Duties concluded, farewells made

I celebrated the Eucharist at St John's yesterday morning, and again this evening at St Luke's to cover for Fr Mark. These are my last assignments of parish duty cover. Walking home after this service, I dropped off three big bunches of church keys at the Rectory, which I've been using during the past couple of months. They're going to be Emma's keys hereafter. Her responsibilities develop over the coming weeks, getting acquainted with the Parish setup in detail. 

Before lunch, I said goodbye to Rachel, who returns to Kenilworth for the weekend to attend a big Festival with Kath and Anto, before they leave for holidays in Spain, and she returns to Arizona. It looks like the next week will be somewhat cooler and wetter as the month long drought comes to an end. Rachel was a little distressed to arrive home to temperatures not much cooler than Phoenix, so she deserves a some more temperate weather. Just being back in a leafy green climate for a month has, nevertheless been a big consolation for her. She's not a hot climate girl like big sister and Dad. 

I couldn't see her off from the bus station, as I had a lunchtime funeral at St John's followed by a burial at Radyr cemetery, next to St John's Danescourt. It's been lovely having her here. I wish it had been for longer, or for good. She's not happy living in Arizona and it's a struggle to get work, so naturally I worry about her a great deal. One day maybe, when Jasmine is old enough not to need Mum around all the time, she'll return and stay.

Apart from her amazing solo gig at the Apothecary, the time she spent last week in Kenilworth in Anto's recording studio was most fruitful. She's returning with two superb music tracks to release and promote. It's 'cast your bread on the waters' time.

  

   

Llandough on time

This afternoon we took Rachel to the coach station to start her journey to Kenilworth, where she'll not only be staying with big sister Kath this week, but making some song recordings with brother in law Anto in the attic studio where he composes his own sound track music for AKM Music and has recorded their own Sonrisa band albums. Getting quality recordings done in the USA would be not only more costly but maybe also a more chancy process, where you can't be sure that the people you're dealing with want to help you or take advantage of the fact that you're a foreigner. Working on home ground has its advantages! Unfortunately, her coach suffered a door closure malfunction, leading to a departure delay of over two hours.

Clare and I went to Llandough Hospital after dropping Rachel at Sophia Gardens, as I had a first examination and briefing about having an endoscopy inspection. I'm impressed by the improved way the hospital appointment system now works, checking and rechecking by text message, that you still want and can keep the appointment. This strategy aim to cut down on time wasted by those who fail to notify of their need to cancel or postpone. 

For good or ill, there are always reasons why a scheduled booking has to be changed, or cannot be taken up. While there's little excuse for not letting the hospital know in good time, I guess with a range of older, less capable patients, some of whom may be supported by busy careers, additional effort to communicate and obtain a response is worthwhile. I was also impressed by how everything ran to time. We were on our way home again within three quarters of an hour of arrival.

I was interested to find the specialist I saw wasn't entitled Dr or Mr but Lt Col, a military surgeon, not in the reserves, but on active service. As a ranking officer, leading or managing a team he spends time in a civilian hospital alongside military duties to maintain his level of professional competence when not on operations. That's a comforting thought now.

Over the weekend, I started watching a series of French crimmies called 'Dead Beautiful' on More Four Walter Presents. They feature Thierry Godard, who plays the Parisien flic who co-stars in the brilliant long running 'Spiral' series. Instead of being a team member, he's Le Commissaire in this series with the usual complex personal and family life which seems to be built in feature of the narrative in so many police dramas, representing the exacting demands on the individuals who serve in law and order roles.

As the generic title suggests, this is a series of stories about women who are victims or perpetrators of violent crimes. Wealth and privilege also part of the scenario, and the power politics surrounding the judiciary aren't really a feature. Each is a two hour watch, quite tough going, and each has a few surprise twists in the past ten minutes. Best of all, my comprehension of movie mode French seems to have improved, perhaps because I have been using the Duo Lingo app to revise French this year, in addition to maintaining my Spanish. Half to three quarters of an hour's language drills daily is a quite a routine to maintain, but I'd rather that than doing Sudoku or crosswords. It seems a bit more useful, while I'm still able to travel and live abroad for decent periods.
       

