Weekend ventures

I spent much of my time yesterday in the church office, getting my sermon finished and printed out, completing the batch of CBS documents I've been working on urgently all week, with occasional walkabouts to relax, and a Scottish mutton pie for lunch from the Jodi's little pastry shop which I visited yesterday. Some good quality snacks here to showcase traditional British food. 

I was invited out to supper at Peter and Lay Reader Linda's house about five miles west of Fuengirola. The sun was setting spectacularly as I got in the car, so I decided to capture the moment on the Chaplain's mobile phone which I was carrying with me in case I needed contact numbers. It's a Sony Experia, and I felt confident of a decent result, although camera phone isn't as easy to use as a proper camera.

Driving in the dark on completely unfamiliar roads without sight of normal landmarks was trickier than I'd anticipated - should have done a dry run in daylight. Kilometre markers were on my map of how to get there, but a lapse of attention meant I could't figure out whether the numbers were increasing or decreasing, so I came off the N340 at the wrong exit, circulated around a giant shopping centre, got back on the highway, came off at another exit, still unable to figure out which way the numbers ran. Then I rang for guidance, and was soon on my way. I didn't expect to drive six kilometres further before the turn off. 

Phone satnav is useful for giving location, but it can't give you a readable bigger picture to inform you of your whereabouts in relation to a destination further afield - especially fumbling in the dark! Once off the highway, I followed the map provided and was there only five minutes late, somewhat chastened.

I had a lovely evening meal and table talk with Peter and Linda. Both are retired from careers in the Royal Navy, she in nursing and he a submariner, and both with fascinating tales to tell. They have been involved in St Andrew's Chaplaincy for over thirty five years, and not lost their enthusiasm for its ministry. Getting home in the dark was hardly a bother, with a good idea now of landmarks along the urban highway to be spotted while driving in the dark. Glad to crawl into bed at the end of another challenging day.

I slept for a good nine hours, got up and did some washing after breakfast, which dried quickly in the bright winter sun. Then I went for a drive to the far end of town, retracing the first part of my journey last night to have a proper look, first at the giant Miramar shopping complex, with hypermarket and cinema, and then at the moorish Castello Sohail, dating from 956 on a 40m high promontory nearby overlooking the rio Fuengirola, where it meets the sea.

 

The Romans first occupied the site 1250 years earlier and eventually built its first fortifications of which now only traces remain at the base of the hill. It was renovated and opened as an events and tourism venue in 2000 and is an attractive destination for tourists and locals alike.

It was however closed to visitors, possibly for the winter season, to judge from the positioning of a single notice stapled high up on the west gate, but even in the heat of the day people were climbing up to look around and disappointed to find it was closed. There was no closure notice displayed at the base of the hill!

Along the west bank of the rio Fuengirola, as it meets the sea is a childrens' park with a tower and aerial runway that crosses the river. The leisure boats are in the shape of big water birds - 'swandolas'.

In memoriam Bill John

Clare emailed me this afternoon to tell me of the death in his late eighties of Bill John, lifelong member and one of the stalwarts of St John's City Parish Church, and Lay Reader Emeritus. Sadly he didn't live to meet the new priest in charge: Canon Sarah Rowland Jones, inducted just a week ago.

Bill was a Burma Star veteran, one of the last remaining, and took part in their annual service, as long as he was fit to do so. At the end of World War Two, before he was repatriated, he lost a kidney, and did well to have survived to such a great age.

This for me is a personal loss, not only because he was the eminence grise gently offering wide and sound advice during my time at St John's, but back in my youth, from 1956-61 he was a Grammar School History teacher in Pengam and taught me up to O level - I think I learned perspective as part of understanding life's affairs from him. During our latter years together at St John's I was able to thank him for that.

Sadly, I won't be around in person to share in celebrating his life and passing, but with his life-long involvement in the Church in Wales, its education programme and its governance, there will be no shortage of distinguished people there, from the Archbishop downwards.

His welcome ministry to parishioners and visitors to St John's, always at the door after services to meet and greet people went back decades, and in a way has left its mark on the building. The west porch has lately been transformed, must to everybody's delight. Bill didn't see it completed. He stood next to the old porch every Sunday he was at church greeting people with his kind smile. 

Ironically his fall and the broken hip he sustained in the very spot where he stood, often warning others of the trip hazard, was a catalyst that started an urgent project which took five years to complete. Common sense and duty of care were overshadowed by due process. But Bill did everything by due process, and counselled patient compliance with regulations.

You didn't argue with that. He was one of those who'd put his life on the line for the freedom to do things properly, both in the church and the world. He was a great educator - the kind we need more than ever today.

May he rest in peace and rise in glory.
  

Trip into the mountains

This morning I drove out of Fuengirola inland and up into the Sierras de Mijas on the road leading to Mijas pueblo, and then around the massif to Alhaurin el Grande a village turned into a town of 24,000 inhabitants. I last drove this road in the opposite direction during my six hour wait for Clare's flight to arrive at Malaga at the end of August. I met up with Lay Reader Caroline in the municipal cemetery car park for a briefing on her work up here among settlers in the mountain village communities of the campo. The cemetery in present form is of relatively recent origin, as a result of the twentieth century expansion of the town as a dormitory for Malaga commuters, as well as expats. So, its a place with plenty of empty spaces. Outside, in the car park is a capacious modern chapel accommodating  English speaking services as well as funerals, courtesy of the municipality.

The regular congregation is a couple of dozen, but as it draws on a wide constituency of settlers away from the coast, there can be up to a hundred worshippers on special occasions, many of them children. Caroline with others, has started the Mustard Seed Club for youngsters meeting around worship times. I'll be here celebrating the Eucharist on my fourth Sunday. 

Until last year there was a retired priest here on a house for duty basis, but economic recession has meant this can no longer be afforded. Caroline does the key pastoral work, along with other lay worship leaders in the Chaplaincy Team, and the regular chaplain takes services up-country several times a month.

We then drove to the outskirts of nearby Coin a town of over 20,000 inhabitants on the road down to Marbella. Here the Chaplaincy uses the building belonging to the independent evangelical Church of Christ, which has a tiny congregation. Here there's only a fortnightly Thursday morning Anglican service. The church has a small apartment built over its sanctuary, made available to occasional visitors or people in urgent need.

It's a simple baptist-style chapel, with an immersion font behind the back curtain, sadly finding use as a repository for furnishings and equipment not in current use. There are scripture texts carved on four wooden plaques adorning the walls giving a homely touch to an otherwise austere interior.

We returned from Coin and had a tapas lunch at the bar-restaurant where the congregation socialise after Sunday worship, right on the main street.

I returned to Fuengirola on the newer faster road, which brought me into another part of town that was new to me. Slowly, I'm putting together all the pieces of the area. Could do with an old fashioned tourist map however. In wandering around the barrio I came across a small shop which sells British savoury products, run by a man with an Essex accent. Some was hand made, some high quality imports from the UK. I bought a giant sausage roll and enjoyed it thoroughly sitting on the plaza St Raphael.

