A decision taken

After another erratic night's sleep, this morning we shopped early at the Riverside farmers' market, then walked to Llandaff for the Cathedral Sung Eucharist. Our old friend Father Graham preached a fine sermon in his role as Canon in Residence, and we met up with Eleri his wife, Katherine's godmother, for a chat on the way out. Today's weather was grey and damp, and it started to rain as we strode across Llandaff fields, so we didn't go out again. I found myself daydreaming about snowy mountains and blue skies. Nevertheless, it's good to be home again where we belong.

After lunch, something went wrong as I was updating Clare's Linux laptop, and I couldn't restore it to working order, so I decided to replace its Xubuntu installation with Linux Mint. For once, I took the precaution of backing up her data properly using the Mint live CD as I was uncertain of what had happened during the failed system update. This took several hours, but worked perfectly. Linux Mint then installed effortlessly over the Ubuntu partition, and required very little setting up afterwards. Clare's data survived the installation intact. It couldn't have been easier, and I swear the laptop works a little quicker and slicker than it did before. Mint has a reputation for working well on older machines.

In my recent unscheduled awake hours, I've started to think about a book I want to write. The thoughts are still  unstructured, but the focus emerging from the jumble of ideas and insights that come from the edge of dreamland is that of spirituality in the light of modern self understanding and awareness. I now have the time to give an hour a day to creative writing, quite apart other things I have to do. The only thing I have to sacrifice is all those evening hours wasted watching worthless telly. One thing our stay in a home without TV in Canada taught me is that, like junk food, if you learn to do without it and be careful of what you take in, you feel so much better for it.

When we were in Monaco I made pastoral visits to an elderly retired concert pianist whose arthritis had compelled her to give up after more than fifty years in performance. She was philosophical about it, and spent much of the day in bed watching every kind of TV soap opera you could imagine. "I never had time for any of this when I was growing up, or when I was working." she'd say. It wouldn't have made me content, only more restless, no longer to be creative in some way.