Story of a street name

Much rain overnight and showers for much of the day. I went for my 'flu jab at the King's Road Pharmacy straight after breakfast. Mother Frances messaged me just after I got back, flagging up a strange anomaly in the Mailchimp distribution, with her personalised email addressed to Jesse, not to herself. A web-server glitch? Or a catastrophic mailing list database failure? No other complaints so far, or a simple data entry typo from some time in the past? Fortunately that's what had happened, I discovered when I examined the mailing list in detail. I couldn't edit the entry however, and ended up removing it, together with two other email addresses of people who have died, one of them a couple of years ago.

Clare bought a salmon for freezing from Ashton's in the market yesterday. While I was writing a sermon for Sunday, she cooked a lovely fish soup for lunch with the head and bones left from filleting. She had a flute lesson after lunch, so I went out for a walk. It started to rain, so I took shelter outside Cafe Castan and had a cup of coffee, waiting for the rain to stop, then walked to the other end of Llandaff Fields and caught a bus into town at the stop near the junction. The bus was crowded with students returning from college so I had to stand all the way into town.  

I visited John Lewis to see if there were any bargains to be had, and chatted with a young woman in the tech' section, wearing a Chromebook tee shirt and hovering around the display. She told me she'd not long returned from a year in Hungary as part of her business studies degree. Now she has the travel bug and is wondering where next to look for work. I think she was slightly surprised to learn I was an early adopter of the Chromebook over ten years ago. On balance, I use mine for everyday tasks more than I use my two Windows machines, which serve mainly for easy audio and video editing plus mailshots. I am thinking of buying a device with more RAM to use for running Linux apps, now that Chrome OS has been enhanced to make this possible, but before I do, I need to find out how feasible this would be. I'd certainly like to be able to use Linux again on a daily basis.

I caught the 25 bus to the top of Cathedral Road, then walked into the park before going home. There, I bumped into Peter and Jan walking their dogs, and we chatted for a while. Jan is a member of the Church in Wales electoral college which meets in the coming week to elect a new Bishop of St Davids. I wonder who will be elected? Jan says changes in electoral procedure are now in place that have improved the process, with preliminary briefing papers on prospective candidates available before a decision on nominating a voting short list is made. This is, I believe, intended to inform decision making and refine the selection of possible candidates with sufficient support to be electable in the ballot process. Let's hope it works as it's intended to.

Above, I mentioned Cathedral Road. Rufus told me yesterday how he learned about the origin of its name from Peter, who I met in the park this afternoon, when he was at St Mike's. Cathedral Road doesn't lead to Cathedral Road, and never did. It was named after the prestigious Victorian Welsh Presbyterian Church that still stands at the west end of the road. 

In the nineteenth century Welsh Calvinistic Methodism was a major force in the social development of urban industrial Wales, said whether true or not, to have enjoyed the adherence of half the population. This building was its most prominent in the capital city, but why call it a Cathedral when its pastoral oversight is performed by a council of elders, not a Bishop? 

French theologian Jean Calvin, caught up almost by chance in Geneva's independence struggles in the 1520's made a  major contribution to reforming church and society in the city state, advocating a new form of governance that didn't rely on episcopal hierarchy, but a council of church elders. Two centuries later his way of thinking was influential in the Methodist revival in Britain, and especially in Wales. Geneva's St Pierre Cathedral was one of only three churches which wasn't closed for worship at the time. It's a place where his memory is still honoured, a mother church of the protestant reformation. The road was named after the church building regarded as the Welsh equivalent of 'Calvin's Cathedral'. 

Sadly, in the last quarter of the twentieth century Welsh Calvinistic Methodism went into steep decline, losing almost all of its buildings. Ninety years after its opening in 1903, the congregation moved into the church hall and the main building was converted internally into three floors of offices. For fifteen years it was the headquarters of homelessness charity 'The Wallich'. It's now been acquired by Red Rose school, an independent special educational needs establishment. No longer a place of worship, but still very much in the service of vulnerable people, in the spirit of Calvinistic social thinking.

