Covid jab time again

I got up at eight and posted today's Morning Prayer video YouTube link to the Parish What'sApp thread. The meds didn't affect me quite as badly as they have done. I remained fairly clear and sharp. Getting to bed earlier does seem to make a difference. 

We were a dozen for the Eucharist at St Catherine's. We stood around a nave altar for Communion and I was standing in front of it with a full view of the Holy Table. I noticed that I could see the candlestick and lit candle to the right of me, but on the left side I could see most of the candlestick and candle but not the fact that the candle was lit until I raised my head. It shows where my field of vision is impaired. It's good to be aware of this and consciously look up when checking what I think I'm looking at. I've learned to double check when I cross a road in case I've not noticed a car entering my immediate vicinity. 

Almost all of us stayed for coffee and chat afterwards. I can't have slept as long as I needed last night, as I dozed for an hour in my armchair after lunch. I went out for a walk when I woke up. Fortunately a phone notification reminded me that I had a Covid jab in half an hour's time, at the Riverside Health Centre. On my way home I called at Tesco's to buy a few food items that we're running out of. Then I went out again to do a lap of the park and complete my daily step quota. Ashley called as I arrived home and we chatted for an hour and a half about our ailments and reminiscing.

An email arrived from HMRC this morning acknowledging receipt of my letter of complaint sent three weeks ago. At least it didn't get lost in the post. It will take a while to get an answer, but it's important that I have started the process. Owain advised me about the letter I sent, and this caused him to look at 'extra help' provisions for the disabled, access to the complaints procedure and information about how to obtain technical assistance. His inquiries and conversations with relevant team members have led to him to work on how to deliver this information in the most user friendly way on-line. It's complex, to say the least, as he explained when we chatted after supper.

Trump claims that Iran has asked for a cease-fire. and that the war will end soon. Iran says this is 'false and baseless'. After so many insults to NATO allies, he now threatens to take America out of NATO altogether in retaliation for members' lack of support for his Iran invasion proposals. The King and Queen are going to make a state visit the USA on the 250th anniversary of America's declaration of independence. Trump has high regard for the Royal Family, but how will he behave when the visit takes place? He's notorious for his embarrassing off-script random remarks and unreliability. Meanwhile several Israeli cities have been subjected to a barrage of missiles from Iran and Hezbollah in response to Israel's war on Hezbollah waged at the cost of Lebanese lives and loss of homeland, as swathes of the country are turned into a battlefield.

I'm confident Charles and Camilla can do the right thing in an awkward diplomatic encounter. Trump is so vain and self centred he may undermine his own populist appeal. He's already losing a significant amount of support due to his prosecution of a war which has caused such economic chaos and effectively ceded power to Iran, which still controls the flow of oil and gas from the Middle East to the world. Even Iran's president warns in an open letter to the American people of the cost of continued war. If at any time Trump declares he's won, it will be seen as a pyrrhic victory. What will happen, who will take over if it becomes evident he's completely lost his grip and is unfit to lead?

  

Lady Day

I woke up to a bright sunny day with a cold strong wind, feeling quite clear headed, after a good night's sleep, benefiting from getting to bed earlier. Can I turn this into a regular habit? I posted today's YouTube Morning Prayer link to WhatsApp as Giles Frazer spoke about the Divine Feminine and the inauguration of the first female Archbishop of Canterbury on 'Thought for the Day'. It's highly appropriate that it's the Feast of the Annunciation to Our Lady

In Middle East news, Iran is now allowing non-hostile shipping through the Straight of Hormuz, while retaliating against Israel as it invades Lebanon to deal with Iran's ally Hezbollah. Trump alleges that negotiations between allies and Iran are going on in the background. This is not reflected in what Iranian spokesmen are saying. Despite American threats and attacks, Iran's response is causing physical and economic damage to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States and the Straight of Hormuz is under Iran's control. Will Arab states move from their current defensive posture to the risk of an attack that could make things worse in the long as well as short term?

