Farewell day for Kath

A hazy start to the day persisting with thin high clouds later but no wind. Again, we breakfasted on the terrace enjoying the mild weather. Kath kindly stripped her bed, we put the linen through the washing machine and hung it out to dry. Once her bags were pached, we walked down to the Mirador de Güilches restaurant across the road from Tamango Hill, and had lunch there at a table overlooking the sea and Playa Vilches below us. Grilled Lubina for Kath, sardinas for me.

We walked slowly back up the hill after we'd eaten, loaded the car and headed for Nerja. I found the route to the large car park on open waste land that sits below the main road, a steep climb back up to street level, but still convenient for the estación de autobuses. On our way there we passed a phone shop and went in to enquire about a Spanish data SIM for my phone. With Kath's help and both of us using Spanish, I bought a month's worth of data on a physical SIM and had it added to my phone. This gives me the security of connectivity I need in and out of the house. It's a relief.

At €10 a month it's a quarter of the cost of EE data roaming for the same period. It's symptomatic of how some businesses are profiteering from brexit changes and sabotaging their own future. Even loyal customers resent being exploited. I haven't changed mobile provider in 23 years, but will be looking into it when I return home.

We arrived at the bus stop at four twenty five, in time for an earlier coach to Málaga and the driver was happy to take Kath, so we parted company, and she had a two hour wait for her very late return flight back to Brum, not getting home until well after midnight. I did some shopping in Mercadona before driving back to the hous and cooking supper. I ended the day with a walk down to the main road and along the path to the not-yet-open-for-the-season Mesonera restaurant overlooking Nerja whose lights 2km away twinkle against the dark sky. And then return, and bed.

Blackberry Blues

Today's flight back to Malaga was punctual and uneventful apart from a brief bout of turbulence over the Pyrenees which caught everyone by surprise inclding the air stewards. After we landed, I found that my Blackberry Z10, newly converted to run on a BT EE network sim card could find the local network but wouldn't attach to any of the four carriers available with strong signal. I tried different settings, and re-started the phone to no avail. In the end, it booted up to 100% but wouldn't even display what Blackberry call the 'Escreen' = the 'desktop' on an ordinary computer, so I couldn't even use it to retrieve emails via wi-fi. My own personal PAYG phone, on the same EE network switched over to Orange ES, without a hitch.

Nothing much can be done about this over the weekend, and I certainly can't do anything from Spain, it will have to be done by Ashley in Cardiff, as he is the account holder for all our business phones. My guess is that BT, despite having a contract to supply us with acccess to roaming services while I'm in Spain have foisted a new SIM card upon us without checking if roaming abroad was required. If so, it's a serious indictent of the quality of service to business customers in an world where crossing European borders, if not continents is an everyday matter. Once again EE's 'Everything Everywhere' service turns out to be more like 'Nothing Nowhere' despite all their expensive media advertisements. It's not so much the technology that doesn't work properly, as the people who manage it.

 

Springtime in Dyffryn Nantlle

We were out of the house and on our way up the A470 to North Wales by nine thirty this morning, and found only light traffic all the way. The weather was good and everything made for a relaxed and pleasant journey. We stopped for a pub lunch in Caersws, and arrived at Trigonos in Dyffryn Nantlle by three. We noticed once we crossed over the Brecon Beacons bluebells were in bloom everywhere in the hedgerows and mountainsides. Ours in the garden at home were over two weeks ago. 

In Snowdonia the visual impact of rhododendrons, mostly purple, is a striking contrast to bluebell blue. Rhododendrons are an invasive species, imported by the wealthy from the Himalayas in the nineteenth century, and now running wild, regarded as an invasive species. In and around Beddgelert, the National Park authority is taking initiatives to curb if not root them out, before they destroy native species which cannot compete with their vigour.

After unpacking, we walked out by the lake at the bottom of the garden at Plas Baladeulyn, saw several ethereal powder blue dragonflies in the long grass, a fish jumping and two white butterflies mating, one of them had bright yellow wing tips. As well as the sound of blackbirds, robins and chaffinches, we heard the solitary distant voice of a cuckoo. It don't think I've heard one since I was last here three years ago. 