Video labours

Slowly but steadily over the past few days, I've edited the footage from Rachel's gig last Friday into separate videos of all sixteen of the songs she performed. Technically speaking they're not perfect, but, the sound quality is excellent and the performances are remarkably good, well worth uploading to her YouTube site for a wider audience of fans family and friends. The first one to be published 'Bubble Trouble' is here. It's a song from ten years ago, and there an audio recording of it on her site, but the live video is value added in my opinion even if it's not as polished as a studio recording. She will release one song video a week on YouTube and publicise the series on her Facebook page. Good for getting her work a wider audience.

Yesterday morning I celebrated the Eucharist at St John's again. There were just seven of us as some of the regulars are away, which is only to be expected at this time of year. In the afternoon, I had an GP appointment to find out the result of last Friday's blood test and ECG. I was relieved and glad to hear there are no anomalies requiring further investigation, clearing the way for my next round of duty travel to Montreux, in three weeks time. Having said that, I have an endoscopy appointment next Monday to get through first, and optimistic about the outcome of that.

I was driven over to St German's church for today's funeral, and was pleased to be able to drop in and say hello to people in the old people's day centre in the hall beforehand. As expected there was a big attendance for the service, as the deceased was a well known member of Millennium Centre staff. The organist played us out to a largo version of 'There's No Business like Show Business', but I'm not sure if any of the congregation recognised this, as people were chatting on their way out. Ah well, it was still worth the effort.

Follow-up

Despite the extra stimulus of yesterday evening, I was awake at six, and walking to St Catherine's early to celebrate the eight o'clock, and later the ten thirty. This past week I've been enjoying the exceptional warm weather and bright sunlight, but strangely it had its impact on my this morning, as I started to develop a migraine aura once I switched on the pulpit reading light to preach. My eyes deal reasonably well with sunlight and high contrast, but certain kinds of artificial light and natural light mixed seem to trigger a reaction. I've noticed it happens when I go into shops during bright sunny weather. It doesn't last long, about the length of a sermon in this case, even though I switched off the reading light immediately and carried on. It was a somewhat unnerving experience.

It was lovely to have a family lunch with Rachel afterwards, even though Owain was unable to join us, and Rhiannon wasn't with us, staying home for a teen sleepover with friends. Kath and Anto left fairly soon afterwards, and I devoted the rest of the day to audio editing and learning Movie Maker. The audio only recording was OK, but colourless in comparison to the stereo video sound recording, as it was mono only. I've got the first half gig video stitched together with minimal audio. Without editing redundant material out, it's fifty minutes long, as is the second half. That's quite long for a solo performer. And Rachel next stops smiling or looking happy while she makes music. Bless her.

Gig night

A visit to the GP surgery yesterday morning for a routine set of blood tests and an ECG. Apart from that, and sermon preparation, the day was taken over by Rachel getting ready for her gig practicing and organising her set playlist. Because of the unique way in which she uses different tuning settings for her various songs she needs to have at least two guitars set up ready to use. The one she brought with her we felt didn't really fit the bill, so we tried without success to hire one, but to no avail. Clare and I separately had the same idea, and an instrument fit for purpose was borrowed from Diana's husband Pete and fitted with a brand new set of strings. Rachel has bought lots of packets as she found a special offer in town. In any case, it seems they are less expensive here than in the USA.

Kath and Anto arrived with a car load of equipment for the gig, including a PA system leads, to add to the guitar brought last weekend, and a few essentials Rachel brought with her from AZ. At six we accompanied Rachel to the Apothecary Tea Room on Llandaff Road, and got the place ready for the gig. My role was to make a sound and a video recording. The sound job was entrusted to Clare's iPad voice recorder plus a substantial mono microphone of Rachel's, positioned on a boom stand at the back of a room about 6 metres square, with my Sony HX300 next to it mounted on a tripod on a table. This gave me opportunity to alter position and focus if required.