By the time I went to St Catherine's to join six others for the Eucharist, the meds were causing me to feel light headed and slow as if I was in the process of waking up from deep sleep, though the usual sensation of toxicity was absent. After coffee and chat, I called at Jason's greengrocer's shop to buy some veggies on my way home. Clare cooked prawns with reheated left-over rice and spuds for lunch then I walked briskly to Parkwood clinic for an acupuncture session with Peter. I told him about my debriefing with the Stroke Association worker yesterday, and he echoed the opinion that I'm making good progress in recovery. Also  learning new lessons about myself. I walked home, as I generally do from a treatment, with a spring in my step, feeling fully awake again, despite the meds.

When I got home from church, a covid jab notification letter was waiting for me. It's the same date as my next cardio consultant appointment, in a different location and almost at the same time. It seems the various medical services offered don't use an integrated patient centred appointment diary. I had to call and rearrange the date. I was eighteenth in the phone queue, and twenty minutes waiting. The NHS app has a note of appointments pending. I wondered how it would handle the diary clash. Each department is something of an administrative 'silo' it seems to me, so maybe there's no  data handling measure that can flag up anomalies of this kind.

I went out for another walk at tea time, having noticed the rapid change in trees everywhere. The cherry blossom in trees along Penhill Road bordering Llandaff Fields has emerged spectacularly. Likewise the tall silver birch at the entrance to Meadow Street, whose leaf canopy appeared from nowhere in just a few days. A strong cold north wind takes the pleasure out of being outdoors on a Spring evening however. Early to bed again tonight.

Covid jab day

To my surprise, a good night's sleep, more relaxed, benefiting from getting to bed earlier. I remembered to drink more water at breakfast time, to replace the amount I pee out at night. Though the cloud cover broke up yesterday afternoon to give us a beautiful mackerel sky for a while before sunset, it was overcast again and grey this morning. As my medication regime is now less complex than it was a couple of weeks ago I set about editing my daily medication tick sheet file, made for me by Owain. It was in pdf format. It took a while to remember what I had to do with the version stored in Google Docs, which was uncooperative to say the least. I had to convert the pdf to docx using an online conversion app in Adobe Acrobat, and edit it using Open Office and then upload it to Google Docs ready to print off later. 

After an early lunch, I did a circuit of Llandaff Fields before taking a taxi with Clare to arrive at the Bay Scout Den, Grangetown's vaccination centre, for our covid jabs at two thirty. It didn't seem very busy, mostly people in our age group. Fifteen minutes later we were on our way to a bus stop nearby for a number 7 bus that toured around parts of Grangetown I didn't know, taking half an hour to return to the City Centre. When we got on, Clare took  out her expired bus card, causing the ticket machine to issue an embarrassing loud noise, but the driver issued her a ticket anyway. Meanwhile she retrieved the renewed card, but the driver didn't ask to see it. Drivers are probably used to old people muddling up cards.

At the City Centre bus Hub a number 61 was waiting to leave and we were back home again eating choc ices by four. A couple of teenagers got on. One of them said he'd lost his phone and travel card and didn't have the means to pay, or convince the driver he was genuine. He and his mate started to get belligerent so the driver pressed a panic button which emitted a loud alarm call. The boys got off and made themselves scarce. No benefit of the doubt for them. Did they not appear to be of school age in the driver's eyes? Was the story he was told true or not? Will it teach the lads a lesson about being careful with your bus pass and your phone, maybe keeping them separate, however inconvenient? An hour's walk home won't do the lad any harm and may reinforce the lesson learnt. I'll never know.

After returning home and taking my tea time meds, I did another circuit of Llandaff Fields to complete my current daily step goal of 10,500 around 8km. I may do more but I'm not going to increase the goal to 10km as it has been for several years, until I can do so comfortably. My legs and joints are stiffer and take longer to warm up, so the walk is taking me longer but I'm not in a hurry and must avoid tiring myself out. Fitness will return as long as I keep going at a steady modest pace every day.

