Orthodox déjà-vu

After a good night's sleep and breakfast I had spare time to do some writing before driving to St German's for the eleven o'clock Mass this morning. I had a sermon prepared but hadn't remembered that Ross, the ordinand on Parish placement was going to preach. He was late arriving because he'd been at St Saviour's preaching beforehand, so I was surprised when he appeared, but pleased that he was going to preach. After yesterday's journey, the expenditure of energy preaching and celebrating promised to be a challenge I was working myself up to. 

I enjoyed listening to Ross and chatting with him afterwards. I was delighted to learn that his inklings of a ministerial vocation had arisen from challenging conversations with atheists among fellow undergraduates as the same happened to me in my undergraduate years. I learned that his wife is Romanian. He'd visited the country recently for the first time and been impressed by experiencing Orthodoxy in situ. It's not the kind of subject that ordinands get to learn much about, but it happened to me too. I ended up offering him some of my many books on Orthodox spirituality and theology. It will be nice to think that they will go to someone who will appreciate them.

After lunch I sat on the sofa to do my Duo Lingo exercises but instead fell soundly asleep for two hours, and then went for a walk around Thompson's Park and Llandaff Fields. I called my sister June who was fed up because she'd lost the browser bookmarks toolbar on which she greatly relies to access several of the things she most relies on. Fortunately I was able to talk her through the CTRL-Shift+B toggle routine to restore it, after two days of misery. It would all be so much easier if there weren't so much distractions and confusions involved in using Windows, with all its unhelpful notifications. It'll never be as easy to use as a Chromebook. Unfortunately it can be hard to change habitual usage after fourteen years.

Later we watched the sixth episode of Professor T, which is the finale of the first series, with a vignette at the end of the cause of the Prof's mental health issues. Nothing is being said about a second series at the moment, to know whether this set of episodes is a trial for a much longer series. There's plenty of scope in terms of story lines explore in other versions which appeared in German and Flemish. It's a matter of wait and see how popular it has proved.

The English Professor T

More clouds with intermittent sunshine and cloudbursts today with the occasional spell of strong gusts of wind. A new challenge for me this Sunday morning, having to get up early enough to be out of the house and walking down to St John's to preach at the nine o'clock Eucharist, celebrated by Fr Rhys, streamed on line from Andrew's iPhone, with a little help from my Blackberry providing a wi-fi hotspot, something his partner Martin's phone usually does, but today he and his phone were over in Germany visiting his mother.

I then walked  to St Catherine's to preach there while Fr Rhys celebrated, and also sang in the choir, as did Clare. Before we went home for lunch we had a choir practice for Wednesday's funeral, so all in all it was a busy morning. Even more so for Fr Rhys who had then to officiate at a Christening at one thirty. It's the kind of workload which us clergy would have taken in our stride a few years back, but covid safety disciplines in celebrating any public service seem to make it that much more demanding than routine used to seem. 

Church restrictions will be phased out now that Wales is down to level zero, but a legacy of tension and uncertainty still exists. Between the two Eucharists we ministered to fifty people this morning, half of what it would have been before covid. Will all the missing people return eventually? Will some be content to attend mostly on line, while others find other things to do on Sunday mornings, as have three quarters of the church attending population at the turn of the century?

After lunch an hour sound asleep on the front room sofa after doing my daily DuoLingo exercises, then a bracing walk in Llandaff Fields, thanks to the strong wind, then another short walk  around Thompson's Park with Clare after she surfaced from her siesta. It's good not to feel exhausted by getting up early. After supper we watched the on-line Eisteddfod Cymanfa Ganu, with its socially distanced congregation, choir and musicians on stage. I don't think it was in any sense a live broadcast, but an edited recording of hymns sung by the congregation, and items performed by the choir, singers and band on stage. A worthy effort, but it wasn't moving emotionally speaking. The event was produced using an open air stage, so it lacked the atmosphere of being situated in a church building or even in the Eisteddfod's marquee 'y pabell binc'.

I then watched an episode of the ITV production of 'Professor T', which I had presumed would be a run of the 2015-2018 Flemish crimmie series on mainstream telly, but turns out to be an all new Engish edition, set in Cambridge with an uptight English version of the eccentric academic genius. It's certainly credible, well conceived and watchable if you haven't seen the original, but I watched all thirty nine episodes, a couple of years ago, and am familiar with the whole story and its plethora of plot-lines. Will it run for that long, or will it be edited down to a more suitable length for a prime time Sunday TV series - these rarely run for more than six episodes. 

There's a sixteen episode German rendering of the Professor T series. Does this edit or condense the narrative? I don't know, but I'm intrigued to see if this series will be limited to six episodes. I found the Flemish production very watchable, despite or maybe because of sub-titles which did more than just translate dialogue, helping to watcher to appreciate what the Professor was talking about, as he theorised about crimes and victims. If you miss any of the dialogue in this English version you might be robbed of plot insight. 

Also the comedic side of the Flemish series made hilarious use of non-verbals and some superb acting, by Koen de Bouw as the Prof and Goele Derick as his long suffering secretary. They set the bar very high. The English series has the brilliant Francis de la Tour as the Prof's eccentric aged mother  and comedian Ben Miller as the Prof, who also starred in 'Death in Paradise' which may work against him, as that role was a straight detective part. I'm more interested to see how he develops the character he plays than the individual plots, already familiar. I felt the Flemish series gave some good insight into the suffering of mental illness and trauma.