Clare was out when I got home. She'd gone to 'Amser Jazz' at the Royal Welsh College. I watched the news on telly, listened to the radio and waited for her to return so we could eat together. Then, this week's episode of Norwegian crimmie 'For Life' before turning in for the night.

New normality or old?

Another overcast rainy day, but as it's Saturday, Clare cooked perfect pancakes for breakfast. A small domestic ritual we enjoy together. My back is less painful today, but it still takes a while to recover a measure of flexibility that makes walking relaxed and easy. Today we both went out in the drizzle. I took my Song Alpha 68 DSLR out with me, the first time in use it since before I went to Ibiza. It's heavy but a joy to use, like driving a Jag after driving a Ford Fiesta. 

I got it out as I wanted to see if I could take a photo of some pots of geraniums Clare has flowering outside the kitchen window, not through the glass but standing with my back to the wall a metre from them, too close for an ordinary lens to fit them all in, so I used the wide angle lens I bought last year, and was please with the result. I took it with my to the park without its case, and regretted this when it drizzled as I had to cover the camera with my coat. As it's the weekend, Cafe Castan was open for takeaway orders, as it has been since mid-May, so I took a few photos of it being open for business. 

There's a large mobile electronic sign now, at the top of Cathedral Road, warning drivers that they can no longer drive past the Castle due to road closures, but must divert around the station instead. There's a lot more traffic on roads now, more so than when I arrived home two and half weeks ago, and you can hear background traffic noise again. Pollution levels will rise again, but will they return to previous level? Will changes in work and consumer habits lead to overall reduction in car use, in favour of bikes? As is hoped by the city's traffic planners, keenly introducing new bike lanes in town.

Kath, Anto and Rhiannon met wth Owain in Bristol today to celebrate his birthday and their wedding anniversary. Kath sent a photo of them down at the harbour, with SS Great Britain in the background, and several of the amazing cake which Rhiannon had baked and decorated. Wales lowers its five mile travel boundary this coming Monday just too late for us to benefit from. Whether my back could cope with the car journey at the moment is doubtful, however. I'm just grateful it's improving.

In the evening Clare and I watched the third of Alan Bennett's 'Talking Heads' monologue series on BBC iPlayer. The character speaking was a bereaved middle class lady, talking to camera about her life from the funeral tea onward into genteel poverty due to her son's irresponsible stewardship of her financial legacy. It was amazingly well written, true to life observation. Bennett is a writer with a pastoral ear and eye for detail  It was an intense half hour of watching, as much as I could cope with, though I would like to see the others some time. This isn't binge watching material. Each is a work of art to be savoured.

   

Bay uplift

After a wet day yesterday when the workmen weren't able to continue stripping the rendering, they returned this morning and continued their daunting noisy task. I was glad to go out and meet Rufus for coffee and chat at Cafe Castan. He's not being treated at all well by those overseeing  his ministry development. In the absence of a diocesan Bishop at the moment, there's no higher church authority he can reasonably appeal to. With no authentic spiritual leadership being exercised, it seems affairs are being managed in a seriously un-pastoral fashion. I don't like it at all. It's destroying that sense of community in faith and trust which Christians are meant to give witness to in life together.

I walked to the Bay wetland nature reserve, after lunch, and was astonished so see scores of swans swimming around in the neighbourhood of the great flyover which crosses the water, joining the A4232 with the central Bay area. There was a pair of ducks I didn't recognise too, and couldn't identify when I looked later at my birdie books. 

Outside the Millennium Centre, Roald Dahl Plas is once more occupied during August by a fun fair with a giant sand pit at the heart of it - all branded as 'Cardiff Bay Beach'. It's an ingenious idea to do something different with this huge open space, a hundred yards from the water's edge, and it looked pretty busy as I passed by. 

Renovation work on on Bute Road railway station buildings is now complete and it looks spruce and clean for the first time in half a century. It dates back to the 1860s when the South Wales Railway line was constructed under Brunel, and a short branch line extended to take passengers down to the cross channel steamers in the docks. It's been semi-derelict and unoccupied for decades, blighting the neighbouring area. It now has space for a restaurant and some offices. I hope they get fully occupied and soon, as this would really enhance this interesting historic locality.

