Quarantine day two

I woke up in the night a couple of times, wondering about how to alert the local health authorities to the inconsistencies in the messaging. After breakfast I decided to contact the Local Health Board 'concerns' team and explain the problem. I still had the contact details, as I opened a complaint procedure two years ago when communication about appointments and waiting list was poor and contributed a great deal to my distress at the time. I explained my concern and added some photos as back up evidence. 

I received an auto reply straight away with a form to fill in. I did that two years ago, and never formally closed the complaint I made, and won't do until the surgical saga is over and done with. My contact details must be on their system somewhere (if not why not?). Somewhere will get around to reading it eventually and do what I asked, and forward my email to the NHS Wales comms team. 

Later I discussed the issue with Owain as he's a comms professional and knows from the inside what the problem is. As far he's concerned the government's communication systems are dysfunctional from the top down. It was badly designed and implemented piecemeal from the outside, so agencies don't all talk to each other or collaborate on information output, a malaise in every area of government. Ah well, at least I did what I could to highlight a problem there'd nothing I can do to resolve.

On the statistics programme 'More or Less' following the nine o'clock news, on Radio Four, there was an item about vaccination rates. It was revealed that Wales has the highest proportion of people vaccinated at least once in the world, and is set to complete the target population two months ahead of the UK target date. Israel is world leader in the number of its nine million citizens vaccinated, but Wales with three million citizens has done better proportionally. 

The Welsh Assembly Government developed its own logistic strategy for the roll-out of vaccines, different from that of England, Scotland and Wales, and it has proved effective. When I think of the way BBC Radio Four's Today programme interviewers subjected First Minister Mark Drakeford to a most hostile interrogation when he announced there would be a planned pause in roll-out at an early stage, I felt it was entirely unjustified. Poor journalism in fact. I wait to see if he is interviewed on the programme in the light of his re-election and the success of the Welsh vaccine roll-out.

A warm sunny day today, an opportunity to walk outside, and take photos of bees browsing flowers in the garden. I'm not over pleased with the results. I'm out of practice at taking close up photos of tiny creatures but a few days of nice weather confined to the house and garden will give me plentry of time to practise.

This evening I recorded Morning Prayer and Reflection and uploaded it to YouTube ready for tomorrow. My Samsung phone ran out of memory three fifths of the way through, so I had to move the incomplete file to the SD card and then record the rest and join the two files in a video editor  it is very annoying and consumes extra time. An eleven minute recording edited and uploaded consumes over an hour of time when you include the initial time spent on setting up the recording. Can all this be done more quickly with a more powerful better equipped phone? There's been no technical discussion of 'how to' among parish contributors so far. Or is it me? Am I the 'dinosaur' with only a five year old phone which works for most purposes just fine? 

At the moment, I don't have WhatsApp on my newer work phone. I could just swap the SIM cards over and install WhatsApp, but am reluctant to do so until the work SIM expires and revert to having only one phone. Yes, I am being awkward and will put off adapting until I must as I have no idea if the Blackberry will be as good to use for videoing as the Samsung. I've never tried videoing with it. Never needed to. As long as you have a device that works and fulfils your current needs and purposes, you learn the minimum you need to be remain functional. It's when you need to adapt to changes in use that you have to learn a few new things, and change well worn habits. That's a key problem in living with technology, and explains why people so easily get left behind by surges in innovation.

Fifty years ago this week

After seeing Rhiannon off to school we left Kenilworth in torrential rain to drive across country to Worcester to have lunch with our friends Mike and Gail. The journey was uneventful until I took a wrong turn on the northern outskirts of Worcester, just a mile from our destination. It was a move which took us an hour to rectify as we got quite lost in driving rain and persistent traffic. There's been so much building of new housing estates to the north of Worcester since we last lived up in the West Midlands that the landscape of the area is confusing, unrecognisable without sight of a 'proper' map to give perspective.  Regrettably I had forgotten just how good my Blackberry's mapping device is, and by the time I'd remembered I had it with me, and found out how to work it - the first time ever I needed to in earnest - Clare had left me in a parked car and gone to obtain directions from a nearby chemist's shop.

