BT impersonators and more medication misery

Another dull damp day, but I think I slept a bit better. Ten hours in bed, three of them awake and a couple of dreams at the point of waking up to pee. I think they were travel dreams. I was listening to a news item about Chinese hacking activity when a phone call arrived from someone with a Chinese accent purporting to be from BT, alleging our router settings had been changed to allow password free wi-fi access and that malware was downloading on to our network, presumably via a drive-by exploit. The caller wanted me to access the router admin account to remedy this, and was offering help to do so. Given how recently it was that the system was configured by an OpenReach engineer and knowing exactly who has logged into our wi-fi since then, I asked a few questions for clarification. 

Vague answers amplified my suspicion, so I then challenged the caller to identify herself in a way I could verify. She became more pushy. I put the phone down. Within a minute a 'supervisor' called and continued where the woman had left off. I put the phone down on him too. I was half awake when the calls started but fully awake when they ended and somewhat distressed. I called the BT contact number on my mobile, went through the security check and received a return call. A secure connection check confirmed that all was in order. The call was from a scammer trying to hijack the account. I was advised of the way to check independently in future if there had been breach of wi-fi security and that set my mind at rest.

While I was on the phone, I ate my daily banana, drank water and took my first pill of the day and then got dressed. I was under the impression I had a GP appointment at ten. This interruption had wasted the hour I had to eat breakfast and get myself to the surgery. I got there five minutes late, only to discover the appointment is this afternoon. I had misread my digital diary. What an upset, what a mess! 

Clare's study circle was arriving when I got home. I had breakfast in the kitchen on my own then checked if I had taken my first pill of the day. I have a tendency to do things automatically and not remember if I really follow my daily routine. It's difficult if I get disrupted. It wasn't clear if I had followed the routine. Strips of medication currently in use by the pharmacy don't have days of the week helpfully printed on them, I don't get on with those fiddly pill box accessories marked with days of the week,  so I now have to write the days on the medication pack. Writing on foil doesn't always show clearly. After the stroke I used a daily tick sheet as part of the meds routine plus a phone notification. Now I only take two pills a day at different times, it's easier to remember. If I get disrupted, I'm in trouble.

I returned to the surgery in the rain for my appointment at three. The wind blew so fiercely and erratically I couldn't control my brolly and risked damaging it. The GP I saw addressed concerns written in the letter I delivered. Apparently, not taking statins adds to the risk post stroke. The body produces more cholesterol than normal. Being dairy free is said to make no difference. I wasn't offered a cholesterol test that would confirm this, however. I said the statins made me feel poorly and deprived me of a morning's activity. It was suggested I take the med at bed time instead. It remains to be seen how I cope, given the number of times I get up to pee in the night. 

Dr Hughes the cardiologist had written to the surgery recommending replacing the clot dispersal med with aspirin plus another with a long unpronounceable name. This is said to stop blood leakage from minor wounds like my big toe and perineum. I took the prescription to the pharmacy opposite the surgery and was told a delivery was awaited. Tomorrow, hopefully.

The rain worsened on my way home. I collected household waste paper reading for collection tomorrow, but was unable to put it into the relevant blue bag without getting soaked and had to wait for a break in the rain to finish the job. It didn't stop for long. I paced up and down indoors for exercise to keep my blood circulating in an effort to lower my blood pressure. The GP said it was very high. This wasn't a surprise to me, the way I was feeling. The scam call this morning upset me and my reaction to it along with feeling trapped by there being no alternative to a set of meds that rarely leave me feeling well, continued right up to bed time

Coronation recalled

In the news each morning this past week are reports of many half term holidaymakers all over the country hoping to travel abroad are having plans ruined by hundreds of flight cancellations, caused by a lack of ground staff at airports. The scaling up of recruitment for security personnel, baggage handlers, cleaners, food suppliers and flight attendants has not matched increased demand for air industry staff. During the pandemic hundred of thousands of employees lost the jobs, and many of them have found alternative and better paid employment since then, 

It's had me wondering about the wisdom of flying out to Malaga the morning before my first service at San Pedro. If my flight was cancelled or seriously delayed I'd be in trouble, so I've been wondering about taking the ferry to Bilbao early in the week, and then the train via Madrid, maybe stopping over there with friend Roy for a few nights. It might well be worth the expense to take the uncertainty out of my arrival.

There were eleven of us at the St Catherine's Eucharist this morning, celebrating Justin Martyr. We were joined by Archbishop Rowan, back from his recent travels. I wondered if he'd come especially to pray for his successor at Canterbury, Archbishop Justin.

A call from Ashley queried an item in the CBS final phone bill for the hire of a pair of wi-fi broadband dongles he had no recollection of ordering. I'm not sure why we acquired this piece of kit, but it dates back to times when wi-fi chips weren't a standard component of a computer motherboard. That was ten years ago! I found the dongles in their original packaging stashed away on my bookshelf. On the package, it says they were designed to work with Windows 7. It didn't work that well in the days when just a 3G signal was available, and not everywhere, too slow to be useful for travelling abroad, so the dongles got shelved once I bought a new wifi capable laptop eight years ago. So is BT still charging us for devices, no longer fit for purpose, if they ever were? We'll see! 

I fetched the organic veggie order before lunch, then in the afternoon collected the Beanfreaks order for the week. Before supper, I started work on next week's biblical reflection. There's a sermon to write for Sunday as well. In both cases, I need to pick up on the Queen's Platinum Jubilee theme. Amazing to think that it's sixty nine years tomorrow since her coronation, a ceremony which took sixteen months to prepare after her accession to the throne on 7th February 1952. two months before my seventh birthday. 