It's very quiet here, and also difficult to get a phone signal in such a deep valley. Nothing from BT and a very poor one from Orange-EE standing in a corner of the car park. So we have to rely on wi-fi, and for that, a short walk from the main house to the neighbourhood around the estate office. The government talks about improving rural internet services, but in some parts of rural Wales mobile reception is in a worse condition. I couldn't help noticing so many UKIP posters on display in this region, symptomatic of disaffection with the Westminster political elite, and for that matter the Cardiff political elite, for failing to deliver resources which have become critical for economic development and success.

Job done

I cleared the data from my spare phone this morning, and got it unblocked at the EE shop in town this afternoon. Then, on my way to work, I went to the Old Library where Owain is currently temping in the City Council's Tourism and Leisure section, to hand it over to him.

Walking to meet Ashley on the way to the office, I was quite surprised to see Jean-Bernard Métais sculpture 'Alliance' on the Hayes outside the new Library turned into a temporary advertising hoarding.

I wonder what the artist thinks of this? I wonder if it will raise debate about the nature and function of public art hereabouts? I'm greatly looking forward to Grayson Perry's BBC Reith Lecture series, which gets under way tomorrow. He'd undoubtedly have some funny comment to make about it if he saw it.

A couple of hours in the office, and then home for the evening, sifting through old poetry and compiling some of them into sections with brief introductions, ready to post on my poetry blog. The results of my labours are here. Quite a satisfying evening.

  

Another week in Malaga

Well, the promised replacement SIM card to go with my replacement phone didn't turn up until today's post. After an afternoon in the office on Monday, I visited the EE shop in Grand Arcade and bought a new Samsung Galaxy SIII Mini, the same size as my lost phone but a lot quicker and easier to read, with an improved brighter sharper screen. My account details and number were transferred to the SIM in the new phone and I was told it would be active in four hours. I went to bed at midnight and it was still impossible to use as a phone, although it was useable via wi-fi to access the internet, and most of my contact details and phone numbers were added from the Samsung Kies backup programme. A pity the backup was several months old, so a few newer numbers needed adding by hand. A fiddly job.

Tuesday morning fifteen hours after purchase, still no phone, and my Orange internet account told me that it was still blocked. So I borrowed Clare's phone to ring up, and within minutes a helpful call centre guy had unblocked the account and made sure that all was in order. So, the guy who sold me the phone in the EE shop thought that he'd done all the right things, but seems to have missed something decisive in the complex procedure. Funnily enough the same thing happened last time I bought a phone. It's not a good advertisement for the service. Oh yes, and the SIM card mailed to me arrived on Tuesday. Should I now send it back?

With an evening flight to Malaga again, I had a leisurely day to prepare. Strangely for me, I packed most of what I intended to take on Tuesday evening, yet when I arrived at Bristol Airport I remembered that I'd not packed a toothbrush, or the Spanish grammar and phrase books. The more relaxed I get about travel, it seems the more careless about the detail I get - like forgetting to add Fr Geoff's mobile number to my new phone so that I could text him to say I was on my way. I had the bright idea as I was sitting in the very back row of the aeroplane waiting to be told to switch off everything electronic, of texting Clare and asking her to ring him before he left home to go to the airport. She did, but had no luck getting through. 

Thankfully Fr Geoff trusted that all was well though we hadn't spoken for a while. He and Carol were there to meet me. Being in the back row was not only the most uncomfortable flight I can recall, as the seat space is a little smaller in the corner, I was also one of the last off the plane, then there was a fifteen minute queue to get through passport control, and a long walk to the arrivals gate. By the time we sank into armchairs with a late night beer in the Vicarage at Nerja it was quarter to one, with a good hour's more catchup talk before surrendering to sleep.

  

Back to base and digital divisions again

Time to go home, so we were up early, gathering our goods and chattels, loading them into the car. We were on our way by nine thirty, stopped at Pont Abraham services by eleven and home in Cardiff by one. 

Apart from dealing with the relatively small pile of mail and doing the food shopping, my major task was sorting and uploading photographs, and preparing a sermon for tomorrow. Our accommodation was a little cramped for two of us, let alone when Owain camped on the floor, but so well situated. I look at my pictures and am reminded just how beautiful and photogenic the West Wales coastline is. No wonder the visitors come here from all over Europe as well as Britain. But best of all is the gentle way of life, the warmth of hospitality and the food, whether you buy things to cook or go out for a meal. And there's ten years worth of holiday exploration of the region's history to prevent you getting bored, whatever the weather.

