Bye bye booster

A mild and cloudy start to the day. Clare went off to her study group after breakfast. I archived my latest photos from Spain and prepared lunch for Clare's return, The news media are obsessed with the state ritual of handing over the role of Prime Minister from Boris Johnson to Liz Truss, and endless speculation about her cabinet appointments, policy plans, and whether or not her first speech will be broadcast from outside Number Ten or indoors if it rains. An awful waste of time in my opinion.

I went for a walk along the Taff after lunch, saw and took photos of a solitary egret on the eastern shone, a place where I've seen just one hunting for food on several occasions in summers past. Apparently there are more of these birds upstream around Forest Farm area, but I've only ever seen a single one this far down.

We had an early supper as we had a six o'clock rendezvous with Fountain Community Choir members at a house twenty minutes walk away from home at the city end of Canton. Ten of us gathered to rehearse for a concert before Christmas of mediaeval liturgical and devotional music, some interesting and challenging things to learn. I felt completely out of my depth, and my vocal cords were stiff and unfit. The music was all new to me, and will be fun to learn. The rehearsal and concert schedule shaping up cuts me out of any more locum duties this side of Christmas, and that's just as well, given the gaps to be filled in maintaining the ministry of the church to its faithful remnant in coming months. I expect to be busy most Sundays and on weekdays.

Mother Frances has joined the singing group. I really hope she finds it's a fun adventure. As we arrived she sent me a message about a funeral a week Wednesday. Tomorrow I stand in for Emma at Fairwater's midweek Eucharist.

Our EE signal booster has stopped working, after seven and a half years of pretty decent service. I got in touch with EE by Direct Message and was told that the device was being phased out, replaced by 4G voice over internet mobile calls. Well and good if it works, but we can't get enough 4G signal on the ground floor of the house to be able use this facility - IF we have a phone designed to do this. Clare's phone does, my Blackberry is too old. There we are, built in redundancy at work. And no compensation. The signal booster and my phone are destined to become electronic waste for no good reason, and there's been no improvement in mobile phone service in the house since we moved in.

 

Self emptying time

Another Saturday lie-in and pancakes for breakfast. Again, overcast with intermittent rain. Clare's new phone has started giving her trouble, with the SIM and SD occasionally not being recognised and then registering but leaving error messages. Is there something wrong with the way the cards are seated on the tiny flimsy tray on which they sit inside the phone, or is the contact fault something to do with phone itself? We can fiddle about with it - and it is fiddly because it's so small, and neither Clare's eyes nor mine are really good enough. 

Perhaps the cards themselves are worn at the edges and now a poor fit? It needs to be examined, which means taking it to a Currys store near us, to start with to get help. Phone shops are allowed to open, but the hours and procedures for engaging with them aren't normal. I had to dredge up the half a dozen emails sent to me from the time I ordered on-line until it was delivered on 5th January in order to find a helpline number, and the place to take the phone to get it looked at. It's the worst possible time, just when we're both so very reliant on using our phones to maintain all our regular contacts. Clare can re-instate her old phone, but that's a big hassle. It's taking her long enough to get used to a new one. 

We both found this mini crisis a distressing experience, exposing our digital dependency and helplessness when it comes to fixing anything that goes wrong. In years past, when all electronic systems were simpler, I learned how to fix lots of things. Now complexity and vendor lock-in makes it much harder, even down to finding the right path to obtaining a fix that won't violate the phone warranty.

I went out for a walk after lunch when the rain stopped for a while. The river Taff at Blackweir was almost up to path level again by the bridge, and huge volumes of spuming water tumbled loudly over the weir at great speed. It's been far wetter up in the Beacons than down on the coast, and there's more rain to come, so will the water rise another 15-30cm and flood the footpath and adjacent field overnight?

I met Jan and Peter watching the water while walking their dogs. Twice in one week? I asked Jan if she'd had any funerals delayed due to the Coroner's office not releasing the body in time, as I have this week with Wednesday's funeral postponed a second time. It seems from what she'd heard that there's a change in protocol involving coronavirus testing of all deaths referred to the Coroner, and this is bound to put extra pressure on the labs, already burdened with dealing with 'surge testing' in areas where new virus variants are detected. 

