Chateau de Chillon - an unsatisfactory photo-opportunity

A glorious sunny day, and a morning walk to the Chateau de Chillon for a look around the interior, just CHF10.50 for oldies and a ticket that allows you to come can go as often as you like during the day. It's a marvellous building, set on a rock outcrop protruding into Lac Leman. Traces of Bronze age settlements have been found among the foundations of the 12th century castle keep. It was an outpost of the Dukedom of Savoy at the outset, taken over by the warlords of the Canton de Berne at time of the reformation,  and taken over by the Canton de Vaud in 1798. In each period it was added to or adapted, and its component buildings have had many uses apart from military, as residences or government offices, storehouses, even the Vaudois Cantonal prison. 

Since the 13th century its vaulted vaulted cellar has been used to store barrels of wine harvested from the nearby Clos de Chillon vineyards which belong to the Chateau. You can buy bottles of both red and white at high prices. It's a rarity, and all profits made on the wine go to the restoration and maintenance of the Chateau undertaken by the Fondacion du Chateau de Chillon.  

It's twenty five years since we last visited. At that time, not all the rooms were open due to ongoing restoration work. Now, nearly all the rooms are open to the public, many are arrayed with period style furniture, walls and ceilings authentically decorated. Each room has interpretation panels and educative models to give an impression of people's way of life many centuries ago. It's one of the most visited castles in Switzerland, and I guess we were fortunate not to be herded around the place along with busloads of global tourists on a sunny winter low season day. A delightful experience.

The one setback was turning up with a camera lacking its SD memory card. Only yesterday had I finally filled a 16GB card, in use since 9th September 2016, over 2350 photos, and not all of them worth keeping, but such a hassle to separate the dross from the keepers. I had planned to go into town and buy a new card before going to the Chateau de Chillon, but as the weather was so good we seized the opportunity. 

Having removed the full card from the camera, I then forgot about buying a replacement. Just last week, the spare SD card I carry in my wallet for emergencies since running out on the Rhine Cruise last May, was pressed into use with my new Alpha 68 DSLR camera, and I'd not yet got around to replacing it. I had to use the BlackBerry's phone camera instead, once the HX50's internal flash memory had run out - just six photos. The results were adequate, just. It's not as good as the Samsung Galaxy S3 phone camera, I left re-charging in Church House along with the Alpha 68. You don't always live and learn in my experience. Serves me right. The Chateau is well worth a visit, and I may find time to return, better provisioned.

We returned for lunch and then walked into town to buy train tickets for tomorrow's airport journey, for Clare, who has to return to teach on Thursday , all too soon for the both of us. I needed to buy another SD card as well. I should have bought two, but didn't as I thought they were rather expensive. They are much cheaper on-line, naturally, and when I checked, Curry's are retailing them at roughly the same price in Sterling, so later, I regretted not buying a second. Ah well another day, maybe.

  

Farewell letter

This morning, despite feeling under the weather, for no reason I can understand, there was work to do. A funeral office to prepare for next Thursday, a sermon for Sunday, and the monthly diocesan Ad Clerum to be read, containing Archbishop Barry's touching farewell letter to his clergy before he steps down next month. Retirement for him must look very different now from what he might have imagined or planned just a couple of years ago, since his wife Hilary died, and he himself has just come through cancer surgery. Everyone hopes and prays that he'll have some time left to re-discover the blessings of life in all its beauty and simplicity after so many of his later years being devoted to high office with a national public profile. He has served the Church in Wales wonderfully well, and led the faithful in facing up to the challenges of change and decline with intelligence, integrity and courage. Such distinguished exemplary leadership.

I had intended to go to Martin Jones' funeral in St Woolos Cathedral this morning, but didn't feel up to the drive. Only after lunch did I begin to feel like my usual self.  Later, I took advantage of the improvement in the condition of my knee, to get some fresh air, walking into town to Motorpoint Arena via the covered market and back, a distance of over 6km. I visited the new speciality cheese stall in the market, called the Cheese Pantry, selling goat and sheep cheese made in Britain. Jolly good they are too. I do hope this venture will be successful. It's a great addition to a new generation of high quality food stalls which are so good for its reputation as a must visit venue for 'foodies'. All the market needs now is a high class restaurant on-site to showcase these products. 

