It only takes a few

Although Saturday lie-in and pancake breakfast are part of our 'new normal', it still succeeds in feeling special - the absence of compulsion to get on and do other things. So much so that today I forgot to take my blood pressure medication altogether and only remembered while out walking with Clare at tea-time. I didn't notice the difference at all in fact, not like I noticed the difference when I stopped taking the top up doxazosin, absence of a fuzzy swimmy head, absence of unusual joint pains, and my blood pressure generally about the same, and not screaming 'crisis!' at me.

People in Wales are allowed to travel more than 5km from today. There were noticeably few people out in the parks, and not all the parking spaces were taken up in consequence. It was more like midweek than a weekend. We decided not to join the inevitable rush to the coast or the mountains. Not much point in traffic queues or hunting for parking spots. We can venture out when it's quieter, and people are back at work, although most children are back in school only for a few days this coming week, and then it's the Easter holidays.

Infection levels are diminishing, but not as rapidly as in the past couple of weeks. Given the third wave of contagion surging through several European nations, it's right that government public messaging repeatedly highlights the need for continued vigilance and precaution. International travel is tightly controlled and foreign holidays deemed illegal at the moment, which sounds bizarre and is a red rag to bullish libertarians. There have been protests this week in cities throughout Britain against legislation aiming to bolster police powers in relation to protest demonstrations. Last weekend, there was a vigil of protest on Clapham Common which police badly mishandled, arousing a storm of public indignation. 

More often than not, police manage demonstrations successfully, containing unruly elements, spotting and defusing threats of chaos. If something goes wrong, the world notices and pronounces before there's been any proper analysis or conclusion reached about the chain of events. Maybe that Clapham Common event went wrong because police team briefings weren't adequate or far sighted enough to achieve the objective of keeping everyone safe in a public space, without unnecessary enforcement action. 

Organisers of the demonstration claim to have planned and prepared with safety in mind, and most of the day's vigil occurred without issue. Things went wrong as some individuals decided to give impromptu speeches to the crowd without a public address system. This caused people to bunch up as they tried to listen and put each other at risk. The police saw the danger and acted clumsily to manage the situation. 

The fact that some people felt their voices must be heard, that they had a right to speak regardless of the circumstances, may not have been intended by the organisers. It meant they lost control, and the police were obliged to step in unprepared. Thus the thoughtless egotism of the few precipitated chaos. How much more powerful an expression of protest it could have been if this hadn't happened - unanimous disciplined silent witness, not disrupted by noisy voices stating the obvious.

How unfortunate this should happen as national debate over increasing police powers gained momentum. In a few days, the energy of protest shifted from violence against women to the tabled legislation. A demonstration in Bristol city centre turned into a violent attack on the central police station, and further protests happened there in the days following. 

When youth rioted in the St Paul's area of Bristol where I was parish priest back in 1980, it was very much a local incident of rebellion. In the hours and days that followed, anarchist activists with little or no local foothold arrived, to take advantage of the sense of injustice and discrimination felt within the community. They were soon spotted and told to clear off by local leaders. 

It's interesting to observe that the radical creativity characteristic of the city still contains a hard core of old school anarchists, willing to cause trouble and do so violently. It's another kind of selfish egotism, that masquerades as freedom for all. St Paul's rioted in Holy Week back in 1980. It gave us a different context for understanding Christ's passion and condemnation by a crowd turned into a vicious mob. It only ever takes a few people of ill-will or selfishness to re-direct the energy of a large gathering of people. Nothing has changed, in forty years, or two thousand for that matter.

Bed early tonight, as the clocks move forward an hour to summer time.

State of Alarm - day twenty

A lovely bright blue sky sunny day, though still a bit cool in the shade. I hunted down the key for the door which leads out on to the little east facing balcony, to open the shutters and let the sun in to warm the dining room during the morning. I also climbed up on to the flat roof of the house and took some panoramic shots of the surrounding countryside. Just think, I've been here a month and that's the first time I have been up on to the roof. As Clare said when we chatted later, if she'd been here she'd have found the key and gone up on to the roof in the first day of settling in.

I'm seeing and hearing more sparrows at the moment. A couple have spent time resting in the louvres of the study window shutters, chirping madly at their mates in the bushes yonder. I've heard a blackbird singing for a mate out in the arroyo yesterday evening and this morning that's new. The few lemon blossom buds on the tree are now bursting into flower, so hopefully the terrace will be an aromatic experience in a day or so.

Five days ago I noticed a tiny snail on one of the steps leading up to the terrace. When I checked next day it had re-positioned itself on the terrace corner pillar, a distance of about five metres higher up. Next day I found it on the outside of the pillar at the other end of the terrace, a distance of about eight metres away. Then the next day again, it appeared on the wall above the steps where I first saw it, a distance of fifteen metres if not more?

I'm pretty sure it's the same snail, for if it had been eaten in the night at any stage how come there was an identical one some distance off? Formidable. This morning I found a second tiny snail, nestling on a ridge of concrete grouting in the stone faced ground floor exterior of the building. Hard to spot. In addition  a large sized snail had taken up residence in the middle of the concrete path on which I do my daily round. Not sure where that one came from. I didn't see it yesterday, I don't think.