It's just as well the excess death rate is still dropping, or it would be impossible for the system to deal with the demand for funerals. Inevitably, families are having to wait longer to make arrangements because of the pandemic. Many local authorities have set up temporary mortuary facilities in industrial storage units to deal with the backlog. Public emergency management planning requires this, and municipal land earmarked for mass graves. At least we haven't got to the stage of needing to bury people in in this way, as happened in centuries past, and in some poor countries in our time, overwhelmed and unable to manage in any other way.  What we're going through is terrible, but it could be so much worse.

In one of my old notebooks, I started transcribing the travel journal I wrote when Clare and I visited Jordan in 1998. It's fascinating to make the trip again through my own words at the time. I digitized the photos I took a decade ago. Words fill in detain the photos missed.

This evening I came across a podcast on an American Jesuit website, geared to a young Catholic audience. Franciscan spiritual guide and teacher Fr Richard Rohr gave an hour long interview, in which he spoke of the different characteristics of Jesuit and Franciscan spiritualities, and about the observance of Lent. He makes the challenging observation that our Lenten efforts at self-mastery run the risk of nurturing the ego, rather than emulating Christ's own self-emptying. 

Letting go of everything, recognising and understanding our weaknesses and failures, transcending them rather than thinking we can master or suppress them is better for our spiritual health, he reckons. This stands the traditional 'spirit of discipline' on its head. It isn't by our own efforts that we can 'triumph over evil and grow in grace', but by saving grace alone. I loved it. Listening to this was just what I needed tonight, as I'm tired with watching telly programmes that are only mildly interesting or entertaining. 

Home and dry, nevertheless

After the torrential rain and flooded roads a few days ago, and prospect of more rain to come, we were left feeling uncertain about travelling home on Tuesday morning. As there were no extreme weather warnings for today, we decided to leave today instead, and packed after breakfast. Then the sun came out, so we walked on the beach and through the dunes for a couple of hours before lunch and then headed for home. There were only a few light showers all day! 

Clare was happy to return early as she has extra preparations to make for school this week. I did the shopping, then uploaded to Google Photos 290-odd pictures from our Oxwich stay, and edited them on-line. In the absence of a wi-fi connection, there was no point squandering mobile phone data allowance, especially given the flaky signal we had there. I tried old-school editing on the Linux laptop I took with me, but although the software is good, the poor resolution display on a machine nearly ten years old delivered misleading colour rendering, especially with large high quality photos.

I indulged myself by taking four cameras with me and using them in different situations, just for interest, as taking them by car wasn't a burden. With a poor display screen, comparing them was unsatisfactory, so I transferred the entire folder of these photos to the SD card on my Blackberry, for viewing purposes. As this is a modern sharp high resolution screen on a powerful device, the viewing experience was impressive, despite being small. It revealed mistakes I had made in trying to adjust photos using a screen not really fit for purpose, and that convinced me to leave editing until I could do so at home using a better screen. 

The laptop is OK for writing but not for editing photos. I still regret losing to a beer spillage while working a similarly aged Dell XPS a few years ago, which had a high res screen and ran Windows and Linux well. In most ways a Chromebook fits the bill. It's designed for 'always online' use, and can be used off-line, although differences between modes of use are a limitation, especially when it comes to saving a copy of work on a USB device for transfer. It's do-able, but calls for vigilance. 

Although 'always online' is the new normal with Windows, files created by use of the device's own apps are saved first to the device, easy to copy for transfer, and then  sync'd if/when it's on-line. For Chromebooks, it's the opposite way around. Normally this does not matter, but this difference becomes a noticeable irritant if working offline is inevitable.

Still, it's back to digital normal again now. It was noticeable that after powering up the router and signal booster on arriving home, that we were attached to the internet again within minutes, while the EE signal booster, which runs via the router, and normally runs very well, took several hours to settle down and deliver the usual service. Again, it's one of these things you don't notice, if you neither send nor receive mobile phone calls or texts in the house while the network sorts itself out and re-attaches the device. 