The visit to Motorpoint took me to the Lodge, to retrieve the Blackberry, no longer of use to CBS, as it was already redundant, replaced automatically by BT with another phone last spring. I find it amazing that equipment gets automatically upgraded, even when it's working well. Redundancy is an accepted accountancy policy. Equipment is devalued over just three years, when its working life could be three times that or longer. It's very wasteful, something I've long disapproved of and resisted. I've been given the Blackberry, because it will last a good while longer. As its connectivity is so good when I'm abroad I plan to get a PAYG SIM account with a euro account to use with it when I'm next away.

   

Overdue phone upgrade

Another visit to St German's this morning to assist in funeral arrangements for Angela Brown, who grew up as a member of the congregation and was married there nearly forty years ago. Her brother Fr Chris Lea is Curate in Caerau with Ely parish. My task was to make sure everything was in place for Angela's parish priest, another Chris, Fr Chris Burr of Lisvane, to officiate at the funeral office and preside at the requiem Eucharist, part of the service. There was yet another Chris, Canon Chris Clark an old family friend also taking part in the service plus former Vicar Fr Roy Doxey, and several more clergy in the congregation of over 180 as well.

Often, on occasions like this a quarter of the congregation will take communion, but on this occasion it was more like two thirds, as a great number of fellow church members from Lisvane and other parts of the city, who knew Angela attended as well. The home team of servers and stewards did her proud. Although a moving and sad occasion, the worshipping community was charged with consoling warmth and affection. It's amazing the way St German's and its core community generates a relaxed atmosphere for a congregation of 30-40 on the regular basis, yet can scale up with ease and respond to having 200 or 500 in church. Essentially the regular members love what they do, and this in its turn influences all who turn up and join in. For once I had a background role, and enjoyed just being part of the crew.

I returned home for a late lunch then walked into town, having decided to buy a new phone. My three year old Samsung Galaxy III Mini feels comparatively sluggish, now I'm not using the Blackberry Q10 I had for work purposes. I've passed over several opportunities for a new phone after the 18-24 month renewal cycle, not approving of early redundancy which new technological innovation pushes consumers towards. Tending to be a late adopter, I hang on to working products as long as seems useful to do so. Now I use my personal phone a lot more, the difference is noticeable between a 5 year old and a 3 year old phone. Following a recommendation from Owain, I bought a Samsung Galaxy J3, for just £85 from the EE shop on Queen Street. That's almost half the price he paid for the same phone six months ago. It's amazing how quickly phone prices tumble when new ones come out. Some 'state of the art' phone features, I just don't need. Owain says the phone camera is not good, but that's no bother to me, as I prefer a proper pocket camera with real knobs and buttons rather than a device with only touchscreen controls.

I was delighted by the way the J3 copied my installed apps and email messages and phone numbers from the old one, leaving me only to log in or re-register some of them. The only thngs that wasn't copied across were SMS messages. So, I back them up from the old phone to my PC using Samsung Kies software only to find that Kies refused to play with the new phone, requiring me to use an app called 'Smart Switch', which I also had installed, to connect with the phone. Thankfully this automatically found the text message backup just made, and transferred the content to the J3. It took me a while to achieve this. After all, it's not that often I have to do this, so I forget how to. Now the new phone is running, nothing is lost, apart from a few hours figuring it all out. Not that it matters. There was nothing on telly worth watching this evening anyway.

      

 

Unrestful days

A few precious days at home to savour, though not without a visit to the CBS office late yesterday, as this is a time of year when our business taxes are due. Getting the details correct is vital, and for me nerve wracking, as any error will only make hassles for others to sort out later.

Already today I am packing and re-organising my luggage to make sure I have everything I need. On my next trip I will need to take my own PC, as a printer is supplied there but not a computer. I'd rather use my own, as long as I don't have printer problems as a result. If only I could just take my Chromebook I'd be fine, but getting documents printed out from a Chromebook is an uncertain process, whatever is claimed by Google. Just take a Windows PC, no matter how much extra maintenance they demand, and at least getting a (fairly modern) printer attached is less of a problem. 