After supper I watched a couple of episodes of Rocco Schiavone. He's with his Roman childhood mates in Latin America, searching for one of their number who betrayed Rocco and got the love of his life murdered. His mates are out for revenge on the traitor. They follow a trail which goes from Buenos Aires to Mexico City and then to Costa Rica across two episodes in which Italian and Spanish exchanges of dialogue take place, making this an interesting exercise in comprehension, not over reliant on subtitles as I'm familiar enough with both languages to enjoy following. It turned out to be a moving finale with the discovery that the traitor had a wife and two teenage children none of his Roman mates knew about. The desire to express anger and the hunt for revenge dissipated. They left the traitor alone with an indication that his old friends had found him. There would be no question of punishing his family for his betrayal. Enough suffering had come from his failure to protect his childhood friends, and he was forever separated from them as a result. A sad ending, but in many ways a noble spirited one. Time for bed already.

Late boost

I posted the YouTube link for today's Morning Prayer on What'sApp just before 'Thought for the Day' and then went down to breakfast, prepared by Clare, who was up before me and ever so slightly improved to be able to take on a normal routine activity again, but there's no escaping the back pain.

I went to St John's and joined six others for the Eucharist' We had the story of Phillip and the Ethiopian eunuch from Acts for the Epistle. Mother Frances pointed out that the Servant Song passage the man was reading aloud in his chariot from Isaiah 53.7-8, is a passage a passage about someone who is isolated and lonely, an experience with which the eunuch would most likely have been familiar, being in a position of  responsibility, but without family support. He would have identified himself with this, and be seeking its true meaning.  It's an angle of interpretation I'd never thought of before. 

Looking at the same passage, my curiosity is aroused by the question of which language he'd be reading in and they'd speak in. My guess is that they'd speak Greek so the Greek translation of Isaiah would be more accessible to him than the Hebrew or Aramaic, both of which he'd be less likely to know. Interesting to observe how the same text catches our attention in different ways. That's the wonder of the Word.

I took the trolley with me to carry the food bank donation to church, then used it on the home run to collect our weekly grocery order from Beanfreaks. Then I recorded and edited the audio for next week's Morning Prayer video, before sitting down to a curry lunch. Unfortunately while I was doing this I was separated from my phones, too absorbed to check them or hear notification sounds coming in, as they were both upstairs. As a result, I completely forgot my booster jab appointment at one forty. After eating I continued work on making the video and then went out for a walk, forgetting to take a phone with me.

It was only when Ashely called me at five that I realised my omission. I rang the vaccination admin line, and was lucky enough to rearrange the appointment for twenty to seven this evening. I had enough time to drive across to the Mass Vaccination Centre in Splott, and as it wasn't very busy I was jabbed by half past six with a dose of the Pfizer vaccine and on my way home in time for supper and The Archers on the radio. Just as well I decided last week to renew the car insurance and keep the Polo for another year!

I binge watched episodes of a new crime thriller currently on ITV called 'D I Ray'. It's about an Asian thirty something woman who is a police detective inspector on a murder squad, who uncovers a link to an organised crime gang trafficking drugs and people, going against her supervisors who are certain two of the deaths being investigated are a product of culturally related violence. D I Ray is subjected to quite a lot of casual racism, presumed to be of Indian origin, but actually born in Leicester into a middle class professional family which happens to come from the Punjab. 

The crime investigation using all mod cons available in modern policing was interesting enough, but the whole four part series is really an essay on institutional racism and cultural identity issues, plausible and relevant currently. I suspect there will be another series, probing further the weaknesses and failings of Her Majesty's Constabulary, and that there will be moans that it's unrepresentative of the force today. Trouble is the force has been playing catch-up on these issues for far too long.