With Sarah's help recording bible readings, produced the audio file of tomorrow evening's bible study to send to Dave, as the sun was going down. Clare sent me a message to say that Radio Four was broadcasting a documentary about the St Paul's riots and it was just about to start. Pleased that the 40th anniversary hasn't been forgotten, even if the programme isn't on the day. It was a good hour's listening with lots of original sound recordings covering all the events of the fateful day from the perspectives of both the police, the rioters and local residents.

When the violence started I was busy getting things ready for the evening's Confirmation service after returning from a lunchtime Community Relations meeting at which the underlying state of tension in the community was being discussed. Pete Courtier and I, both living in Badminton Road, went home by different routes that afternoon. He ended up right in the middle of the conflict zone and I missed it altogether, as I was working in my study or else in church, not realising there was trouble just three hundred yards away.

I didn't go out on the streets until after the service, about nine in the evening, and was out until very late. The piece by piece story of the riot took me several days to gather together. The documentary did a good job of joining all the dots together. Even so, I hope for the day to come when the story of St Paul's riot day will be told including a mention of that Confirmation service, with the teenage girls in white dresses standing in Ashley Place watching the bank burn into the night.

State of Alarm - Day eighteen

Forty years today since the Bristol St Paul's riots happened on confirmation night with Bishop Freddy Temple at St Agnes Church, when Amanda was confirmed. Very little mention of this in the news media, and not surprising considering the worries of the world at the moment. It's been good to write about those events in recent months. I'm glad I did. There may be more to write eventually, when there's more time to reflect on those days. I dropped an email to Paul Bartle-Jenkins, the NSM priest at St Agnes who was my churchwarden there in those days. I had a surprisingly quick but very brief acknowledgement thanking me for my message, telling me nothing about how things are with him at the moment. I wonder if he is sick or recovering from sickness?

More clouds, rain and lower temperature today, disappointing after yesterday. I did the first half of my daily 10k before lunch, then Jayne arrived with a big order of groceries I'd asked her to get for me. I missed her message while I was out walking, and wasn't expecting her until tomorrow, so it was a pleasant surprise to be restore food stocks. I have enough to last me until Easter now, even some dark chocolate!

After lunch I made a video recording of the Palm Blessing ceremony in the dining room, suitably arranged, with the Sony HX300 perched on top of the desk. I got the alignment correct, checking by taking stills with me standing in place using the timer. It only half worked however, if I remained in position, but I took a step towards the camera and this cut off the top of my head during recording.

This camera is starting to worry me. I love its long zoom and balanced handling, but it's started to produce the same error message as spelled the end for the HX50 which died fifteen months ago. It's a code which indicates a problem with the zoom extending mechanism being slightly out of sync.

It may be wear and tear, as I have zoomed with it a lot taking seven thousand photos with it in the three and a half years since I bought it. It's possible to get rid of the error message with a little physical manipulation of the camera without the battery in it, but it returns when the zoom is used and the extending of the zoom gives tiny crunching sounds, as if there's grit in the barrel. I think it means the camera is doomed. And while I'm here, there's little chance of getting a replacement, let alone a repair done. Alas! So if it works it's on borrowed time.

I'd forgotten the video recording is in 16x9 format and not 4x3 for still pictures which means the image frame isn't as tall. It will have to do however, since the 1.2gb ten minute video file took two hours to upload to YouTube, after one failure wasting an hour's upload time. I used the waiting time to complete my day's exercise, albeit indoors, as it had started to rain. 

Uploading would have been fine first time if the Chromebook had been by the router in the office, but it was in the dining room where the signal is generally adequate, but can be variable, probably because of signal bounce or load demands. Next time, optimize, optimize connectivity!

After supper, I made a sound recording of the Book of Common Prayer 1662 Communion rite to use with the audio of the Ministry of the Word which I recorded and edited yesterday. Checking and editing that is a job for tomorrow. I'm much too tired tonight.

O Sapientia

I didn't go to bed late, but had the idle thought that I should try out Google's dictation software app before turning in. I had an idea for another short story about the night of the St Paul's Riots to try out, and experimented with the dictation software. It was interesting to see how accurate it could be if it really understood my particular pronunciation or turn of phrase, and how inaccurate if it didn't. As I'm unused to composing and dictating at the same time, so it wasn't that satisfactory, so I corrected and saved the text, and carried on writing at a far healthier pace. 

An hour later I'd written a thousand words and stayed up far too late. This meant that I started today a good two hours earlier than usual. I'd arranged to meet Rufus for mid morning coffee, but he arrived earlier than expected, and being unable to find me a Cafe Castan, he came around the house to look for me at ten, and I was still in the bathroom! So instead of going out for coffee, we sat at the kitchen table and discussed his forthcoming move to work in Ludlow Team Ministry. Rural Ministry will be for him something new and interestingly different. It's great to see him so full of enthusiasm for it.