It's confusing if you find you cannot make a mobile call, and confusion is compounded nowadays as we can make WhatsApp or Skype calls via wi-fi as well as direct mobile phone calls. It's easy enough to forget or confuse what medium you're using, when not looking at the phone. That's if you've bothered to register the difference between the two services anyway.

I managed to get another couple of hours writing my latest story, which continues to grow in a way which keeps me interested and motivated. I had no idea when I started where this would take me. It's a story about a traveller, and while I have ideas about how it will end, I'm still not sure how long it will take or how to close the circle. What an adventure!

Pentecost fruit

Up bright and early, getting on with video processing and uploading to Google Drive. I don't know why, but several uploads failed, and they weren't big files. The network connection went down, and I had to restart the router and everything attached to it to restore functionality. The same happened last night, while we were watching Montalbano on iPlayer. The Talk Talk Freeview box,called YouView just crashed. It's the second time recently. Diagnosing this lost us time and was in part the reason why we went to bed quite so late. Is it a random hardware glitch, or a mini dropout on the part of the server, or a power spike, I wonder? Not sure I know how to diagnose this. One more time and I'll get TalkTalk on the case, as it could be the router needs replacement. 

Anyway, the uploading job was done by quarter to ten, and I was able to go off to St Catherine's to celebrate the Pentecost Parish Eucharist without unfinished business. There were forty five adults and fifteen children in church. The atmosphere was rather subdued and unenthusiastic for such a great feast, despite giving it my best efforts. I was quite tired by the time we got home afterwards and siesta'd for over two hours before going for a walk around Pontcanna Fields. A couple of late nights and early starts really has an impact on how I feel and wound comfort, strange to say. We are indeed 'fearfully and wonderfully made'.

Disappointingly, Clare picked only a handful of black currants from our garden bush, which as new and a bit more fruitful last year. We get loads of bees pollinating so why this has happened is not at all obvious. Maybe it lost flowers when vulnerable to cold and wind? Maybe it was lack of nutrients in the soil? Who knows? She cooked the new with an apple to make a mini pie filling or a pudding on its own. Will Kath's blackcurrent bush in Kenilworth will be fruitful enough to make a few pots of jam from this year as previously, I wonder? None of them up there like blackcurrant jam, but fruit from the bush Kath turns into excellent jam, and keeps as a special gift for Dad. What a kind and lovely daughter!

  

Sunday night at the movies

For this morning's locum assignment I drove to St Isan's in Llanishen again to celebrate the Parish Eucharist with just over sixty people. After the service, preparations for a baptism service were being made, and I wondered if it was for the afternoon, and who was coming in to take the service. On my way out I went to say goodbye to the wardens, who looked puzzled and wondered why I was going. 

It seems that the christening request arrived and had been booked in since I agreed to come and take the main service some two months ago. Whoever was responsible for the arrangement hadn't thought to contact me! It's just as well I wasn't in a hurry to move on to a next engagement, as I was last time I was at St Isan's. I didn't mind at all. I was delighted to perform another baptism this Sunday, as I did last week. For so many years in my last job, and on foreign locum duty in retirement,  baptisms were a rarity. And, I wasn't at all late home for lunch!

It rained in the afternoon. A street party had been planned from lunchtime onward, but ended up as an outdoor tea-time social get-together. Clare went along, but I had a little work to do for tomorrow's funeral service. This proved to be frustrating when it came to printing material to use. The network connection wasn't functioning properly and defied re-setting. I had to switch off the router and every attached device for half an hour and then reboot. Then it started to behave again. Later I learned that there was a massive Gmail outage in the USA, and patches of slow connectivity here also in the UK. Instead of downloading a file to print from Google Drive, I had to connect a phone to the computer and extract the file attachment I received, and knew was stored there. 