Back in the office, I worked on a sermon and on CBS document preparation until it got dusk, then headed for home to cook supper, and do some more document preparation, It's not easy to stay on line with my mobile dongle because of reception indoors. I can't take my laptop outside for long because its battery in now in terminal decline after three years of hard work. It now drains of power very quickly and will only change to fifty percent, but perhaps that's to do with slightly lower mains voltage here. The combination makes work of this kind very stressful. Not what I need. But it gets done, eventually.

  

Sociable mid-week at St Andrew's

An early start this morning, as Jim and I had arranged to meet for Matins at eight thirty in St Andrews. A few people were already working behind us in the hall preparing to open the Chaplaincy's weekly charity shop, which followed on from the nine thirty 1662 BCP Eucharist for all the Saints of Britain, at which I gave an ad lib homily. OK, I cheated. It's meant to be All Saints and Martyrs of England. The observance for Wales is on the octave but today in the Welsh Calendar is St Illtyd, one of our Glamorganshire Church Fathers. 

There were fifteen of us for the service and a few outside, continuing preparations for opening time. A dozen or so others, visitors and regulars, came and went, drank coffee, brought stuff or bought it, and caught up with friends if they'd been away. It was a gently convivial occasion which I thoroughly enjoyed. It ended with a nice cool beer al fresco in a restaurant a couple of blocks away with Jim and Della, and Father Peter Ford OGS, who has retired here. Like me, he does locum duties in a variety of places in the diocese in Europe. 

As we sat there under the toldo, several people came past and greeted those assembled. It's obviously a good place to hang out. Father Peter said that in another Chaplaincy he was looking after, he found the most frequented hostelry to hang out in, then advertised it as a place people could meet with him.

On the way back to church, I bought some fruit and veg in the Mercado de la Virgen, then after a chat with church administrator Linda, I walked down to Fuengirola Port, a couple of kilometres away in the beautiful warmth of the afternoon sun, taking photos as I went, and uploaded them in the office on return. Slowly but surely, I'm getting acquainted with the area. 

Down at the port there's a modern retail and restaurant area, designed in mock-Moorish style, in homage to Andalusia's past. It has some small domes and minarets for atmospheric decoration - a bit of a mockery of a great architectural style to my mind.

There were several West African street traders about plying their wares cheerfully to restaurant clients. One was a tall woman in a trouser suit, her head bound with a turban, and on top of the turban balanced a small tray full of the ornaments she was selling. I was unable to get close enough for a photo, but I did get one of a man with a fantastic punk hairstyle. And then I saw another. Such a distinctive way of marketing oneself as a street vendor!

Blue sky Guy Fawkes

I went down to the church office this morning at ten thirty to skype Clare as she was starting her day. I spent the remainder of daylight hours machine minding while the Chaplain's slow XP machine updated, with a new anti-virus package, and two dozen Windows updates. In between times, I visited Jim and Della, made a few phone calls, met the man running the twice weekly Bridge tournament in the hall. 

I also had a look around the barrio, taking in the Parish Church of Our Lady of Carmen and St Faith, the market and the long golden beach with pristine well-managed sand, and hardly anyone on it in the bright midday sun. The temperature was more than congenial for sunbathing, with a light breeze for perfection, but no takers on this archetypal winter herald day in UK. I bought something for supper but forgot to eat lunch, so I popped out to the little Finnish cafe next to the church for a cafe solo and a pancake around tea time.

At last I was in a position to upload photos taken so far and label them properly. You can find them here.

  

Getting settled in

I rose with the sun once more, and pottered around all morning, saying prayers, writing, catching up with Ashley on the weekend's happenings. After lunch I walked down the hill in the direction of the town, as far as the junction with the N340, which is about 3 kilometres away. It took me fifteen minutes to reach the nearest mini-market (closed for the siesta) and twenty five to reach Mercadonna, where I bought a couple of cleaning cloths for the kitchen. A little further on, I found a hardware supermarket, where I got a cheap cafetière, some wooden spoons and a small sieve. The walk back uphill is quite steep, so all on all I got myself some much needed physical exercise.

At the roadside as road above starts to climb steeply, is an intriguing addition to the built environment called the 'Capillo del Silencio', which really got me thinking.

You have here just the west and east walls of a chapel. The east has a niche holding the figure of a Capuchin Friar holding his finger to his lips and a bell-cote above. Between the walls, a metre of space. Nothing else. No graffiti, no rubbish. That's all. I guess it's a sculpture/installation. It's newly built, not a remnant of an historic monument. So that makes it a statement, but what sort of statement?

In 2012 a more monumental 'Chapel of Silence' was constructed in Helsinki, a substantial modern public building funded by the Finnish Lutheran Church, but a building with no liturgical furniture, just beautiful quiet empty space with seats that anyone can use to sit and meditate. It's quite a strong contemporary idea of creating a sacred space that can be used by people of all faiths or none, united only by silence. This roadside edifice is a wry kind of homage to that idea, using traditional Andalusian design and materials. There's no interpratation panel (not that it's needed), but therefore no idea of who the designer of this folly might be. Nothing on the web that I could find either. I must ask around.

Later, I went back down to town by car down to St Andrew's, about six kilometres away, to investigate the office facilities.  The church hall was open and in use, and a handful of people were there for the first rehearsal of a Victorian Music Hall extravaganza for December. I couldn't access the Chaplain's computer, as it was password protected, but while I was there the new church secretary came in, and let me use hers.  When I shut down the inaccessible machine, it started installing nineteen updates, and this too over an hour. It runs Windows XP, so there won't be many more such updates to come. Lucky I had plenty to do and the means to do it.

As the router was the same as the type I've been using for years back home, I was able to access its set up and find the wi-fi password, which yesterday I discovered had been changed. So immediately I was able to log in the chaplaincy phone and my laptop, and do some necessary updating of my own. This is a well organised chaplaincy, as befits its thirty years of experience of serving expatriates along the Costa del Sol. I want to be able to give of my best while I'm here.
   

Sunday duty again - in Spain

After a good night's sleep, I got up at sunrise, did some Chi Gung and had breakfast. Val called for me at eight thirty, to show me the way to Benalmádena for the first Eucharist of the day. We parked the C3 outside St Andrew's Los Boliches, then drove in Val's car along the coast road in bright sunshine to the neighbouring town's huge church of Nuesta Señora del Carmen.

The undercroft chapel of San Josep is used weekly for Anglican services, Eucharist on first and third Sundays, and Morning Prayer led by a lay Reader second and fourth. It's a well, kept nicely decorated chapel with seating for eighty. Twenty people were present, and they sang with such gusto they could have been twice as many.

We then returned to Los Boliches in good time for the eleven thirty Eucharist, attended by forty people, another lively welcoming and sociable congregation.

St Andrew's Church and the Chaplaincy office are set in the ground floor of an apartment building 'Edificio Jupiter', property leased to the church and well adapted for liturgical and pastoral use for up to a hundred people. There's a little cafe next door, but refreshments were served after the service from the little kitchen/bar in the nave / community hall section of the church building.

