Unhelpful help

Rain overnight. Clouds and sunshine again 22C with quite a heavy downpour early afternoon. I'm still remembering snippets of information I need for my tax return, in this case gift aided donations. I kept digital receipts for all but donations to the church. My on-line bank account would not provide me with a means to list direct payments. I tried asking the AI help line but it simply didn't understand what I was asking for and kept asking me to rephrase the question. In the end I gave up went through a collection of bank statement to identify church donations. I'll have to go into the bank branch in town and ask someone about this. If the bank software doesn't provide this service, it would be good to know rather than wasting time in future trying to engage with a less than intelligent bot. 

I went out to clear my head with a brief walk to Thompson's Park. The big pond water level is a foot lower than usual, exposing all kinds of foreign objects sticking out of the water. I wonder what impact it has on the resident moorhens? The mallards seem happy enough to spend much of their time on the grass verge. Moorhens will do likewise but less frequently. They prefer to pass their time close to undergrowth along the circumference of the pond. I went straight from there to the Coop and Tesco's to buy groceries before cooking lunch. I bought chicken pieces to roast and I made use of the oven to roast potatoes and carrots as well as sausages, but underestimated how much longer the carrots took, so they were hard compared to the perfectly baked spuds.

It was still raining when we finished lunch, so I wrote another Morning Prayer reflection while waiting for it to stop. After an hour and a half, the clouds cleared and the sun shone brightly, perfect for another hour's walk through Llandaff Fields. I noticed that transparent panelling delivered to the Padel Court construction site has now been attached to the external framework of the building. Tennis courts are totally exposed to the elements and matches take place only in fair weather. The Padel courts are enclosed, though not sealed against the elements and games can be played in all but the most extreme weather conditions, floodlit as well on dark evenings. Spectators can stand outside and watch games at close quarters. 

I crossed over to Thompson's Park through the back streets by Howells School and did a circuit there on my way home to complete my daily distance. After supper, I watched the second pair of episodes of series two Scrublands. One scene I found interesting was of a mourning ritual devised in place of a traditional funeral ceremony by a group of people who knew the deceased. These crop up every now and then in dramas involving a death, reflecting the widespread move away from traditional religious services in an unbelieving secular society, and they can say something important about what people care about and value most in life, and in the person they've lost. One way or another, seeking a meaning to life arising from our achievements and purpose is what we long to uncover at different times, especially towards the end.

Archbishop elected

Great to wake up to blue sky and bright sunshine with the temperature rising to 25C. I posted the YouTube link to Morning Prayer as soon as I woke up just in time for Thought for the Day. I stood in for Fr Sion at the St Catherine's and St John's Eucharists and collected this week's veggie bag from Chapter on my way home. Clare had prepared veg to cook for lunch and then gone out for a walk, so I continued the job, and had the meal ready by the time she returned from the shops.

The election as Archbishop of Wales of Cherry Vann Bishop of Monmouth was announced in the news at lunchtime. She's inheriting a difficult troubled situation. I wonder how much more challenging it will be for her as an English woman and Welsh learner dealing with issues in the Welsh speaking heartland of the church, as Bishop in a mainly anglophone diocese. She's earned respect, troubleshooting another difficult  situation in a diocese failing to come to terms with change. Maybe the church needs the objectivity of an outsider to exercise leadership in these circumstances.

I slept again for an hour after lunch, then went for a walk, enjoying the warm breeze blowing across the park, neither too hot nor too cold. Perfect. I walked through the woods on the west bank of the Taff for the first time in weeks. It's a place where I frequently see butterflies in the months when the weather is mild or hot, even if they dance in pairs and move too fast to photograph.

After supper, I watched an episode and a half of the second series of Australian crimmie 'Scrublands' with an investigative journalist as the protagonist rather than a detective.. As I was watching the second Clare commented about re-reading Grandpa Jack's tale, saying that it stopped short of a conclusive ending. That sounded strange to me, and when I examined her Kindle I realised she was reading an unfinished first draft from way back. I noticed en passant a typo, and Clare said she'd noticed a few others. This prompted me to return to the editable document file and run a full spell check. It seems I hadn't done this before. Then I had to update the pdp and epub versions as well, and make sure all were copied from my workstation to both Windows laptops, to avoid confusion. Before I knew it, it was time for bed again.

Turning point in the Gaza crisis?

Sunshine, clouds and occasional showers again today 22C. After a good night's sleep I got up and made breakfast just after eight. A big crowd gathered in the Mall London today to celebrate the victory of the English Women's football team in the European Championship. Thought for the Day came from there with Lucy Winkett reflecting on the significance and virtue of struggle against the odds and resilience. This has dominated today's news alongside famine in Gaza. 

I heard an interesting interview with someone whose name I didn't get, who was critical of information supplied by AI to web browsers. He poured scorn on the idea that AI would evolve to do our thinking for us, observing that paradigm shifting innovation and breakthroughs in human knowledge rely on original, often contrarian thinking about given evidence whose very nature cannot be derived from any existing body of knowledge. While acknowledging the value of powerful tools for processing huge data sets, he likened AI web browser enquiry information digests to ultra-processed food - content of little substance. Important philosophical points to make when the value of AI is promoted with messianic fervour by many in the tech' world. 

I spent the morning recording and editing audio for next Wednesday's Morning Prayer, and making the video slide show, while Clare was out shopping in town. I didn't notice the passage of time, so the lunch was not yet cooked when Clare returned home just before one. She bought a couple of hake fillets home with her, so I cooked these in the steamer with potatoes and runner beans given to us in recent days. It only took me half an hour. Last night, green fingered Keith left another huge marrow on our doorstop. As we'd only just started the one he recently gave us, Clare offered it to Gwyddion next door. He was pleased to receive it, as it would give him an opportunity to make marrow jam!

I went out and walked for a couple hours after lunch, and returned when the five o'clock news was being broadcast. After an emergency summer recess cabinet meeting to day, the Prime Minister announced that Britain would be joining France in formally declaring support for UN recognition of a Palestinian State this September. And about time too, I say! It's a conditional declaration of intent, however. It will happen if Israel doesn't expedite aid relief, end hostilities, stop formal annexation of Palestinian territory and accept the necessity of a two state solution that's been on the agenda for the past forty years. It's unlikely Netanyahu's government will agree to this, but the political and diplomatic action will have an impact. The only miracle one could hope for would be the fall of this regime and its ultra conservative backers seeing how irreligious and contrary to the spirit and letter of the Torah their policy has been. We tend to forget how strong is the secular liberal pluralist democracy of Israel, but with insufficient support to govern.  

It's been British policy for forty odd years to do this eventually when there's mutual agreement with the Israelis on borders and other issues. It's not happened, due to strong opposition from religious Israeli ultra nationalists to sharing the Holy Land with anyone else. Their reading of Hebrew scripture ignores its admission that Palestine is destined to be a land shared with others as God's chosen but ever rebellious people are unable to live up to the demands laid on them as God's own children. Learning how to share the land and forge a destiny together with others is part of their calling. At least that's how it looks from an external Christian perspective. It's bound to look different to a secular liberal pluralist democratic Israeli, and what it's like to live with the terrible pain and helplessness inflicted by the October 7th Hamas assault.

After supper, we chatted with Rachel for an hour and a half. Then I watched another episode of 'Death Valley', before turning in for the night. Much of this episode was filmed in and around Penarth Pier. Shots taken from the sea were all taken by day at high tide, despite the passage of time in the story. Cheap and cheerful comedy crime drama. But there's nothing else on I fancy watching at the moment.

A few problems solved

Sunshine this morning with occasional ominous clouds but no rain - 22C and thankfully not humid. I slept better with fewer disturbances last night, and was bemused when my not so smart watch said that I'd only slept for an hour and a half. It's not the first time it's happened. I logged in the missing hours manually, and the data analysis showed I'd been away continuously for two hours before daybreak. It probably means that its sensors are not in good enough contact with the skin sometimes, and fail to take a reading. Or, its data synchronization with the cloud, by whatever route it does this, goes to sleep of its own accord. Why do I bother? As much as anything I'm interested in finding out over a period of time how reliable such consumer health devices really are.

Housework after breakfast, waiting on tenterhooks for a call from Kate our travel agent. It was eleven when she rang, and reassured me that I hadn't done anything disastrous. In fact, last night I nearly succeeded in finding the place our particular boarding passes were stored on the EasyJet website, but was thrown off scent by an server error message which shouldn't have occurred. Kate had checked everything was in order before calling, and talked me through the stages of finding flight details booked by a third party, Riviera Travel in this case. This can be done without logging in to an account, using the boarding pass codes Kate already sent me. This morning it worked as intended. I downloaded PDF files to store on my phone, took and edited screenshots of the QR codes, to add to Google wallet. Apparently Riviera Travel mails us paper copies plus brochure next week. All is well, one more uncertainty disposed of. 

Several weeks ago one of our IKEA dining room chairs started to come apart. A joint in one of the legs had worked loose. On inspection the loosening joint had ended up with a specific curved washer dropping out of place, so the joint could no longer be tightened with the key provided. At that time the washer could not be found, or maybe we were too busy to hunt for it carefully. While I was chatting to Kate, Clare got the tool kit out, looking for a way to remedy the problem, and the said washer turned up. I had assumed it was lost, but maybe we had spares without realising. Anyway, unscrewing the bolt holding the joint in place proved to be a slow and tricky job, but in the end I got it loose enough to be able to insert the washer and tighten it fully.