Computer systems utterly dependent for error free functioning on having an internet connection are a liability. There's no guarantee this will always work as intended, no matter how many internet service providing satellites Elon Musk insists on contaminating near earth orbit with. I nearly got caught out today because the file I wanted hadn't been saved to proper computer storage belonging to me, from where it could be printed. But it was on my phone. I did print it out having transferred it from there. It may be possible to do it directly from the phone. If so it's something I have to learn how to do.

Clare dashed in from the tea party, alarmed to realise we were about to be late for the evening movie she booked us in for at Chapter Arts Centre - the Elton John bio-pic 'Rocketman'. We walked there very rapidly, and arrived after the batch of ads we've already seen on telly had finished, just as the title screen appeared.

It was superbly entertaining, in the format of a rather quirky screen musical. It was also thoughtful and sad, showing us his early life and taking us up to his mid-life addiction crisis, through some of his difficult relationships, and his glorious performance successes. The film was shown with subtitles for the hard of hearing, which included the lyrics of songs essential to telling the story. Never having been an Elton fan, I'm only slightly familiar with the music and not the words, so subtitles which could have been an annoyance made it unusually accessible to me. A great treat, coming in the same year as the Freddy Mercury biopic.

Alpine excursion

We had another early start for an excursion to Luzern this morning. Clare decided not to come along, and took herself off across Basel on public transport to visit Colette, a colleague from Geneva days who lives in the southern suburbs. As we drove along the eastern ring road past the vast industrial estate of pharmaceutical factories, I remembered how we'd first driven this way in 1976, with the children in a Citroen Dyane, towards the Gottard pass on our way to a group holiday in Palazzola, Rome. Indeed, we stopped overnight in a small hotel in a village near Luzern, to get some rest, after having driven all day from Bristol. The place names along the route are still familiar to me, as I'd rehearsed the route with a map several times before this first experience of driving on the continent.

We made good time to Luzern and the coaches dropped our party conveniently in the town centre and then went to park elsewhere. Each tour group is allowed to do this, booking a drop off time to suit themselves, and a return pick up time. All is expertly marshalled by a man wearing a Securitas branded luminous vest. I enjoyed an hour of brisk walking around taking photos, before returning early to observe the comings and goings at the coach stop. There seemed to be mostly selfie stick wielding Chinese and Japanese visitors in town at the same time as us. Many of our group were toting cameras or smartphones, but not one had a selfie stick that I noticed. From Luzern, we drove on into the Bernese Oberland,  past Lake Brienz, then turning into an climbing up a valley on a narrow winding road, to Lauterbrunnen. 

There, we boarded a mountain railway train cremaillere, similar in design to the one that ascends from Yverdon les bains to Ste Croix in the Jura. It offers great views of spectacular scenery as we climbed to 2060m to stop off for half an hour at the busy station of Kleine Scheidegg, passing Wengen on the way. The station serves two different railway lines that link the pass with Grindlewald in the valley 1500m below. This is a hub for winter sports, skiing, hiking and mountain climbing, situated at the top of a pass from where the still snow clad slopes of the Jungfrau, Moench and Eiger peaks can be seen towering above. At station level, most of the snow had gone, though only recently, we were told. The higher mountain passes are only now starting to open for the summer season.

After our brief look around and photo opportunity, a different kind of train took us down the eastern side of the pass to Grindlewald, where we were met by our four coaches punctually. From there it was a a two hour return drive past Interlaken, alongside the Thunersee towards Bern, then back to Basel. Despite rush hour traffic, we were back at the ship by six. It can sometimes take an extra hour if there's any  traffic problem.

Then, a final supper, and bag packing, ready for a nine o'clock departure for the Dreieck Flughafen, and our flight back to Heathrow. Four and a half hours in a coach today, and tomorrow another five hours in a coach plus an hour's flight, to get us home. An inevitable surfeit of sitting, I'm afraid, but with delighful memories and photos of all the places we've seen this past week. It will be good to get back to decent speed internet again. Doing anything apart from emailing this week has been a nightmare of delays and dropped links. And this on a new ship. I think the travel industry that caters for 'silver surfers' greatly underestimates their need for connectivity at least as good as at home.