Watching a film of the coronation service in Ystrad Mynach cinema with fellow pupils from the Junior School some months after the event I recall quite clearly. We didn't have telly then, but my memory of hearing it on the radio with Richard Dimbleby commentating is rather hazy. I recall his dulcet tones, the fanfares of trumpets and shouts of God save the Queen, but that's about it. And there was a street party at which Mum's piano was carried out into the street to be played for singing and dancing. My sister June sang 'This is my lovely day' from the musical 'Bless the Bride' to an audience of neighbours outside. It's all a lifetime away. So much profound change has happened since then. An amazing time to be alive.

Coping with complexity

After breakfast I drove to St German's to celebrate Mass with half a dozen regulars, returned home and continued editing together the audio pieces I recorded late last night. The less mistakes I make the easier the editing becomes, though occasionally the sound quality is poorer than usual, and I've yet to work out why, so editing takes longer. I took a break to collect this week's veggie bag and help Clare cook lunch, then continued work after going for an early afternoon walk. By supper time I had completed both weeks' videos and uploaded them ready for posting on the right date. Apart from that small task, my fortnight's holiday is care free!

Clare received a call from the holiday cottage owner to brief her about the facilities and check when we'll arrive. She was expecting to receive a key safe code to access the keys we need, but it seems the owner prefers to welcome visitors personally, hand over the keys and show them around, which is very pleasing.

Sister in law Ann is coming to join us for six days in the middle of our first week. It was meant to have been seven days, but for some inexplicable reason the seventh day return fare was four times the outbound fare, despite cross-checking by the station booking clerk. Perhaps it's due to a surge in ticket demand on the return day, who knows? 

She also had a frustrating and distressing experience acquiring a new Oppo phone from BT with whom she has a contract. Although it's meant to be an Android phone, it didn't prove possible to transfer all the data from her defunct Nokia to the Oppo, so she sent it back, opted to go SIM free and got a new Samsung phone from Argos instead. Why BT are pushing Chinese phones on to their customers when government is openly concerned about security risks relating to Chinese electronic hardware, heaven only knows. BT sent her a new SIM card to fit in the Android, which took a week to arrive, but instead of taking up to three hours to attach to the network, as she was assured it would, it took twelve.

I wondered why this was the case, until I thought about it. If BT had sold her one of their Samsung phones their network would have immediate access to the hardware database of their batch of phones, so checking the hardware identity would state there and take up to three hours. The hardware identity of a phone from Argos would be on a different database section, and the automated system would have to trawl through the bigger database to find it. Given that such phones are made in their tens if not hundreds of millions, this is going to take that much longer. The systems on which we rely for everyday communication are far vaster and more complex than we tend to think. This much I learned from working with Cardiff Business Safe.

After supper we watched 'The Repair Shop' again in which the stories behind the items skilfully restored were all of historical interest as well as personal value to the contributors. More marvellous craftsmanship to wonder at. A lovely show. Then a tough BBC Wales documentary on the impact of the Foot and Mouth epidemic on Wales 20 years ago. Especially interesting was the presence of Professor Neil Ferguson, who as a young research student was developing innovative statistical modelling tools to monitor outbreaks of contagious disease, recently applied to understanding the covid pandemic spread, bringing his name to public attention again. Mistakes were made in managing the foot and mouth outbreak, perhaps because it spread more rapidly than people realised, so that rapid containment was impossible. Learning comes sometimes, not from due diligence but from bitter experience.

Historic anomaly

Another Bank Holiday Monday, a bright and sunny day, perfect for a walk to the far west side of the Parish to visit a couple whose one year old son I will be baptizing at St Luke's in a month's time. Both are busy young professionals and this was the best opportunity we could arrange to meet for a briefing. It was nice to discover that both of them come from churchgoing families. 

They were married three years ago in the 12 century chapel of St Pierre, near Chepstow, a place where I remember celebrating Holy Communion according the the 1662 Book of Common Prayer in the days when I worked for USPG and helped in local churches on weekends when I wasn't away preaching. 

St Pierre was a chapel of ease belonging to the mediaeval manor of the same name, in the Parish of Mathern. It's now a prestigious golf club. It was one of a few Church in Wales churches which didn't in those days adopt the new service book, calling on the legal right to retain the old liturgy as long as the church committee approved. I wonder if it's still in use there?

I got back in time for lunch. We intended to go out down the Bay to visit the Urdd Eisteddfod, but we never got around to it, as both of us pottered around with other things to do.

We're currently being hit by robo-scam calls as I call them, threats to have broadband disconnected and this one offering a press button menu of several options, all of which probably are expensive to activate. These seem to be voice activated, and if you pick up and say nothing the rest of the call message isn't triggered. The number on the dial display points to a Glasgow exchange, and several different numbers get used. The scammers use genuine but redundant numbers in the i/d displayed by the device they use.

We get about half a dozen calls a day, between nine and six. TalkTalk offers a reporting service to get the numbers blocked, but it's actually quite an inconvenience to do this since these keep changing. We could deploy the call filtering service TalkTalk offers, but I'm not sure about the impact of this on occasional legitimate callers. It's bound to be annoying, so we'll have done no more than shift our annoyance to someone else.
   

Leaving Mojacar.

