Safeguarding reprise

With the news story about the Liverpool suicide bomber still unfolding, I've been pondering on what led a young asylum seeking convert to Christianity to commit such an act of apostasy in the eyes of all three Abrahamic faiths which incorporate the Ten Commandments. Clearly frustration and despair at having his life on kept hold for so long due to the slowness of his asylum request process generates such desperation. 

He's reported as suffering from poor mental health. He seems to have acted alone, deliberate in planning his attack over the previous six months. None of this says anything about his spiritual state. Three years ago he was baptized and confirmed, leaving aside his identity as an Iraqui muslim to become a member ot the Church of England. Was his religious conversion a lying pretence? Did estrangement from his native culture leave him lonely a stranger in a strange land, despite the welcome and fellowship he received. 

The power of evil to insinuate itself into the lives of the strongest and weakest people alike. Few apart from the most conservative thinking religious people are at ease with talking about 'the Devil' these days, perhaps because such talk has been linked to abusive behaviour in times past. Good though we are at analysing and interpreting human thought and action, we don't have adequate language for thinking about the 'mystery of iniquity' unless we can speak about wickedness at a spiritual level.   

After breakfast today, I had my second two hour Safeguarding Zoom session. It was comprehensive and through, and demanding of attention. Interestingly enough, he session over-ran by ten minutes due to an unscheduled but worthwhile discussion about 'spiritual abuse', a phenomenon not unknown among zealous well meaning Christians, who fail to respect the personal boundaries of others. 

I was quite tired by the end, and could have done with fresh air to clear my head, but there was lunch to cook in time for Clare's return from town. When we'd eaten I went and collected the weekly veggie bag, and then the grocery order from Beanfreaks. 

The plasterer turned up to finish repairing the kitchen wall as I was going out by car on a third excursion to the main Post Office to collect a small parcel which the postman failed to deliver when we were out. Traffic was slow moving, and as I was crawling along, the fuel warning light came on, so before returning home I drove to Tesco's filling station to get petrol. By the time I got back, the plasterer had finished and left. Now we have to wait for the patch to dry out before painting it and the rest of the kitchen walls.

Rufus sent me the document to review he's been working on, which we discussed when we met yesterday. With his agreement I did some editing and revision to make the outreach project it describes presentable. It was only after supper that I got around to a proper walk for the day, in the dark. I've made an effort to optimise daylight hours outdoors and avoid walking in the dark. It's frustrating to run out of hours, but sometimes inevitable.

Safeguarding training resumes

At last, after breakfast, the two hour Zoom Safeguarding conference I've been waiting for with the Church in Wales Safeguarding trainer, and nearly thirty trainees from all over the Province. For the most part, we were talked to, clearly and straightforwardly or shown slides and video. The presentations were carefully constructed to build the framework within which Safeguarding procedure makes sense. More of that next week. The course content showed signs of relevant recent updating around on-line issues, which is good. There were two five minute slots for breakout groups of 4-5 people, not long enough to my mind, to get acquainted and open up, but yes, it was all worthwhile nevertheless.

Zoom worked as designed with no serious glitches except the odd bout of microphone feedback. Next week's session is at the same time, ten o'clock, which means I'll have to forego the weekly 'Class Mass' at St German's. It's a sacrifice, but I have no alternative to complete the course asap. It's a precondition of my next application for Permission to Officiate, due in the New Year. 

Once I've done this it'll be necessary to approach the Diocese in Europe Safeguarding team and request to re-start their programme, which I failed to complete eight months ago, because I got the start time of the Zoom session wrong - CET not GMT, the same before or after brexit - what a fool I am! Tonight I emailed the diocesan Safeguarding training officer, to re-activate the equivalent process for Europe.

I went out for a walk to clear my head after two hours glued to the computer Zooming, while Clare cooked us a delicious lentil and veg curry. I went out again after lunch and walked again, talking on the phone with Ashley, as we hadn't spoken for two weeks. This month, he told me, Cardiff Business Safe Limited will finally, officially cease trading, then our office in Motorpoint Arena will be shut down and cleared out. 

Very little has happened there for the past year and a half because of covid. Not much by way of events happens at the Arena either. I think the place is destined to be shut down, demolished and the site repurposed, for God knows what. The Guildford Place site opposite the Arena is to house an extra tall tower block behind the retro facade of the former row of low rise Victorian buildings. Not more student accommodation? I hope. What the city needs is more low cost social housing, but land and property profiteers seem to rule the roost.

It's Rachel's birthday today, so Kath arranged a family Zoom call, so we can sing her Happy Birthday and tell her how much we miss her. Two Zoom calls in one day. Heavens above!