This week is the 50th anniversary of Mike introducing me to Clare at an open air 'War on Want' bread 'n cheese lunch on the steps of Bristol's Student Union building - then, the Victoria Rooms - in our first term as University undergraduates. He and I were next door neighbours in Churchill Hall of residence on the Downs. Clare and Mike went to the same English lectures. We all liked music, and for a while we sang folk songs and went to Choral Society together.

We lunched at a very nice old pub, the King's Arms in Ombersley, and inspected a huge very classy delicatessen shop called 'Checkett's' a few paces up the road past the church in the village. We returned to their house to talk, drink coffee and tea, and listen to Mike play one of Bach's French suites on Clare's clavichord, which is on loan to him as we really don't have enough of a good space to keep it in regular use at home. Then he played us some fiery Chopin on his Bechstein upright piano. He's maintained a high standard of piano playing every since we've known him and is still receiving lessons regularly in order to improve his technique. I have fond memories of Mike practising piano in the rehearsal room during our days together in Churchill Hall. He worked his way through Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues, with me idling besides him, acquiring a lifelong love of this 'essential' work of art.

Knowing of my interest in cameras, Mike and I discussed options for the acquisition of an advanced digital camera that could match the performance of his old 35mm SLR. I took out my Sony Alpha 55 to show him, just as one of their two fine cats with blue black fur jumped up on to the table. Truly, they behave as if they own the place.

Those grapes, sweet dessert varieties, were grown locally by the proprietors of the cattery Mike and Gail use to look after their pets when both of them are away. Apparently the pusses aren't interested in fruit, but sit up and take notice when the lid is taken off the butter.

We drove most of the way home in rain and semi-darkness. It was an uneventful and un-memorable trip in every way, performed on auto-pilot to the extent that I found it hard to recall journey detail. We arrived just as 'The Archers' was getting under way, so I sat in the car and listened before unloading our luggage. Glad to be back safely and sleeping in my own bed again tonight.

  

Smart but not so smart

I went into the office again today at lunch time to finish off work on the business plan and circulate it. A parcel arrived in the mail from British Telecom. It was meant to have come yesterday along with a replacement phone for Ashley, but the promised item didn't turn up. The BT help line worker swore it had been mailed - a computer said so after all. In the ensuing investigation, prompted by Ashley nagging them, a store keeper was dispatched to check reality against the computer record and found our unsent package. Apparently the office work isn't done in the place from where goods are distributed, indeed the office work isn't always done in the office, as some of BT's staff work from home. Remote administration clearly has its draw backs.

Anyway the missing parcel was a freebie, part of a bigger compensation package for the messes made serially during out three office re-locations over the past two years. We'd asked for a SIM card that could link my phone to the CBS BT account, to replace my PAYG package for work purposes. BT gave us an expensive Blackberry Bold plus a SIM card. Now I'm faced with having to get used to a bright new piece of technology with an unfamiliar user interface and a keyboard equally as fiddly as an on screen virtual keyboard. And I'm only just about accustomed to that after six months of use.

The Blackberry is great at internet functions and has copied both my email contact lists into its memory and merged them, which means I  have scores of double entries as the two accounts have gradually overlapped over years of accidental misuse. How on earth I get my real working phone directory from one set to the other I have yet to work out. There a few phone numbers in either of my Gmail contact lists, as I have never needed to use them to store numbers. So, I have a big mess to sort out before I go much further.

These big smart clever guys only think they know what we insignificant if paying users want to do with our data, and always give us too many options, confusingly presented, therefore time wasting, therefore less than useful. I confess that I am deeply ungrateful for these anonymous efforts to hog my time with menial tasks. We were better off when we used just a paper note book to store our numbers and made the effort to look them up and dial each time, but I don't think we realise it, as we've got used to be enslaved by inflexible information systems.

As I was on my home from work Ashely and I spoke on the phone about something I'd forgotten to tell him earlier, He told me there was an emergency in progress with streets blocked off after someone had run amok in a white van and knocked people over in several different locations. The seriousness of this only became apparent when I got home and listened to the news before heading off to St Luke's to say the evening Mass. It had happened only a mile or so up the road from church. Although we didn't know any detailed information, we offered the Mass for all involved, aware of the disturbing impact this would have, especially on Glanely's Parish Church of the Resurrection, our nearest neighbour in Canton.