I thought yesterday was busy,but today was busier still. I stayed up late writing and got up late. Then this morning, there was my case to pack, the bed linen and towels to consign to the laundry basket, travel food to put in a bag, rubbish to take to the bin, the kitchen to clean.

There was more writing to do as well, as a handover report for the next locum, and this took me a lot longer than expected. I felt it was important to ensure the wi-fi password was embedded in the report, as I'd been unable to find it, as can be the case, on these assignments, found scribbled on a post-it note on the desk, or in the vicinity of the router. So far in Spain, with rare exception, I needed to look for the wi-fi password on the device itself. It's written in such small print that a magnifying glass is needed. So I take a photo of the identifying label on the underside of the router, and blow it up to read from when identifying each device I log on.

One virtue of BT and TalkTalk wireless internet is that they provide this info in larger print, on a card and with the 'howto' information. Some routers used in Spain have an extra button to push to broadcast the password briefly so wireless devices can pick it up, as in the UK, but not all. Such 'magic' solutions are not good news in the realm of good security, as you don't know what suspicious person or system is sniffing for access. So why Spanish internet service providers seem to relish making it difficult, I don't know, as it's of no benefit to the user.

Anyway, the morning sped by, and my last cooked lunch was rather a rush. I got out of the house on time, then went back because I worried about having left the balcony door unlocked (it wasn't), then I headed for Pam and Alwyn's house outside Vera for the journey to Alicante airport, and was only five minutes late by my timetable, or twenty five minutes early as they were expecting me at two and were still having lunch. It meant that I could enjoy a cup of coffee before we headed north in good weather. The journey passes through some spectacularly beautiful terrain. I didn't take photos for once, as the cameras were packed away in the boot. All I had to do was relax and let myself be driven, and in good company. How lovely.

Booking dot com led to an inexpensive room for one at Hostal Pensimar in El Altet, a well appointed and modern stopover place for the airport. I bade farewell to Pam and Alwyn just after four, happy to know they would be back in Vera before dark. Now with tomorrow's taxi booked for six thirty, all I have to do is relax some more, sleep and wait until the check-in counter makes its sleepy start.

No rising Supermoon for me tonight. On the way here we drove into cloudy weather, and it rained for a while on the airport approach motorway. Early bed for me I think.

        

Preparing a farewell

After spending a good while speaking to someone on a British Telecom help-line yesterday, Ashley was able to re-start his phone restore from back-up routine. However, the phone signalled that all it wanted to do was complete a system update, and it's not clear this was ever properly completed. Each time the phone was re-started, it stalled in the initial procedure, whether due to a software or a mechanical failure was impossible to say, but it wasn't fit for purpose, so an exchange had to be arranged, with next day delivery. Of so stylish and sophisticated but not nearly as robust as needs be.

Mass at St German's with a school class again this morning, followed by some time with people in the old people's day centre in the hall afterwards. I distributed Mothering Sunday greetings cards. One old lady refused to accept a card, and declared resolutely "No thanks, I'm an atheist." There was no chance to ask why, as this was taking place during a lively Golden Oldies karaoke session. It was quite unexpected and made me wonder. A conversation I'd have enjoyed.

I went home for lunch and spent time editing the eulogy notes given to me by Martin and Byron to put into shape for delivery at the funeral of Jane their mother tomorrow. Then I had a call asking if I could help with making a CD of orchestral music for one off use during the entry and exit of the funeral cortege from the church. It's ages since I last did this, but I was pleased to discover how easy it now is to feed a digital music stream into the Open Source Audacity sound editing software. Easier than I remembered. When I came to make a CD however, I discovered that I was out of blank media, so had to walk to Tescos and buy a small pack to get the job done. Then to finish the day 'Spooks' on catch-up TV and New Tricks live.

   

Landmark occasion at CBS

Today, the new Business Crime Reduction manager, Ian Tumelty started with with Cardiff Business Safe. I met him in the office at ten as arranged. Hopes were dashed of arriving earlier to make sure things were in order, as I narrowly missed two buses at different stops. I briefed him on the CBS story so far, and gave him the required password access to the office systems to get him started.

Then Ashley arrived and shortly after chairman Gerry. The conversation was a good way to round off his first morning. In the afternoon I prepared and sent out the invitations and documents for the next BCRP meeting, at which Ian will be introduced to the Board and to Police and Council invited representatives. It's taken six years to get this far and get it right. A hard slog, but worth it in the end.

I left for home at four thirty and called in John Lewis' store, where I caught sight of Clare browsing the cushion department, when we'd both completed our errands, we had tea and a scone together. I'd forgotten about lunch. We visited a few shops together in the Grand Arcade. Clare bought a small blue plastic bucket to occupy the space under the kitchen sink, which I carried home. It reminded me of the one kids have on the beach, although it was twice their size. The bus driver also thought so, as he commented on it as we were getting our tickets "All you need now is the spade to go off to the beach." he said.

Nothing worth watching on telly to I spent an hour trying to clear space in Ashley's BT Office 365 email account, which keeps announcing that it's full. Between us we've spent hours deleting old messages to no good effect. The titles vanish, but the space is not reclaimed. Ten email addresses are assigned for a 250mb account. Only two are active, one of which is empty. No emails have been received since 31st December last, and we know some copies to his account were sent. A test email sent from another account was not received. It's possible to log in but few webmail administrative functions work. It's a complete disaster, and not for the first time has complaining to BT about this yielded any results. And to think we're paying for this non-service!