Only a few stayed on this occasion, and after parting company with people, I was taken to the nearby home of Jim and Della for lunch, stopping for coffee at a bar on the way. Della has recently stepped down as church administrator and was able to brief me about how the church runs. I was also given the opportunity to Skype Clare and Rhiannon in Kenilworth from their computer, having not succeeded in hooking up to the office wi-fi earlier.

It was late afternoon when I left them, to return to base. I was taken to the vacated Chaplain's house to collect the returned Citroen C4 to use from now on. It's bigger a livelier, despite being diesel powered. I spent some time trying to figure out how to operate the official Chaplain's phone, a Sony Experia - also Android driven, but somewhat quirky in comparison to the Samsung, and the operating system language is Spanish. However, it does have all the vital parishioner contact numbers I'll need, once I get used to it. I added some chorizo and rice to the other half of the meal I prepared yesterday, and ate watching two very interesting BBC Four documentary and discussion programmes raising debate about the concept of Exile in Jewish history, spirituality and politics. It was based around the excavations of the site at a village in the Galilee district, where there was a first century town called Saphira. Findings there indicate close integration between different Jewish and Pagan communities remaining under Roman rule at the time of the first and second century 'Jewish Wars'. 

The point strongly made was that through trade even more than conflict, Jews lived dispersed throughout the world, and so exile spirituality had long been part of their culture. The fall of Jerusalem, and the subsequent destruction of the Temple was a landmark event, and as a result more Judean Jews were forced to join the diapora, but throughout Palestine especially Galilee, co-existence of Jewish communities with Christian and Pagan communities as established fact. It was part of Judean Jewish history and mythmaking that Palestine was exclusively theirs, other Jews saw things differently. Yet, 19th and 20th century Zionism re-invented this notion of Jews entering a possessing the land, not only right to return but right to take over and exclude, and this was the the ideology that governed the foundation of the land of Israel and its subsequent separationist policies. 

Documentary make Ilan Zev sought to make the point that the dominant foundation narrative is not the only possible intepretation of Jewish history. It could be beneficial to explore alternative perspectives in resolving the Palestinian 'problem' founded upon the overlooked facts of multi- cultural Jewish history in Israel itself.

Quite an unexpected and stimulating conclusion to my first Sunday of locum duty.

Return to Costa del Sol

I got up at half past six, and was out of the house with my luggage heading to the bus station by ten to seven. Half way there a 61 bus conveniently appeared and I took it the rest of the way there, and had plenty of time to get the seven twenty five Cardiff airport bus. Still, I believe, not enough promotion of this excellent half hour shuttle service is being done. There were only three others on board.

The airport seemed very quiet when I arrived to check in. I stopped immediately to drink the coffee I'd missed at breakfast time, and headed for the security bag check at ten past eight, only to find that there were over fifty people queuing, and only one of the three available bag scanners staffed and operational. The boarding call for the Vueling flight to Málaga was made just as I was cleared. That's thirty five minutes compared to ten in Bristol. The number of staff and scanners in Bristol is higher, matching the higher volume of traffic, but Cardiff's security portal is running at one third capacity. Staff are excellent, but being worked too hard for their own good. The new airport management has some catching up to do in order make the place attractive to customers and new airlines.

I sat next to a lady from Llanmaes going to stay in Nerja for a spell. It turned out she was Anglican, and parishioner of Llanmaes into the Llantwit Major Rectorial Benefice, not far from the airport. We talked intensely throughout the flight, as she has a long standing dedication to working internationally  with the Church's mission among Jewish people. Apart from the few occasions when I've fallen asleep on take off and awakened on landing, this is one of the only occasions where I had not a moment to enjoy the ride, staring out of the window. A fascinating conversation however.

Churchwarden Bill met me, as arranged, outside the main Arrival entrance door, and drove me to Fuengirola, where I met Val, the church secretary. We had lunch together, then went down to St Andrews church in the district of Los Boliches to pick up a Citroen C3 for me to drive for the day until the outgoing Chaplain's diesel C4 car is returned after his departure tomorrow. We had a brief look around the church, then Val escorted me to the apartment where I'll be staying, a couple of miles inland. 

I'm in this ground floor one bedroomed apartment. Here's a section of the Residence El Albañil, looking from the road below. My apartment is at garden level behind the hedge third from left.

And here's the view from the study window. More a place to contemplate than to work! Thankfully there is also a well equipped church office in town, about 3 miles away.

 After unpacking, I drove down to the nearest Mercadonna supermarket and stocked up with food. Later, I went back to St Andrew's Church in Los Boliches church, one the communes of Fuengirola, for an All Souls prayer service, led by lay Reader Linda and her husband Peter. I arrived early and went for a wander around the area, found another supermarket and bought a couple of essentials I'd forgotten first time around - onions and lemons.

It was dark by the time the service was over, and I missed my turning inland going back to the apartment, but eventually backtracked until I spotted a familiar portal I couldn't spot in the dark first time around at the street junction I needed. Only at this moment did it dawn on me that I hadn't properly memorised the address, and there was no map in the car, so I was relying entirely on landmarks registered in the two trips I'd made and nothing looks the same at night.

   

Anyway, I returned safely, and cooked a vegetable sauce with white beans to eat with pasta, before hunting down BBC Four wrongly marked on the Astra satellite menu, and watching Inspector Montalbano before heading to bed, tired but happy to be here, just hoping that my sermon prepared yesterday would be relevant in this new context.

   

Photography with Rhiannon

I seem to have spent an excessive amount of time on line and on the phone through the weekend and since dealing with urgent business concerns. Not quite what I hoped for with Rhiannon spending the week with us, just something to be coped with, by getting up early and working late. Monday she went shopping with Grandma and did some baking. Tuesday we went on an expedition to Dyffryn Gardens, and I gave her a camera to use. The weather was very kind and congenial for picture taking. I was much taken by her skill and enthusiasm for taking pictures with our little Sony Cybershot W690 point 'n shoot with telephoto lens. 

In fact, she took over two hundred pictures of which no more than half a dozen were out of focus (as the battery was nearly empty and its motor functions slowed up). Most of the pictures she took were well framed and without motion blur, with some interesting close up selections. Quite something for a nine year old. I was quite thrilled to think that I have an accomplice who finds pleasure in capturing visual beauty and interest the way I do. Oh yes, all our family have cameras and take pictures as a matter of course, but what I saw yesterday was the hunter's glint in her eye as we wandered the gardens together.

Today, I showed her how to upload pictures to the Picasa website from her own Gmail account. It'll take a while for her to learn to use properly, and learn photo editing, but there's nothing like an early start. I had difficulty accessing Google+. It required date of birth and gender, if not a photo for her profile, information I had no right to give or encourage her to impart. She's old enough to use her account responsibly, but has no need to disclose any information that might make her vulnerable on-line. She's not too young to hold and use an account, which is, in any case, supervised by her parents, but why should such personal details be of any interest to anyone? Or the personal details of anyone supervising her? I used to take no interest in the issue of personal data acquisition by Google and others, but suddenly it's become personal.

