SIM satisfaction.

I celebrated Wednesday's 'class Mass' at St German's, then returned home and cooked lunch, before taking Clare to the train for Coventry. She's looking after Rhiannon over the weekend, while Kath and Anto are gigging far up north in Cumbria. Apart from a couple of hours watching episodes of Spooks and Happy Valley on catch up TV, the rest of the day was devoted either to Lent blog writing or preparing material for the office. Somehow, even when I have time to myself and only me to look after, I still end up getting to bed later than intended.

I woke and breakfasted earlier than usual this morning, and having had less sleep than I really needed, I spent the morning doing very little, quietly, with the occasional doze in the armchair thrown in. One nice thing about being retired is not feeling guilty about such treasured indolence. I spent the afternoon in the office, by way of a visit to the Central Square building site, to take more photos of the construction work on the foundations, now under way.

I chatted with a lorry dispatcher outside a gate on Wood Street. He told me proudly that he'd seen 143 lorries of excavated subsoil off-site the day before. These are big vehicles, and must be carrying a 20-30 tonne load, so that's about 3,000 tonnes a day. The basement car park will be four and a half metres below ground level, 150 by 250m surface area. The weather as pretty rotten lately, but I was surprised later to discover it's over three weeks since I last visited the site to snap the progress.

After a wasted trip to the bank failing to satisfy all the requirements for signatory changes to the BCRP Board account, I spent another hour and a half on MS Publisher in the office, the set off to St German's for Stations of the Cross at seven. On the way, I called in the EE shop in Grand Arcade to top up my personal PAYG phone, and was told that I needed to exchange my old Orange SIM card for an EE SIM card, as before too long it would cease to be functional, now that the merger of companies at technical and administrative levels is moving to completion. As I had ten minutes to spare, I waited around in the shop until a PAYG SIM could be issued and top up payment taken.

Since Orange UK became EE, about three years ago, I have been unable to log into my phone account to check balance or top up as the Orange site denied all knowledge of me and my phone number or email address, although I could still top up by other methods. Also my present phone, about two and a half years old, has always needed to acquire the network manually, except when I'm abroad, where an Orange SIM still works automatically.

As soon as I returned home after Stations of the Cross, I swapped the SIM cards and found it worked automatically first time, perfectly. Moreover, I was able to download the EE mobile phone app, to enable me to check my balance and top up on-line if I wish to do so. Nice to have the phone working properly at last.

Think citrous

Last night we had a family meal at Stefano's restaurant, one of our favourite haunts, in Romilly Crescent around the corner. After a day of much play and not enough food Rhiannon seemed to be under the weather. The transformation effected by her usual plate of spaghetti with butter was amazing!

What a relief to get up this morning to normal internet connectivity once again. I was reminded of how we felt after occasional power blackouts when I was a child. After a brief visit to College to collect information for report writing, I drove Rhiannon and Kath to Cardiff Central station for their train home, and after lunch, a brief spell of catch-up in the CBS office.  As I left, I was given a box of Israeli Clementines from Jaffa. I don't know why they came my way, but the same happened last year a few months earlier, and we turned them into fabulous jam to share. 

Over the course of the year, however, my eating habits have changed significantly. Time spent in Spain, and then Sicily have made me into a citrous fruit eater in a way that has never been the case in my entire life. When I was young, post-war, oranges and bananas were a rarity in the Valleys, fruit eating wasn't a habit easily acquired. 

After many months of mediterranean diet and successful spare weight loss, I now think nothing of eating half a dozen pieces of citrous fruit a day. This past year, I've had far fewer colds and escaped the common round of nasty viruses. I'm willing to attribute this to improved resistance as much as added vitamin C, but who knows? Needless to say the Clementines this year will not get turned into jam. The gift box represents half a week's provision, given what I've been buying from the market on my way to and from the office this year.

  

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?

   

Personal technology breakthrough

After Mike left this morning, I went into town with a few errands to accomplish, and ended up buying my very first Smartphone. I've been dithering about doing this for ages. My Sony Walkman phone has not been quite the quality experience that I'd expected it to be, but I have used it for two years and put up with a certain level of irritation about its user friendliness. Recently the sound has become cracked and tinny, adding to the irritation, so the question was, should I just get another basic phone with limited but useful functions, or make the effort to learn how to use something new and  much more capable?

In the end I plumped for a Samsung Galaxy Mini, at a fifty percent discount using my Orange PAYG phone fund. Getting started with it, as a complete ignoramus was a lot less onerous than I expected, though I suspect I shall never exploit the full range of its features. Most importantly, it's easy to handle even if I still need specs on to read messages clearly. I guess occasionally it may be useful to to access emails, display e-tickets etc,  but I'm not sure how much web surfing I'll be tempted to do on such a small screen, even with a free allowance of 250MB a month for a year. Give me the luxury of a fifteen or twenty inch screen any time!