Dydd Gwyl Dewi Sant

We had a quiet Saturday, with a brief shopping excursion together into town, ending with tea in John Lewis'. I bought a couple of re-chargeable battery chargers in Currys, for Ashley to use on the move, since he uses his phone that much when he's away from the office, a backup charging solution is needed. It will be interesting to see how useful this is in practice. The France-Wales international was on TV in many shops and in all the pubs, which were rammed. The second half had just started when we got home, so I watched, something I rarely do. Glad Wales won, with St David's Day tomorrow

Before cooking the usual weekend paella for supper, I went through the process of ordering new .cymru and .wales domain names for CBS and the Business Crime Reduction Partnership to use, linked to websites old and new that I've built. Now there's patriotic for you now ... We've had just one domain name for the original CBS website, linked to our British Telecom Account. It worked until about nine months ago, when the weblink was interrupted for no apparent reason. BT wouldn't give us access to control the .org.uk domain name which we owned, and getting it fixed by whoever is responsible in the right department is so complex and elusive we had better things to do than wait for ages on hold in phone queues to find them. Now we have a fresh start and with a new domain name providor, more control. Providing it all works as it's meant to. The new domains go live tomorrow.

This morning, I walked to Llandaff for the Cathedral Sung Eucharist at eleven, with a Schubert Mass in G and a favourite Purcell Anthem, 'Thou knowest Lord the secrets of our hearts'. I went to switch off my phones as I arrived and notice an email from our Swiss friend Claudine working in Myanmar, announcing with astonishment that she's been roped in to sing some hymns in Welsh with an expat choir in Yangon for a celebration of St David's Day. I couldn't stop smiling about this during the service, plus the fact that I was sitting at the front of a nave bathed in sunlight. There must have been a hundred and fifty in church. This congregation has doubled in the past six months. 

Good liturgy in a simple, relaxed, solemn style with decent preaching and renewed choral leadership are commending the value of a traditional worship format in modern language. Sure, the majority of the congregation are older people, but there's an increasing number of older people in society as well as among church attenders. Many are thoughtful, and too discriminating to put up with dumbed down services. It's been hard enough for most of their lives to keep the faith in wayward times. They have many strengths and gift to bring to the church's mission. They need nourishment and inspiration to make sure they don't feel like strangers in their own place.

In town there was the usual St David's day parade, and the Welsh Guards were on parade in the Millennium Plaza, looking smart and sober in their winter greatcoats and busbies, according to the news photos. But both events co-incided with worship. As far as I'm concerned, if worship doesn't get priority, the rest of the celebration is sentiment and vanity.

   

Old tech, new tech

Finally on Monday morning, the phone I ordered for my sister from the Easy Life Group website arrived with the postman after a two week wait rather than the two days promised. What a relief. It's about the size of a smartphone with big keys, but its operating system is of the previous era of mobile telephony, so navigating menus and keying in the phone book data provided by June, with a plea to do it for her, was a very fiddly job. Three dozen names and numbers took me more than an hour to enter. I hope that none of them are wrong, as that will cause endless frustration.

The phone has a USB linked charger, and immediately presented some of its file system areas for examination by a PC. But there was no indication that there might be software for uploading a digital address book file from an external source, and no internet capacity, only free memory for music and pictures to display on its small coloured screen. It has other facilities that make it an attractive prospect for older people, like an alarm button and hands-free cradle. I hope June will have the patience both to maintain it and use it, after I've handed it over to her. She doesn't have that much patience with more technological innovation than she's already struggled to adjust to.

Tuesday morning Clare went off to her regular study group in Dinas Powis. I drove out to pick her up afterwards, and we went to the Fig Tree restaurant on Penarth sea front for lunch before taking a walk to Lavernock Point along the coast path. On the return leg of the walk we bumped into Sue, walking with one of her grandchildren. It's the first time we've met since my retirement dinner nearly five years ago. How time flies! We stopped at the Leckwith retail park for some shopping and had tea in M&S on the way. A pleasant change in our workaday weekly routine.

Today I had lunch with my old friend and partner in publishing the Spiritual Capital report over seven years ago, Roy Thomas. He now runs his own public relations company Redefinepr, and is about to become a domain name  registrar for recently approved .wales and .cymru URL handles. I wish him every success in putting the Principality on the global internet map in this way. When I went to the office later on, Ashley and I agreed that we must act to register our enterprise immediately, as a matter of pride. Besides, British Telecom has let us down very badly. 

Having registered our web domain with a .co.uk label, BT insisted on controlling the linkage of the domain name with our web-site which is not hosted in webspace hired from BT. It worked for two and a half years and then was unaccountably disconnected. So far BT has failed to reinstate the link or give a reason for not doing so. BT is so big, so complex an operation, it often seems that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.  

    

Blackberry Blues

Today's flight back to Malaga was punctual and uneventful apart from a brief bout of turbulence over the Pyrenees which caught everyone by surprise inclding the air stewards. After we landed, I found that my Blackberry Z10, newly converted to run on a BT EE network sim card could find the local network but wouldn't attach to any of the four carriers available with strong signal. I tried different settings, and re-started the phone to no avail. In the end, it booted up to 100% but wouldn't even display what Blackberry call the 'Escreen' = the 'desktop' on an ordinary computer, so I couldn't even use it to retrieve emails via wi-fi. My own personal PAYG phone, on the same EE network switched over to Orange ES, without a hitch.