On the way back I met Clare in John Lewis' for a cup of tea, escaping from the house after the workmen had gone for the day. After supper, I whiled away the evening by working my way through several episodes of 'Keeping Faith' series two. It's again filmed in the most beautiful coastal locations in the vicinity of the Gower and Pendine. There's a serious crime thread threaded into a domestic  family drama, beautifully acted, kids as well as adults. What with this and some powerful domestic narratives about sexual abuse and rural housing poverty in the Archers, there's some thoughtful stuff to capture the attention being broadcasted at the moment.

   

Another birthday girl

This morning Rufus came over for a chat, so we sat in Cafe Castan overlooking Llandaff Fields and drank coffee for an hour and a half, sharing thoughts about ministry and teamwork, as the Church in Wales rolls out its new area ministry plan. He's brought a good deal of experience with him moving from social work into the church in his fifties, but he is fired up with enthusiasm for a life of pastoral care in the community, flavoured with a healthy dose of practical realism. He keeps his feet on the ground with lots of domestic DIY jobs, furniture restoration among them. He told me how pleased he was to have taken a broken stained glass door panel and modified the intact portion to create a window light to go above a door frame. It's great the church has such all round capable people in its service.

Over the weekend I was asked if I could do a funeral in a fortnight's time. I was busy with funerals when I returned home from Malaga in the summer. I may well be busy again now we approach the threshold of winter.  

The weekend rain and cold has changed many trees that remained green until lately giving them extra shades of yellow and gold to add to the reds and browns. Utterly lovely when the sun shines. This long drawn out and fairly mild autumn has been quite spectacular, but even the best of photos doesn't fully capture this.

Hot on the heels of Rachel's birthday last Friday, today is Jasmine's birthday. She's twelve already. We spoke to her on WhatsApp just before bed when Rachel was driving her home from school. She was having some friends over in their evening to celebrate with her. It's sad we see so little of her.

   

Wobbly web and wobbly knee

I woke up at half past five and couldn't get back to sleep, so I wrote for an hour or so until Clare came down, and then we had breakfast together. Still felling tired, I trying going back to bed, but our cleaners came and I couldn't settle. Clare's computer wouldn't attach to the internet, so her computer needed a little troubleshooting. Thankfully it wasn't the problem plaguing thousands at the moment, but a clash between the Wifi and Ethernet devices, which were both on at the same time. A flawed Windows 10 update has left some router marques not working consistently. Sister June emailed to say she hadn't been able to access mail for ages, until this weekend just gone, and that may well be an instance of this upgrade problem, as she has really fast broadband and a dual router set up that I'm not familiar with. So I can't help wondering if her posh router is one that's been suffering from Windows 10 upgrade-itis. 

Thank heavens for a Chromebook, and Android phones, as neither is likely to be affected by this bug, which seems to leave the actual PC unable to play consistently with certain makes of router, and not the other way around, if I've understood properly. I read reports about this on Saturday. Certain TalkTalk issued routers also seem affected, as their help service tweeted about it today, drawing public attention to an article on their website. Meanwhile, Microsoft is being quite tight-lipped about it, and how long before a remedy will be issued. These days MS performs operating system updates automatically, unless the operating system is configured to change nothing without user consent. They don't say what's being fixed in each update, so there's no way of users knowing which update needs to be uninstalled to root out the problem. It's totalitarian madness.

After lunch, Clare went swimming, and I went out to meet colleague Fr Chris for a coffee and chat in Cafe Castan, before making my way to the Natural Health clinic for a MacTimony chiro apporintment with Kay, so work on a painful knee problem which has emerged in recent days, the result of several unfortunate collisions with low lying furniture, hitting me in the same place. Unfortunately,  I was a week early. I hadn't read the confirmatory email I receive properly, so grateful I'd been to get an early appointment locally. Well, after limping unsteadily home, I secured another appointment for tomorrow, and I have to drive to Newport for that. I'll be glad to get some help in sorting this problem out. Feeling wobbly in one leg is a sensation I have found most disconcerting, an unwelcome taste of old age.