Disappointingly, given the effort we made in advance publicity, only a dozen friends turned up, but they were a warm and supportive audience, nevertheless, and Rachel shone, performing tirelessly, answering questions from the audience, at one point coping with the invasion of a small escaped puppy dog and a noisy avalanche of empty bottles being added to the recycling bin by the bar next door. Kath added backing vocals on a few Rachel songs she remembered from ten years ago. It was good to see them reunited in music again. The last time was when they sang the specially composed duet celebrating our Golden Wedding anniversary celebration two years ago. We are so blessed!

The recordings turned out quite well, despite the need to swap out memory cards, and the camera running out of battery near the end of the second half. Thankfully I'd been taking still photos with my Song HX50, which has an identical battery, so I was able to swap them around, without losing too much of one song. The challenge now will be to edit sound and video into a useable form which Rachel can publish on several different web platforms. But first, there's the small matter of having to re-learn how to use Windows Movie Maker. So forgettable, unfortunately. 

  

Friends and family re-connecting

Sometimes, especially in winter it seems, several days slip quietly by when it's an effort to remember what I've busied myself with if I've had no appointments in my diary or duties to perform and don't find time to write this blog, I have investigate whether I've taken photos, worked on any documents, or ask Clare if she can remember what either of us did.

I quite forgot that having talked to Rachel about publicity for herself as a performing musician, I then spent all of Tuesday using Blogger to build her a site to host some of her gig videos. Some of these we have on home devices, others are on the internet and have to be tracked down and linked up. It's several years since I built a new website using Blogger, so a good deal of time was spent re-learning its edit functions, before I had something to show her. The next problem is obtaining a response from her as she's so fully occupied scraping a living, and without a decent home internet connection, that it takes ages for her to get around to viewing and commenting. No quick results around here, but a day well spent anyway.

Last weekend I noticed that Delbert Field an old friend from Geneva Days, I haven't seen for more than a decade started following me on Twitter. I sent him a Direct Message, and on Wednesday got a response. He and his artist wife Araceli now live in Sta Fe, Colombia, where both are involved with the local episcopal church, Ara is creating a mosaic to decorate the sanctuary of their church there.

Delbert worked for the International Organisation for Migration, and was involved in moving people out of danger zones and later resettling them during the Bosnian war. He made it possible for me to accompany him on a visit to Sarajevo in November 1996 when IOM was establishing a new office there, about six months after the siege was lifted and SFOR was enabling the return of the civilian rule of law. I digitized the photos I took there many years ago. One day I must get around to re-reading and transcribing the journal I wrote of that memorable week in my life.

Thursday afternoon I made a brief visit to the CBS RadioNet office, but there's still no development in response to our request for an enquiry into questionable business initiative of For Cardiff. In the evening we went to Jacquie and Russell's house for their annual soirée of readings stories and songs around around their Christmas tree, a very pleasant occasion with two dozen other guests present.

Friday we drove up to the Yorkshire village of Northowram outside Halifax to attend the Memorial Service for Clare's cousin John's wife Dorothy, who died last month. It was held in St Matthew's Parish church where John had been Vicar, after they returned from a spell as missionaries in Zambia. She was eighty three and had lived a full an active life, despite being disabled by a stroke in her early seventies, singing with a big local choral society, involved with the work of the Mothers Union Overseas, and campaigning to retain rural Post Offices during a time of widespread closures. Their four children and offspring told her life story and they also sang together in the service, and two of them contributed also with organ accompaniment. The ladies of the Parish laid on refreshments to follow, and people, relatives, friends, parishioners, lingered for a long time after the service chatting and remniscing.

Rather than drive home four hours in the dark, we drove to Kenilworth to stay the night with Kath Anto and Rhiannon. Although it's less than half the complete distance, the journey still took us three hours in Friday rush hour traffic, and we were somewhat bemused by the way Google kept offering us alternative routes for the fastest journey time to avoid congestion hot spots. It changed each time a bottleneck cleared or developed. We just stuck to the M1/M42 route back to the West Midlands, once we left the Leed conurbation, where the impact of congestion was worst. Kath had a meal ready for us when we arrived, and we enjoyed a delightful family supper at the end of a long travel day in less than ideal conditions.