Nothing much can be done about this over the weekend, and I certainly can't do anything from Spain, it will have to be done by Ashley in Cardiff, as he is the account holder for all our business phones. My guess is that BT, despite having a contract to supply us with acccess to roaming services while I'm in Spain have foisted a new SIM card upon us without checking if roaming abroad was required. If so, it's a serious indictent of the quality of service to business customers in an world where crossing European borders, if not continents is an everyday matter. Once again EE's 'Everything Everywhere' service turns out to be more like 'Nothing Nowhere' despite all their expensive media advertisements. It's not so much the technology that doesn't work properly, as the people who manage it.

 

A new dongle and a culinary co-incidence

Sarah spent today in the St David's centre main office, meeting with security workers to sign them up and issuing them with 'need-to-know' documents about confidential information sharing. In turn, her efforts fed me with couple of new dozen email addresses to add to our DISC intranet reporting system. Sarah is good at enthusing people, and I anticipate a good influx of useful information in coming months.

British Telecom has now issued me with a new mobile internet dongle to permit internet access working away from home or office. This was vital in the wilds of coastal Pembrokeshire last summer, even if signal reception was weak and patchy, and only out in a country lane, would it work. 

When I acquired a Windows 8 computer however, the software installation led to error messages, not finding a signal. Hence the new dongle, identical in brand name and number to the previous one, but inscribed with different serial number in tiny letters. Software installation on Windows 8 machine was flawless and the old SIM continues to work. I imagine there's been a minor firmware upgrade to the electronic circuitry in the dongle, as well as new software, but there's nothing on the packaging or in the instruction booklet to indicate the new dongle is good for Windows 8. Black mark BT! A Windows 8 sticker on the box or dongle could prevent confusion between superficially identical pieces of kit, and who knows, reduce help line calls.

After several weeks of forgetting, I went to Wally's deli in the Royal Arcade to pick up a kilo of Asturian rice. Funnily enough I was in there two days ago, bought some pimenton, but forgot the arroz redondo that soaks up flavour and makes paella what it's meant to be. I arrived home to discover that Clare had also remembered to visit Wally's and came home with a kilo of the same rice and a kilo of Italian risotto rice as well. I'm so sad that we lost to weevils the kilos of red and black Thai rice given us by Claudine last time we met, a year ago in Switzerland. How we enjoy the different varieties!

  

Markers of achievement

There's nothing like a spell of pleasant weather, and a little pressure free time in the office to making catching up on work tasks to be completed quite a pleasant way to spend the afternoon. That's how it Monday to Wednesday slipped by cheerfully. The only thing of interest was the arrival of a Blackberry work phone upgrade for me. It's hard to believe that it's more than eighteen months since I first acquired one, and started fuming and fretting over its tiny keyboard and screen. Much as I've disliked the standard Blackberry Bold, however, its connection reliability at home and abroad has always served me better than my Android devices, so it goes with me whenever I travel.

BT Business informed us of a contract renewal deal on a Blackberry Z10 touchscreen smartphone. It received good reviews, but appeared just as the parent company RIM started to go downhill fast, so fearing the worse some sections of the global market went for other devices instead. RIM has had hard times, but this doesn't seem to have been reflected in the robustness of its network connectivity, only its profitability. So, on the basis of the reviews, we signed up Tuesday afternoon, and the new phone was delivered eighteen hours later, backed by a couple of text messages to advise me of a straightforward SIM activation procedure.

It was late afternoon before I collected it from our 'other' office and took it home to unpack. It's an impressive piece of kit, with Blackberry's own user interface rather than the common Android arrangement. It'll take a bit of getting used to, but the clarity and slickness of the display make it a pleasure to interact with. By the time I got around to SIM activation, I found myself with an overnight wait. It's procedure initiated via the internet but overseen by humans, and BT no longer provide a 24/7 service, so the old phone with its larger format unswappable SIM card stayed in use overnight. Hmmm. Even so, I know I'll enjoy using it.

The other good thing about Wednesday was agreeing a satisfactory end of lease deal with our company financier. By this weekend we'll own every piece of equipment in our possession, and owe nobody anything. We've worked very hard for this, never defaulting on a payment, relying on direct revenue, no grants or subsidies. I look back to my time at St John's, and recall how the Tea Room raised a similarly huge sum of money over a decade of selling drinks, sandwiches and cake with a few dozen volunteers - enough money to redecorate the interior and transform the tower porch entrance into an elegant and appealing point of access - I feel proud to have been associated with and supported both of these voluntary social enterprises that in their different ways have done so much good for the city.

It's a delightful co-incidence that I should receive an invitation today, to attend a porch dedication ceremony at St John's next Tuesday. The Mayor and Archbishop Barry will be there.

 

Springtime in Dyffryn Nantlle

We were out of the house and on our way up the A470 to North Wales by nine thirty this morning, and found only light traffic all the way. The weather was good and everything made for a relaxed and pleasant journey. We stopped for a pub lunch in Caersws, and arrived at Trigonos in Dyffryn Nantlle by three. We noticed once we crossed over the Brecon Beacons bluebells were in bloom everywhere in the hedgerows and mountainsides. Ours in the garden at home were over two weeks ago. 

In Snowdonia the visual impact of rhododendrons, mostly purple, is a striking contrast to bluebell blue. Rhododendrons are an invasive species, imported by the wealthy from the Himalayas in the nineteenth century, and now running wild, regarded as an invasive species. In and around Beddgelert, the National Park authority is taking initiatives to curb if not root them out, before they destroy native species which cannot compete with their vigour.