Not Dewi Sant but Ash Wednesday

Today's first assignment was the Eucharist and Ashing ceremony at St Catherine's, with a congregation of eight. Then, after lunch, a visit to Tredegarville School for a simple Ashing ceremony for staff and two hundred children. As today is St David's Day, their morning had been taken up with the traditional school Eisteddfod. I full expected the children to be fidgety and tired with over-excitement, and was amazed at how relaxed, quiet and receptive they were. I explained what we were about to do and then taught them to sing a Kyrie Eleison I learned half a lifetime ago from the Taize repertoire. Once they'd mastered it, they continued to sing throughout the procession of children to the front to receive their black smudge on the forehead. This was quite difficult to achieve with perfection, as some moved as I was taking aim. 

With prayers, it was all over in twenty five minutes. The look on children's faces as they came up to receive, some smiling, some serious, some looking a little lost in the moment, was just wonderful to behold. I would like to have spent time just looking into each child's eyes a little longer than the few seconds each took, as is possible when I meet children at the altar rail to be blessed during Mass. For me, this deepens the sense of awe and wonder at the heart of the sacramental mystery, seeing them so caught up in the experience of Christ's presence in worship.

Before returning home to finalise a sermon for the evening Mass, I spent a while in the church hall trying workarounds to the problem of poor wi-fi connectivity in the building. A wi-fi range extender purchased has not delivered expected results. The fault is not in the device but in the location of the wireless router, in an office under the stairs near the entrance. There building has a steel frame and reinforced concrete walls, making it just about impossible for router and extender to handshake, except when plugged in at a socket in the lobby, ten metres away. The extender's signal cannot penetrate the length of the hall and backstage as the only power socket is located next to a steel and concrete pillar which masks the signal or deflects it in the wrong direction. 

A powerline network setup with wi-fi extender would do the job nicely, if only there was a free wall socket in office under the stairs. The answer may well be to relocate the incoming phone socket, in the main hall, along with the wireless router itself. This made me envious of the solution adopted by some Spanish telecom internet service providers, of having phone and broadband delivered wirelessly into properties to domestic handsets and routers through a domestic transponder which captures signals broadcast from an 4G cell tower transmitter or a satellite antenna in the vicinity. This is occasionally subject to outages due to electric storms or really excessive traffic, as when there's a key football match or major emergency, and everyone is attached or trying to attach to the network at the same time, but normally, its fast, stable and effective.

There were twenty of us for the Solemn Mass and Ashing ceremony at St German's in the evening. For the second night running, everyone sat in the chancel and enjoyed the acoustical pleasure of singing parts of the service unaccompanied. Each Lent these days, I attempt to do something that requires me to be creative and learn something new and not just fall back on twenty odd years worth of material stored in my liturgy and preaching digital archive. This year, I'm going to highlight the different Psalms which are set for use in the Sunday Eucharistic lectionary, as so often these are sung or said with hardly a reference to them, when there's so much to be said about the rest of the readings. 

Tonight, it was Psalm 51, which has contributed phrases to so many expressions of penitence in Anglican forms of worship, and the daily offices. The biblical texts is annotated with a reference to origin as a prayer of king David occasioned by the unmasking of his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba and his deadly effort to cover up his mortal sin. So often the prophets denounced Israel as an 'adulterous nation', as people's dalliance with the worship of foreign gods was considered in much the same terms, as being a breach of their covenant with God. Plenty of food for thought here.

I also wondered if there was some different effort I could make that wasn't just the usual routine of fasting, prayer and alms-giving, but which would push me into being more aware, more responsible. Often when I'm out walking I start feeling angry toward people who not only wander the streets at night drinking from bottles, but leave them dumped if not smashed in places where this could harm others, and leave the place looking ugly and uncared for. Often after football training or matches on pitches in Llandaff or Pontcanna Fields the grass is littered with discarded bottles and cans. Not all team coaches and supporters seem to be bothered about cleaning up after them. Occasionally I have collected a plastic shopping bag of stuff to carry to the nearby bins. 

