Blessed normality

Pancakes for our Saturday breakfast, then a drive over to St German's to meet Ziwei Gao, the Chinese student of conducting who is leading the singing group for tomorrow's All Saints' Sunday Mass. She's from Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province of South East China, aka Canton. I explained to her that Canton in Cardiff is derived from Canna-town and that the presence of a Chinese church and Chinese shops is a coincidence! The singing group will be eight strong tomorrow. 

We went into church where Ann and Mike were doing the necessary sacristy duties, and talked through the movement of the service with her, and agreed choir positioning for books to be put out for them. The one thing I'd been unable to do was inform her of the singing of the dialogue and preface, as I don't have music and have sung it off by heart for half a century. Fortunately Ann and Mike were there on hand to assist in a live demonstration!

Then, back home for lunch, finishing off and printing tomorrow's sermon and writing a weekly reflection. I got around to recharging several back-up camera batteries which have drained and not been replenished. I'm not as good at being systematic as I think I am, and need to be. Older batteries lose capacity and drain more rapidly. Another solution would be to buy new batteries but as specialised batteries are expensive, I'm loathe to buy new so until I must.

Mthr Frances has asked me to do a funeral at St John's a week Thursday, and the midweek Eucharist this week. In the Parish WhatsApp group was a notice about St John's setting up a Parish funeral fund, aiming to help hard up families to cover the church side of funeral costs. I think that's a very nice idea.

It was a reassuring pleasure to return to an afternoon walk in Llandaff and Pontcanna Fields afterwards. Normality is resuming after our two week break from routine. I spotted four pied wagtails near the children's playground, where normally I see one, occasionally two. This must be a family group. Some of the trees have turned golden yellow, others are still green or green flecked with gold, a lovely sight, and different in appearance from the trees around Watchet, which seemed less advanced in colour change.

There was nothing worth watching on telly, so I spent the evening archiving copies of photos on a back-up drive, then recording and editing audio files ready for this week's Morning Prayer video. For once I made an effort not to take advantage of the clocks going back and stay up late, in order to benefit from the extra hour.