After a happy birthday half hour with Rachel, including her showing us her garden in Tempe, I thought I'd investigate how to get the NHS 'covid passport'. The NHS website is clear, simple and well presented, but in order to access what you need, you have to establish your identity, setting up an account login with a two stage process then giving your NHS number, not to be confused with your NI number (as I did at first) plus a photo of your passport which is checked by face recognition software using you device's webcam. 

Once they have confirmed your identity you can move on to get what you came for. Except if you're in NHS Wales territory. There is a route within the website to the page where this is available, but I thought it was embedded in a surfeit of information. More prominent one click access would have raised a few less curses against the system. But it it did deliver a QR code in the end, valid for only a month, and there's one for domestic use and another one for international travel. Then I decided to install the NHS app on my Blackberry to repeat the process and down load the QR code to my phone, requiring a complete repeat of the process. At least it seems renewal whenever required is simpler once to have proved you are who NHS England has verified who you are.

It's a lot of hoops to jump through to acquire a digital document I am unlikely to use unless I go abroad, and that's not going to happen this year, for sure. Thank goodness the QR code isn't needed to cross Offa's Dyke. At last a tiny consolation for being England's oldest colony!

Training postponed

I was in bed by eleven and woke up to seven thirty. My fit-bit app congratulated me for getting to be at the right time and sleeping the right number of hours. I can't remember when it last did that, it's so long. As the device was charging during the night, I entered the time data manually. Such foolishness to think that kind of message does anything other than annoy. I woke up several times in the night. Before first light, I saw the bright crescent of a waning moon rising in a clear chilly sky. Wondrously beautiful.

Thanks to early rising I was out walking in the park by nine thirty, clad my winter jacket, scarf and gloves. Recent rain and cold weather have accelerated the colour change of the trees, all are now washed with gold. I went down the Taff Trail on the east side of the river, and saw a cormorant perched precariously on the overhanging branch of the limb of a tree fallen into the river, and regretted not having a camera with me. I used my Blackberry phone, but it doesn't zoom into subjects much at all and the quality isn't good, but here it is.

While I was out I had a message to say that this afternoon's Safeguarding zoom had to be cancelled due to the sickness of the trainer. Thanks to the same Blackberry phone, I consulted my diary and responded to the request for a re-booking appointment next Tuesday morning. I returned at eleven and worked for an hour completing this Thursday's Morning Prayer video, then Clare arrived from her study group, so I downed tools and cooked lunch, and finished the job afterwards.

When Clare woke up from her fiesta we went shopping together, first to Wickes on Western Avenue to get dust covers for the kitchen, due for them remedial work on the plaster. We discovered that Wickes had closed during the pandemic and been replaced by a budget supermarket called B&W, We drove out to the B&Q superstore at Culverhouse Cross to get what we needed, but not before a visit to Aldi's for the week's grocery shopping. We both observed that it's a long time since we did anything quite so domestic together, and certainly by car, as normally we walk to the shops locally.

Having agreed with Brian the organist a possible programme for an Advent Sunday Mass with a RWCMD choir singing at Saint Germans, I sent our proposals to Andrea for consideration. It's not as big a challenge as last Sunday's, but that will probably be welcomed, as it's only a week after a special afternoon music by students who have been rehearsing in church all term. 

I had intended to go to this evening's All Soul's Mass at St Luke's, but got distracted by other things I was doing after returning from the shops and ended not going, rather than turning up late. We watched some old comedy programmes on telly after supper and then a really interesting documentary about the remarkable paintings of Vermeer on Sky Arts. 

Now, early to bed, as I have a ten o'clock Mass at St German's tomorrow morning, with a class of children from Tredegarville School attending, young kids for whom this will be a new experience as the 'class Masses' stopped for the past eighteen months of the pandemic.

Safeguarding re-training

This morning, after breakast and vacuuming the carpets, I made an effort to get out of the house and walk, to make the most of a sunny morning. Leaving daily exercise till the afternoon often means in autumn and winter I end up walking in the dark for part of the time. I'm not concerned about safety after dark, but not benefiting from the optimum amount of daylight.

Clare had started chopping vegetable by the time I got back, and I took over cooking a sauce to go with pasta so she could get on with other things. Then after lunch, I did the new Church In Wales on-line basic safeguarding training. It's a slight improvement on what I did four years ago, using the Moodle on-line learning tool. It's one annoyance is the use of backing music over speech with subtitles that has a catchy pop beat. You can't switch that off if you find it distracting. A pity.

I needed a couple of tries to get 100% of the Q&A right as there were a couple of small points where I felt the correct answer was debatable. There's no discussion or feedback. This is a training in compliance, not thinking for yourself. Hopefully this comes later, in the stage two modules. Tomorrow afternoon I do the first part of stage two in a zoom session. I hope it works properly. I hate having to do these things on-line. Will we ever go back to making face to face meetings the default?