By the time I finished, Clare was preparing vegetables for a pasta sauce and starting cooking them. Then she went outdoors to hang some washing, and lingered longer than was necessary, when I arrived in the kitchen feeling triumphant. Well, the vegetables were a bit caramelised, but not carbonised, so I took over, finished the job and boiled some penne to give her a few moments of respite before lunch.

I walked along the Taff Trail the other side of the river from Western Avenue to Blackweir Bridge, busy with commuting cyclists as ever late afternoon. Clare had gone out to meditation group by the time I got home. After supper, I recorded next week's reflection on the Transfiguration and edited it.

Lorries transporting aid into Gaza are beginning to deliver now, in addition to air drops. Trump is finally acknowledging the reality of starvation there, as if he's only just starting to watch TV news reports. Two significant declarations have been made by Israeli groups alleging genocide in Palestinian territories on the basis of evidence they ave collected on the ground - one, a group of charitable Israeli medics, the other is the eminent radical Israeli group B'tSelem, which monitors human rights violations in the Occupied Territories. It was active during the second intifada when I was in Jerusalem on sabbatical concluding my time in Geneva at the end of 2000. Let's hope public opinion supports its findings at this time when the Israeli government is in recess. This could well positively influence any cabinet reshuffle Netanyahu makes in an effort restore the credibility of his government's disastrous plan of action.

For lack of anything better to do before bed, I watched an episode of Death Valley on BBC iPlayer, shot on location in and around Llantwit Major's Parish church. I hope disruption filming inevitably entails was richly compensated for in location facility fees.

A resounding farewell

Overcast again today, with the occasional shower at 20C. I got up just after eight o'clock and made the breakfast, after a disturbed night's sleep with minor worries surfacing in light sleep. At last, the Israeli government has yielded to international pressure and is allowing air drops with undertakings to let lorry convoys with aid into Gaza. With Palestinian adults and children already dying of starvation, suspension of hostilities by the IDF will reduce the risk to aid workers but not eliminate it, as Hamas fighters can still wreak random havoc, and hijack aid for civilians for their own purposes. Three distribution centres in places under Israeli control, but lorry convoys have yet to begin. The coming week is going to be critical, a matter of life and death for undernourished victims.

I went on my own to the Eucharist at St Catherine's as Clare decided to attend the Welsh Eucharist this afternoon. In addition to thirty members of the regular congregation, a group of about seventy smartly dressed people came for a baby's Christening. They arrived early and stood outside chatting, and were rather slow to enter and settle down. At least they were well behaved eventually. 

I felt for Fr Sion having beginning the service without a  quiet moment to start with. Some of the attendees seemed unused to participating in ordinary worship. Choir numbers were reduced, so the congregational response was somewhat muted throughout. While it's good to celebrate baptism in the Parish Eucharist, the form and content of the event isn't exactly geared to newcomers. At the end of the service Colin the organist played 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'  from Mary Poppins. I found it very distracting, and am not sure what this was meant to convey. Sion left straight after the service for a coach to Bristol airport, on his way to Leipzig to help his daughter return from a course of studies in the university there. I'm standing in for him this Wednesday.

After a coffee and a brief chat in the church hall I went home for lunch and slept in the chair for an hour after. Then I set out for Jan Gould's farewell Mass at 'The Res', walking down to Cowbridge Road East to get a bus. I just missed an 18 which would have taken me right there, but it was followed by a 13 which dropped me near to bottom of Grand Avenue, giving me a 20 minute walk to the church. It was packed with parishioners, colleagues and friends from far and wide, over four hundred I reckon. Jan celebrated and Bishop Mary preached a highly appreciative and reflective sermon. 

The singing in such a full church was uplifting and invigorating, such a contrast to this morning's Eucharist. Some of the hymns were new to me, though not their words, resonating with the best of social gospel aspirations. It made me realise how out of touch I with contemporary developments, worshipping in churches which use traditional hymn books, revised of course. There was a farewell party in the church hall next door afterwards. I wasn't in the mood for socialising in a huge crowd and headed for the nearby bus stop. I met Peter and Hilary who gave me a lift back to Llandaff Fields, and I was home by six.

After supper, I set about downloading our flight passes for the cruise, but was unable to with the information available from Kate our travel agent. I realised she didn't have the EasyJet account email which I habitually used and created a new account with the one she did presumably use. But this, plus the holiday booking reference yielded no results. I emailed her a full account of the problem, and home this is not going to be a problem. I suspect that using the wrong email address to send to an account which didn't exist at that moment has resulted in an un-noticed error message. There's nothing I can do about it. I just hope she can sort it out. Just as well there's still a fortnight to go before we travel.

I went for a half hour walk in the park at sunset, in need of cooling my brain following the frustration of the past couple of hours of futile troubleshooting. Then I headed straight to bed.

Chicks on display

Back under cloud, humid with occasional showers and sunshine today. I thought I slept reasonably well and got up just after eight to make breakfast, feeling tired nevertheless. Neither of us were in the mood for Saturday pancake making today. Clare had a painful night with her hip. I admit I'm concerned about how she'll cope with the cruise. Will really hot weather help to ease the pain or make it worse? 

I went for a short walk in Thompson's Park after breakfast in an effort to feel more fully awake. All four of the moorhen chicks were pecking away in the mud on the far edge of the pond, noticeably bigger now than last week. A man was changing his infant's nappy on a bench as I walked by. I was surprised when the child looked up at me and gave me a wave, rather than looking at his dad or protesting at his containment.

Having avoided working on my tax return yesterday, I returned to it to find that I was still lacking some of the information required, embedded in my bank account. Online banking didn't provide what I needed, so I had to collect it from each quarterly statement printout which took a long time. I stopped to cook lunch and then slept in the chair for over an hour before finishing the chore I seem to need close to eight hours sleep nowadays rather than nearer to seven. I can manage, but don't feel as good. It wakes me half a day to feel alert and sharp. It must be something to do with sleep quality, but I don't know what to do about it.

Late afternoon I walked around Pontcanna Fields. Preparations for a big charity fun run tomorrow have started, with a couple of rows of portable toilets installed.  I heard a teenager remark to her friend about the appearance of the porta-potties, wondering what event was going to happen. Three huge event lorries with attached trailer drove on to the far end of the field, but couldn't go further as a cricket match hadn't yet finished. 

On the Taff, I saw a pair of swans with a couple of cygnets that have grown to the extent their plumage is starting to show white feathers among the gray brown. A little further up river, the gaggle of Canada geese occupied the water. I spotted a pair of growing goslings, not yet moulting. There may have been more of them sticking close to their parents. I didn't have a clear view of them all together and in their grey brown down feathers their outline at a distance and on the move isn't all that distinct. It's visible in photos other than those shot at close quarters. It's the same with moorhen chicks and cygnets too. Very useful attire for confusing normally sharp eyed predators.

We had supper a little earlier than usual. After watching the last half hour of last night's Sommerdahl Murder, I spent the rest of the evening reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez until bed time

St James' Church remembered

So uplifting to wake up to a clear blue sky and bright sunshine once more. It's St James' Day today. Just by coincidence when I was sorting stuff out yesterday, I came across an exchange of letters with Archbishop Barry Morgan and myself, about the fate of the huge failing St James's Parish Church near the city centre on Newport Road, dates 2004. After discussion with the congregation, a proposition to redevelop the nave of the building, seating about four hundred, as a multi-use community centre while retaining the chancel for church services was under consideration by the diocesan management team. I was given the go-ahead to turn this into a fully formed plan around which fund raising could take place. 

At that time EU funding for developments in deprived areas was still possible to apply for, and the City Council's community services office was interested in helping advance the project. Not long after we started the European Commission revised its funding priorities, redirecting development funds towards Eastern Europe. British and Welsh government development funding was fully committed elsewhere, so the project just died. Two years later St James was closed and I was faced with the heartbreaking task of clearing and dispersing the contents of the church ready for sale. 

Eventually it was sold to a housing developer for over a million pounds. Then the big financial crash occurred and it was a decade before conversion work on the building continued. The building conversion was completed in 2022 and now contains sixteen apartments. Externally it looks much the same as it once did. Cleaner and tidier in fact. All apartments are occupied or being traded and appear on property websites, looking very luxurious, taking advantage of the design features of the original church. 

I found an article on web reporting on the fate of St James in which I am quoted about the inevitability of closure as it  cost £15,000 a year to keep it open for a regular congregation of fifteen. Those mainly elderly members had seen the number of regular attenders drop from 200 in their lifetimes. Few of them lived in the neighbourhood any longer, and commuted to church once a week. Nothing I could say would overcome their sense of hopelessness. They had lost heart. Did they resume worship in the areas they now lived? I've no idea. None of them kept in touch to tell me. You could say the demise of St James' was both natural and inevitable given the changing demographics of the city centre. But was my striving to keep it on life support through the first five years of my ministry a wasted effort? I neither know nor forget.

After breakfast, Clare started baking a batch of bread, and I went off to buy replacement bags of flour, six kilos worth plus a few other items. A heavy load to return with, but good exercise. Clare made stewed veg with TVP for lunch, and baked a couple of the potatoes given by green fingered Keith, to go with it. Being so fresh out of the ground, they tasted delicious. I had a snooze and started a reflection for the feast of the Transfiguration after lunch, and then chatted with Ashley before walking in Llandaff Fields for an hour and a half. Then I had a call from Rachel at supper time and missed tonight's episode of 'The Archers' as well as eating with Clare. I caught up later and listened to an Archer's podcast missed a few weeks ago. Then I read a few more pages of Gabriel Garcia Marquez before turning to tonight's live episode of 'The Sommerdahl Murders', but mistimed the start of it. It meant that I didn't finish it before it was time for bed. It's good nevertheless, that I still have competing interests and conversations to stimulate my mind. A pity about the ageing body which aches and tires too readily these days.

