Improved comprehension

A quiet Sunday for me, apart from walking with Clare to St John's, to celebrate the eight o'clock Eucharist. It was a very cold day, and we didn't venture out after that. I found a book of charming folk tales in Spanish which Kath loaned me last year. I read a couple of stories and then mislaid it for a very long time. This afternoon, I completed reading it in one go, finding now that my memory for vocabulary and sentence construction has much improved, so I can read and make sense of text with only occasional references to the parallel English text for obscure ancient words. I was quite cheered to realise this. Obsessive daily Duo Lingo daily practice seems to be paying off. I wonder what else I'll be able to read with enjoyment when I get to Spain this time?

Owain was meant to come over yesterday, but his plans were thwarted by disruptions in the regular Bristol to Cardiff train service, so he gave up in frustration, and came over to see us for a couple of hours this afternoon instead. So, I was finally able to give him the bottle of Gamay de Genève, I bought for him in Duty Free when I flew home from there three weeks ago. He wanted to open it and drink it with me, but I sent him home with it, as I am off wine for Lent. It's not much of a struggle to do so these days as I seem to get more sensitive to the after-effects of wine drinking the older I get.

Owain has given his techno music and culture blog a complete makeover, with new graphics and user interface, to make his expanding content more accessible to his growing readership. It's very simple, not at all flashy. It works well. He is talking about moving the site to another ISP later in the year. At that point he'll have no more use for the server capacity I've been hiring from Servage.net for his use and mine over the past ten years. I stopped making use of it altogether when I retired, not least because free Google and Microsoft storage capacity became more readily available, and I had no new need to develop website management skills, or fill the server with content. All part of simplifying one's life.

Return to Radyr

Another early Sunday start, with not so far to travel. Three morning services in Radyr Parish to take, as Jenny is taking her Easter break. An eight o'clock at Christchurch with twenty communicants, followed by a nine fifteen at St John's Danescourt with another twenty communicants, then a Sung Eucharist back at Christchurch with seventy-five communicants and a couple of dozen children in the Sunday School. It was very enjoyable. This time I got to speak with David and Joyce Suthers, the only Radyr parishioners I have known for ten years since we met over a Korean Veterans' service in St John's City Parish Church. They were there also on Easter morning, but the church was so crowded and busy we missed each other.

At the end of lunch, twenty hour hours after purchasing my phone, it was still not working as it should but the old one still worked, so I called the help line, and was told that all I had to do was swap the SIM card from the old into the new phone. It wasn't something the sales girl had reminded me to do. I guess she must have assumed I knew all about these things - well, if I did, I'd forgotten. Much as technological progress fascinates me, I invest only as much time acquiring need to know-how where phones and other gizmos are concerned. Once set up, my old Samsung Galaxy has 'just worked' and required precious little extra understanding, so I forgot something basic that my grand daughter would be able to grasp. So now my slick new Galaxy Ace 'just works', apart from a few apps still needing to be downloaded to it.

Owain came around, and together we tried to figure out how we could set up the necessary components of Wordpress in the web space I rent from Servage. He wants to build his own website to advertise his professional skills with a view to try his luck as self-employed copy-writer. It was an exercise in learning by doing, rather than simply paying for service providor to do it for us. We followed the instructions as far as we could, but found we needed a registered web address to use with the Wordpress program files we'd uploaded, and Owain didn't have the necessary details, so we didn't reach the start line this time.