints' Day. 

He also posted the text of an Orthodox hymn known as the Akathist of Thanksgiving. It was, I quote; "found among the effects of Protopresbyter Gregory Petrov upon his death in a prison camp in 1940. The title is from the words of Saint John Chrysostom as he was dying in exile. It is a song of praise from amidst the most terrible sufferings attributed to Metropolitan Tryphon of Turkestan."

Metropolitan Tryphon was a son of Georgian nobility. He was a Bishop for 33 years, before and after the Russian revolution, so his entire ministry was conducted in violent troubled times. He is said to have written this hymn not long before his death in 1934. It's long, as are others in this unique liturgical genre, including some repeats nearly 3,200 words long, and would take half an hour to read aloud, and much longer to sing prayerfully using the Russian version of Byzantine chant. It is nonetheless a poetic work of great beauty, expressing heartfelt thanks for an entire life, for its joys and sorrows and for the grace of God at work through them all, and written by someone reflecting in faith on a life full of trial and suffering, lived in faith without regret or resentment or remorse. 

It's a faithful old man's prayer, one that any retired person might well read, mark learn and inwardly digest. The words can be found here - just one small section for a taster, there's lots more.

Glory to Thee for calling me into being

Glory to Thee, showing me the beauty of the universe

Glory to Thee, spreading out before me heaven and earth

Like the pages in a book of eternal wisdom

Glory to Thee for Thine eternity in this fleeting world

Glory to Thee for Thy mercies, seen and unseen

Glory to Thee through every sigh of my sorrow

Glory to Thee for every step of my life's journey

For every moment of glory

Glory to Thee, O God, from age to age.

I decided to go out for a walk around ten in the Garrucha direction, with no real aim in mind apart from checking which of the big bulk carriers was in port today. It turned out that the 'Kure Harbour' had left and been replaced overnight by the 'Pisti', although the latter had been due to dock before the former if the marine traffic website was to believed. Anyway, when I'd taken more photographs, on impulse, I headed up the hill so see if the Parish Church of San Joachin was open on this fiesta day. Indeed it was, but better still a Mass was due to be celebrated at midday. I was delighted. There were forty minutes to wait, but it meant I could have a good look around the church before the faithful were first summoned by bells at half past eleven.

The priest came in to get ready, and put on some background religious musak, which did nothing to stop people being chatty when they came in. By the time the Mass began the church was a third full, sixty mostly older people. A few hymns were sung, the priest preached what felt like a lengthy homily but may not have been so long as it felt. His voice sounded gravelly, and I think he was complaining of a sore throat. He spoke conversationally, but to my ear unintelligibly, although I understood many key words, I couldn't discern sentence structure, which was frustrating. I heard on the radio a few days ago that after Japanese, Spanish the second fastest spoken language in the world. I guess that means on an everyday basis, as I find I can decipher a fair amount of what broadcasters have to say.

We were out of church by a quarter to one, and I was back home preparing lunch by half past two, largely thanks to the brevity of Roman Catholic liturgical hymnody, editable to suit the occasion. So different from the rites of Byzantium, Moscow, Jerusalem or Antioch.

I went out for another walk just before sunset, first along the beach, and then inland up one of the side streets away from the beach in search of a clear view of the spectacular orange and grey sky which had developed once the sun had dipped behind Mojacar pueblo. This took me along the Calle Camino del Palmeral, along which several urbanizacions are strung out. It ends over the hill where it meets with a roundabout below the pueblo, another short cut when walking up there which I've now found.

In the evening I found I'd received a couple of verification code notifications from Gmail regarding my sister's account, which I set up for her years ago, with my address as the emergency point of reference in the event of needing to reset a password. As she doesn't use the mobile phone she persuaded me to buy for her, I couldn't just text it to her to use, so I had to ask Clare to call her and check if this had truly happened (and wasn't a hacker's effort), and then pass on the code via WhatApp (usefully encrypted) so she can read it out to my sister over the phone. Unforeseen consequences of trying to be helpful!