After unpacking, we walked out by the lake at the bottom of the garden at Plas Baladeulyn, saw several ethereal powder blue dragonflies in the long grass, a fish jumping and two white butterflies mating, one of them had bright yellow wing tips. As well as the sound of blackbirds, robins and chaffinches, we heard the solitary distant voice of a cuckoo. It don't think I've heard one since I was last here three years ago. 

It's very quiet here, and also difficult to get a phone signal in such a deep valley. Nothing from BT and a very poor one from Orange-EE standing in a corner of the car park. So we have to rely on wi-fi, and for that, a short walk from the main house to the neighbourhood around the estate office. The government talks about improving rural internet services, but in some parts of rural Wales mobile reception is in a worse condition. I couldn't help noticing so many UKIP posters on display in this region, symptomatic of disaffection with the Westminster political elite, and for that matter the Cardiff political elite, for failing to deliver resources which have become critical for economic development and success.

Home making, Quiet Day and getting connected

A second day with rain, yesterday, albeit more intermittent. I spent several hours finishing off the preparation for the planned Quiet Day at Cortijo Carranque tomorrow. Then, after lunch, we went to the big El Corte Ingles to look for a few small kitchen items, a sieve, some wooden spoons, a peeler, plus a plastic spatula, a fish slice. We have some excellent stainless steel pans spatulas and fish slice. We also have two fine non-stick frying pans. These would be ruined very quickly if used with any metallic implements. We were't all that successful, but we had tea there to make a fruitless search seem more worthwhile. We would have been better off going to one of the many Chinese hardware supermarkets, which seem to stock everything you can think of, even if the quality may sometimes leave something to be desired. I was amazed to receive a phone call from the Telefonica engineer enquiring if we'd yet acquired a key to the local telecoms distribution box. Sadly the answer was no. Tracking one down is the problem and contacting the keyholder is the problem. 

Today started with driving Clare down to Mogens Dahl, the chiropracter who has worked wonders on my back this past month. She fell and hurt her shoulder a couple of days ago. We were fairly certain it wasn't broken, but out of alignment in its socket. I succeeded in getting an emergency appointment, and the delay wasn't a disadvantage as the initial injury trauma subsided, making the joint a little easier to work on. It meant I had delay departure for Cortijo Carranque for an hour and arrive late, after dropping Clare off in Los Boliches to go on a Chinese supermarket shopping expedition. 

Being late hardly mattered however. It turned out nobody had booked in to attend the quiet day. I enjoyed doing the preparation for this as well as the poorly attended Lent Course. It kept my mind active and focussed on things that matter to me. If few were interested in the offer to share these things, inshallah. I still made the hour's trip up into the Rio Grande Valley for lunch in the open air, with a warm breeze fragrant with orange blossom, and enjoyed good conversation with Angela and Martin, followed by a siesta. We then strolled down through the orchards to the river, plucked some roots of wild mint from the water's edge, to carry back for potting and eventual installation in the yet to be created chaplaincy house garden. Angela picked some orange blossom and half a dozen oranges for me to take home to Clare. The fragrance of the spring sierras now fills our dining room, and fresh oranges were served up for pudding.

And yes, the Telefonica man, bless him, phoned again in the morning to ask about the key. I had to tell him that I expected to obtain a contact number later in day, but couldn't say when that would mean I'd have a key. I hope he understood my careful slow English. Indeed when I got back to Los Boliches, just before six, I tried ringing the contact numbers received during the day, but only found office answering machine messages, barely decipherable. The resident key holder's house, just down the street still appears as if the occupants are away. 

Ah well, the world still has the Chaplaincy mobile phone number, but few callers seem to let it ring for long enough for me to find and unlock it to take the call. Then the auto answering service cuts in with a series of nags and a robotic voice in Spanish which is simply too fast (and often too crackly) for a learner to decipher. Still, I am much comforted by the diligence of the engineer who calls daily for a progress report so that he can get on with hooking us up. I can't imagine getting that quality of service from British Telecom.

Office moving - downs and ups

Today was office moving day. Unusually for me, I drove in nice and early, before the office removers had started working our end of the room, borrowed a flat bed trolley and moved all the electronic equipment I'd packed up down to the car parked with permission in the basement. I drove over to Wharton Street and waited until the guy with the bollard keys returned to let me into the pedestrian precinct, just as other service vehicles were moving out for the day. 

With official Council authorisation I parked outside the library door and delivered four crates of sensitive documents and half a dozen pieces of computer equipment quickly, carrying everything up the stairs to the equivalent of a second floor office, with vital help from Julie. The lift, when not used by the removers was too slow to be useful. By half past eleven the vital computers were running and Julie was carrying on where she left off yesterday, generating invoices. So, I took the car home, had a coffee, then returned by bus to get on with setting up the network. 

The PMR engineers came in to set up the SaftyNet software on the newly acquired Windows 8 PC. I must have forgotten to log off properly after configuration yesterday, as it kept defaulting to the email address login page, rather than the computer only user area login specially set up for SafetyNet installation. The guys had the correct password, but it didn't work. Windows was presuming exclusively an internet login was required, regardless of the fact that there's no internet connected router until BT installs new phone lines for us. Should have been yesterday, my be some time next week. Despite promises BT don't do quick! 