Given the uncertainties about printing, today I have completed and printed off a Harvest Sunday sermon text - blind - given that I have no idea of the kind of audience or context I'll face. At least I have a start point to work from. Also among my tasks to get done while home was making a CD of all files relating to St John's City Parish Church guidebook, produced under my editorial hand in 2009. Sarah the current Vicar wants to do another print run, or ideally a route to producing a revised edition. 

Thankfully, I have an archive of all the material, editable or finalised pages, relating to the production version, 180mb of 'stuff', which I'm now able to pass on to her and her team to work on. It wasn't hard to find the relevant file folder, as I'd left it in a place where it couldn't easily get wiped.

Despite much hunting around town, I was unable to find a new battery for my Blackberry Q10. How soon this basic commodity passes from being a regular item to a specilialized variety to be hunted for on the internet. Upgrading to a new phone could be less hassle, regardless that the phone I use is more than fit for purpose; i.e. it suits me and my work pattern just fine. But all the time we are being pressured to adopt new devices we neither need or want, in ordeer to keep the system going. Surely, there is something wrong here?

  

Connecting - mixed fortunes

I awoke at first light, despite retiring early. The building and surrounding apartment blocks were quiet until sunrise, around a quarter to eight. It'll take me a while to get used to being surrounded by a new palette of the sounds of human activity punctuating the day. Waking up early and hearing the changes reminded me of this.

Nerja chaplain's house had thin walls, and neighbours who were often absent, but when present, their noises were mainly nocturnal and early morning. In Vinaros, noises came from holidaying neighbours across the road, day and evening, but in the background. Silence dominated. Here sounds are more varied, remoter and occasionally sounds from apartments above and either side. Back in Meadow Street, it's mostly quiet. Neighbours either side are single women who are away a lot, and make little noise when at home. The differences add to life's interest.

Rosella collected me to go together to St George's in Malaga for the midweek Communion followed by a Chaplaincy Council meeting. Doreen, the Chaplaincy's self supporting priest celebrated Mass in honour of St Aidan. I enjoyed being there and receiving her ministry. That's a rarity for me these days. I didn't attend the Council, although I met members beforehand.

Instead, I stayed in the sacristy and took full advantage of a fast broadband office connection to upload photos from yesterday. This is impossible in the flat, given the limited connectivity a wifi mobile internet ( aka MID ) dongle provides. The device may not be working at its best in an apartment whose core metal frame may impede signal flow, but right now I am blogging from my Nexus tablet via this wifi MID.

As ever, the Blackberry Q10 does everything I ask of it.  It may be a bit small, but robustness and reliability count. I didn't swap it for a PRIV as I wasn't satisfied its design could take the same punishment as the Q10.

Last but not least, the Chaplain here, unlike my past two assignments, has a Huwawei Ascend P6 smart phone. It's a nice piece of kit and has a 4G sim, and like the Blackberry it works fine. Mobile devices win here. The chaplain's laptop and my Chromebook just don't work as expected even though they are so much easier to use.

 

Wet weekend

The roads were much busier yesterday, with cars coming and going from the town centre, visiting the never ending sales. To get some exercise, we walked into town along the Taff Trail late afternoon, not very late but late enough for the Castle Park gates to be already shut requiring us to use a cramped exit through the gatehouse cafe into Castle street. We visited several stores in search of pot-pourri and came home with a new jacket for me, something smart to wear when we go cruising on the Danube in the spring.

Much to my delight, the first of six new episodes of 'Young Montalbano' was shown on BBC4 after supper. There are many moments of comic dialogue and sarcasm to raise a laugh, and yet this never detracts from the tragic seriousness of the story lines. You get small glimpses into people's struggles against poverty and corruption, and conclude that humour is for the people portrayed a front line defence against losing their dignity to despair and anger. It speaks to me more than the earnestness and intensity of Scandinavian noir crime fiction.