Anyway we got her pictures up on the web and looked at them on the Asus Transformer when Uncle Owain came around for supper happily home from a great weekend of gigging in Berlin. I wouldn't be surprised if he moved out there before too long.

East Vale churches revisited

I failed to take advantage of the clocks going back an hour, as I had to work overtime on composing an urgent business letter, but I woke up as did Clare and Rhiannon, early enough to enjoy breakfast together, including a feast of freshly cooked waffles, a Rhiannon favourite.

Today's Sunday duties were in two churches of the East Vale Group of villages, Peterston super Ely and St Brides super Ely. The last time I visited these churches was when I was a student at St Mike's taking Sunday Evensong and preaching. I'd never driven there before and was quite unfamiliar with the geography of that particular part of the Vale of Ely, which made me a bit apprehensive, but I arrived in good time nevertheless. When I entered St Peter's my memory of the place took a while to register recognition. Forty five years have passed, after all. Seeing the tall bronze figure of an angel serving as a lectern and a distinctive bronze mock mediaeval tabernacle in a single niche in the east chancel wall helped the sense of familiarity to return. The congregation of three dozen was lively and welcoming.  

It was the same in St Bride's as well, albeit with a congregation of half a dozen. There is a distinctive genuine mediaeval Florentine statue of Mary and Jesus in a niche at the centre of the east window, giving it an unusual continental country church appearance. There are Flemish glass medallions depicting biblical scenes set in plain glass lights surrounding it, and these date back several centuries. The congregation knew they had been acquired and installed with the statue during the 1960s, but nobody knew where they came from or how. Both these churches are in beautiful rural settings and well looked after, as most country churches surviving still are - testimony to the commitment of people in small communities, rich and not so rich.

    

Funeral for a Cousin

I drove to Barry Friday morning in good time for my cousin Gareth's funeral at St Mary's Parish Church. As a former church warden and head sacristan, it was done just the way he would have wanted it done for any faithful congregation member under his care. Apart from the dozen or so relatives, the church was filled with parishioners, old friends and colleagues. Fr Ben Andrews celebrated a solemn requiem Mass and was joined by his predecessor Fr John Hughes, a former server colleague now a priest Fr Chris Seaton, and myself. 

The newest English translation of the ancient Roman Canon of the Mass was used as the Eucharistic prayer. I'd never seen it before let alone spoken it aloud in prayer, and I stumbled through the section very kindly assigned to me, the 'Memento Mori Domine'. I'd have preferred the old modern translation, or even the mock Tudor English of the English Missal version. No wonder some Roman Catholics hate and resent this latest change, the poetic quality of the original is undermined by the awkward Latinate nature of the language used, alien to native English speakers. Why adopt something manifestly bad? I don't get it.

I couldn't stay long as I was due to drive to Kenilworth and pick up Rhiannon from school to bring her back to Cardiff for half term. Inevitably, leaving the funeral made me late, but Kath and Anto were home ahead of me, and able to collect her from friends who looked after when school finished.  

This morning, I took Rhiannon to her youth theatre workshop at Warwick Arts centre, then navigated my way, using a Blackerry app, to the nearest Tesco supermarket, where I was able to buy myself some new underwear and a new belt after several uncomfortable unsupported days. My twelve year old leather belt, bought on our first Corsica visit finally broke beyond repair this week. It was the first opportunity I've had to get a replacement.

After lunch we drove to Cardiff and by tea time, Rhiannon was organising a big tea party of an assortment of small soft toys - dogs, cats, rabbits, bears, even a bird. A touch of paradise? 

This week's episode of Inspector Montalbano was good. I noticed the women that seduce him are brunettes, often bad girls, whereas Livia, his fiancee and Ingrid his loyal close friend, are both blondes. You might be tempted to think it's like the black hats/white hats of cowboy movies, unless you take into account the fact that his long dead mother was brunette. Fascinating, as Mr Spock would say.

Conferencing in London

Tuesday morning I visited the NHS dentist with whom I am newly registered for a first check-up. Apart from a few minor repairs and the need for a crown on one of my vintage fillings, my teeth are thankfully in fairly decent shape. I now have a couple of appointment for the course of treatment, when I return from Spain.

I went into the office for the afternoon, and after my weekly Chi Gung class headed for London on a late train to attend a Business Crime reduction Partnership conference. I stayed overnight with my sister June, arriving there at nearly midnight, to find the automatic door opening mechanism, repaired that very day was not functioning, due to a mechanical fault caused by installing a new lock. The building management agents are hopelessly inefficient. I wonder how long an effective repair will take?

The Wednesday conference was held at the Hippodrome Casino in Leicester Square, a century old building that started life as a permanent indoor circus, and later became used as a music hall, a theatre and even a night club. It has been renovated and adapted for its new use, restoring lots of its original decorative features. During one of the breaks one of the business partners in the venture chatted to us with enthusiasm about its building in 1900 and its subsequent history. It's one of several fine Edwardian theatres by architect Frank Matcham, a very strictly run gaming house open to the public as long as they behave themselves properly.

Our conference was excellent in that the failures and problems as well as the successes of Partnership working were discussed. It became clear to us that the difficulties Cardiff B.C.R.P. has striven to overcome in the past five years are far from unique. We had a meeting after the meeting with the Operational Director of the Association of Business Crime Partnerships, who was very helpful in his analysis of our situation and in giving us valuable advice. 

I got back to my sister's place at seven. We had supper, then I introduced her to the Samsung Chromebook I'd brought with me for her to try out. It wasn't a success, as the track-pad was too sensitive to control properly for stiff old fingers, and the font size too small for easy reading. She very much liked the ease of access to iPlayer, YouTube and GMail, albeit recent interface changes to GMail make this much less easy to use than the old form she'd gotten used to. It's a nice light machine, but it's clearly not older non technical user friendly. I could see myself on the phone for hours talking her through getting used to it and getting only exasperation as the outcome. So I decided not to leave it with her, and reconfigured it for my own use before packing it for the return journey.

I left London on the train late this morning, and completed my sermon for Sunday en route, using the Asus Transformer which I'd also brought with me, and its Polaris Office suite, for a change. What it can do is quite good, but I still prefer the proper desktop user interface I'm accustomed to, than any interface designed primarily for touch screen users. I don't care if this means I'm stuck in the past. Maintaining productivity is what matters.

Before going home I went into the office for a couple of hours, and as Clare was poorly, went out on my own for my last Tai Chi session until December.

