Birthday family reunion

Yesterday morning we had a new Mira electric shower installed. The old one still works but has become a over sensitive to water pressure of late and shutting down while in use. With a house full of visitors this weekend we didn't want to risk a cold damp bathroom experience for all. It's nineteen years old, and we've been fortunate that only once in that time have we needed to call out a technician to fix it.

It was another hot and sunny day, giving me plenty of time to make an early start and apply a fresh coat of paint to the coping stones on top of the front garden wall to go with the recently repainted railings. While I was at it, with paint to spare, I also did the stones on top of Liz's front wall next door, so the entire frontage now looks bright, clean and welcoming.

I then completed tomorrow's two sermons, a shorter one for eight at St John's, and a longer one for ten thirty at St Luke's. It's good to make the extra mental effort to write a shorter simpler address which has something in it worth considering. It's harder than a longer 'Parish Communion' sermon in which I try to have something to say, however brief, on all three readings and the link between them. When I look back at sermon's I've preached previously I am often disappointed by them. Sure, they were prepared and delivered in a different setting and in different circumstances, but often major on one text at the expense of others.

Late afternoon, Kath, Anto and Rhiannon arrived followed by Owain, to celebrate Owain's fortieth birthday weekend with an excellent meal at 'La Cuina' the marvellous local Catalan restaurant in King's Road. Owain's fortunes have recently taken a turn for the better, having finally been offered a permanent contract for the web content management job he does with the DVSA, after more than two years on a temporary contract. His first original techno music compilation record published under his own 'Innate' label went live a few weeks ago and has been selling well in a international niche music market, and nominated as top distribution of the month by a leading techno magazine. A substantial reward for the patient hard work of preparation he's put into this over several years, even if it's unlikely to earn him any money.

It was an enjoyable evening, although we missed having Rachel with us. She arrives on Tuesday from Phoenix to stay for a month. Next Saturday, she sings the full gig, arranged by Clare at 'The Apothecary' tea room which we've been preparing for over the past month. I'm hoping she won't be too jet-lagged after four days back home.

I was surprised at how tired I was at supper, perhaps due to all the extra physical exercise wielding a large paintbrush and bending down a lot earlier in the day. Although I walk a lot, it's not the kind of activity I'm used to, and for that, I pay the price.

Homecoming

I woke up at 05.20 with nearly seven hours reasonable sleep behind me, and was relieved to find I could move reasonably well, as long I moved carefully. After breakfast and a final inspection of the house, I locked the house and walked to Montreux gare for the 07.24 train with twenty minutes to spare. As this train stops only at Lausanne and Genece Cornavin before the airport, it's one of the fastest of the day, an hour and ten minutes. It's crowded with commuters, students, teachers and business workers, as well as heavily laden travellers destined for the airport. I had to walk through a couple of carriages to find an empty luggage rack, let alone a seat. 

Having found both, I went to sit down, and was greeted by a smiling friendly face - Bethany-Ann, who'd been in church with her five year old daughter yesterday for the midweek Communion service, such a delightful surprise. She teaches English in both Lausanne and Geneva's Webster Universities, travelling this route by train to work several times a week. So instead of gazing at the sunrise over the lake and dozing, I enjoyed an hour's good conversation all the way to Geneva. 

Bethany-Ann's father is a retired American Lutheran pastor in Philadelphia. She teaches students from around the world, many from Arab countries. She said how filled with hope her Saudi students are at the rise of a young Crown Prince able to give them a voice through his progressive thinking and actions. Her younger sister is an academic who began as a French graduate to learn Arabic and now researches and writes on Islamic culture. Bethany-Ann is married to a Kosovan Muslim who was a refugee at the time of the Yugoslavian war and made his home in Switzerland. Such is the everyday diversity of a significant proportion of the inhabitants of Switzerland. It made for a happy conclusion to my stay.

The airport was busy. Twenty minutes to drop off my suitcase, but only ten minutes to go through security. The flight landed at Bristol ten minutes early, and I was soon on a bus for Temple Meads station. My twenty minute wait for a train turned into a half an hour wait, as the train was delayed due to 'cows on the line', which makes a change from 'leaves on the line' I suppose. Clare met me with the car at Cardiff Central, to save me lugging my case to the nearest bus stop. Home by two.

As ever, there were Windows PCs to be updated and made fit for purpose, before attempting any work on them. Sister in Law Ann arrived for the weekend at four, and Owain at six, then we walked together to 'La Cuina', the Catalan restaurant at the bottom of King's Road, for the first of Clare's birthday meals, a superb gourmet affair with an excellent bottle of Catalan wine from Vallibona de les Monjes, due north of Tarragona. Unfortunately, it rained on us as we walked home, not that it dampened our spirits after a splendid night out.

  

Tedious work but family pleasure nevertheless

This morning was given over to Sunday sermon writing. Rachel sent a message to tell us she'd won a local song writing competition for the Verde Valley River Association festival in Arizona, and would get to perform this live on stage tomorrow. We're thrilled for her. She's had such a tough time of it lately moving house in difficult conditions with little help, but she's come through, nevertheless.

Afterwards I began to think about acquiring independent web hosting for the CBS RadioNet site. With just a little surfing, I found a decently priced basic package with Host.com, and signed up for it. Next step will be to transfer our pages there and get them to work, a job I haven't done in ten years, so will need to re-learn, if I want to keep the layout and design of our existing pages on Google Sites. The sheer difficulty I had trying to link up some new company domain names to Google web hosting, since the company has changed its web security frontiers, left me feeling that we'd be better served by a simple and more easily controllable resource. Here's hoping I can make this work! 

Satisfaction with my efforts at database migration quickly faded today when Julie found some transfer anomalies I hadn't noticed. She was very kind about it, but this puts complete transfer to Libre Office Base on hold for another week. It may not be a fatal error, but I have to re-visit the creation process once more from the data source with a CSV file error check and then re-build - probably the fifth time I've done this recently. Errors, while frustrating, provide experience in the use of the Base program, and that's valuable as I find my memory for new routines of an abstract nature quickly fades. By the time I left the office, I'd got as far as making a better complete data table. All that remains now is to finish the job recreating display forms.

Owain came over early evening for a supper outing to La Cuina, a local Catalan restaurant at the bottom of King's Road, in honour of Clare's birthday, which actually falls on Sunday. The food was excellent, and so was the wine, from the Lleida area. One of the people running the restaurant is a teacher who proposes to launch a Spanish conversation group shortly. I put my name down on her list. It's high time to make use of all that I've been pumping my head with daily for the past nine months, using the Duo Lingo Spanish app.