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.
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