It's immature and irresponsible behaviour, but impossible to police. So, instead of moaning and being resentful, I have resolved for Lent to make it my business to keep a bag in my pocket and pick up cans, bottles, takeaway cartons and the suchlike whenever I am walking anywhere. Having decided this at the Eucharist in St Catherine's this morning, I started on my way home, and collected seven pieces in just over half a mile. Some had been stuffed into boundary hedges, others balanced on garden walls, on waste bins, or ledges from which they could fall and smash. Two bottles that were parked on the street outside of Poncanna's gated St Winifrid's apartments lay there undisturbed since I walked to church on Sunday morning. Residents drive in and out seemingly oblivious of the squalor. 

Council auto-sweepers drive by occasionally, but they only do streets and gutters. Trash dumped out of reach seems to be nobody's concern. Well, if I can see it, I can do something about it, can't I? I don't have the energy to exhort others, start a civic awareness trend or a political campaign to extend community service payback schemes for delinquents to every city neighbourhood, but I can pick up what I notice, if I bother to make the effort this Lent. It is a bit of a penance, but it might help make me feel less ashamed about living in such a slovenly society.

   

Ascent to Y Fron Eryri

The early morning rain cleared up and a breeze blew away low cloud locally, and this encouraged us to set out on the hill walk that starts on a footpath just opposite Trigonos main entrance. We climbed through sheep pastureland for three quarters of an hour, around the edge of the easternmost slate spoil tip, and then above on to moorland as far as the quiet little hamlet of Y Fron Eryri. We met the local postman on his rounds and he offered to take a group photo of us at one of the many stiles typical of the region, made of slate, with iron gates. 

From up there at 250m the views of this industrial legacy, with Nantlle Lake beyond in the valley floor, and the crests on the other side, rising to more than 300m, are simply amazing for their stark and colourful contrasts. I couldn't help imagining the quarrymen from Y Fron and other neighbouring hamlets walking up and down these tracks to their workplace - walking to such drugery and dange - sustained by the beauty of the landscape rising above its own ravaging, and the faith that kept praise and dignity alive in their hearts.

We started our descent on tracks leading us past the only working slate quarry left and through abandoned quarry sites that closed fifty years ago, now slowly, patiently, being reclaimed by wild nature. While we were eating our picnic lunch on the mountainside, two buzzards circled over us on the breeze, calling to each other with a cry reminiscent of a cat. The sun shone, but Snowdon in the distance was still wreathed in cloud.

A memorable walk, but one that called for a siesta and a quiet evening to follow, savouring the marvellous vegetarian cuisine for which Trigonos is famous, with most of the food being grown on the estate, or locally. Visitors come from far and wide, travelling many miles, to enjoy eating meals with very low food miles in comparison to an average restaurant.

Since we last came here, wi-fi internet access has been extended to the main house from the conference centre. It was, with patience, possible to log on, but there was no internet last night, and today laptop network access was virtually impossible, whereas phones and tablets, albeit slowly, could get on line and stay on line. With a couple of dozen devices seeking an IP address at any time, it's not surprising, a bit like an airport lounge. The phone signal also dipped in an out, so it was impossible to do much more than send texts. To sustain a conversation meant going outdoors and standing in a particular the car park - or else walk thirty yards up the track towards Y Fron Eryri, where it's more consistent. 

I didn't have much need to get on line with a laptop, except to retrieve a file to edit offline. The CBS business user account on the newly upgraded Windows 10 laptop was not fully synced. Since Microsoft operations seem to hate being interrupted they hog internet access until they have done what they want to do, and the house connection was too congested to allow access, it just refused to connect - make any different use impossible - that's what I discovered.

I did however succeed in using the BlackBerry as a wi-fi hotspot for just long enough to grab the file from OneDrive accessed through Firefox, but the signal soon dropped. A bit like using an old fashioned modem, but at least I could finish a final revision done on the job description we've been discussing all week.