Paper work

Cloudy and fairly warm for most of the day. At sunset last night, green fingered Keith arrived at our door with a hefty amount of veg from the Riverside Community Garden in Llandaff Fields. He works in several municipal allotments locally, advising and helping less fit gardeners with digging and uprooting, keeping the place tidy, particularly allotments that become neglected, or unused in between leaseholders. Fruiting trees and bushes continue to produce their crop, and he can't bear to see fruit and veg go to waste, so he harvests and offers to friends, neighbours and churchgoers. He brought us a giant marrow, some huge pear tomatoes, a handful of purple runner beans, and several kilos of potatoes of assorted sizes. Potatoes were on this week's shopping list and Clare had only just bought some, although I said I would. We are blessed with abundance at the moment.

I made a start on tidying the accumulation of un-filed documents in my study, organising end of tax year statements, in preparation to fill in my year's tax return. I discovered I was lacking two pension P60s from my service in the CofE. The one from the Church Commissioners I knew I could access on-line to print a copy for reference. The other one from a supplementary pension provider called One Family I didn't have, only a notification letter advising me that I needed to create an on-line account. No more paper P60s. The sign-up routine was thorough and straightforward, involving an identity verification process delivering different codes to both email and mobile number via SMS. Finding and printing off the P60 was easy after that. Aviva had already sent me a tax certificate relating to the cashing in of one of my investment bonds. All I need to do now is add up state pension payments for the year. The State Pensions advisory letter gives the expected sum per annum, but the actual amount received varies a little I've found, depending on payment dates.

While I was busy in my study, Clare cooked mackerel fillets for lunch, with spuds, carrots and a generous amount of purple runner beans picked yesterday and cooked to perfection. A real treat. Then I got to work on printing a copy of Jack's tale to send to my cousin Ros. I wanted to include page numbers, but simply couldn't get the Libre Office editing feature to work, and inadvertently printed them all with page number forty six, so I had to amend all the pages by hand. Worse still, after thirty pages properly printed, the last sixteen came out with striped fades on one side, making them illegible. I took the laser cartridge out of the machine, gave it a shake to redistribute the remaining ink, and fortunately all sixteen pages printed fine, second time around. The cartridge is nearly empty. It's just over four years since I bought the last one, a benefit of being a light user plus the benefit of laser cartridges being far more economical than inkjet ones.

Then at last I went out for a walk around Llandaff Fields. Over the past few months four new sites along the main footpath to Llandaff have been created for park benches, each dedicated with a plaque in memory of someone. It set me thinking. Almost all park benches I see these days carry one. It's more functional than a grave stone, and in a more everyday beloved location than a cemetery, but doesn't last as long. Benches decay, break or get vandalised. Will there be family members around to take care of renewal when the time comes. Stones can last many centuries, depending on what they are made of, but cemeteries can end up being neglected and memorials disappear into undergrowth which is great for wildlife, but not for people. For how many generations does a grave plot get maintained when no family members live nearby? Grave plots may be family owned, or leased and recycled if not renewed, as is common in Europe.

I walked down to the river for a circuit of Pontcanna Fields. I noticed a couple of baseball pitches have been freshly marked out. I often see practice sessions there, but it looks like there'll be a match this weekend.  It was after six when I got home. Clare made veg soup for supper. I didn't feel like tackling the tax return tonight, so I continued watching 'Detective Surprenant' until bed time.

More unexpected digital drama

Another cloudy day, but with a pleasantly warm breeze. I woke up at what seems to be my habitual time of seven fifteen, and posted today's Morning Prayer YouTube link to the Parish WhatsApp group. As I was listening to the news, I heard the various noises made by rubbish bin lorry out in the street. Meadow Street missed out on last week's rubbish collection of sorted recyclables as several scaffolding vehicles blocked the entrance to the street while they were unloading. Despite notifying the Council and receiving an email of acknowledgement, no action ensued, doubling this week's collection of glass plastic cans and paper.

When we were in Penarth with Jasmine on Friday last, a bin lorry collecting glass and plastic from the restaurants on the promenade was temporarily obstructing traffic while it was at work. I watched two bin hoists raising containers of glass and dumping contents with the loud noise of an avalanche of bottles in free fall into the giant recycling container. When the process was repeated for the plastic bottles and cans there was very little noise. What did happen was that the giant recycling container spat out a few cans and plastic bottles on to the pavement. The  hoist operator collected and placed them into the container first used and hoisted them up again. With much the same result. I wish I could have filmed this, as it reminded me of one of those classic BBC comedy sketch shows from another era. The cans and plastic section must have been full to the top to give the impression of a bin lorry with re-flux indigestion.

While I was musing on this memory I heard the noise of some kind of avalanche happening in the house and jumped out of bed to investigate. I discovered a pile of pillows blocking the stairs up to the attic. The void above the stairs has a shelf where spare pillows and bedding are kept. The pile had become unstable and chosen this moment to fill the staircase with its content. I went back to bed, and after breakfast cleared the stairway, leaving the pillows for Clare to re-think storage, then later in the morning I put a reorganised pile of pillows back in place tidily under her direction.

TalkTalk sent me a broadband contract renewal letter this morning. I resolved to deal with it later. I went to the Eucharist at St Catherine's. There were eight of us today. Coffee and chat after the service, then I collected this week's veggie bag from Chapter on my return journey. Clare was making fish pie for lunch, and I cooked a portion of kale to go with it.

After lunch, I returned to the task of setting up my new Dell laptop, as I found an anomaly that I hadn't yet dealt with. It was starting up without demanding a PIN or password login after boot, which meant that it's insecure. I couldn't work out why this was happening. My attempts at editing security settings demanded a password, without making it clear whether an existing or new password was required. After much trial and error, I came across the correct procedure and completed the set up, so that it now behaves in exactly the same way as the other Windows laptop I have, redundant now but not yet disposed of, for fear of getting locked out of my account. All's well. For now.

Then I turned my digital attention to renewing our broadband contract, starting by checking my TalkTalk account, except that I couldn't, as the TalkTalk website refused to recognise the existence of my TalkTalk email address, and therefore wouldn't accept the password tied to it. The login page offered the alternative of signing in with my mobile phone number, or by some other means described as 'passwordless' God only knows what that's supposed to mean. Both of these alternatives depended upon the email address which the site refused to acknowledge. Paradoxically, I was able to use this email address to log into my TalkTalk email account. 

I phoned the call centre number and complained about this and was able to establish that I am the account holder, and was sent a secure code to my TalkTalk email. I was able to read this back to the call centre handler, to confirm account ownership, but this didn't give web access to my account details. Trying to log in by several different methods and failed attempts led to the access page locking me out for 24 hours. Anyway, the call handler, a woman with a South African accent, was patient and sympathetic and I was able to renew my contract. I lodged a complaint about the amnesia of their log-in server, and will have to wait until tomorrow evening to find out if I can retrieve my account. I found this process very upsetting, and struggled to find an accurate way to describe what was going on and what checks I'd made. I was on the phone for an hour, not to mention time spent beforehand trying to log myself in.

An hour and a half's walk in the park was a welcome calming relief, after a stressful afternoon. A flock of geese twentysix of them I counted, were foraging on the edge of the Taff. It's rare to see them this far inland. They feed normally in the shallows of the Bay marina where the Taff flow in.   I enjoyed the refreshment of a bowl of chilled stewed plums with chilli and cinnamon at supper and spent the rest of the evening relaxing, watching a French Canadian crimmie called 'Detective Surprenant' on More Four. It's set on a remote island archipelago off the coast of Nova Scotia a beautiful environment visually interesting, with a story about the secrets of young people and drug trafficking.

Pre-op examination for Clare

Cool and cloudy start to the day, with occasional light showers again. Good for the gardens, as people say routinely. Clare harvested the first of our home grown tomatoes to turn red. Lots more to come from four spare plants she was given. We've also benefited from a surfeit of apples from the garden of a house in neighbouring Llanfair Road, advertised as a free take-away on the local WhatsApp residents group. Some were used in making Jasmine's batch of bramble jelly, so Clare took a small surplus jar around to the apple donor's house as a thank you gift. While she was out at her study group in Penarth, I paid the TV license for the year, then went for a short walk to Thompson's Park, before cooking lunch early. 

Kath and Anto have been sending us lovely photos of Florence and Rome this past few days. This morning they are on their way by train to Trento in the Alto Adige region, of wide glaciated valleys flanked by tall but rounded mountain peaks sculpted during the ice age. They're staying in a hotel surrounded by orchards and vineyards. The mini-bar in their room has bottles of wine from the terroir.  Anto expressed his delight at the speed and timeliness of their train, wondering why the Italian rail network is so superior to ours. The second world war inflicted such damage to transport infrastructure that it gave an opportunity in the years afterwards to upgrade and electrify the whole network. Italy was an early innovator, having its first electric train line in 1901. Britain's rail network was established over 150 years ago and the only major change to the infrastructure has been the closing of so many rural branch lines. With the HS2 infrastructure project foundering, on grounds of cost, and bad planning leading to many objections obstructing the development it seems we're destined to remain stuck with our national heritage.    

