Sometimes limping

I slept unusually well, and started the day feeling fresh. A dozen of us were at the St Catherine's Eucharist, and most stayed for coffee and chat afterwards. I went straight from there to collect this week's veggie bag, and got home in time to see Clare with a delicious fish pie ready to go into the oven for lunch. 

Afterwards, I recorded next week's Morning Prayer audio and reflection, then edited and turned it into a video slideshow and uploaded it to YouTube. On this occasion, the whole task, apart from preparing the texts, took two hours. It usually takes longer.

Then I went to the Co-op for the week's grocery shopping, a rather heavy load to carry around in a basket to the checkout, but noticeable because right ankle joint pains were suddenly acute enough to make me limp. My knee joint gets out of alignment and causes this to happen. It seems quite random. Sometimes I can correct the alignment, other times not. The joints aren't especially worn, but the connecting muscles either get too stiff or too lose, it's hard to know which. I think it's related to sitting on an upright chair at a table when working on the computer. 

There seems to be no particular position or posture which prevents my legs from mis-alignment. I need a treatment from Kay, who's a sports injury specialist, not just to sort me out, but to learn from her how tackle this sustainably. There's an element of pressure on a nerve in this. It doesn't add to the ankle pain but affects the whole body, like a mild shock. It's quite exhausting when it happens, but with a little rest I soon recover. 

The only thing I couldn't get on the shopping list was sunflower oil. A side effect of the war in Ukraine cutting supply chains. None in stock. Last week, I bought a bottle at Tesco's. I limped straight home rather than divert to buy some there, and after a cup of tea and sit down, ventured out again. This time my ankle gave me hardly any trouble. It's hard to figure out what had change in the half hour between excursions but a relief nevertheless. Tesco had lots of bottles of sunflower oil, even five litre ones. I think the reason for this abundance is to do with the Tesco business brand having a big chain of supermarkets in Hungary, also a producer of sunflower oil. While I was there I also bought a bag full of cans for the parish food bank offering. It was pretty heavy and I was relieved this didn't affect my walking, as happened earlier.

After supper I went to bed with my Chromebook and watched another 'Inspector Borowski' episode for a couple of hours, looking at the phenomenon of sexist and right wing chat rooms on the dark web, and the kind of pathetic loners these attract.. This series three is very up to date in its observation of contemporary social pathologies and the internet. There's a lot of nastiness out there in the virtual world, and some of it translates into horrifying incidents in real life. It's collateral damage from our excessive dependency on the benefits we think are conveyed on us by our use of digital tools. Any kind of dependency is not good for us as it robs us of creative freedom to shape our lives and decisions without us realising. Just because it conveys the illusion of great convenience and immediacy of communication doesn't mean there's no price to pay. When will we start to say 'enough'? 

Summer colour

This morning I celebrated the Eucharist at St Catherine's with five of the regulars. As Clive was away this week, I acquired his keys and played caretaker for once. It meant I had to stay a lot longer than I normally would, but with no pressing engagements later it didn't matter. 

I  took some lovely photos of flowers in Clare's garden after lunch. Over time she's added a great variety of flowering plants which come into blossom through spring and into autumn. Some come and go while others last long, but the colour composition changes often, as is very camera friendly. Take a peek here 

My afternoon walk took me to the big Tesco on Western Avenue in search of a new USB card reader, as the one I've had for many years is now faulty through wear and tear. I found what I needed for just a fiver, probably a quarter of what I paid for the equivalent item over a decade ago. I guess, in that time the market for such small add-on devices has grown hugely and manufacturing costs go down. On the return walk, I got some more heron photos. It was a bird with different markings this time, so more mature I think. I was pleased to find, on my return, that my days's walk had been over six miles, with no ill effects.

Nothing so far from the hospital about my appointments complaint.

  

Password problems

As it's St Barnabas Day today, I joined the St Luke's congregation for a quiet morning Mass. As  it was bright and sunny, it seemed a good idea to go out for lunch, so we drove to Dyffryn Gardens, walked for an hour or so, marvelling at the changes in vegetation since our last visit six weeks ago, and then ate in the visitor centre's friendly cafe.