The only thing that marred the experience from my point of view was poor digital network connectivity, whether by mobile or wi-fi throughout the area. The infrastructure is not fit for purpose, given the large number of visitors that can be predicted to arrive annually. This is damaging for the tourism economy and damaging for all those who live permanently in far flung places and are expected to be there to welcome visitors. What rural Wales offers to wider society is hugely valuable in terms of health and welfare, giving people a respite from the pressures of work and urban living. Yet investment in the improvement of connectivity to rural areas comes late to government priorities. I'm talking here, not about high speed broadband to direct home deliver entertainment packages, but about reliable basic services, email and text messages, delivered as consistently as BBC Radio Four is to most remote areas. 

That identifies the problem in a way. BBC broadcasting sets very high standards of availability all over the country. That's a benchmark for mobile phone signals, and internet access by whatever means. It is possible to get on line in most places, but in some, local server capacity is so inadequate to cope with the fluctuations of demand by increased numbers that every service user is affected.

I'll never forget being able to upload photos via a BT Openzone wifi connection faster than at home on one day, then on another, not even being able to get recognition of the same memorised password to permit access to the same service. That tends to be an indication of overwhelming demand, but it was also true of Ceredigion Council's public wi-fi network access when I tried to use it in Aberteifi's library the week before last.

Sure, people learn to live with these frustrations, but the persistent failure to keep up with the rising demand is a symptom of the gulf between all consuming big city demands and the rest. Escaping from the city to the country is what a large proportion of citizens want to do when they can, but like me, they bring with them expectations about being able to stay in touch with people elsewhere that govern their attitudes and actions. 

If you can get a phone signal on top of Everest and in many parts of the Swiss Alps, why can't you get one right along the Welsh coast path, in places where not being able to call for help could be a serious risk to life? Wake up WAG and Whitehall.

 

Parish visit

Yesterday morning, we took Owain back to Fishguard to catch his train home to Cardiff. By special request we re-visited the Parrog beach at Trefdraeth / Newport, walked along the coat path, and skimmed stones on the sea, near the the old lifeboat station, before feeding him with lunch for the journey.

We lunched in the stylish Parrog restaurant (visitor centre) in Goodwick close to the Ferry terminal and railway station. Then we took time to look around the town before heading home. We also stopped for a look at Henllys Castle near Eglwyswrw on the way back. It's a reconstruction of an Iron Age fortress above the ancient Parish church of Meline. It's visible from the main road as a collection of thatched round houses on a wooded hilltop. Unfortunately it was too late in the day to have a good look around the site, so it will have to keep for another time.

Today we drove north to have lunch with our friend Margaret, now incumbent of a group of six parish churches in the mountains to the east of Aberystwyth. After an hour's drive along the main road along the coast it took us twenty minutes driving inland and uphill to reach her 'Ficerdy' at Llanafan. It's still a predominantly agricultural area, and Welsh speaking, which has done wonders for her Welsh. She took us on a tour of the churches after lunch, all in the most spectacular locations with small congregations, struggling to make ends meet, and yet contributing something vital to the health of rural society. It was great to see her looking so happy, and enjoying a ministry that's radically different from anything she's done before.

On my way there, I lost my Samsung Galaxy phone, which must have dropped out of the car when we stopped at a filling station. When we got back home in the evening, I had to borrow Clare's phone, also on Orange EE, to call the helpline and get the phone's SIM card blocked to prevent use and theft of PAYG credit. As ever I had to walk a quarter of a mile up the hill to get a signal, but when I did, I was greeted by an Indian lady who chatted in a very friendly and reassuring way while sorting out my problem. Whether she was in the sub-continent or UK, I neither know or care, but it was a genuinely comforting encounter, as I was coming to terms with my carelessness.
    

Tweet a friend

I painted the the front garden wall coping stone, the porch and its surrounds yesterday. There's only the bay window to do a second time now and the job is complete. A fledgling seagull from one of the street chimney nests is roaming the street while its parents patrol often noisily above. Some years they die, other years they grow until they can fly, and the street goes quiet again, until next breeding season.

