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.
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