Getting straight

During breakfast yesterday morning, a prolonged hailstorm made us sit up and take notice. In the afternoon I had a funeral service to take at Pidgeon's chapel of rest, which was packed with mourners. Someone arrived, as my driver put it, "Wearing Her Majesty's jewellery" accompanied by two guards. Other mourners were evidently pleased to see him there.  Being of the 'tough on crime' opinion, my driver didn't approve of this brief expensive outing. I said I couldn't imagine anything more likely to cause a costly disruption inside than a prisoner upset by bereavement and absence from the farewell to a loved one. Even treating someone humanely can have a pragmatic side to it. We arrived at the crematorium in yet another hailstorm. And sun shone through the clouds on the way home.

Before supper, I drove out to through the evening traffic to Caerau for a bereavement visit in relation to another funeral I've been asked to do this week. The parish clergy are busy at the moment due to a sharp increase in deaths, perhaps due to the vagaries of the season's weather. I'm glad to help out and ease the pressure. Visiting people in their homes, listening to them talk about their life with the departed person, being trusted to help them with an appropriate service, is always a privilege.

Today, I drove to Newport for a session with Kay, to sort out the problems caused by a poor driving seat in the car. Despite re-enforcing it with strategically placed cushions, I can't drive for more than an hour before neck muscles threaten to go into spasm, and the symptoms will then persist for days, because the constraints of the saggy seat shape twisting my pelvis out of alignment. A new seat might cost as much as the car is worth. It works beautifully for a twenty year old vehicle. Sooner or later we must get a replacement, but ideally I'd like it to stop working first. At the moment it stops me from working as intended. It's good to have a therapist who can remedy the problem and help me understand better how to prevent ill effects prolonging themselves.

Kay, I discovered was also a Blackberry user. She'd greatly enjoyed her Z10, as I had done, but hers had recently died. She'd been given a replacement, whose first action was to update the operating system taking several hours. When it came to re-start it on completion of the update, it too died, and she was awaiting the delivery of a third, as she was tied by contract to that model. Such a nice phone, so sad it was fatally flawed. BT wouldn't issue me with a new Z10 but replaced it with a Q10, as they'd stopped issuing the Z10 altogether. A disastrous blow for RIM's new flagship model. If they'd been able to get the build quality right, it would have been a real market changer for them.

After lunch I took Clare to the opthalmology clinic at the Heath Hospital for a post-op check up. Her consultant declared himself pleased with the progress she's made in the three months since surgery. Mission accomplished, I went into the office to meet Ashley and confer on the new pricing strategy, which we've been working on for the past few days, as we have a meeting with others to discuss this tomorrow.