My complaints on Twitter about poor EE reception locally in Pontcanna have elicited a response from someone who manages their on-line public relations, via the Twitter instant messaging channel. I was at first suspicious of someone asking for my name and mobile number, as my name is published on Twitter, and my Gmail address available for them to send me an email also, so there was an amusing exchange of banter about this punctuating the routine. It seems as if work is being done on the relay system in the local cell of the network. Whether improvement will mean eventual improvement of reception remains to be seen. It's always been poor in the houses around here, no matter how good the advertised service is meant to be.

In this hot weather, the relay linking our office monitoring system with that down County Hall has briefly and confusingly done down a couple of times. Normally this is very robust, but feeling microscopic changes in alignment of the dishes, or changes in atmospheric conditions near ground level are capable of interrupting the flow, requiring system re-starts. Just like with the mobile phone. The helpline mantra for people having trouble with their reception is: "First try switching it off and on again." Heaven preserve us all from solar flares, as they too can have a much more disruptive impact on networks.

Not long after finally touching base with EE's eager to help people, I had a text message asking me to participate in a cost-free survey about the quality of service received from the help people. Here's a record of the exchange. I couldn't resist a bit of childish mischief.

RX: "Thank you for using Orange Internet Service on your phone. We'll text you shortly for some feedback about your experience (All texts are free) How likely are you to recommend us based on your experiences of using the internet on your phone recently? From 0 (Not at all) to 10 (Extremely).

TX: Internet for me is best a big screen experience. Emergency use only on a phone, as too hard to read with old eyes.

RX: Sorry, your answer needs to be between 0-10 How likely are you to recommend us based on your experiences of using the internet on your phone recently?

TX: I don't do robot polls, so stop harassing me.


RX: Sorry, your answer needs to be between 0-10 How likely are you to recommend us based on your experiences of using the internet on your phone recently?

The rubric assumes everybody knows you can only enter numbers. The robot survey monkey doesn't instruct you to. Duh! Bad design.

Earlier I'd asked the EE help line people for reassurance that I wouldn't get spam texts. This was what I got. So I complained:

TX: How come the robotic survey monkey is suddenly in touch with my phone? I only talk to humans. Sometimes.

To which I got the reply 

RX: Hi Keith, most of us here are humans, we are not able to catch the robot monkey though!

So nice to know there are humans out there not just some geek's idea of artificial intelligence to solve all our problems. Humans do stupid things, but remain smarter than machines whenever they stop, observe, and reason clearly with facts rather than suppositions, and talk to you in language you can grasp.


Enough hassle for one week, I thought, doing their best with all this technology which is never as good as we think it ought to be - although my sister June complains that it was better once upon a time, but improvements (we are talking Google stuff here) are making it impossible, as there's new things to learn and get used to when the old stuff worked just fine.
 

Return of The Hole

Two years ago a hole appeared in the road surface near the house. It was patched, but then collapsed into a bigger hole, which was excavated properly to investigate, then filled in and a two metre square area of street was re-surfaced. This past week, at one corner of the patched area, another small hole, big enough to contain a football has appeared, so Clare rang the non-emergency service contact number to report it. First she had to overcome her surprise in discovering that the service now operates via the South Wales Police switchboard which puts callers in touch with the relevant Council depertment. I wonder how long it will take to get done?

Talking of holes, since we moved into Meadow Street three years ago, Orange mobile phone signal reception has never been good. It's barely adequate in the attic, and it's just about possible to receive, although not to send texts from indoors downstairs, nor make or receive a call without the line hanging up after seconds. Usually we have to go out into the front porch to make or receive a call. We concluded we were in a reception black hole and that was that. When I acquired a Blackberry for use in the CBS work, we found reception on the BT network generally good enough for the phone to function normally. It should be, after all because we can see the BT tower from the attic window. I still don't enjoy using the Blackberry, but love the fact that it 'just works'.

This week, and not for the first time, the Orange, sorry EE it's now called, service was out for several hours at a time, even when we walked down the street to look for better reception. Annoyed, I tweeted about the fact that on times Everything Everywhere = Nothing Nowhere. I noticed that someone else had tweeted about the EE 3G transmittor being down and to switch to 2G reception only. It seems that others locally, and in other parts of the country are having similar problem, judging by the complaints appearing on Twitter. It doesn't sit well with EE boasting about the fastest 4G service. Consistency and reliability are more important than speed to ordinary users.
   