This morning I left for the Mass at St Germans in driving rain, and realised that I'd left my sermon behind, which meant I had to improvise around what I remembered of the one I prepared. We kept the Epiphany early, and processed to the crib for a prayer. There was a minor panic due to the absence of an appropriate prayer source to take with us. I retrieved my Blackberry (in silent mode) from my jacket, found the collect for the Second Sunday of Christmastide in the CofE Daily Office app, tucked up my sleeve. That's my first ever liturgical use of a Smartphone. I was impressed back in the spring in Nerja, that parish priest Fr Andreas led hymns and devotions in procession from his smartphone. I wouldn't say 'never' then or now, as I'd rather ban phones from the liturgy. But sometimes, the need is there.

As I arrived, rain started to cascade down the inside south wall of the Lady Chapel. A gutter blockage on a flat roof above quickly led to a small lake of uncleared water seeking to go to ground underneath the lead, not over it. The blockages is a consequence of a tree in the Vicarage grounds, which the church is not allowed to cut down or trim as there is a municipal 'tree preservation order' on it. This grade one listed building sustains damage, not because it's poorly maintained, but because the tree cannot be cut back, if not cut down, to prevent leaves landing on the roof. This kind of blockage can happen in between regular inspection visits, if there's an overnight wind followed by heavy rain. If the Council has the legal right to impose such preservation orders, do they not have an obligation to help prevent things like this from happening as a consequence? 

After lunch, a walk down to Blackweir bridge again to see impact of the day's rain on the river Taff. 

The water level beneath the bridge before it goes over the weir is a good six inches higher than a few days ago, and the speed of flow is astonishing, but it's still a couple of feet above the upstream banks. With more rain forecast will it go any higher I wonder?

Computer delivered

I rose early and walked to the new temporary bus station in Sophia Gardens to catch the 7.30 coach to London. It doesn't take me long to drop off after a short night's sleep and early morning fresh air, regardless of coach seat discomfort, so the journey passed by quickly enough. In the last hour of the trip through dense urban traffic, I made a first draft of our annual Christmas newsletter on my Blackberry. The keyboard is small, but useable for text entry at a modest pace. A good way to pass the time, I thought. 

As we came into Victoria, our coach was flagged down into a lay-by outside the coach station departure building, rather than going around the block to reach the arrivals hall. The street was crowded with travellers, and we were ordered off the bus. A security alert led to evacuation of the building and that caused a traffic jam on a crowded street. I was able to make good time in reaching the train station, having been dropped off five minutes or so early, and I caught the train that preceded one I usually get to go to Wandsworth Common. June was surprised to see me arrive ahead of time, and we were soon into catching up on the news and eating lunch before setting up the Acer laptop and giving her a brief tutorial on the few differences with her old machine.

I left at six for the seven o'clock coach back to Cardiff. There'd been nothing in the news about the evacuation alert. Nothing remarkable about it these days I guess. The coach arrived in Sophia Gardens nearly half an hour ahead of the scheduled time, and by eleven, I was cooking myself a tuna steak with peppers and onion for a late, late supper, satisfied with my mission accomplished.

Preparations

I drove Clare over to the University Opthalmology centre in Cathays yesterday morning for a routine eye test. After dropping her off, I did some shopping in the neighbouring Lidl store, then went over to Newport Road in Roath to do a bereavement visit in preparation for a funeral Monday next. I had difficulty finding the address, as there was street signage on one side of Newport road, but not on the other - the street I was looking for crossed the main road - thankfully I had my Blackberry phone with me to help establish exactly where I was.

This afternoon we went to Penarth and walked along the coast path for a mile. It's Clare's longest since the operation. Progress has been slow but encouraging. With less than a week to go to departure for Nerja, I started preparing for the trip by collecting all the necessary travel documents and putting them in the rucksack where I expect to find them when I'm ready to go.

Part of my preparation to leave is preparing food to go in the freezer for Clare to use as she needs to, in the period while she is recovering full use of her right arm. It's amazing how she's adapted to using her left since she's been strapped up. It's been a pleasure to cook a series of meals with enough to eat plus an extra portion to freeze. Portion control is always a challenge when cooking if you're down-sizing after a family visit, or trying to moderate food intake and lose weight. The next challenge will be when I get to Nerja, reverting to cooking sensibly for one, or else as has previously been my habit, to cook for two days at a time, and eat the same thing twice in a row.