Then I produced an edit of yesterday's liturgy with just the pieces sun by the choir. With the prospect of a similar service for Advent Sunday, I researched on-line for suitable music to discuss before proposing a selection to Andrea at RWCMD. We received plan for an afternoon programme of live music by RWCMD students on 20th November, a special thank you for their use of St German's this term. Clare is delighted as it includes an 'AmserJazzTime' hour at the end.

After supper and the Archers in the evening we watched a new episode of NCIS together and then started the slow journey to get to bed a bit earlier, and benefit a bit appropriately from darkness

National isolation day one

Nothing in the post from UHW again today. I would have expected to hear by now. It's distressing. It was also annoying to have my Llandaff Diocesan safeguarding CRB check application form returned to me in the post because when I filled it in and did the identifying document check at Llys Esgob two weeks ago I missed a second form authorising consent to digital data sharing for safeguarding. Earlier this week I found the un-filled form and posted it to Sarah the Bishop's chaplain, but she's not in the office this week, so it won't have been dealt with. It's just as well my Llandaff PTO doesn't run out until the end of April, and I requested my application rather than wait to be notified. Both ways on top of Brexit starting at midnight in Brussels yesterday, a rotten start to the weekend.

I still can't believe brexit has started, let alone come to terms with it. It breaks my heart. Separation and division ferment conflict. Eleven months of negotiations now begin in earnest. Isolation makes us vulnerable. I believe those who have a high opinion of Britain's strength and capacity as a lone global player are profoundly mistaken. It's another propaganda con-trick. Just how vulnerable Britain now becomes may well be revealed in the coming years. All of us will suffer, apart from those who can figure out how to make a profit from the country's plight, then cut and run. 

I walked into town, keeping Clare company while she did some shopping in the afternoon. It was a six nations rugby international afternoon, and while Wales were imposing a humiliating defeat on the Italian ream, the streets and shops were very quiet. We saw a stall set up on Queen Street by a Muslim non-violent anti-extremism group wanting to convey to the world that authentic Islam in no way condones the evils perpetrated in its religious name. Good luck to them. I wonder what impact their campaign will have in a society which habitually stereotypes everyone and feeds on fake news poor quality journalism and 'newspeak', fond of calling good things bad and bad things good in a way which would have George Orwell saying "I told you so." from beyond the grave.

More scanning later in the day, this time a roll of film from a Greek island holiday in 2000 and from the wedding feast of Delbert and Ara in Geneva, on which occasion I played guitar with a Mariachi band of Latin American ex-pats in between courses. The daft things I did in those days!

A re-run of a Montalbano episode seen twice before on BBC Four tonight. Brillant slapstick from the inimitable Catarella, but a sad tale of betrayal, jealous passion and compassion, spanning a thousand miles from Sicily to the eastern Italian Alps.

  

  

Borowski in veiw

I spent this morning in St Michael's College with a group of other retired clergy with permissions to officiate in the diocese, at a Safeguarding training session, run by the Provincial Safeguarding team. It is and should be requirement for us to ensure we're well briefed about those really sensitive pastoral issues one comes across from time to time. This was prompted by recent legislation changes regarding responsibility for reporting potentially abusive situations and how this should be undertaken, but it still relies on pastoral awareness, common sense and discernment to know if action is required. And that's not often easy, if as a visiting priest you're not fully acquainted with the people and their context. It was a good and refreshing experience nevertheless.

I returned home for lunch, and afterwards walked into town to shop for some small items. I rang Ashley and then we met in John Lewis' top floor restaurant for a cup of tea and scone, for a catch-up before returning home to cook supper and eat it with Clare when she returned from her choir rehearsal. Then an hour watching an episode of 'Inspector Borowski' on the All Four streaming site. I'm about a third of my way through a 'box set' package of episodes of european TV series, branded as 'Walter Presents'. I like this website, as it's easy to use, swift and reliable, also it's as easy to pause and resume viewing for a few minutes or a few days.

As for Inspector Borowski, he's a sympathetic character, and like so many heroes of detective fiction he is middle aged, workaholic, getting over a broken marriage and with difficult offspring. Each episode, as well as telling the story of a nasty serious crime, shows something of his everyday life and work, and his social context, in a relaxed and quite amusing way. Having said that, the most recent episode I watched was just hilarious, portraying his eccentric boss taking refuge with Borowski during a marital crisis, and a very young looking female recruit to his team who is streets ahead of everyone else in her ability to analyse and research a case, mature beyond her years. How he manages to take this in his stride in his dominantly men's world, with gentle respect and appreciation, give an insight into what positive male leadership can look like today.