Fifty years ago this week

After seeing Rhiannon off to school we left Kenilworth in torrential rain to drive across country to Worcester to have lunch with our friends Mike and Gail. The journey was uneventful until I took a wrong turn on the northern outskirts of Worcester, just a mile from our destination. It was a move which took us an hour to rectify as we got quite lost in driving rain and persistent traffic. There's been so much building of new housing estates to the north of Worcester since we last lived up in the West Midlands that the landscape of the area is confusing, unrecognisable without sight of a 'proper' map to give perspective.  Regrettably I had forgotten just how good my Blackberry's mapping device is, and by the time I'd remembered I had it with me, and found out how to work it - the first time ever I needed to in earnest - Clare had left me in a parked car and gone to obtain directions from a nearby chemist's shop.

This week is the 50th anniversary of Mike introducing me to Clare at an open air 'War on Want' bread 'n cheese lunch on the steps of Bristol's Student Union building - then, the Victoria Rooms - in our first term as University undergraduates. He and I were next door neighbours in Churchill Hall of residence on the Downs. Clare and Mike went to the same English lectures. We all liked music, and for a while we sang folk songs and went to Choral Society together.

We lunched at a very nice old pub, the King's Arms in Ombersley, and inspected a huge very classy delicatessen shop called 'Checkett's' a few paces up the road past the church in the village. We returned to their house to talk, drink coffee and tea, and listen to Mike play one of Bach's French suites on Clare's clavichord, which is on loan to him as we really don't have enough of a good space to keep it in regular use at home. Then he played us some fiery Chopin on his Bechstein upright piano. He's maintained a high standard of piano playing every since we've known him and is still receiving lessons regularly in order to improve his technique. I have fond memories of Mike practising piano in the rehearsal room during our days together in Churchill Hall. He worked his way through Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues, with me idling besides him, acquiring a lifelong love of this 'essential' work of art.

Knowing of my interest in cameras, Mike and I discussed options for the acquisition of an advanced digital camera that could match the performance of his old 35mm SLR. I took out my Sony Alpha 55 to show him, just as one of their two fine cats with blue black fur jumped up on to the table. Truly, they behave as if they own the place.

Those grapes, sweet dessert varieties, were grown locally by the proprietors of the cattery Mike and Gail use to look after their pets when both of them are away. Apparently the pusses aren't interested in fruit, but sit up and take notice when the lid is taken off the butter.

We drove most of the way home in rain and semi-darkness. It was an uneventful and un-memorable trip in every way, performed on auto-pilot to the extent that I found it hard to recall journey detail. We arrived just as 'The Archers' was getting under way, so I sat in the car and listened before unloading our luggage. Glad to be back safely and sleeping in my own bed again tonight.

  

Sad news

I made it to eight o'clock Eucharist at St Nicholas Parish Church this morning, still with several dozen regular attendees who seek out early morning peace and quiet. 

Other worshippers, not just the Vicar, make an effort to greet strangers like me. It's great they bother, but in my case, most of the time, it's not what I need. Silence and simplicity in conventional liturgy is what I crave most. I think the whole church still struggles with this notion, as if it doesn't trust the power of Word and Sacrament at its most basic to commend itself. 

Rhiannon was content to play in her home environment for most of the day, apart from an afternoon expedition to Waitrose's. I cooked my paella to match Kath and Anto's return from their Leicester performances at supper time.

During the afternoon, I received messages from my cousin Alan and my sister June telling me of the peaceful death from lung cancer of my cousin Gareth at Holme Tower hospice in Penarth in the middle of the night. He was seven years older than me, the first and eldest of our generation of cousins, active in his local Parish Church for decades until he became too sick to attend.

I'm grateful for the opportunity I had to see and pray with him there three weeks ago. May he rest in peace.
  

Fictional take on reality

We took Rhiannon to her theatre workshop at Warwick Arts Centre, then returned to Kenilworth, taking a brief look at the (mainly French) street market in the old town above St Nicholas' Parish Church. |

A wedding celebration was being concluded as we walked past. The bride, we noticed, radiant in a white dress, was in a wheelchair.

We then made an expedition to the Waitrose supermarket in Kenilworth's modern town centre to shop for the ingredients of a paella to cook for Sunday supper.

Kath and Anto arrived home, delighted with the success of their day's performances and we ate fish and chips together. Everyone apart from me wanted to watch 'Strictly Come Dancing' and 'The X Factor'. Thankfully, there was a second telly, so I was given leave to feast on the first episode of the third series of Inspector Montalbano, one slice of telly I find utterly engaging.

I'd wager the opening sequences have either been re-shot meticulously, or re-mastered by way of a digital editing suite, as the colour display seems far less bleached than the original. The sound track also seems a different take from the original score. Positive signs of producer pride. A new actor is playing Livia, Montalbano's mostly absent fiancée. The Radio Times critic complained she was too young to reflect the passage of time in her long-standing unfulfilled relationship with the detective who never loses his obsession with the crimes he investigates. I disagree. Lina Perned portrayed Livia as a well-preserved independent female Italian forty-something - the kind of woman who doesn't show the signs of having endured the trials of motherhood. Just right, in context. One up for casting, one down for the critics.

Andrea Camilleri's storylines are as complex and puzzling as ever, yet worth the attention. If you don't get it the first time around, thanks to iPlayer, you can review the bits you didn't get. The diversions into Sicilian culture are entertaining, sometimes illuminating, rarely distracting. But, it's those plot-lines disclosing criminal intent in the strangest of places that sometimes need revisiting, to be sure you've really got it. And then, you're left with something worth reflecting on.

   

Once in a blue moon

I attended yesterday morning's RadioNet users' group, and collected some more email address sign-ups for access to our DISC crime intelligence sharing network to add to the expanding list of participants. One of those who attended the meeting transferred some suspect photos from his phone to mine via Bluetooth for transferring to the system when I got back to the office. Last month, I was told, info on a suspect uploaded to DISC by another user helped a guard identify someone attempting a theft, by observing the same modus operandum. It's pleasing when things like this work as intended. Once my DISC updating tasks for the day were complete, I went home and cooked an early supper, prior to going out for our evening classes.

This morning, after meeting a good friend for coffee and catch-up, Clare and I drove up to Kenilworth to meet Rhiannon from school. Kath and Anto's Wriggle Dance Theatre performance tour 'Once in a blue moon' started today, with a dozen gigs in the Midlands and East Anglia, spread over the next six weeks. By a stroke of serendipity, tonight's both a full moon and an eclipse night. What better occasion to launch!

All this on top of their everyday work. It's lovely to be able to support them by looking after our lovely lively grand-daughter. While we were awaiting for Mum and Dad to arrive home for supper, she practised her flute, and I accompanied her on the guitar. It's the first time we've ever played together. A satisfying delight, reminding me of playing with Kath when she was learning the flute.

On not fixing what ain't broke

In stark contrast to yesterday, this morning's sky was overcast, and it rained. While I was editing and uploading photos from yesterday's outing, I had a message to tell me of the untimely death of Gordon Nichol, after a fall. He was another of the faithful at St John's, a contemporary of mine who'd expressed the hope that I'd be available to take his funeral service when the time came. I recall him asking me this himself in person on past occasions when he was in a melancholic mood. I spoke to his partner to let her know I'd had the sad news.

