Communication frustration

A cold but sunny autumn day. I went to the Eucharist at St Catherine's. There were seven of us. Our two eldest much loved regular attenders were missing. One becoming increasingly housebound, the other in hospital with a chest infection. I chatted with Fr Siôn after the service, expressing my frustration at the non appearance of the quarterly download of the Intercessions file on the Diocesan website. Instead of being available before the due date it's often several days late in appearing. 

It's been like this for years. A good idea thoughtlessly delivered. In past years, the information delivered could be badly out of date. There's been an improvement this past years, but punctuality fails regularly. I've complained before and never had a response from those who manage the site. It sends a poor message about the value and priority of a shared commitment to pray for each other. The 'Prayer Intentions' page is hard to find, and has been relocated several times with new versions of the website. It's not on the home  page. You must navigate down three page layers to find it, of you can find the drop down menu icon you start from. It's yellow on white, when it needs to be in a high contrast colours. It's in a sub section called 'Explore Faith', when it needs to be under 'Faith Commitments'. But why isn't an intercession link visible on the landing page? As it is on the Diocese in Europe website nowadays, and before its due date.

Starting a rebuild from scratch without reassessing priorities in the messages the website delivers leads to cosmetic changes which make no difference if the overall presentation conveys the impression of muddled values and priorities. So much of church content output whether it's liturgical texts or relevant information bears the hallmark of creation by committee rather than skilled experienced artisans. Poets of the word, visual designers, information analysts who manage content delivery. 

I started to understand this much better in latter years, thanks to conversation with Owain, working on government websites and my lawyer friend Roy, whose trade is public relations and advocacy. When I was young I sensed if something was not right about a communication, but have learned a little about examining content since then. A little late in life maybe! Anyway, Siôn has asked me to write to him a message he can pass on to the diocesan officer overseeing the website, outlining my concerns.

I collected this week's veggie bag from Chapter on my way home. Clare was already well advanced with cooking a chick pea dish for lunch. Diana arrived at the same time as I did to return the draft copy of my Dai Troubadour novel, with warm encouragement to seek publication. This feels like more of a hard task than writing it!

Clare had been frustrated by wasting time requesting her next eye appointment at UHW, being passed on the phone from one department to another, so we drove there to find someone in charge of the booking diary. I dropped her off, and drove around the block several times feeling guilty about adding to traffic congestion rather than parking, but ten minutes later she emerged from the entrance in triumph. We were lucky that the round trip only took forty minutes. 

We then went straight to the main GPO sorting office to pay for and collect an item labelled 'insufficient postage'. This little round trip of equal distance from home took us fifty minutes. Traffic congestion was far worse, an hour later. As suspected, the offending item was a square birthday card, not quite narrow enough to fit in the standard rate slot. It had a stamp on it, but ordinary second class rate is not enough, so you get charged first class rate. The recipient is therefore penalised. 

I wonder how the GPO would think if tens of thousands of people decided not to collect these cursed greetings cards and their sorting shelves were stuffed with them. How much would that end up costing them to dispose of? Or if card shoppers took a template of the regulation slot size with them, to try before they buy, and the retailer ended up with loads of unsold non standard stock? Cards may well be manufactured in a country with no regard for differences in national size standards. One of the annoying side effects of industrialisation and globalisation, sad to say.

When we got back, I walked in the park until supper time, a lovely dry evening. I spent the evening adding to my latest short story about my Grandfather's American adventure at the turn of the 20th century.  Putting memories from childhood into words is quite a pleasure.