   

Question of treatment

As it was bitterly cold and there was fog in the air, I drove to this morning's dental appointment rather than walk. There was only one lost filling to replace, otherwise my teeth are in good shape. I paid just over forty pounds for a check-up and a replacement filling. A notice displayed in the reception area say that patients must pay in advance for any planned scheme of repair work arising from a check-up. 

This can be very expensive indeed, more than some patients can lay their hands on there and then, so they need to go away and think about how they can afford it. But, the proposed costed plan itself only lasts six weeks, and they must return and pay up front within that time frame, or be obliged to go through and pay for another checkup for the same or a revised estimate to be applicable.

Modern dentistry is high tech, effective and expensive. Registered NHS patients only get to pay a proportion of treatment costs. Those on benefits get completely free treatment. The economics of modern health care are complex and difficult, and it seems well nigh impossible for health authorities not to run out of money to achieve their aims. We pay for dentistry through taxation, and most of us have to pay also through the charges levied on treatment. 

The same could also happen in future for medical treatment. Recently we've been hearing in the news about JAMs (=people Just About Managing.) Those in this category not on benefits may find themselves unable to afford treatment and having to forego necessary repairs, maybe medical treatment generally. Such progress has been made in health care and medicine over the past century, but at an increasingly great price. Where will it all end?

After the dentists, I went into town and met Fr Rufus for lunch at Cafe Zest, and heard about the way his ministry has been developing in the most positive way, since we last met, the best part of a year ago. It was great to hear someone so enthusiastic and delighted with the response to his work, in a broader context where ministers' moral is low as a result of catastrophic decline in church membership. Monmouth diocese has reduced its clergy numbers from 130 to 46 in recent years, and coping with the demands of radical change is proving hard for many.

Then I returned to Pontcanna to meet with Fr Chris Lee at Cafe Castan on Llandaff FIelds, to discuss the funeral of his sister who died last weekend. It's going to be held at St German's. I've already been asked to conduct it, and as there are several other clergy who also wish to be involved, some advance planning will be needed to enable everyone who wants to can take part.

After an early supper, Clare and I went to Chapter Arts Centre, where mulled wine and mince pies had been laid on for subscribers of Chapter Friends. It was strange to realise when we were there that there that out of hundreds of people there for various evening activities, there was only one person I knew and nobody else I even I recognised from the neighbourhood or the churches. Perhaps that's because I haven't really been around that much over recent years, or simply an indication of the size of the area served and the eclectic constituency of Chapter Friends. It's typical of urban living, I guess, but not really the most congenial experiences to start this so-called season of good-will.

   

Upgrading - various

Wednesday afternoon, as I was going into the office, I bought a prime lens to go with my Sony Alpha 55. No telephoto capacity, just a set focal length F1.8, much like my old Praktica SLR film camera. In fact the 49mm UV lens filter from the Praktica fitted the new lens, although sadly it's acquired a scratch and will only be temporarily useful. This kind of lens works best for portraits and landscape. I shall enjoy exploring how to use it, having got used to variable focal length lenses on all the different digital cameras I've had over the past 15 years. I can't believe it's that long since I started to abandon 35mm film photography.

Thursday was broadband upgrade day - at some time unspecified, the line would drop, and then restart and it would all happen some time before midnight, as the TalkTalk upgrade letter said. It was a day when there were several work matters I needed to deal with and be on-line for, thankfully the old speed link was stable and uninterrupted until just after two. By then I'd done all I needed to do. It was much later in the day when I got around to unpacking the new router and installing it. 

Happily it started up quickly and was soon delivering a much smoother service in getting the household devices all on line without IP address clashes. I say smoother rather than faster, as I've formed the impression that Windows 10 computers still load programs with a degree of latency, more than one would expect for faster modern day computers. Once fully loaded the speed is obvious, but while they load an assortment of internet checks are being made. How I wonder are really necessary? I think it is presumed that people will leave computers permanently on with programs open, or else configured with a pre-load feature operating at boot time, to give you a quicker program start, but a longer wait from switch on to first use. 