Then at midday, I dashed through the drizzle to the Ignation meditation group at Diana's house. By the time we'd finished our forty minute session, the skies were clear blue and the sun was shining again, making the day feel more like one in April than October. A pleasant surprise.

After lunch with the mediation group I went into the office, stuffed envelopes for a RadioNet mail distribution, then attempted to design and print some labels to a new format. No matter how many adjustments I tried, or scrupulous checks I made, I couldn't get the label file created to print out and properly match the label sheet. Nor, could I get control of the tray I wanted to use to feed labels through the lazer printer. It's an everyday office routine I've never been able to master, despite understanding how it works and thinking I've configured it correctly. I suppose it's one good reason why many small print-shops still exist and have enough clients to keep them busy with work.

Owain came around for supper, getting to grips with his Samsung Galaxy Ace II and asking my advice on low level controls he hadn't worked out for himself. Unfortunately I'm not much better myself. There are so many options and things I either don't need or don't have a clue about, I investigate features on a need to know basis, and generally forget very quickly how I did or didn't achieve a result. 

One thing is certain. I don't like any of the possible web browsing interfaces available on Android equipment, tablet of phone. They simply don't allow the same precise control as the browser user interface on a proper computer. It bothers me that the standardisation of interfaces across different devices is tending to make desktops work more like phones and tablets, and in my book that's taking away control from the user. And no, I never wanted to be obliged to learn a new user interface, which limits what I can do quickly and efficiently from memory. Why should I have to waste time acquiring extra abilities to use equipment when what I already had was perfectly adequate? Why does Google keep on changing the layout of its main homepage? Twice this month so far.

How long before someone clever invents a 'retro interface option' for people like me that resent so much the additional un-necessary imposition?

I heard this evening from Richard Hall, churchwarden at St John's city Parish Church of the death of one of its faithful members, Gordon Nichol, following a fall dowstairs. In an occasionally melancholic mood before I retired, he would say to me "When I die, will you officiate at my funeral here at St John's?" Yes, of course!" was my considered pastoral response, believing that he would outlive me.

You never know what's going to happen, do you?
    

Afternoon outdoors

The weather today was unusually warm and bright for Mid-October, so I went out for a walk with my camera up the Taff Trail from Pontcanna past Llandaff Rowing Club to Hailey Park in Llandaff North.

At the far end of Hailey Park, which runs beside the river, I discovered a newly opened pedestrian bridge over the Taff, opening footpaths to Radyr on the other side.
 

The new bridge has been built on top of a railway bridge that once linked the Melingriffth tin plate works with Taff Vale line on the west bank of the river. Founded in the middle of the eighteenth century, and in its time the largest in the world, the works closed down in 1957. The site was later cleared and was absorbed into the park, providing playing fields and a wild area.
  

It's remarkable how green the leaves on the trees still are, as if it were still late August, with only a few occasional patches of dark red. Some, but not all of the ground foliage has turned yellow. The colour contrasts are amazing.
  

It did me a power of good to get out in the fresh air and soak in the colours of the landscape. I ended my walk in the centre of Radyr, catching the 63 bus back to Pontcanna in time to cook supper before going out to the Chi Gung class.

   

Job done

I cleared the data from my spare phone this morning, and got it unblocked at the EE shop in town this afternoon. Then, on my way to work, I went to the Old Library where Owain is currently temping in the City Council's Tourism and Leisure section, to hand it over to him.

Walking to meet Ashley on the way to the office, I was quite surprised to see Jean-Bernard Métais sculpture 'Alliance' on the Hayes outside the new Library turned into a temporary advertising hoarding.

I wonder what the artist thinks of this? I wonder if it will raise debate about the nature and function of public art hereabouts? I'm greatly looking forward to Grayson Perry's BBC Reith Lecture series, which gets under way tomorrow. He'd undoubtedly have some funny comment to make about it if he saw it.

A couple of hours in the office, and then home for the evening, sifting through old poetry and compiling some of them into sections with brief introductions, ready to post on my poetry blog. The results of my labours are here. Quite a satisfying evening.

  

Creative deficiencies?

Out to Llandough for the first Eucharist of the day and then on to Ystradowen for the second. I was struck by an enticing cooking aroma wafting over the churchyard from the Black Lion pub next door as I left for home. Lunch was on the table for me as soon as I returned - a cauliflower cheese, the first Clare's made for many years, thanks to a giant organic cauliflower in this week's veg box that'll do us at least four meals and still taste freshly picked, such is the quality of what we get from the Riverside Market Garden.

Clare had her monthly study group in Bristol in the afternoon, and that gave me time to review some text written in recent years for posting on my poetry blog. It's nearly four years since I last found time to do any work on this, and there's a lot of material from a collection of works going back nearly fifty years, which I haven't got properly named and sorted from the archive I started digitizing fifteen years ago. I've had all this free time to make good use of since retiring, and have written a huge amount but not reviewed what was once for me a treasured creative channel. 

Why so little written in the new millennium? A simple answer. Digital photography. It's twelve years since I bought my first Sony Cybershot, and found a means to relate to what I see that by-passes words. It's absorbed a great deal of my creative energy, and my ability to focus on what fascinates me - the interplay of shape and colour, light and shade. 

Returning to my book project 'Stones into Bread' to revise and update it recently was quite a challenge, as it involved re-shaping a volume of text and embedded argument in the light of helpful comment received. Working on even smaller amounts of text with a 'single eye', would perhaps be even more demanding. I've always waited for a moment of inspiration to guide poetic endeavour, rather than studying an idea or theme and working on it. Yet, funnily enough this is what happens when I take up a camera. 

There are places I return to in different weathers and seasons. Landscapes, townscapes, architecture, capturing broad visions, sweeps of colour, reflections, bold shapes and exquisite natural detail are things I return to. Poems, my kind of poems, are like snapshots, observations that awaken strong feelings. You can't capture that easily in a photo. Reviewing old material reminds me of something I may be lacking in creativity these days.
  

Lost and found

In the post this morning, a jiffy bag from Margaret up in Llanafan containing my lost Samsung Galaxy Ace II, missing presumed damaged or stolen, when all the time it was hiding in the black leather back seat of her car from that delightful afternoon back in August when she showed us around her parish. And still holding its charge. Amazing! All I have to do is get it un-blacklisted by Orange, and Owain can have it to use, since I already have a new phone, and he wants an Android smartphone to get him started, as he's been using a conventional mobile for years.

Clare had a school open day, so I was left to my own devices until mid afternoon, and just pottered around - emails, blog, sermon for tomorrow - not enough blue sky to be worth a photo expedition on my own. We went into town and ended up having tea, as we often do, in John Lewis' before returning home for supper and the last episode of 'The Young Montalbano', a splendid series faithful in content and spirit to the original featuring the detective in mid-life crisis.