I was due to take Clare to the Vale Hospital for her physical check before her hip replacement operation on 1st September, but her friend Linda volunteered to take her instead. It was just as well the meal was ready when Clare returned at twelve thirty as Linda wanted to leave half an hour earlier than I would have done. I walked down the Cowbridge Road and took a bus to town to buy Clare a new Kindle at John Lewis'. Her existing one has a 24 hour battery life now instead of six weeks. She reads a lot so her device is forever on charge. It's not great if you're away from home for any time, and better if you don't need to remember to take a charger with you. The 2024 Kindle charges through a USB-C port, like newer phones and laptops. It all adds up to less cable clutter in your hand baggage. On my way to catch a bus, I popped into Wally's deli to buy a tin of pimenton dulce, and into Beanfreaks to buy a jar of sauerkraut. 

Clare returned just after I did, at half past four. Both of us wanted to go for a walk and Clare went out first, as I wanted to listen to the five o'clock news. I fell asleep for twenty minutes while listening and then went out into Llandaff Fields where I met Clare on her way back. We are such creatures of habit nowadays! After supper Clare set up her new Kindle. It's a long time since she did this so it was a question of figuring out what needed to be done from scratch.

There's been no change in the continuing onslaught on Gaza, where the death tool from bombs and bullets is now being augmented by deaths from starvation. The world looks on helpless. Four fifths of the Israeli population are said to be in favour of a cease fire and an end to hostilities but the Netanyahu regime insists on pursuing the remnants of Hamas into the city of Deir al Bala, expelling inhabitants and destroying one of the remaining urban centres less ruined by the war. 

Outrage by global political leaders and calls for an end to the assault continue to mount, and probably diplomatic efforts too, but none can or will intervene. To do so would be a violation of sovereignty. Some nations might favour it while others oppose, and this in itself could precipitate a war. Meanwhile, the entire tragedy of the Palestinian people and their Gaza homeland is made visible in mass media live reports every day. What will happen when it all comes to an end as it will sooner or later. How will Israel, Palestine, the international community of nations recover from this? What lessons will be learned and acted upon?

I spent a couple of hours reading my Gabriel Garcia Marquez masterpiece of a novel. Despite my often flawed comprehension the intimacy of his manner of storytelling makes me feel as if he's present with me talking about people he knows inside out. And he's so funny, observing the quirks in relationships of people as old as  we now are.

  

Jas in St Paul's

Cloudy and cooler today 17C, with random light showers. After breakfast I worked on making the video slide show for next Wednesday's Morning Prayer. Housework was postponed until later in the day when we have the house to ourselves again. Jas proposed a walk in the park before leaving, but the morning just ebbed away getting her bags packed. Clare made an interesting farewell lunch: cold salmon with grilled courgette, fried aubergine and sweet potato. We took Jas and Louie to the station for a three o'clock train to Bristol. 

They're meeting Owain there, staying in an AirBnB in Wilder Street, in the St Paul's Area, the heart of the Parish I served in fifty years ago. At the east end of this street is Grosvenor Road, where the Jamaican Black and White Cafe served as a focal point for Jamaican men to socialise, play dominoes and eat traditional food. It was the epicentre of the brief outbreak of rioting in April 1980 which drew attention to institutional racism, endemic poverty and the frustration of young people for the first time. In those days housing was decrepit and the street was within the red light neighbourhood. 

Things are different now, housing replaced or renovated. The Black and White Cafe lasted until 2004, when it was demolished. St Paul's Area is even more diverse now than it was in those days, in some parts it's still poor working class, gentrified in others thanks to its proximity to the city centre. None of this will be apparent to Jas and Louie. I hope Owain will tell them some of the story of the area where he was born. I love the fact that one of the clubs in the neighbourhood has continued to run over the years since then, and is still a haunt for aficionados of techno and other alternative music, Owain among them.

After dropping them off, I proposed to drive to the Council's Bessemer Road recycling centre to get rid of a car boot full of assorted electrical stuff and old violin case with broken locks. You have to book a place in the queue for the site to do this but I hadn't yet done so. I gambled on it not being busy immediately after the weekend peak dumping period, to book a slot as we travelled as near to our arrival time as was possible. If we had to wait a while, we could pop into Lidl's and do some grocery shopping first.

Crisis! The Council's website was off-line. What to do? Keep going. There was no queue at the entrance to the site, so I parked the car and approached the guy who was managing traffic at the check-in booth and explained my problem. His first question was - did you try to book through the Council app? No through the website which is down. Yes, it's not unusual, but the app keeps running anyway. I resolved to return to the car, install the app and book myself in, but the guy wouldn't hear of it. He checked my details on the spot on his Council smartphone and directed me to a free parking slot by the electrical dump. These guys are so good natured and helpful, a credit to the Council.

Job done, we drove to Lidl's on the way home and bought much of our grocery requirements for the week. Then, the deferred housework. After that, we both went out for our respective circuits of Llandaff Fields, met for a brief kiss on our circuits half way, then returned for supper. I read more of my Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel for a while afterwards. Despite the ever present challenge of new vocabulary, his story telling gets me laughing aloud when I get the gist of the narration. Then I went out to Thompson's Park for some fresh air to complete my daily distance. There was a drizzle of rain after leaving the house, enough to make me turn back to get a brolly. Carrying a brolly seemed enough to prevent further recurrence.  

Clare was watching a Michael Moseley programme about staying fit and living long and well in old age. Interesting to learn about the need to mitigate ageing muscle wastage by regularly eating extra protein. For much of our adult lives we've been vegetarian, but this last couple of years I've felt the need to eat a small portion of meat regularly. Recently Clare has started helping herself to chicken I've cooked for myself and now admits she's starting to feel the need for this little dietary supplement. And why not indeed! We are so blessed to be able to eat a varied balanced diet, with lots of organic veg and as little processed food as we need. And can afford to eat well too.   

Family lunch with the grandchildren

Warm and cloudy again all day, with a few sprinkles of rain. Clare and I survived a night of sharing a bed without disturbing each other too much and the grandchildren returning by eleven for a slice of Grandma's choccy cake and a drink before turning in. It amazes me to think how well travelled and adventurous these Gen Z kids are, before they start university. Sara wrote to tell me that her daughter, same age as Jasmine is in Madrid on her own this weekend for a K-Pop concert. I was twenty before I left Britain for the first time but these kids above travelled internationally, with or without parents, since they were infants. Sixty years ago we were able to hitch-hike around Europe and sleep on beaches. If there were risks we were unaware of them. It's a different world nowadays.

I got up at eight and went to the Eucharist at St John's where I joined a congregation of about twenty. This meant I was home again just after ten before anyone else surfaced for breakfast, as I guessed correctly. Unlike us the youngsters don't tend to each much early in the day. Clare was already preparing lunch when I arrived. Jasmine came down, then Rhiannon and Tal. We chatted about last night then Jasmine and I went for a short walk to Thompson's Park before we had lunch around the dining table, in the quiet presence of our Trinitarian icon. Sadly Louie didn't join us. It seems that in addition to feeling unwell, he's unused to sitting at table and eating a meal with the family. No matter how hospitable we are towards him he shrinks from the experience.

After we'd eaten, Jas and Rhi took out the family albums to show Tal photos of Kath and Rachel's weddings. They were fascinated to compare resemblances between us and our offspring over the past two generations, and hear stories associated with them. Was it also a way to reveal wedding expectations in advance? I wondered.

Rhi and Tal left us for Kenilworth around three. Jas took herself into town, as she wanted to buy packs of Welsh cakes to take back to her friends in America, and she found out on-line that a Welsh cake shop was still open. To my surprise, she was back in an hour, with packs of Welsh cakes to add to her luggage, along with the little jars of blackberry jelly she and Clare produced. She said how much she's enjoyed being able to walk in the parks and the city since she's been here. Most of the year at home in Arizona it's too hot to walk by day, so cooler weather except for her first three days here have been just what she hoped for

She and Louie are leaving for Bristol tomorrow, so her evening has been taking up with washing stuff and packing. Clare and I watched tonight's first Sunday BBC Promenade concert of the new season, featuring the world's only professional one handed concert pianist Nicholas McCarthy playing a concerto for the left hand composed by Ravel. A beautiful work brilliantly executed. For an encore he played another beautiful left handed piece, a Nocturne written by Scriabin. This Russian concert pianist practiced ten hours a day, and overdid it to the extent of being unable to play with his right hand for a year. This was when he write this exquisite work for left hand only. McCarthy didn't start learning piano until he was seventeen, having decided this was what he wanted to do with his life. He's the only left hand only pianist to have graduated from London's prestigious Guildhall School of Music. Amazing what power music has to bring out the best in people, and reveal unexpected talent. 

After the prom Jas and I went out and walked for half an hour as it was getting dark, our last opportunity to chat together before she and Louie leave tomorrow afternoon. And now sleeep.

Cousins Reunited

Cloudy again and humid, 22C. Although I slept a good eight hours, I woke up again feel lethargic and out of sorts. Waffles were decreed for breakfast, so I made a bowl of batter, and after test cooking one batch, Jasmine surfaced and took charge of the waffle iron. She thought the batter was a bit too thick and added some more milk, but this change led to subsequent batches not taking shape properly during cooking. We added extra flour to make the batter thicker and this improved the end result. 