Orange EE blues

I did bother to get up early this morning and get to Morning Prayer in College as my dear near neighbour on the upper corridor Dr John Wilks was addressing students and staff for the first time in the Tuesday Reflection assignment. John is an experienced Methodist lay preacher and a theological educator with a long and interesting track record in working with people training for ministry and mission. It was good to hear him engage with one of the high points of New Testament writing - 1 John 4 - and the challenge that faces every community to make love of each other and love of God consistent with each other.

After breakfast, I had a go at sorting out my new study, which has two computers. One wired up and ready to go, the other just dumped surplus to requirements somewhere else in the building I guess. The one wired up took half an hour to boot up and attach itself to the network. The hard drive wasn't all that full. It was probably eight or nine years old, same age as my oldest functioning laptop from which Windows XP was banished in favour of more efficient and speedy Linux several years ago. 

I went home for lunch to collect the old HP laptop. It had much the same specification as the machine I inherited. It booted up in 3-4 minutes, attached itself to the College network, then blew an adaptor plug fuse. Idiot that I am, I picked one from my collection with a 1amp fuse when a 3amp is needed for the laptop's replacement transformer. Ah well, it can wait. The time for urgency in reading College emails and shuffling documents is past. Thank heavens.

Fr Mark came to the evening's tutor group for a get-to-know-you session. It's not as if students don't know much about him already, but it is as important for them to make their own personal relationships with him as it is for me to step back. 'He must increase while I must decrease', as St John Baptist would say. 

After the session it was satisfying to get away in good time to attend the first of the new term Chi Gung sessions, which did me a power of good. Then I went over to Owain's place to pick up the misplaced SIM card. It worked perfectly after a re-boot. Even so, it's yet a poor advertisement for Orange EE's customer service. Just as well I didn't have cause to rely on a connected phone that I'd paid for to be in urgent contact with someone during a minor personal crisis. Having emergency service access on any phone is all well and good, but why overwhelm 999 with non-critical stuff because your providor cannot deliver accurate and timely information about the phone service you've paid for?

  

Handover time, straightforward or otherwise

I went into College late today, as I didn't feel the need to arrive in time for Morning Prayer on the first day of term. I needed to remove the remains of my stuff from the office which will from now on  belong to Fr Mark Clavier. He was already busy unpacking books, so I collected what was mine and moved it to the empty room without a view across the corridor, which already has my nameplate on it. After lunch we met for half an hour for a hand-over briefing. It's a relief to revert to being just a voluntary tutor again with a better defined part to play in College life until ordination time marks an end and a beginning for those accompanied through training. 

It's been quite difficult to maintain my city centre interest in CBS RadioNet at the same level over the past six months. Having a secretary to take care of the financial administration has been a huge advantage, and it has enable me to concentrate on building the aspects of the organisation which interface day to day operations with the right level of accountability to Business Crime Reduction partners: viz. the Retail Partnership, City Council and South Wales Police. This side of our enterprise was badly done from the outset, and it has disadvantaged us in ways that have made it difficult to grow universal confidence in work that in reality is done very well indeed. We've got things back to where they should have been from the outset, but now there's a lot of work to be done to communicate this to everyone with an interest in the well-being and security of the City. And that's what I'd like to concentrate on doing next.

By the time I'd returned from the CBS office, my new phone had stopped being able to connect with the Orange EE network. Yesterday I'd followed instructions and replaced the still active SIM card from my old phone to the new one, and it had worked in the new phone until now. The sales-girl on Saturday had told me that the new SIM card would be activated in 24 hours, and that was not the case, hence the switch. I thought I'd misunderstood her. Now my old SIM in the new phone was dead. But, unfortunately I'd put the new SIM (which I thought was redundant) into the box with the old phone, which I'd given to Owain. Oh dear, I'll have to wait until tomorrow to recover the SIM to see if it contains my account details. Even if it does, it will mean that the originally promised 24 hour activation period was, in fact, 48. How's that for customer service?

 

Return to Radyr

Another early Sunday start, with not so far to travel. Three morning services in Radyr Parish to take, as Jenny is taking her Easter break. An eight o'clock at Christchurch with twenty communicants, followed by a nine fifteen at St John's Danescourt with another twenty communicants, then a Sung Eucharist back at Christchurch with seventy-five communicants and a couple of dozen children in the Sunday School. It was very enjoyable. This time I got to speak with David and Joyce Suthers, the only Radyr parishioners I have known for ten years since we met over a Korean Veterans' service in St John's City Parish Church. They were there also on Easter morning, but the church was so crowded and busy we missed each other.