Shed woes

Last Friday we ordered a shed from B&Q. We were meant to have been called about a delivery date by Wednesday. Nothing doing. Clare rang the number provided only to find they had no record of the order we'd paid for in full being placed. We got on to the store, and I drove down there to be sure. Fortunately they had a record of the order that matched our purchase. Whether ours had never been sent, or simply got lost in the extremely creaky in-store IT network various store workers have complained about to us previously, we don't know. But now we have to wait until next Monday to chase up a delivery date. How very frustrating. At least it gives me extra days to perfect the leveling of the slab foundation on which I'll erect the shed when it arrives.

I noticed the film of 'The Da Vinci Code' was on TV, and I started to watch it but very quickly gave up, out of sheer annoyance, not only with the offensive and absurd plot presumptions, but also with the way so much of it is shot in semi darkness, making it quite hard to watch on TV in a lit room. The way it frames the Catholic Opus Dei organisation bears no resemblance to the socially enterprising wholesome outfit running a Boys' Club in the house on Wandsworth Common opposite to where my sister June lives, producing decent, well educated responsible young citizens with a Christian faith and commitment to serve others. The difference is so great that the film is exposed as no more than a crass sensationalist tale, neither enlightening nor entertaining. Glad I didn't pay to see it when it was breaking box office records.
 
In last night's veg box from Riverside Market Garden arrived a big bag of green tomatoes, perfect for turning into chutney. When I got back from the office this evening, the house was full of the aroma of spicy vinegar. To my senses, it's a whiff of autumn, every bit as much as woodsmoke.
      

Machine minding

An uneventful few days. I took Andrea to her train on Tuesday morning, went into the office in the afternoon and to Chi Gung in the evening. Wednesday in the office was devoted to preparing the mailing of a dozen letters of invitation to prospective members of the Crime Reduction Partnership Board of Management for the inaugural meeting at the end of the month. Once the job was done, I had the task of re-assigning and setting up the new HP desktop PC for the Administrator to use, as it didn't suit Ashley's workflow pattern. Julie now has one machine with the office accounts on it and another for managing the rest of her labours. Getting that right also involved moving the printers around, but in the end, there were improvements all round.

What I hadn't bargained for was a massive twenty two item system update installation from Microsoft, which effectively took four machines in succession out of service for at an hour at a time. Downloads happened in the background, but then, when installation started, system reboots were required which took an age to complete. I was left machine minding, and got home much later than expected as a result. It was the same with Windows PCs at home as well. I was grateful for the use of several Android devices to consult until the job was done on a further three machines.

I went into the office early on Thursday, as I'd forgotten the night before to install our standard backup software on the new HP desktop, which Julie is accustomed to using at close of day. Then I had to wait while my office machine did its updates, as I'd not got around to it the day before. Luckily most of this week's waiting time was done when there wasn't a need for all the machines to be in use, and other things could be done not requiring computers in the meanwhile. Big companies can afford a tech guy to waste his time machine minding, or devising clever automated routines to run updates network wide, but I'm not that clever. 

It did make me wonder however just how many hours of productive time the world's billion computers take up waiting for updates - well, probably half of them don't bother installing updates, don't need to, or are designed beautifully to update in the background without interfering with anyone's workflow. But still if it's half a billion PCs, taking a total, say, of fifteen minutes waiting time a month, that's three hours a year, fifteen hundred million hours productivity time. Just say two thirds of those are updated out of work hours by corporate IT staff, that's still five hundred million wasted hours a year. Apart from the hours re-deployed by meticulous planners who factor in tea breaks, assignations, keep fit routines, or a trip to the shops in their down-time. Thankfully, the rise and rise of Linux based equipment via Android and Chromebook operating systems is effecting a necessary change in this. Will Windows ever catch up?
  

Castle visit

We got up surprisingly late this morning and it was midday before we got out of the house and drove to Caerphilly by way of Castell Coch to show Andrea a couple of our local treasures. It's about thirty years, when the kids were young, since we last took a proper walk around the interior of Caerphilly Castle. 

Ten years ago, a modern tourist shop was constructed to replace the elderly ticket booth just inside the outer eastern gate house, several buildings and towers have been restored for opening to the public. Clare and I had not long moved to Penyrheol during my first curacy in Caerphilly Parish in 1970 when the re-roofed Great Hall was opened to the public and started being used for mediaeval banquets. So much has been achieved by CADW since then. The Castle is now a great asset to regional tourism. It was cloudy all day, but occasionally the sun shone through, and created some interesting photographic moments for me with my Sony Alpha 55. The results can be viewed here

After our visit we had a bowl of delicious cawl in the Glanmor tea room just across the road from the castle, and then drove up the Rhymney valley to Ystrad Mynach, Nelson and Treharris to show Andrea a little of our beautiful valleys environment before turning for home. Waiting on the doormat there was a 'failed delivery' note from the postman who arrived an hour after we left, and presumably couldn't find a neighbour in to leave our replacement modem, delivered punctually as promised by Talk Talk Care. I'll have to collect it from the depot tomorrow, yet another un-necessary car trip because the arrival of the postman is so much later and less predictable than it used to be.


We had a further culinary treat for supper, as Clare cooked us some venison she'd been keeping for a special occasion with an unusual kind of cabbage resembling a large dense leaf of spinach. This went down well with a bottle of Stellenbosch Shiraz. 

 

Opera matinée weekend

Yesterday the temperature was mild and the sun shone, so we took Andrea out to see Duffryn Gardens. Few of the trees have yet begun to change colour and several flower beds are vivid with the bright colour of autumn blooms. The warm brought out a variety of bees, a few butterflies and lots of dragonflies, which were busy mating over the ornamental ponds.

The leaves on the vine decorated pergola at the far end of the main lawn are still an untainted green, and bunches of small black grapes nestle beneath them. It's a lovely sight.

We navigated our way across country from Duffryn along narrow lanes to find Llancarvan church with its mediaeval wall paintings, but sadly it was locked, so we headed for home.

We went out early to Stefano's for supper - fresh picked porcini mushrooms and arancini were among the treats on the menu - a perfect prelude to the evening viewing of 'Young Montalbano'. Andrea is also a fan.

Today is my first Sunday in a while without locum duty so we breakfasted late, went to St. Catherine's for their Harvest Festival Eucharist and showed Andrea the Riverside market before returning for lunch. We set out early for the opera, to enjoy half an hour's afternoon sun down the Bay before the performance of Donizetti's 'Roberto Devereaux' started. It's the third in the series of operas set in the court of the royal Tudors, with a magnificent performance by Alexandra Deshorties as Queen Elizabeth the First. The set design was similar to that of the other two operas in the series - 'Anna Bolena' and 'Maria Stuarda', dark and minimalist with hardly any reference to the historic period.

In the second half the Queen ascended to sing from a throne which resembled a giant mechanical spider, prowling around the stage. When it was revealed during the scene, it raised a ripple of amusement among the audience. It was incongruous and un-necessary, a gross metaphor of predatory power where a subtle one would have sufficed. The music was marvellous and so were the singers and orchestra, so disaster was averted, and a good time was had by all. It was good to emerge from the Millennium Centre before it got dark, for a change, and return home for a quiet evening of conversation about Geneva days.

