Hospital journeys

Once more, up bright and early, after a short night's sleep yesterday, to deliver Clare to the Heath hospital for a seven thirty appointment for her eye operation. I went home, to await her call to collect her and soon fell asleep on the sofa for a couple of hours, after saying Morning Prayer. Then, I walked to the bank, where I received a call to tell me she was ready. Fortunately there was no queue, so I returned for the car, and by one o'clock, had collected her and was cooking her scrambled eggs for lunch at home. She couldn't be left alone for her first day after surgery, just in case, so I didn't go out. In between cooking meals, there were phone calls to be made arranging three meetings with bereaved families for whom I am officiating at funerals in the next fortnight. These came my way as Fr Mark is on leave.

Then, another early start today, to take Clare to an eight o'clock follow up appointment at the Heath hospital. It was to be a shorter one, so I stayed with her, and we were on our way back home shortly after eight thirty. I was interested to observe the increase in the volume of traffic between starting at seven and at seven thirty. On the return trip it was even more noticeable, with ten minute slow moving traffic queue from the hospital exit slip road to the Gabalfa flyover. Something I rarely see. Having dropped Clare off, I headed for St German's to celebrate Mass in good time, as morning traffic across the town centre around nine thirty is always slow moving. Today, it was exacerbated further by the introduction of lane closures on Newport Road, for work to be done on the central reservation, in both directions.

There were fourteen adults and thirty school children for the midweek Mass. Among the visitors on this occasion was a 94 year old lady whose family had attended St German's in the 20s and 30s, when she was a child. There was much delighted animated conversation between her and 94 year old Gwyneth, who has been a regular worshipper at the church her entire life. I was amazed to discover that our visitor is the mother of Canon Ruth Moverley, one of the first women to be ordained priest in Llandaff diocese, whom we know through the Ignatian Prayer group.

Her mum was proud of the fact that last week Ruth had presided over the recent 20th anniversary celebration of the ordination of women to the priesthood in a special Eucharist in Llandaff Cathedral, and justifiably so. It's lovely to think that St German's has figured in the lives of both women and men called to the priesthood, regardless of the fact that it has been served by celibate male clergy for the first 120 years of its history. When Fr Phelim becomes priest-in-charge, he'll be their first incumbent to be married with children, a change which most will regard as a welcome change.

After lunch I walked to the first of my three bereavement visits, organised yesterday, in a street the other side of Thompson's Park. I was asked to deliver the eulogy, and returned home with biographical notes provided by the widower. I assembled them into a text I'd be happy to deliver, then walked back again to pop a copy of it through the door. By that time it was dark and the as good as full moon was rising over the hill in the park, apparently it'll be completely full just before dawn tomorrow. Tonight the sky is clear, so Cardiff gets the full benefit of beautiful moonlight. A wondrous sight, as ever.

On my walks this past few days I have been trying out a simple pedometer app on my phone, as I was unsatisfied with the accuracy of Google fit. So far, I'm pleased with the results it delivers.
   
  

Long walk between shops

Another late and lazy Saturday morning, time to complete downloading and then uploading to our Golden Wedding Anniversary web album the series of photos emailed to me by Richard Johnson over the past few late nights. He's a late bird, as I am, and we talk about computers and Linux in our email exchanges, one of the few regular users I know. 

Just after an early lunch, Clare was collected by taxi,  for an afternoon at the University School of Optometry, where she had agreed to let her eye condition be examined by different post graduate students, as part of their training. With a free afternoon, and a couple of small shopping errands, one in Canton and one in Gabalfa, I went out on a long walk connecting the two. First, down Llandaff Road to the Apothecary Shop, then along Cowbridge Road East, over the Taff River bridge and into the Castle grounds. The weather was mild and the rain stayed away, but there was a slight mist in the air, letting you know it was winter. Bute Park was busy with people walking dogs or shepherding children, taking advantage of a break in the wet weather. We're so fortunate to have this resource, right at the heart of the city. 

I walked out at the far end of Bute Park, and along the trail that leads to the retail zone, that is home to Staples, my second port of call, to buy another flash drive so I can experiment with doing a system back up, something I've not done so far with Windows 10 on any of my machines. These no longer seem to come with a separate partition for system backup/restore files. It stands to reason that a drive failure could make it impossible to perform a system restoration from a partition on the same hard disk. Yet hard drives may well outlast the usefulness of a computer in an ordinary domestic context, and maybe most offices too. Pre-installing operating system software and not setting up a recovery partition saves manufacturing costs, making for cheaper mass market pricing. 

Users get nagged about making their own system backup these days, but it's not easy. Even when using a separate hard drive, this process has a reputation for failing, and requires a certain measure of experience and confidence. I suspect many people don't bother, if not forget to, like me. I have not been motivated by anything other and wanting to learn how to do so. Any Windows operating system which fails on a machine of mine will simply get replaced by Linux, sooner or later. Anyway, I got a 32GB flash drive for just £6.99, the January sales are on with a vengeance now, shelves to be cleared to make way for new stock, with threatened price increases due to the weaker pound. Pity there's no longer anything I need.