I went to Tesco's to buy four different kinds of plant milk, as we were nearly out of supplies, also potatoes sweet potatoes and bananas, as we were almost out of these as well. A heavy load to carry home, but the exercise was beneficial. Then there was an extra bed in my room to sort out for Rhiannon and Tal, and sheets to put through the wash. Clare and Jasmine finished making a batch of blackberry jelly and filled the dozen small jar Jas bought yesterday, plus a couple of normal sized ones. We had a late snack lunch and then Rhiannon and Tal arrived at three after a rain soaked journey in her small Seat Mii. She was lucky enough to find a parking place in Llanfair Road. Often when there's good weather, people take off somewhere for the day, but not this weekend. Perhaps because of the Kendrick Lamar concert in town.

After the reunion of cousins, a brief photo opportunity. The last time the two of them were together was 30th June last year. I took a photo of them at the time, and it turned out blurred and Jas had her eyes shut. I don't think either of them were keen on being photographed, so I only got a single picture. This time they were relaxed and happy, and the result was pleasing.

Jasmine and Louie then took themselves off to catch the Waterbus down to the Bay at the Castle Gardens landing stage. Rhiannon and Tal busied themselves dressing up ready to go to the Principality Stadium when doors open at five. The main act doesn't get going for another two hours, but apparently the warm-up DJ is famous and must be heard. Coincidentally Owain is one of the deejays appearing at an open air festival on the Glanusk Estate outside Crickhowell this evening, he'd have been here with us otherwise, sleeping on an air bed in the lounge. He often camps out with his mates and is used to it.

After the four of them left, Clare and I went out for our respective walks in the park. I cooked pasta with tuna, aubergine and courgette for supper. Rachel called and chatted with us while we ate and long after. By the time she rang off, there wasn't enough evening left to start watching something live or on-line, and I didn't want to wait up until the youngsters returned from town, some time after eleven, so it was early to bed for me in earnest for once. 

Blackberry foraging

Cloudy and warm today 23C. After a slow start we drove to Penarth at Jasmine's request for a snack lunch on the pier followed by an ice cream on the promenade. Jas took her Canon AE1 SLR 35mm film camera with her, which used to belong to her dad and took black and white photos in our favourite retro location. 

When we got home, I had to park in Llanfair Road as there was no legal parking space left in our street. Later Jasmine was determined to visit to Thompson's Park to find out if there were any ripe figs on the two trees overhanging the boundary wall of the adjacent houses. There were indeed many, but none fit to eat. Our attention was drawn instead to and abundance of fat blackberries on a neighbouring bush, so we went home to get a container and then return to forage. By then there was a parking space, so I moved the car back into the street before joining her in filling the container. 

Jasmine was taken with Clare's blackberry jelly making method and wanted to replicate it here and now. Already he had set aside and filled a 100ml former spice jar with jelly for taking back to America, and had this idea of making more jelly and to fill more 100ml jars to take with her for her friends, and tell them the unique story of its making. According to Jas, as long as the jars are less than 100ml they can go through security. But will they survive customs regulations? That remains to be seen.

As I was cooking a prawn risotto for supper Jasmine took herself off to the Hobby Craft store in Leckwith, a half hour's walk from here, and returned triumphantly with the pack of 100ml jars she needed. Amazing enterprise! All of this was researched and routed from her smartphone: a true digital native in action!

Later I watched this week's live episode on 'The Sommerdahl Murders' on More Four. Although billed as 89 minutes long, it ran to 120 minutes, possibly due to the amount of prime-time advertisements shown. It meant going to bed later than expected.

Mackerel with raspberries

Mostly cloudy again, but warm 22C. Despite a decent night's sleep, I woke up with tense shoulders and neck which I couldn't unwind for much of the day. After breakfast when Clare went out I decided to record and edit the audio for Morning Prayer the week after next. It wasn't quiet enough in my usual recording spot as scaffolders were working down the street, as they did yesterday. Their activity obstructed the street entrance, so the recycling lorry couldn't get in. The full bags sit out on the street neatly arrayed, waiting for the collection to resume. I wonder if anyone has told the Council about the omission?

Anyway, I made the recordings in the middle room instead, and was pleased to find that they weren't too resonant, and easy to clean up a tiny amount of background noise. I stopped to cook lunch, and continued editing afterwards. We had mackerel fillets with broad beans, spuds, carrots and chard stems. Jasmine collected a handful of raspberries from our garden bush to cook with the fish in the steamer, a surprise for her, and a pleasure for me. Some years ago we had lunch in a Brecknockshire pub serving trout with raspberries, which tasted good. Remembering this inspired to try this with mackerel.

Jasmine and Louie went to the castle, and Clare went out again. I made a brief excursion to Tesco's for cooking oil and a few other things. I exchanged emails with Kate Williams our personal travel agent, and found out that she'll be checking in our flights to Portugal and producing tickets for us. She asked if I'd send her copies of our passports and travel insurance policies for the benefit of Riviera Travel. This took me a while to produce, it was gone six by the time I went out to walk in the park for an hour and a half. 

I returned and had supper late, then watched another episode of 'The Sommerdahl Murders', the last of series two. Apparently there are five series altogether, forty episodes, one crime each double episode, with a soap opera style story line about the love lives and relationships of characters in the crime solving team. I suppose I've got used to this by now. At first it seemed rather ponderous, and I kept wondering when and how it was going to end. Well, now I know. There's another two dozen episodes to come, one series at a time. I don't know how long it will be until series 3 is screened 

Summer abundance

I woke up at seven and posted today's YouTube link to Morning Prayer on WhatsApp, and listened to the news and Thought for the Day, before getting up, emptying the dishwasher and making breakfast. Cloudy again, but warmer, occasionally sunshine 22C. There were six of us for the Eucharist at St Catherine's, at coffee afterwards, courgettes from the church garden, tiny plums harvested by green fingered Keith from abandoned but fruitful allotments he helps to look after and a handful of ripe green figs. Only yesterday Jasmine was asking if fresh figs were available locally, so I bought them to take home. 

I collected this week's veggie bag from Chapter which contained a huge aubergine in addition to courgettes, chard lettuce, carrots and broad beans, almost twice as heavy as last week's bag. Beans and tomatoes in Clare's garden are growing healthily too. Despite the variable weather, it's already a fruitful summer.

Clare went with a friend to visit our old friend Jackie and have lunch with her in Stroud where she now lives. I steamed some veg to eat with a piece of cooked chicken and mayonnaise. Jasmine and Louie went off to visit the National Museum, so I didn't need to cook for them. I started advance preparation on a text for Morning Prayer the week after next, and then went to Thompson's Park to check on the moorhens. 

All four chicks were swimming around in the dense cover of pond weed. One of the chicks is noticeably larger than the others, a sole survivor from an earlier brood or the only male with three female siblings? It's hard to tell. One parent swims around with them, while the other sits on the nest in the middle of the pond. The water level has gone down several inches in the past few weeks, exposing the piled up heap of sticks and twigs on which the nest sits.

Clare arrived home just as I was arriving home, and we had supper together. I watched another episode of 'The Sommerdahl Murders' and continued with a second one until it was time for bed.

Dell first impressions

Cloudy with gusty wind and intermittent light showers all day 18C today. More work was needed on a brief text introduction to the life of St Bridget of Sweden commemorated in next Wednesday's Morning Prayer, before I could record it. It seemed to take up most of the morning after breakfast.

I cooked a savoury lentil with veg dish with rice for lunch. I wasn't pleased with the result as I didn't give enough time to some components and too much time to others. Also, I didn't cook quite enough so we had to settle for modest sized portions. Cooking for more than two requires extra attention to detail. Anyhow, it tasted OK.

After lunch I recorded next Wednesday's Morning Prayer and Reflection, and edited it. This was the first occasion on which I have used my new Dell laptop. The version of Audacity downloaded from Microsoft's app store must be the latest. There are a few modifications to its look and feel, also changes in the layout of the drop down menus I use, which took me by surprise, but are not contentious or annoying. In order to arrange the file system to replicate my habitual workflow. 

On the Honor laptop, I chose to keep all my archived sound and video files on the device and not store them in the Cloud, as they take up a lot of space and I am determined not to exceed my free allocation and have to pay for storage, either to Microsoft or to Google. Everything I have in both cloud services is backed up on physical storage. I have sufficient cloud space for everyday tasks, the volume of new material I store other than photos, is very little nowadays. Enough is enough I reckon.

There's an odd quirk in the Dell's sound management menu which puzzled me. With headphones plugged in, sound comes from the loudspeakers, not from the headphones. The settings menu shows the opposite but if you reverse it, highlight the loudspeakers instead of headphones, sound comes from the headphones. Apart from that, the two channel stereo sound isn't erratic or broken, the sound quality is superb, superior to the Honor laptop. A larger screen is also an advantage in displaying more of a section of sound file at any time. Glad that I set aside my misgivings and bought this. It makes my weekly editing job smoother. Altogether a pleasure to use. 

Clare organised a hairdressing session for Louie with Chris at his salon in Rumney. I drove them there for a three fifteen appointment and returned immediately, leaving them to return by bus. Then I walked in the park for a couple of hours, by this time late in the afternoon, dodging rain showers under the trees, and returning in time for supper Jasmine and Louis stopped in town on their way back from Rumney and had supper there. Jasmine and I then went out for a short walk at twilight. Late to bed again.