   

Mobile Office after the Opera

How cheering to wake up to a sunny day after yesterday's rain. Although it's cold, there's just a hint of Spring, with daffodils starting to blossom, along with crocuses and snowdrops. The morning slipped by writing my Lent blog before it was time to go to the office for a couple of hours. I came home early, as we had tickets for Humperdink's opera 'Hansel & Gretel', last seen in the WMC WNO performance of 13th June 2008, according to my pre-retirement blog 'Edge of the Centre' on that day.

Clare was still feeling unwell with her op-stopping sore throat. Despite our efforts to find someone to use her ticket, I ended up going on my own. The story is familiar enough, and the presentation of the first act I did recall, but the other three acts seemed not to have lodged themselves firmly in my visual memory, making something of a surprise for me. I can only think that the opera didn't make much of an impact on me when I saw it last. Maybe a consequence of being preoccupied with work worries. Now I am retired, I find I can take more in and savour it better. Is that perhaps why opera audiences tend to made up predominantly of grey and white headed people. 

The music, from the same era as Wagner, is relatively easy listening compared to Wagner, but nevertheless rich and melodic with tunes that I did remember hearing before in performance, quite apart from the opera itself. It was beautifully sung, with two female lead singers, a children's choir on stage in the final act, a funny pantomime dame of a witch,  most enjoyable, although sad not to be able to share the experience with Clare.

Ashley and I conversed by phone while I was waiting for the sixty one bus home. He asked if I could send him a Board member registration file to print off and hand out as soon as I got back. With a few more minutes to wait before the bus came, I thought I'd try and do this on my Blackberry, hunting down the file on the office One Drive account and emailing it. I was astonished at how easy this was to do, both because of the speed of the 4G connection, the clarity of the phone's display of the file system and a really good workable keypad. 

This is the kind of relevant performance which has over years earned global respect for RIM. Such a shame they had bad luck with the Z10 recently and lost market share. I grew to hate my previous Blackberry Bold because of its feeble keyboard and small display, although once it had been state of the art, and connectivity was always reliable. The Q10 hardware shines in comparison to both. Let's see what RIM will come up with next.

Getting straight

During breakfast yesterday morning, a prolonged hailstorm made us sit up and take notice. In the afternoon I had a funeral service to take at Pidgeon's chapel of rest, which was packed with mourners. Someone arrived, as my driver put it, "Wearing Her Majesty's jewellery" accompanied by two guards. Other mourners were evidently pleased to see him there.  Being of the 'tough on crime' opinion, my driver didn't approve of this brief expensive outing. I said I couldn't imagine anything more likely to cause a costly disruption inside than a prisoner upset by bereavement and absence from the farewell to a loved one. Even treating someone humanely can have a pragmatic side to it. We arrived at the crematorium in yet another hailstorm. And sun shone through the clouds on the way home.

Before supper, I drove out to through the evening traffic to Caerau for a bereavement visit in relation to another funeral I've been asked to do this week. The parish clergy are busy at the moment due to a sharp increase in deaths, perhaps due to the vagaries of the season's weather. I'm glad to help out and ease the pressure. Visiting people in their homes, listening to them talk about their life with the departed person, being trusted to help them with an appropriate service, is always a privilege.

Today, I drove to Newport for a session with Kay, to sort out the problems caused by a poor driving seat in the car. Despite re-enforcing it with strategically placed cushions, I can't drive for more than an hour before neck muscles threaten to go into spasm, and the symptoms will then persist for days, because the constraints of the saggy seat shape twisting my pelvis out of alignment. A new seat might cost as much as the car is worth. It works beautifully for a twenty year old vehicle. Sooner or later we must get a replacement, but ideally I'd like it to stop working first. At the moment it stops me from working as intended. It's good to have a therapist who can remedy the problem and help me understand better how to prevent ill effects prolonging themselves.

Kay, I discovered was also a Blackberry user. She'd greatly enjoyed her Z10, as I had done, but hers had recently died. She'd been given a replacement, whose first action was to update the operating system taking several hours. When it came to re-start it on completion of the update, it too died, and she was awaiting the delivery of a third, as she was tied by contract to that model. Such a nice phone, so sad it was fatally flawed. BT wouldn't issue me with a new Z10 but replaced it with a Q10, as they'd stopped issuing the Z10 altogether. A disastrous blow for RIM's new flagship model. If they'd been able to get the build quality right, it would have been a real market changer for them.