Clare called to say she was home, just as I got to Staples, so I got back as quickly as I could, my poor knee performing better than yesterday. When I arrived, Google Fit told me that I'd done 7.2km and exceeded (for the first time) the 10,000 steps daily target, and by 10%, in a hundred minutes walk. I was pleased with that, but it's not something I'll have enough time to repeat every day. I was pretty tired and sore footed, too tired to go out to Fr Roy's 'at home' as intended this evening. I had to settle for taking it easy, preparing a sermon, investigating backup image making. The two good crime series on telly were both repeats of episodes seen a couple of times already. It gets easier and easier to spend an entire evening without feeling compelled to switch it on.

What I did discover about Google Fit, when later in the evening I looked at the day's data on first the phone and then the tablet was that only the walking time elapsed was correct and the same on both devices. The distance walked, on the phone was half what it had shown when I'd stopped walking earlier, and on the tablet, a tenth of the amount. Both devices had been in the same location all the evening, and only the tablet moved, very occasionally. Very odd behaviour indeed. I wonder why? Perhaps the GPS tracking gets muddled inside a house where it may be masked. Or not quite as smart an app as it seems?

    

Epiphany Day

I slept well, but having woken up early, went back to sleep again, listening to the news on the radio, and was still in bed when Clare left to go swimming. Some minutes later, she returned to retrieve her house key, rang the doorbell, but I wasn't awakened by the doorbell, so she had to borrow the spare house key kept by one of our neighbours. I'd had nine hours sleep by the time a got up for breakfast, and tree tidying, fortunately with no appointments or deadlines to meet.

After lunch, I walked into town, and visit the temporary National Express coach station in Sofia Gardens to renew my discount card and book a ticket for a day trip to London on Monday, to see my sister June now that she's nearly recovered from the nasty long drawn out cold she didn't want me to catch from her. Actually there's more risk of me catching a cold or 'flu on public transport. It's difficult to steer clear of all ailments at this time of year. I've been very lucky so far.

From there, I walked into Queen Street, looked in a few shops and eventually headed for St German's to celebrate the Mass of Epiphany day at six. I didn't want to take the car and risk getting stuck in the Friday evening rush hour traffic, and walking is what I need to do. Even so, that 10,000 steps a day target set by Google Fit is still eluding me.

There were sixteen of the regulars for Mass, and no organist, so I led the singing of two hymns and the Ordinary of the Mass unaccompanied. Although we'd set out with the idea of it being just a Low Mass, as there were a couple of servers, we decided to have incense, and then I decided to launch the singing. It's something I've not done much of at St German's, except at the Wednesday school Mass, but I used to do it regularly for a Solemn Weekday Mass at St Agnes. People sang well and heartily, as all the music was familiar. 

What was remarkable was to sing in that environment without benefit of organ. When it's switched on but not in use, though it's not noisy, the low level sound of pumped air is there in the background. Switched off, the pure beauty of the building's acoustic is more noticeable, and the reverberation just perfect for unaccompanied singing. No wonder it's a favoured venue for broadcast recording and choral concerts. I think everyone sang their best tonight because we could all hear the difference. We must do this again - what am I saying? We'll have to do it again, as the organ will be out of action for some weeks in Lent (a most suitable season for this), to install a new organ bellows. That will be an opportunity to make a different kind of joyful noise unto the Lord.

Angela brought me home by car, to be welcomed by a big dish of veggies and pasta prepared by Clare for supper, and there was time to watch an action movie, 'The Taking of Pelham 123' on Channel 4, one I'd not seen before, with lots of high speed rushing around and violence, with insane baddies. Another melodrama in which frenetic New York townscapes and NYPD incompetent driving (or is it rubbish cars with bad handling?) clog up the dramatic thread, and dialogue which struggles to work amid all the sound and fury. I don't know why I bothered really.

   

Tracking myself

Yesterday was cold and slipped by unremarkably. It was sunset before I ventured out for some exercise so instead of my usual routine walk, I circumnavigated Thompson's Park - literally - it shuts at half past three at this time of year, so I walked right around the periphery instead, a distance of just over half a kilometre, according to the Google Fit app which I installed on my phone for curiosity. I'm not really sure how accurate it really is, now how it's possible to check this, nor have a read any reviews yet, but it's interesting to see what it does record, nevertheless.

There were ten of us at St German's for Mass I celebrated this morning, after a brief chat with people in the day centre, I headed for home to await a call to collect Clare from the dentist's. A visit was needed after the crow capping one of her molars came out during a meal on Boxing day. Alas, it was too late to save the tooth, as part of it detached with the crown itself, so she needed an extraction. She's going to be vulnerable to infection for the next few days. This is especially bad news as her next eye operation is due next Tuesday, so she'll need to be scrupulously careful with her wounded gum until then.

Today was somewhat warmer, so I went earlier for my afternoon walk on the course I've set myself, using Google Fit. I was disappointed to find that the distance logged was less then my guesstimate, although it did seem to log time elapsed and steps walked correctly. I'm not up to the recommended basic of 10,000 steps a day yet, but as my knee improves, so will the target be easier to reach.

I was delighted to receive several photographs taken at our Golden Wedding celebration last August from our old friend Richard Johnson. It was good to see the occasion through the eyes of another person and recall what a wonderful meeting of family and friends we had that day.