Fixing stuff

More cooling wind and cloud from the west, reducing the temperature to a pleasant 22C. There was even a brief rain shower at midday. No housework today. With guests still settling in after jet-lag domestic routine is disrupted. Yesterday's blackberry harvest needed stewing and filtering to turn into a liquor ready to turn into jelly. I let them get on with it, and spent the morning preparing next Wednesday's Morning Prayer and Reflection before having a bowl of salmon soup for lunch. Then I took Clare to the School of Optometry in Cathays to collect a new pair of glasses. Jasmine came as well, and while we waited for Clare we went to nearby Lidl's for grocery shopping. When we got back, Jasmine took Louie out to the park to enjoy the cooler weather with a picnic lunch. 

I had a go at repairing an ornate hand-bell of Asian origin, whose clapper had become detached. The interior was roughly cast and it wasn't clear how the clapper had been attached since it looked as if a small piece might have broken off. Probing inside the bell with an unwound paper clip, led me to a hidden hole in the spot where I thought an attachment point might have been. I was able to thread the wire through it, twist it into a loop with a pliers and reattach the clapper. 

Lucky maybe, but requiring a lot less patience and time than setting up the new wireless mesh network with its useless instruction leaflet, and equally vague installation advice from an AI web search. When I tried using a wi-fi dongle attached to my Linux desktop to access the internet I ran into problems simply because I didn't have enough detailed information about how the mesh system works, but succeeded in the end by trial and error. More wasted time.

I had to go out shopping again as we'd forgotten to get sugar for jelly making. We had supper together for the first time around the table and chatted about familiar places in Europe. Louie's mother is French. Then 

I walked for an hour in the park and chatted to Rachel for a while. The air was pleasantly cool, but out of the blue came a five minute shower. Fortunately I was walking down the tree lined Spine road at the time, and avoided the rain. The sun had set by the time I reached home and I felt tired enough to go to bed, but wrote for an hour instead.

Live Aid at 40

I woke up at five, having slept six hours undisturbed by a full bladder. I can't remember when I last slept so sweetly - seven years perhaps? I went back to sleep straight away, and got up at a quarter to eight for another hot blue sky sunny day. 

My fitbit refused to recognise the extra two and a half dormant hours, obliging me to add the time period and let the app work out how much of that time I was awake or asleep. It's an annoying inconsistency, which calls into question how accurate all its recordings are. They can only be taken as a rough guide. I hate it when the app tells me to take it easy as its measurements determine I'm not ready for exercise. While it's occasionally true that the app is consistent with how I feel, after such a refreshing relaxing night of sleep, I had a clear head and plenty of energy, the measurements were unreal, inaccurate. I wish I could switch off its 'coaching' pop-ups, which presume I am engaged in fitness training. All I need is to check I'm walking and sleeping enough each day. I don't need a cheerleader.

We went to St Catherine's for the Eucharist, leaving Jasmine and Louie to get up for breakfast when they felt like. I counted a dozen children at church with their parents, and three dozen adults. All the doors were open and sunlight streamed into nave. Thanks to stained glass windows, the interior isn't well lit by nature, but with open west and south doors there's an added warm hue to lift the spirits. We came straight home after the service so Clare could prepare lunch. Jasmine and Louie didn't expect to eat at midday however and hadn't long had breakfast. Louie still has a bad stomach. We ate a little later than usual, with Jasmine keeping her apple crumble for later.

After a short siesta Jasmine and I went blackberry picking around the fringes of Llandaff Fields where we noticed enough ripe berries to make it worth the effort. We returned in under an hour with a pound and a quarter ready to make into jelly or jam. Later Louie went out with Jasmine for another round of foraging, bringing the total to two pounds. I went out again after supper to enjoy the cool breeze as the sky clouded over, and completed my daily distance.

I joined Clare watching a documentary on the outcome of the 1985 Live Aid concert, interviewing pop star activists, musical entrepreneurs and politicians involved at the time and in the 2005 Live 8 campaign and events. What started by drawing attention to famine in Africa moved from just popular fund raising for famine relief to drawing attention to the AIDS pandemic that needed urgent attention not only to prevent it spreading, but also research to find effective treatment. Chronic widespread poverty, the root cause of all Africa's dire problems then became the long term focus of attention and debt cancellation the main aim of campaigning celebrities and the politicians whose attention they could grab - successfully, it turned out by the time of the G8 Gleneagles summit in 2005 with pledges of $50 billions' worth of debts to be cancelled. Another twenty years on, $30 billions' worth has been delivered.

Over the past twenty years there's no doubt this has made a substantial difference to economies across Africa. Agricultural development, improved medical care have led to longer life expectancy, and economic improvement, but the gulf between the very rich elite and mass poverty persists. In the digital era Africa has become a place of interest because of its rare earth mineral and precious metal resources, as these are essential for components in every electronic device the world relies on. There's fierce competition to mine, conflict over ownership and exploitation rights not only within African nations, but internationally. 

Yes, Africa has benefited economically and socially from the internet, but much of the wealth derived from the mining of minerals is exported. European nations colonised and exploited Africa for two centuries, now China and Russia are welcome investors in African countries with resources and expertise, in their bids for power and influence in determining who runs the world and how. Those who have the rare minerals hold the global future in their hands. 

Twenty years on, global heating is precipitating a crisis which will affect Africa and maybe cancel all the gains made by the forty year long international campaign to ensure justice for the poorest of the poor. Bob Geldof, Bono and other celebrity advocates interviewed all look forty years older and insist that a new generation will rise up and carry on campaigning in their own ways. But how will future advocates of justice exert pressure on political leaders when everyone is enmeshed in the same global communications system over which nobody has full control, and a relative few massively powerful corporations determine global priorities in ways which benefit themselves and not the poor?

Extreme heat, day two

As I closed the curtains before climbing into bed last night, a saw the rising full moon just above the roof ridge in the street beyond the back garden, not yet risen above the chimney stack. An enchanting sight. I took out three different cameras to take pictures, mostly on auto settings as there wasn't enough time for adjustments to match the night scene, or set up a tripod. None of them were particularly good, but I think the Olympus OMD E-M10.1 was better than the others. At 25C the temperature was comfortable enough to sleep without a covering, though not long enough. 

The doorbell rang frenetically at eight o'clock, so I had to jump out of bed and run down stairs shouting 'Coming!' hoping I'd be heard. It was the Ashton's fishmonger delivery man with a heavy bag of supplies for freezing. I took the mixing bowl of pancake batter from the fridge and replaced it with the fish bag,  then returned to empty the dishwasher, lay the breakfast table and cook pancakes, a double amount. As expected, Jasmine and Louie surfaced late after their flight. Louie then went back to bed, Clare, Jasmine and I went to Thompson's Park to check on the moorhens. By this time the temperature had risen to 33C. In the year since I last experienced such hot weather in Nerja, I seem to be adjusting to the heat more slowly. A product of ageing I suppose. 

Neither Jasmine nor Louie were ready to eat lunch or are not accustomed to a midday meal, so Jasmine took him to explore streets of Pontcanna she remembers from her last visit. I had another go at setting up the Mesh wireless extenders, and succeeded in attaching a second one to the network. Then I finished setting up my new Dell laptop, installing a link to my phone. The data transfer from old to new phone was comprehensive except for one tiny feature, the link to my customised ring tone. I found the original MP3, but not an excerpt from it, and realised I'd used a three minute track instead. I had to send a copy to my laptop to edit the track and make a 30 second ringtone, to send back to the phone. I had no desire to learn how to do sound editing on my phone. I didn't think it would be such a fiddle to send files back and forth between devices. In the end I connected them by USB-C cable, a familiar routine, and in effect quicker. Job done. Then I uploaded all the photos taken in the past week and editing where necessary. and didn't venture out again until late afternoon.

It was still very hot, but wearing a hat and walking in the shade as much as possible made it bearable for an hour or so, then I headed home to cook a veggie pasta dish for supper. Unfortunately Louie was feeling poorly and didn't join us, just Jasmine. As sunset approached and the temperature dropped to 25C Jasmine and I went out and walked for an hour, talking photography. She said that on this trip she's brought a film camera with her, but accidentally forgot to extract them from her baggage for scan free inspection at the airport in Phoenix. She's using low speed film rolls which can survive CT and Xray scans unimpaired. It's the most sensitive high ISO films that are most vulnerable. It's a case of traveller beware, I'm afraid.

Just as I was about to go to bed, Jasmine asked for a door key, as she decided to go out in the dark and  take Louise with her to enjoy the cooler night air. Both of them are used to air conditioned houses, so our little heatwave must be hard going for them, on top of jet lag.

New tech' set-up frustration

The temperature was a comfortable 18C overnight, pleasant for relaxed sleeping. By mid morning under a cloudless sky it was 27C rising to 33C, one of the hottest places in the UK for a change. In the early hours a message from Jasmine stated that she and Louie were boarding a flight arriving at Heathrow around one o'clock, hopefully arriving at Sophia Gardens by coach around half past five. At last, patience rewarded!

Netanyahu has been in talks with Trump in Washington for the past couple of days, promising a cease-fire deal, but announcing nothing in conclusion. Meanwhile people are killed daily at emergency aid points by soldiers and militiamen alleging they are controlling crowds or hunting Hamas fighters, no longer an army but a collection of insurgents. Killings reported seem indiscriminate and far more victims are women and children than can be considered random accidents. Too little is being said by international leaders backing either Israeli or Palestinian sides about this genocidal anarchy, as that would be an admission of inability to influence events or Netanyahu.  