Anyway, I returned to find two bemused engineers, and had to dive straight into troubleshooting, as I didn't understand why the option of different logins were't available from the initial screen. Trouble is that Microsoft presume those who are forced to purchase their operating system can/need to/must/should do things their way, and bury vital options without making the trail to find them easy. I'm not enjoying hearing how to use this operating system, it hinders my workflow, reduces my control. And why anyone should presume the universe of users all want one and the same user interface on every device, beats me. Do these super inteliigent people not understand the difference between big and small screens, proper physical keyboard and silly jumping around on-screen keyboards? 

I left early to complete my packing and relax, but got a panic call to say that the metal foot, part of the stand on the new SafetyNet PC had not arrived in the box with it. I swore that I packed it. It can't have been lost. But not all the unpacking had been done, and won't happen until Monday. I was so busy troubleshooting the log-in issue I didn't notice the problem with the stand. Such a pity. If I had noticed, I'd have hunted down the piece, knowing what I was looking for, and which in crate it might be hiding. In the end, there was nothing I could do except let go, and get an good night's sleep.

   

New Year comes

It rained most of New Year's eve, but Jasmine was happily confined indoors most of the time, playing with Clare's god-child Anwen. The mums and grannies even managed to get the kids out into the park to play on the swings and roundabouts for an hour during a brief respite. I went to the office to take the newly set up 17" laptop to its new abode. Getting it to work with the office router turned out to be a time consuming nightmare, nothing to do with this machine, but with a desktop machine which was both hard wired to the router and had its wireless card switched on. I had it on in order to set it up to synchronise with Windows Sky Drive. 

It wasn't obvious at all but I suspected something was amiss when I first spotted a 'wireless available' icon flash up as well as the wired network icon at boot time. The BT router isn't the newest piece of kit, and this model has given us many hours of confusion and tribulation in the past for no apparent reason. Now and then it needs a reboot to get every device back on line, but it didn't fix the issue this time around. Eventually I concentrated attention on the desktop PC, established the wireless card was running and competing with the wired connection for the router's attention. Once I'd switched off the desktop PC wireless off the router stopped misbehaving and accepted the new workstation's wireless login. At least I learned something but it slowed me down prevented other jobs from getting finished and delayed my departure, so that I had to walk home as the normal evening bus service had be this time simply withered away - so I was late for supper again.

Once Jasmine had gone to bed, Rachel went into town to see the New Year in with some dancing. Clare and I snuggled up on the sofa in front of the S4C review of the year programme, which saw us through to midnight. We then went up to the attic bedroom and watched the fireworks erupting into a clear black sky from the heart of the Millennium Stadium just over a mile away. Quite a good spot from which to contemplate the festivities, rather than exhaust ourselves joining in. I found myself thinking a lot about the joys of last New Year's Eve festivities en famille in Taormina. I confess that dark cold rainy Sicily was a much more cheerful place to be than dark cold rainy Cardiff.

  

Reading Week diversion

No need to get up early this morning as College routine is suspended in Reading Week. I walked there across Llandaff Fields mid-morning, and was rewarded with the distant sight of scores of gulls and crows, some pidgeons and magpies searching busily for food on the grass, suddenly all rising into the air, as if disturbed by some invisible force. Then I heard a handful of gulls above and behind me, high in the air over Penhill, crying out as they wheeled round and round. Then I noticed in the midst of them the larger form of a buzzard in a hunting mood, or so the gulls thought. It's the first time I've noticed one in such a built up area. I should keep a lookout for them in future.

This afternoon I joined the College administrative staff for a hands on learning session about the Moodle content management system, beloved of many in the educational world. It was developed as a free Open Source learning support tool by teachers for teachers, and it's an excellent resource for managing the complexities of courses that involve hundreds of students and scores of teacher throughout the year. It was a brief introduction prior to a visit tomorrow to Trinity College Bristol to see how their Moodle system operates.

At teatime, I took the bus into town and the CBS office to install the network drive and get it running to serve the three computers in use there. It's a sophisticated piece of equipment which permits remote access to its contents from computers away from the office. The installation routine was easy, but the rest was a problem, due to the BT modem we use. Later in the evening when I was at home, and Ashley was in the office, as neither of us knew how to enable port forwarding on the router, Ashley spent more than half an hour with the BT tech support team trying to do this without success, so it'll have to be tried again tomorrow. So annoying that it didn't 'just work'.

 

Smart but not so smart

I went into the office again today at lunch time to finish off work on the business plan and circulate it. A parcel arrived in the mail from British Telecom. It was meant to have come yesterday along with a replacement phone for Ashley, but the promised item didn't turn up. The BT help line worker swore it had been mailed - a computer said so after all. In the ensuing investigation, prompted by Ashley nagging them, a store keeper was dispatched to check reality against the computer record and found our unsent package. Apparently the office work isn't done in the place from where goods are distributed, indeed the office work isn't always done in the office, as some of BT's staff work from home. Remote administration clearly has its draw backs.

Anyway the missing parcel was a freebie, part of a bigger compensation package for the messes made serially during out three office re-locations over the past two years. We'd asked for a SIM card that could link my phone to the CBS BT account, to replace my PAYG package for work purposes. BT gave us an expensive Blackberry Bold plus a SIM card. Now I'm faced with having to get used to a bright new piece of technology with an unfamiliar user interface and a keyboard equally as fiddly as an on screen virtual keyboard. And I'm only just about accustomed to that after six months of use.