Last night, Amanda called, as she was having problems with her computer, feeling that she was losing control of it. Now she's quite computer savvy, and I thought if she's bothered, maybe I should help troubleshoot. She texted me earlier today to say she's been unsuccessful with the measures I proposed over the phone, so I decided a hands-on session was necessary. I drove Clare to her staff meeting mid-afternoon and then took off for Bristol.

Thankfully, there wasn't a lot out of order, just enough to leave her feeling helpless. One of those software downloads with boxes you have to un-tick to avoid acquiring unwanted crapware had been ticked. Her default home page had been set to display a branded search page, full screen. This hid the normal browser controls, so it wasn't possible to change the home page settings. I messed around until I found how to switch off full page mode, and then reset the home pages as she wanted it.

She's also lost access to her Tesco shopping account and couldn't figure out why. She'd made half a dozen attempts to re-set the password, none of which delivered, and made a mess of her memorised passwords, particularly as Tesco require use of an email address and login password. Your password should be different from your email one for security reasons, but it's easy to get confused. Worse still insistence on high strength passwords by default on Tesco's part, means that if you miss out one of their required alpha-numeric components, your password change is requested and it's not at all clear why. 

Yes, the instructions about password quality are there in your face when you're setting up a new one, but if anything they are close enough to be easily overlooked as you're trying to think of something you'll find either memorable or easy enough to write down. High strength passwords are neither of these, since they use keys which normal mortals don't use often and get distressed about locating consistently.

It's understandable that Tesco have ramped up their security critera, but if this encroaches on usability, it's not good for customer relations. Apparently the helpline people were decent with her about the problems, and assured her that the problem was at the home end. But that was as much as they could do, and naturally it left her worried that her machine had been compromised. This fear was indeed enhanced by the unknowing acquisition of a foreign home page. Sites with secondary download tick boxes on by default should really be blacklisted, for the anxieties they cause.

 

Worlds of work, leisure & late shopping

I had a noon meeting in the office today with two people from the company which does all the technical support for Cardiff RadioNet. We had Monday and Tuesday of this week set aside for a major exercise in upgrading 240 networked radios, and this was postponed for another two weeks at the eleventh hours. Today was our opportunity to review all our work plans for the coming months with top tech guy responsible for these things and consider the proposed scheduling of work needing to be done. Inevitably plans now have to be re-jigged to fit resources available, and that means more work for me next week, but at least this meeting afforded us the  possibility of progress in getting our comms network to function in a way that matches our ambitions. 

Would I have survived if the nature of 'getting things done' in the church had been as tricky and complex and strictly time based ? (Essential in any upgrade exercise of this kind.) The timescale of change in the church is generally pretty long and very elastic. As an impatient feller this frustrated me hugely, even though I learned to take 'the long view' over time. Now I have to think hard about the most efficient way to manage scarce time resources to get this job done. It's quite a contrast to the way I spent my working life, but I'm glad of all the insights this gives me into the ways of the workaday world.

This evening, Clare and I went to a circle dance session in the Mackintosh Institute over in Roath, with its immaculate, well-used bowling green right outside the french windows of its main assembly room. There were only seven of us (adults of riper years) at this first session of the new term, all people we knew from times past when our friend Moonyeen (God rest her soul) was this group's guru. It was an enjoyable if challenging experience to discover if I could still follow instructions, repeat steps consistently and not make a fool of myself - not that it matters - if you do go wrong nobody's bothered. Circle dance embraces every level and kind of participant that can stand and move around. I love its combination of physical and spiritual activity. Would that our over-intellectualised church life enjoyed the same balance and integration.

On the way home we called into big Tesco on Western Avenue to get some 9 volt smoke alarm batteries, as one of our three started irritating the hell out of us this morning. Such a simple purchase at ten at night in a 24/7 supermarket entailed queuing for a quarter of an hour at a checkout behind a couple of people with their week's shopping. The '10 items or less' aisle was closed. Only a fifth of the checkouts were open. There were queues requiring a couple of staff members to manage those using automatic checkouts. I refuse to use them on principle. OK it may be simple and efficient, but it's so impersonal. It reduces the social experience of shopping to queuing with others who don't want to speak, already fed up that they have to wait to part with their cash to a damned robot. I'd rather say 'hello' and 'thank you' to a real person, even if I have to queue for the privilege.

Next time, I'll exercise even more patience and get my spare batteries downtown, in Cardiff Market.