Most Israelis appear to want the war to end and a deal made to return hostages and resume delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza. Apart from the Zionist fanatics who hold the balance of power in the Netanyahu government. Zionist fanatics who hold the balance of power in the government resist decisive action. Is Netanyahu delaying action until the government goes into summer recess, to impose a deal while there's not enough time for the minority to obstruct it? It would be a gamble. It would break the coalition, but any popular surge of support might re-make the coalition with a less extremist balance of power. Meanwhile each day more Gazans die, shot bombed or starved to death, while the world watches unable to intervene without the risk of destabilising the situation further and triggering a third world war.

Irvine Welsh was interviewed on this morning BBC Today programme about his new book, a sequel to his seminal 'Trainspotting' novel of thirty years ago, with the same characters growing older in a radically changing world. He made an incisive comment about the influence of the internet, especially social media and the emergence of AI. Things which may have developed as an information service have concentrated power in the hands of transnational corporations and operate with their own profitable interests in mind. If you search to inform your answer to a question you have in mind, it is more likely to tell you only what's in its interests to tell you, not precisely what you want to know, undermining our ability and desire to think for ourselves. 

Welsh identifies something I have noticed. I know all the information I need about transport timetabling is out there. I can ask a specific question about when the next 61 bus to town arrives at the nearest stop. In some instances Google search will list a few of the nearest match times, in others it will tell me how to search the required timetables, something I already know and can't be bothered with, as it's too fiddly and time consuming. It wants to drive me to one or more websites, or install an app to obtain the information I need. In each case, those devices will most likely pitch me advertisements distracting me from finding out the simple fact I need. It's not in my interests but it generates ad income and information about my search a third party will use to pitch me more ads I don't need to see.

I finally got around to setting up my new Moto G24, an onerous fiddly job. The tricky task of extracting and inserting the SIM and SD cards was relatively easy this time around, but with half a dozen different accounts and apps needing to be signed into and security notifications responded to, plus endless sets of terms and conditions to be agreed to at every move, on top of the hit and miss wholesale transfer of data between phones, it took a couple of hours. Hit and miss, as the process was interrupted by two separate incoming emails. The only annoyance was Google Wallet, insisting that I set up digital payment card details with an immovable demand filling half the screen space. No point in asking Google how to get rid of this. It didn't understand the question. Fitbit behaved itself however, but the Church in Wales lectionary app didn't transfer and had to be reinstalled. Anyway, the morning was over by the time I finished and it was time to cook lunch. Two big hake fillets poached in olive oil and lemon, plus usual veg.

After we'd eaten, I cleared up and had a line of washing to hang in fierce afternoon heat, then another hour completing set-up of  new Dell laptop, with a Microsoft account passkey, recommended these days for enhanced security. I then started unpacking and setting up the Mesh 1200 wireless network extender pack I bought at the same time as the laptop. The instruction leaflet contained no writing at all, just pictures of each stage in the process which took ages to decode without knowledge or accompanying explanation. I attached the hard wired extender unit and got this to attach to the internet, but completely failed with the other two wi-fi extension units. Google's written set-up instructions were plain and straightforward enough but didn't attach to the router or to each other. Most frustrating, contradicting assertions that set-up was a simple straightforward process.

Despite a late departure Jasmine's flight arrived on time. Their coach arrived late, due to Friday rush hour traffic, but also due to city centre road closures for tonight's Stereophonics concert. The bus station was also closed, as I discovered when I arrived more or less on time to meet Jasmine and Louie. Incoming coaches parked in the town-side bus lane at the bottom of Cathedral Road. After a ten minute wait their coach arrived, and they stepped off it looking dazed and drained. The air conditioning on the coach was broken, so the temperature was thirty degrees or more in direct sunlight. We walked back slowly, grateful for the shade of tall trees most of the way. Clare fed them with omelette and chips, and by ten they were ready to start adjusting to the time zone change, catching up on a lost night's sleep. I pottered around with the Mesh set-up for another hour, then called it a day.

Construction landmark

Another hot sunny day with the temperature rising to 28C mid-afternoon. Jasmine reported that she and Louis are still waiting on stand-by for a flight from Phoenix to Heathrow and hoping to get one tomorrow  early. It reminds me of having to wait at Greek island harbour sides for an island hopping boat to arrive back in the sixties, tonight if not tomorrow perhaps ... That was before mass tourism, and there was often a beach nearby where you could wait under a tree until you saw a boat approach. Waiting around for days in the air-conditioned concrete and glass cage of an airport building doesn't compare with it. I guess they can hang out wherever they like until they get a message of confirmation to check in and expect to depart.

I went grocery shopping after breakfast, then worked on preparing text, recording and editing it for next Wednesday's Morning Prayer. Then I cooked lunch, baking sausages and potatoes in the over alongside the chicken pieces I bought. My small supply of meat for the week, which I find beneficial to accompany our largely vegan diet. I don't care if it is considered heretical, it works for me. 

After a short siesta following  lunch, I went for a walk in Thompson's Park. The four remaining moorhen chicks were out swimming around in the shade of the weeping willow tree which overhangs one corner of the pond. It was good to see adults sunbathing or sitting on the grass reading in each of the two open grass areas. I walked for an hour then returned home, started making the Morning Prayer video slideshow, then completed and uploaded it after supper. 

It was still 23C at sunset when I went out to Llandaff Fields to complete my day's exercise. There's been some progress on Padel court construction site. After more than a month of excavating clay soil and laying a bed of large stones and another layer of gravel, the top layer of asphalt has now been added. There will be six courts altogether when it's complete, but that's going to take a while longer, as posts and netting need to be erected and lighting installed. I'm curious to know what will happen to the large volume of soil excavated to create each court area. Will it be taken away, or shaped into a bank shielding the courts from the footpath nearby. I've not seen any design images or site plans displayed in the park.

My wretched fit-bit tells me I'm over training and should take a rest day, but I'm not training, just making sure I get enough fresh air and exercise at all seasons. That way I get to sleep rapidly most of the time. Thankfully I'm just not as stressed as I used to be, most of the time.

Flying visit

Another warm sunny day with clouds, I woke up at seven, posted today's Morning Prayer YouTube link to WhatsApp and eventually got up and had breakfast at eight, unable to doze, despite getting to bed an hour late. I stood in for Fr Sion celebrating the Eucharist at St Catherine's and then St John's. I bought a pot of fresh blackcurrant jam, and the first three courgettes harvested from St Catherine's church garden, to add to the extra weight It was carrying. A few influential liturgical and devotional reference books from my library came with me to St John's give to Andrew for use when he starts ordination training this autumn, leaving them in the vestry for him to collect. Slowly I'm disposing of the bulk of my library in an effort to de-clutter and make room for a study makeover. It will make it easier for whoever has the task of dealing with my stuff when I'm gone.

After the two services I collected the veggie bag from Chapter on my way home. Clare hadn't yet started making lunch assuming that Kath and Anto would need an evening meal before the Stevie Wonder concert in Blackweir Fields. I was fairly sure this wasn't case, and started cooking, so we ate and hour late. Kath and Anto arrived at three and were happy to settle for high tea, with hummous and salad rather than a cooked meal, as they planned to leave for the gig at a quarter to six to meet with friends. We sat and chatted in our sunny back garden until it was time for tea. It was lovely to watch bees, butterflies and other insects busily going about their business with almost everything in full flower.

After they left for the concert, I walked in the park for an hour. I could hear the distant thunder of bass and drums being played but couldn't tell what song was being performed. The only high pitched sound to be carried a mile and a half from the concert was the sound of cheering. As I arrived home, I saw again the flock of five parakeets heading down to the river from Thompson's Park, and then I noticed further away a flock of another dozen of them flying from another direction to join them, the first indication I've observed of accelerating numerical growth. Shortage of sleep time and an energetic morning left me feeling tired and lethargic. I didn't have the energy to complete the setting up of my new Windows 11 laptop or my new phone. They'll have to wait until I have the energy to concentrate on doing what's required.

We watched an edition of 'The Repair Shop' entitled Favourite Fixes, which was a compendium of repairs from previous series, none of which features the disgraced presenter Jay Blades. And then after the news, bed.

A techy sort of day

Another beautiful warm blue sky day, after an interrupted night with messages from Jasmine in Arizona saying that their standby flights had been cancelled. It look like they won't arrive now until Thursday. I got up a bit late, considering I had to drive to St German's after breakfast for a ten o'clock children's Mass. Peter wasn't there to help at the altar, and although most things were ready, I had to hunt for the weekday lectionary. I doesn't contain the relevant collects, so I had to read from the Church in Wales lectionary app on my phone hidden on the lectern- in flight mode of course. 

Thirty children and three staff members arrived and I had a lovely time speaking with them about the peace that Jesus gives, starting with the story of the dumb demoniac, as someone who may have been so terrified by something nasty that he couldn't talk about it. I noticed glances of understanding in a few faces, when I talked about needing a cuddle when you are frightened. 

We sang a few short songs unaccompanied. When it came to the offertory I realised that the booklets on the altar didn't contain a Eucharistic prayer, just an outline. Rather than rush around looking for an altar book and disrupting the calm atmosphere, I recited by heart the Eucharistic Prayer as far as the anemnaesis and improvised from there on a simple continuation of the prayer down to the doxology, without hesitation or deviation. It's not something I'd normally do, but I felt comfortable about doing it. 