It used to take four or five minutes to get a computer system up to speed. Windows 10 gets you to a login screen in under ten seconds, unless inconveniently updating at the time. This always seems to happen to me when I'm in a big hurry to get started. How impatient we've become! Loading programs and work files, brings the time from switch on to starting work down to a minute. In the early days of home computers, there were office suites of programs etched on ROM chips, were extensions of the ROM based operating system. You were ready to find the work file you wanted in seconds from switch on. The nearest matching device for speed today is a Chromebook with fast broadband, though less so when off-line. Such systems are limited in scope, but great if your needs are limited. A good smartphone or tablet always on even when charging, is also quick to get you working, though I'm not a virtual keyboard fan, and prefer a traditional computer to work on. Other devices get used mainly for media consumption.

Today is Kath's birthday. We exchanged messages and greetings in Spanish. They're staying in Toledo on their way home from Sta Pola. I've been enjoying the smooth and uninterrupted quality of broadband access. As at work, this takes a certain tension out of doing what you have to do, as well as reducing delays - except to the imagination, which works at a pace that's not time dependent. After lunch I went for a stroll to Llandaff Fields with prime lens equipped camera to see what I could see and record. I take pleasure in enjoying the bigger picture, landscapes and townscapes are what I look for. The prime lens challenges me to look at detail. Its range of focus gives you a sharp clear subject set in a de-focussed background, so you need to think carefully about what you're looking for in a picture as well as what you're looking at. 

I stopped and had a coffee in Cafe Castan. So glad it continues to flourish, ministering food and drink to park visitors. It's a real enhancement to the locality, and the staff are friendly. Then, late afternoon I went into the office for a couple of hours, and found myself with the task of completing the re-install of Windows 10 on the new Acer desktop PC. It crashed badly and had to be reverted to factory settings, Windows 8.1, then 148 updates had to be made before it could be accepted in the queue for upgrading to Windows 10. 

This dragged on for days, leaving Ashley un-confident about whether or when he could use it, so I finished the job and re-configured it, turning a short visit to talk business into a long one machine minding, so I got home late for supper, resentful that these processes don't always function as smoothly as intended. I never found out why this PC's crashed in the first place. It might have been something simple, sync or an email attachment failing to find an app to open it, locking up the system and leaving the machine useless until it drops into sleep mode. The on/off switch tell tale is so dim, you cannot tell whether it's off or in sleep. At that stage, a wrong move may have caused damage that confounded the various system repair and recovery options. There was no success in recovering settings data stored in OneDrive either, hence the need for a hugely time wasting factory reset.

After supper, we settled down together in front of the TV and watched 'The Last Quartet' a fine film about the middle aged members of a string quartet, thrown into crisis by the impending retirement of one of its members, based around the sublime music of Beethoven's last quartet. Wonderful.

BCP Sunday and an unexpected travellers' tale

I had a quiet Saturday mostly to myself, as Rhiannon had a theatre performance to attend with her theatre workshop group in the morning, and a birthday party in the afternoon, at which she was introduced to the indoor rock climbing at the Warwick University Sport centre. All I had to do was make her a packed lunch to take with her.

I had time to write two sermons, take a trip to the shops and watch Wales win the Rugby championship match with a thrilling victory over England while Rhiannon was out. She was quite tired when she returned, but stayed up until her usual bed time and explored further how to use Corel Draw, producing a teddy bear picture on her own before asking me to read to her when she eventually retired. Amazing to see how quickly she mastered the basic techniques and employed them in a credible design of her own.

A retired priest was celebrating the eight o'clock at Kenilworth St Nicholas Parish Church this morning. He greeted the congregation, and then commiserated with them on the English team's humiliating defeat in yesterday evening's game against Wales. I sat in the front row grinning from ear to ear.