After lunch I took Clare to the opthalmology clinic at the Heath Hospital for a post-op check up. Her consultant declared himself pleased with the progress she's made in the three months since surgery. Mission accomplished, I went into the office to meet Ashley and confer on the new pricing strategy, which we've been working on for the past few days, as we have a meeting with others to discuss this tomorrow.

    

Birthday weekend

Following a request to take a funeral from Father Mark, I made a bereavement visit yesterday morning, then prepared the service, ready for Monday. Then I went to the CBS office to get my newsletter efforts from last night checked and ready for emailing out before the end of the afternoon. The print version will have to wait until Monday to be produced.

This morning we drove to Kenilworth to celebrate Rhiannon's eleventh birthday. We were meant to look after her in the evening, but Kath and Anto's gig was cancelled at the last minute, so we had extra family time together. We played Monopoly again, naturally, and after supper watched the hilarious cartoon movie 'Cloud and Raining Meatballs', originally a childrens' book satirising America's food consumer culture, whilst mocking every other kind of film scenario and visual cliche imaginable. Very clever, as it makes the film as funny and entertaining for adults as for children.

When we arrived, my Blackberry announced it was going to do an operating system update, taking several hours, for which it needed to be plugged in while downloading 1.5 gigabytes of data and installed it. This passed without incident, but I was mildly irritated by the small changes to the look and feel of the user interface. For a while it'll mean that it can't be used habitually. Extra apps will need to be re-installed, and changes adapted to, some of which I'm not sure of, like the dominance of the 'Reply All' button, making it too easy to make unintended responses to the wrong people, also the pop-up delete button on a new email notification. It fades in seconds, but is too easy to tap unintentionally before a message has been read or its content registered. Not good for impulsive or careless users.

All Saints' weekend

Although yesterday was All Saints' day, the chaplaincy annual memorial Service for the Departed took place at six in the evening, attended by eighteen people. After the service, I drove to Malaga airport to pick up Fr Hywel, whose plane left 20 mins late but arrived on time. There was lots for us to talk about so he could feel adequately briefed to get started on Monday. In the morning I prepared a chorizo and vegetable stew for supper so that we could eat straight away and make the most of the rest of the evening. We got to bed around midnight. 

With Hywel from Cardiff came my replacement Blackberry Q10. I got it started OK, but it still wouldn't lock on to any network automatically. Mindful of trouble I had last time, I put it away and reported this back to Ashley, who promised to chase up BT mobile and make sure the SIM card had been registered to work with the new phone. Nothing will happen before Monday, that's for sure.

We were up and out of the house by 8.30 and on our way to Benalmadena for the first Eucharist of the day, giving Hywel an early opportunity to meet and greet people, and for me to take my leave of them. After the later Eucharist at Los Boliches, there was a delightful bring and share lunch attended by a couple of dozen people, a time for me to say my goodbyes. After the service, LInda presented me with a beautiful carved olive wood pestle and mortar, a work of art in its own right, but a proper size for use in the kitchen for making alioli, or hummous. A real practical treasure to remind me of here.

Then I took Hywel out by car to show him the way to Calahonda and the route to the two inland centres of worship. When we got to Alhaurin there was a service of prayer for the dead being held in the chapel, inevitably on this Todos Santos weekend, today being the Dia de Muerte. Unfortunately there was also a Requiem service scheduled here this morning at eleven, despite the fact that our Anglican service is regularly in the diary for ten thirty. No consultation, no checking by those responsible at the ajuntamiento, for the diary is controlled by the civil administration, and as with local government all over the world, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. It happens occasionally when there are Sunday funerals too.

After our outing, we walked the length of Los Boliches as the sun was setting, and called at the parish church of Our Lady and St Faith which was crowded for an evening Requiem mass. We stopped at Granier for coffee and chocolate cake before returning for supper, and the rigours of getting everything packed and ready to go early tomorrow. Handover done, mission accomplished!