  

Alexandra Deshorties

Alexandra Deshorties

Alexandra Deshorties

Troubleshooting by Twitter

Pope Francis is inspiring others and being inspired by his visit to Assisi today, home and last resting place of his inspirational namesake. The whole world is a better place for the light and joy he brings to sharing the Gospel. I spent the morning in Pontcanna's Coffee #1 learning about how one of my St Mike's students from last year packed his summer with really interesting things to do. I found that inspirational too.

This morning I woke up to find that my internet router/modem was dead, and tweeted about it to service providor TalkTalk Care. Within an hour, I received an email to tell me that a new router/modem was being dispatched to me. Great, you may think, but the story started yesterday afternoon. The internet connection was very intermittent, as it has been intermittently several times of late. It was annoying as I had some office work to get done before the weekend. I tweeted a moan about poor connectivity, and my growing curiosity about changing service providor. Within an hour I had a response from TalkTalk Care asking me to explain the problem. This was the first of nine exchanges via Twitter during the rest of the day.

First I was asked to log into my TalkTalk account page and request a line test, which I was only able to do because I had an internet enable Blackberry, of course. But at least I was spared the telephone queue, the multi-option menus and technical support people with accents difficult to comprehend. The TalkTalkCare tweeter(s) were under the impression this would restore service, having not taken in the fact that the device under test was not lighting up, even with the power on. 

I rummaged about among my spare pieces of kit for a redundant modem of bygone years to use, and came to the conclusion it was somewhere in the office. TalkTalkCare suggested I register a support request with the help desk via their internet page. The page link sent to me with the best intentions was unreadable, as it was not intended for a device as small as a Blackberry. After supper, I went off to my Tai Chi class, discussing this by tweets when an opportunity to stop arose.  On my way back from class I went into the office, rummaged around there for the spare modem without success, logged into the TalkTalk website on a desktop PC and registered my request.

When I got home late, I dug out an old multi-voltage transformer to test with the modem, just in case it was only the transformer that was dead. Sure enough the transformer powered up the modem after fiddling with the on-off switch. This got me back on-line and I was able to tweet a message from my laptop describing the outcome to the TalkTalk Care team. I left the device running and went to bed. When I got up, I found the old transformer was dead, so evidently it wasn't up to meeting regular demand, or the modem had a fault that was taking more than it could possibly give. I tweeted this to the TalkTalk Care team and very soon after had a message to say that a modem had been ordered for despatch to me. It should arrive in three working days - I make that Tuesday. Meanwhile my work Blackberry and BT mobile dongle are proving invaluable, and my jobs are getting done.

At tea-time I collected our friend Andrea from the train. She's come from Scarborough for the weekend to go to a Sunday afternoon opera with us. This weekend I have no locum duties, so it'll be good to share extra free time with her. Just as we were saying goodnight, the phone rang. It was Father Graham Francis in need of a little tech support as a consequence of a suspicious email that had set of alarm bells as it carried a file attachment which refused to open. All sorts of straightforward reasons for this, but better safe than sorry, so I talked him through starting a full security check on both his machines, just in case. I bet his namesake Pope Francis doesn't get calls like that just before bedtime.

  

Creativity gap

I woke up early yesterday morning from a strange panic nightmare about moving out of St Michael's College. It left me feeling rattled for the rest of the day. In an effort to discharge some of the dream's negative energy, I had a go at levelling and stabilising the paving slabs I'd laid for the new garden shed. I guess the exercise was good for me, even if it did leave me feeling slightly stiff. Note to self: must do more exercise. Then, I went into the office for a couple of hours, to compile documents for the VAT authorities to re-register with them, as they had lost our details. Owain came in to chat with Ashley and I about the Company's public profile. It's good to bring an objective analytical mind to bear on the issues we deal with from time to time.

I woke early again this morning - or so it felt like. It's not that early, just that it's the sun rises later, but this time I woke up thinking about the poetry I'd written but not yet published on my poetry blog page. So, I got up, switched on and had a look. The first thing that surprised me was that the latest posting was from four years ago, and it didn't belong there at all. It was a piece I'd written for my previous blog 'Edge of the Centre', and posted in the wrong place. When I checked the other, it was apparent that I'd only half corrected my error, for the posting was in both the wrong and the right place, very much a symptom of being under pressure, as I was in the run up to retirement.

Since then, I've only written four poems, now posted. All my creative energy has gone into taking photos and journalling. Occasionally a line or a phrase comes to me, but doesn't materialise into the effort to grow them into a poem. Editing my prose takes enough time, and the discipline of doing that has improved over the past few years. Telling stories, however, is easier than painting an insight or image with a few words - which is the kind of poetry writing that appeals to me. But then, I make very little music these days, and spend a lot more time in silence instead. I just have to follow the inspiration, after all there's nothing to prove to anyone any more.

  

A satisfying day

At the end of the morning I met my good friend Roy Thomas for a delicious sandwich and coffee at the Fat Pig Deli on Romilly Road. How marvellous that the weather was mild enough to sit outside to eat and and catch up on all the news of the past few months. Then I went into town to the CBS office to install the new desktop PC and transfer data. On my way I passed by St John's and saw two guys at work on the new glass doors. I couldn't resist stopping and taking another picture.

 

It'll look very stylish when complete. I sneaked inside to take a look at what had been done with the re-levelling of the floor, and re-location of the step the other side of the tower porch, and was very impressed. The Victorian tiles were taken up and re-laid, and new tiles in an exact match of colour and pattern were added into the excavated area where the former porch had been. I wish it could have been done while I was there, as a great deal of worry was attached to having a hazardous step at a main entrance to the church, but five years on, it's a pleasure to see a job so beautifully done. Kudos to Peter Bricknell and his team of conservation minded builders.

Setting up the new HP desktop PC was delightfully easy, with only a brief internet hunt for a driver for the Dell lazer printer. It attached itself to the office network without any hassle, and then all I had to do was transfer data and settings. I have to confess that although I have set up dozens of computers for use over the past twenty five years, I've always preferred to do so 'by hand' - copying selected data, making the odd adjustment to file structures to suit new circumstances, installing printers and configuring email programs and getting them to recognise their legacy data, and generally that meant a day of machine minding. This time I thought I'd try the file transfer wizard.

I took my double ended USB cable for this task, but couldn't find the disk with the drivers on it, although I know they are on the hard drive of one of my machines. I couldn't be bothered to hunt, and trusted that Windows 7 plus internet would find the necessary files. No such luck. Rather than waste time, I thought I would try the transfer option using the office network. It was straightforward, although not clear quite enough to avoid a few minutes of confusion getting the computers to handshake across the network. It did work however, taking the best part of an hour to move data and settings to the new machine. All in all, setup along with downloading and installing Libre Office, took two and a half hours, letting me out of the office in time to get home, grab my shoes and go back out for my weekly Chi Gung workout. I love it when everything goes right.