 
It was a Book of Common Prayer 1662 service for a change, and having celebrated this rite myself only recently for the first time in years, it was gratifying to be on the receiving end of it in a middle England mediaeval church blessed with a regular early congregation of forty devout souls.

I overheard someone at lunch in College the other day disparagingly describing the use of the 1662 BCP  liturgy as "A nod in the direction of Protestantism". To my mind, it is classic creation of late renaissance thinking which is equally able to contain the interpretation and devotion of both Catholic and Protestant convictions, despite each having their own misgivings as well as assurances about it. In a middle of the road, middle England parish, it represents a reconciling traditional path. For a while in its history (sadly) its use was enforced, but for the most part it was received and slowly adapted, to become a home base for national prayer together.  Quite an achievement.

Every attempt at subsequent modernisation of liturgy owes something to the BCP. Glad I learned it by heart 25 years ago, but sad that working with so many different liturgical texts with minor and major changes in them ever since, has corrupted my memory for recitation. I stubbornly resist using the book, for cues, preferring to stumble and mumble my way through with interference breaking in from the more modern language versions in my head. I rough handle this cultural treasure but cherish its persistence nevertheless.

Before leaving for home, I breakfasted with Rhiannon, Kath and Anto, and heard about their weekend gigs in Lincolnshire. They were chatted up in a cafe by a pensioner with a long beard in a wheelchair. He'd recognised them as likely to be musicians, and claimed to be a drummer. That ran bells for Chris the band's drummer, who investigated the interloper via his smart phone. It was none other than Robert Wyatt of Soft Machine and Matching Mole fame, who broke his back falling drunk from a balcony in his youth, but continued his life in recorded music and performance with distinction despite this.

I left in a shower of sleet, and by the time I reached Cardiff the weather was much kinder and the sun was peeping through the clouds. I was back in time for lunch, and we managed a walk around the park and a cup of tea in Cafe Castan (aka Caffi Ty Bach, because of its location in the former toilet block on the corner of Llandaff Fields.), before Owain arrived for a catch up session.
   

An easy weekend

Clare was out during the day Saturday at the school Christmas Fair, so I walked into College to retrieve a file I'd been working on there, so that I could continue working on it at home. I walked back the long way through the park and took some nice autumnal photographs.

Then I treated myself to a big bacon roll and coffee at Cafe Castan, sitting outside in the relatively mild air, enjoying sunshine and clouds, with no need to hurry back to my desk. It's nice being able to start and stop work when I feel like it. And that's how it is organising ministry rotas, when you have to wait for responses from people invited. You send messages, and check for a response every now and then. If you start early enough before the production deadline you don't end up having to phone around. 

This Sunday no locum duty, no sermon to prepare. I was due to hear Rufus preaching in a Monmouthshire country parish, but he's away sick at the moment. Although I vowed I wouldn't watch 'The Killing III' as I'll only see two weeks worth out of five double episodes before going away, I stayed up and watched the first pair of episodes. The storyline has a political layer to it reminiscent of the Danish 'Borgen' drama series of earlier this year (or was it last?). It's getting a bit formulaic, re-cycling ideas. Shall I bother to watch next week?

Clare and I went to St Catherine's together for the Parish Eucharist this morning. After lunch I went over to Bristol to see Amanda and James, and talk Amanda through some computer updating issues she's bothered about. When I returned home, Owain was there, and we sat and put the world to rights over supper, as we are wont to do. After he left, I realised that I'd left my little laptop at Amanda's place. I'd taken it with me in case I needed to download something independently of her computer which seemed to be getting stuck on big updates. I'll have to go back and get it tomorrow morning.

How many people get problems with their computers because they forget to let updates take their course and abort them accidentally by switching off at the wrong moment, or else the don't understand the need to obey updating instructions which pop up, thinking its some kind of spam or advertising best ignored. Nobody likes having to read messages that throw your concentration on other tasks with engaged with. Computers demand far too much maintenance, even the best of them, to rate as good consumer devices, on a par, say, with a washing machine, an oven or a radio set.