At the end of lunch, twenty hour hours after purchasing my phone, it was still not working as it should but the old one still worked, so I called the help line, and was told that all I had to do was swap the SIM card from the old into the new phone. It wasn't something the sales girl had reminded me to do. I guess she must have assumed I knew all about these things - well, if I did, I'd forgotten. Much as technological progress fascinates me, I invest only as much time acquiring need to know-how where phones and other gizmos are concerned. Once set up, my old Samsung Galaxy has 'just worked' and required precious little extra understanding, so I forgot something basic that my grand daughter would be able to grasp. So now my slick new Galaxy Ace 'just works', apart from a few apps still needing to be downloaded to it.

Owain came around, and together we tried to figure out how we could set up the necessary components of Wordpress in the web space I rent from Servage. He wants to build his own website to advertise his professional skills with a view to try his luck as self-employed copy-writer. It was an exercise in learning by doing, rather than simply paying for service providor to do it for us. We followed the instructions as far as we could, but found we needed a registered web address to use with the Wordpress program files we'd uploaded, and Owain didn't have the necessary details, so we didn't reach the start line this time.
  

Tech shopping day

Yesterday I determined that after an afternoon in the CBS office preparing documents to circulate for next week's Steering Group meeting, I'd go and buy a new phone on my way home. It's taken me the best part of a year to get used to a touch screen device. It was old technology when I bought it, and now it feels a little slow to the touch, compared to those used by others that I occasionally get to try. However, by the time I'd completed all my tasks, I was too late and had to dash home for supper. 

As Clare had a school AGM to attend this morning, I was able to take advantage of free time and visit the shops. I texted Clare to join me for lunch in town, and had a wander around the John Lewis technology store, in the hope she'd rendezvous there with me, but her meeting ran on late. But, while I was there, I found a bargain Dell Windows 7 Inspiron Duo convertible netbook/tablet, for the office, and had it put aside for later collection when Ashley gets into town. It'll be able to plug a gap in monitoring the network while he is on the move and make for a more efficient service.

I then went to the Orange EE shop in Grand Arcade where thankfully I had little time to wait before buying a Samsung Galaxy Ace II that had commended itself to me from internet reviews and hands-on browsing in stores while fending off the enquiry: 'Are you alright there Sir?' It always takes will-power to resist the rude auto-response: 'What's the matter, do I look unwell or something?' and it wasn't long before I was on my way home for a late lunch. In fact, Clare rang me from home just as I set out. Ironically, the Grand Arcade shops aren't a good place for reception using oldish technology.

The new phone didn't take long to set up, as it's Android Gingerbread version is only a slightly polished update on the one I've become familiar with, but it's much slicker to work with. The sales girl told me that it could be a while before the new phone was activated for use, as the number transfer could take up to twenty four hours, so the old one remains in use until then.

Ashley called twice, but I didn't reach the phone in time. By the time I'd rung him back, he'd just bought the wrong computer, having requested the one set aside in his name in John Lewis', because the counter clerk collected the wrong one from reserved goods section. It's had to understand how this occurred, as the sales person I dealt with had taken to desired item off the shelf, written Ashley's name, company and phone number on the back of the correct 'special offer' price tag, and taken away from the shelf to re-unite with its accessory components. Thankfully he was still on the top floor and only had to re-join the queue and jump up and down bit. He came away with the right piece of kit, a profuse apology and another £20 off the bargain price!

It was too rainy to go out for the rest of the afternoon, so we pottered about instead, and watched the DVD movie of 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy' together in the evening. It's beautifully filmed, atmospheric, with great attention to detail and an absorbing slow pace. In a way it's quite stagey in the way it moves between several scene locations. Having read the book and seen the BBC original film series and heard the radio version, this seemed less complex, slightly abstracted from the original, and the 'mole' unmasked with not quite with the surprise impact delivered by the others. Oldman plays an impressive inscrutible George Smiley, but Alec Guinness' unimpressive little man portrayal still packs more lasting punch for me. With all its complexities this is one of those stories that characterise the second half of the twentieth century.