Angela who was doorkeeper in the house of the Lord on this occasion noticed what I'd done and expressed her approval as she'd noticed I wasn't reading from a book! I tidied up and took my leave, as the fire safety inspection was starting, another reason for Angela to be there. Driving down Newport Road, I realised that I'd forgotten to sign the service register and wondered where I might stop to phone her. Then I realised my phone was still on the lectern. I got home, checked her mobile phone number on my Chromebook, and called her. Thankfully she was still in church, as the fire safety officer had only just gone. I drove back to St German's to retrieve the phone and headed home a second time. Clare's study group was just leaving after their session. I let her carry on making lunch, as I had to finish editing audio for tomorrow's Morning Prayer pronto. 

Video making had to come later in the afternoon, as I had grocery shopping to do, and sort out the rubbish ready for collection. I also decided I should get rid of two fifteen year old laptops, still working but useless without Linux, and now a bit slow booting up. I called in to Tourotech and asked Davey if she was still a collection channel for hardware recycling, and with this confirmed I returned and collected them, to take to him. The combined weight of them must have been six kilos. I set out to walk but realised that the weight of them was too much for my back and feet, to carry nearly a mile. The 61 bus was fifteen minutes late, the amount of time that walking would have taken. Ah well!

I came away from the shop with a bargain second hand Dell Windows laptop and a set of three wireless network mesh extenders altogether costing £290. Then I started setting up the laptop, still a horribly time consuming job as it forces you to re-set your password, and makes the process a real rigmarole. It's still not complete as it's still telling me that I'm not logged into my Microsoft account when I am. I can't set up the mesh extenders, or my new phone until I've sorted out the laptop. I had to get on with video making and uploading itto YouTube on my old Honor laptop, and then return to troubleshooting. I gave up at nine and walked under a clear sky with a nearly full moon for half an hour to clear my head. An aroma of hay and lime flowers perfumed the still air. Exquisite. But I did get to bed much later than intended, and rather tired, mentally and physically.

Encouragement

Blue sky and sunshine, pleasantly warm today. Housework as usual after breakfast, then I started to record this Wednesday's Reflection and Morning Prayer. Unusually, I was interrupted by noise a couple of times and had to stop. Doing this broke my concentration as well as continuity, but in the end I was able to edit together recorded fragments of the Reflection into a whole, although it took a lot longer than usual. Clare made lunch and after we'd eaten I recorded the Office. 

After lunch Clare went by taxi to Rumney for a hairdo with Chris, while I walked to UHW for a cataract op check-up and lens measurement. It took me fifty minutes to reach the hospital, about the same amount of time as it took me the last time I walked all the way, about four years ago. Maybe I'm not deteriorating physically as much as I fear. But I do tire more quickly than I used to, that's for sure, and I'm better some days more than others. 

The check-up took an hour and involved several rounds of eye drops to secure required eye data, with a lot of flashing bright lights and repeated scans which I found quite stressful. My vision didn't return to normal sharpness for four hours, which was a bit disconcerting. I was impressed by the patient turnover speed, no doubt aided by recent digitisation of preliminary medical paperwork. The place was busy, but staff seemed to be in good spirits, perhaps because their job has been made a little easier. 

I sat in the concourse lounge recovering with a cup of hot coffee afterwards. It took so long to cool enough to take a sip that I walked to the bus stop instead where a number nine bus into town had just arrived. The journey into town was very slow as the rush hour had started. Clare returned to the city centre by bus, and went to John Lewis' for a cuppa, only to find its restaurants closed. That was my destination too, as I made up my mind to buy the Moto G24 on offer in the sale. We met at the entrance to Caroline Street as she was on her way to the bus station for the 61 bus, too tired to wait around for me to buy a phone. It didn't take me long, and I followed her home on the next 61 bus. 

Cousin Dianne emailed me to say that she's finally finished reading my Dai Troubadour novel. As a retired journalist she's still an avid reader with several books on the go at the same time, so it's taken her many months. I'm thrilled to learn that she enjoyed the story. It encourages me to think that self-publishing may be worth the effort after all.

I spent the evening recording and editing trying to eliminate as much as possible of intruding noises in the background. I also unpacked and charged my new phone, but propose to leave it until tomorrow to do the set up process. Jasmine and her boy friends Louis will be in the air from Phoenix while we sleep tonight, and arriving in Cardiff some time tomorrow afternoon if all goes to plan. 

Ministry Area tea at Llys Esgob

Another cloudy start to the day, but it was warm and the sun shone now and then. I drove to St German's again to celebrate the Eucharist in Fr Jarel's absence. In a congregation of over forty were three babes in arms, and half a dozen other children, two of them at the altar, a noticeable change in a congregation that's mainly middle aged or elderly. It was a pleasure to sing the service completely as well as preach, feeling I was among friends. Many were tired after yesterday's fund-raising summer fayre. The weather was poor and getting to church hindered by city centre road closures and congestion, but a fair amount of money was raised. Today, no coffee and cake after Mass, so I got home before one o'clock, a rarity for me if I go to St German's.

We had an invitation from Fr Andrew to a strawberry tea for Ministry Area co-workers this afternoon at Llys Esgob. There were about twenty of us, including three retired clergy and two newly ordained curates, served tea by Bishop Mary. I decided we should go by bus, as one was due to go to Llandaff at three. We were just around the corner from the Half Way bus stop in good time to catch the bus, when the bus drove past us three minutes early. Most annoying. I returned home in haste collected the car and drove us there, and was relieved to find a parking place on Cathedral Green. It was a good opportunity to catch up with a variety of people I've got to know in the churches over the past five years. 

After we got home just after five, I walked for an hour in Llandaff Fields before supper. I went out again after we'd eaten to check on the moorhen chicks. Two were swimming around in the pond, two more were on the floating nest with mum. I'm not sure if the fifth chick has survived, as it's a couple of weeks since I saw the brood of five. When I arrived at the front door I saw five parakeets flying in formation overhead, one more than yesterday. No idea how many more family groups there are in the area, but I've a lot more parakeets calls locally this year.

We watched another episode of 'The Repair Shop' this evening, another featuring the renovation of a large format bellows camera dating back at least 65 years. Its beautifully engineered lens mechanism needed only a few drops of watchmakers lubricating oil to resume working accurately. 

In the late news report of a flash flood hitting a summer camp on the rio Guadaloupe in Texas killing sixty people, a third of them children. A devastating eight metre surge of water rising in only 45 minutes left insufficient time for urgent flood evacuation warnings to be issued. It reminded me of the flash flood disaster which took over 200 lives in the Valencia region at the end of October last year, and there have been others, as climate instability afflicts countries around the world - Bangladesh, Nigeria, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, the Dominican Republic, Germany. The world is still not prepared for the frequency and scale of extreme weather events, wars continue regardless when people should be working together to face up to immense challenges threatening all our futures.

In the mist

Cloudy again today with fine misty rain driven by a warming wind from early on until late afternoon when the sun peeped through now and then. Good for growing plants. Our beanstalk pyramid plants are now covered with red and white flowers, promising a healthy crop. When I got up I felt stiff and heavy all over, for no reason I could think of, apart from the damp air.

Clare cooked buckwheat pancakes for breakfast, then I worked on tomorrow's sermon. It's taken me longer than usual this week, but it's a while since I preached on a Sunday, so maybe I'm out of practice. I delayed eating a pasta lunch for a couple of hours and went for a walk in Llandaff Fields instead as I still felt full of pancakes. There were very few people out playing games or walking their dogs. Rachel called while I was walking. We talked for an hour including when I was eating a late lunch on return.

Then Clare and I both went out shopping, me for household supplies, and a new dish washing brush and Clare for dishwasher tablets and other stuff from Beanfreaks. I needed to get cash out of an ATM. Tesco's machine was faulty, so I had to use the one outside the Principality Building Society across the other side of the road. Since the local bank branches closed there are none to host ATMs. The fine drizzle turned into a shower for a while, enough to soak my rain jacket on the walk home. If it had been a few degrees colder it would have been miserable indeed.

At the end of the afternoon the wind drove away the misty drizzle and lifted the cloud cover but without dispersing it. I went to Thompson's Park to finish my daily distance and spotted four parakeets flying over the grass to roost in the tall trees on the western edge of the park. I wonder how many more of them there are in the city's parkland now?

After supper I didn't do much apart from read a long interesting article about an huge science laboratory experiment started in the 1990s called Biosphere 2 which created climate controlled models replicating different kinds of ecosystem, rainforest, desert, ocean, wetland etc in a huge sealed environment, to study changes in a controlled way. For two years it was occupied by researchers, sealed off and self sustaining to see if it would be possible to recreate earth living conditions on the moon or mars. It wasn't perfectly successful, but a lot was learned from it about how much more complex and subtle the world's biosphere #1 than is understood. Humans and Earth are co-dependent. n

No other place natural or artificially constructed would be a substitute to sustain life. Don't expect space travel romantics to believe that. Remind them there's only one earth.

Then I watched an old episode of 'The Repair Shop'. It featured a Kodak camera made in 1940 belonging to a British prisoner of war. Its mechanism although jammed, wasn't broken, it just had a screw loose and needed a good clean. The shutter worked and it still took good black and white photos. Just the case and camera body were scruffy needing cosmetic attention. The owner's son and grand daughter followed in his footsteps as keen photographers. An interesting story. Finally,  after further tweaks to the ending of the sermon, I printed it, and went to bed early. I don't know why but I didn't stop feelings tired all day, despite sleeping well last night.