The Blackberry is great at internet functions and has copied both my email contact lists into its memory and merged them, which means I  have scores of double entries as the two accounts have gradually overlapped over years of accidental misuse. How on earth I get my real working phone directory from one set to the other I have yet to work out. There a few phone numbers in either of my Gmail contact lists, as I have never needed to use them to store numbers. So, I have a big mess to sort out before I go much further.

These big smart clever guys only think they know what we insignificant if paying users want to do with our data, and always give us too many options, confusingly presented, therefore time wasting, therefore less than useful. I confess that I am deeply ungrateful for these anonymous efforts to hog my time with menial tasks. We were better off when we used just a paper note book to store our numbers and made the effort to look them up and dial each time, but I don't think we realise it, as we've got used to be enslaved by inflexible information systems.

As I was on my home from work Ashely and I spoke on the phone about something I'd forgotten to tell him earlier, He told me there was an emergency in progress with streets blocked off after someone had run amok in a white van and knocked people over in several different locations. The seriousness of this only became apparent when I got home and listened to the news before heading off to St Luke's to say the evening Mass. It had happened only a mile or so up the road from church. Although we didn't know any detailed information, we offered the Mass for all involved, aware of the disturbing impact this would have, especially on Glanely's Parish Church of the Resurrection, our nearest neighbour in Canton.
 

White Lion reprieve & BT blues

Sunday duties today took me out to Llansannor again, the most remote of the places in Cowbridge Benefice which I have to visit. Now that the narrow lanes are rich with growing vegetation, missing a vital sign post was easy and I realised I'd gone wrong somewhere. Relying on my memory of the whereabout of the village and the church which stands outside it in the overall landscape, I kept going until I found another turning that led me down into the hidden valley, right to where I needed to be. 

Getting from there to Ystradowen for the second Eucharist of the morning was comparatively easy. I was delighted to see that the White Lion pub next to the church no longer had a 'for sale' sign attached to its inn sign, and there were curtains up in the windows, and a light on. The churchwarden told me that it had been sold to a builder who already owned a pub somewhere else. He was going to carry out the needed renovations which the previous owners had not been able to afford, and re-open as a pub in due course. She was pleased the new owner has decided to re-paint the exterior in its traditional white. I wondered if the present pink colour had received planning permission, given the prominence of the building on a main road. It's good to think that this vital rural social hub will have a new lease of life.

I arrived home earlier than usual, ahead of Clare returning from the farmers' market. After lunch, the rest of the day was devoted to blog updating, looking through the week's photographs and uploading them. (They can be viewed here. Sorry about the excess of train photos - irresistible.).

Up in Ffestiniog, we had a decent Orange signal, which meant I could check emails on my phone, but no BT signal whatsoever. There was no interconnectivity between BT and other mobile service providors. Getting on line in an area where there was a BT signal also proved impossible for reasons I could not fathom. I know the laptop software is up to date and working. With this same wireless dongle I surfed and used Skype from Sta Pola del Este in Spain last October, thanks to an agreement between BT and Spanish Orange services. So why doesn't this arrangement work here?  Don't tell me. Excuses are unacceptable. The service BT claims to provide is a national disgrace. Oh sure I could have used the local wireless BT Openzone service, but not without paying. Why should I have to pay when I have a registered BT internet device failing to deliver a service it is meant to provide?

   

BT incompetence

Thursday afternoon I took my work laptop into the Motorpoint office and set it up. The BT broadband link was quickly up and running, along with an email requiring urgent attention. We were less fortunate with the phone connection, running on the same line however. It came and went several times - rather unusual, the man on the help line thought - somebody in the Stadium House telephone exchange not far away, was messing with something they shouldn't have been. We had two BT Open Reach engineers visit within half an hour of each other, neither knowing of the other's assignment. Although the line was declared fully operational, no incoming or outgoing calls were possible from the land-line soon after the second one left. But thankfully the broadband stayed running. 

Today I took the car into town with files I had been safeguarding at home, and then we shuttled the heavy network laser printer and smaller items of furniture which hadn't yet been collected, across to the new office. It'll take a while to sort everything out, but I have my important stuff where it should be, under lock and key. More than a dozen people are working in the new office. It's twice as large as the second floor of Charles Street. Our workspace is about the same size. It has a door on to the balcony opposite, for fresh air, vital in so warm an environment, and the kitchen is next to us.

Some time during the day, the facility for call divert to Ashley's mobile was switched off, robbing our clientèle of a vital lifeline for hours. He spent hours on another phone complaining, arguing with a succession of call centre operatives to get the service re-instated immediately. CBS pays British Telecom for the highest standard of service as a business client to ensure things like this don't happen during a move, to avoid  any impact on the service we provide. What a mess.

I returned at five, to cook an early meal, then go to Ely to visit a bereaved family and prepare a funeral for the elderly mother of seven children. She had brought them up single handed after her husband deserted her, and what a lively happy bunch they were, so proud and appreciative of their Mama, who'd raised them to make the most of their lives and support each other, with a great imagination and little education. She'd lived in the same house for fifty three years - where she'd moved after her Bute-town birthplace home was demolished for redevelopment. How very precious is the stability and constancy brought to home and family life by generations of working class mothers in a century of great upheavals.

After the visit, we went to Chapter Arts for a late showing of 'War Horse'. Well worth the acclaim it's had, though I didn't think much of the over saturated colour rendering of the film, and un-natural natural lighting. If it was intended for theatrical effect, it wasn't a success, to my mind, as it made some scenes look contrived, like the film sets they probably were.