Extreme heat, day two

As I closed the curtains before climbing into bed last night, a saw the rising full moon just above the roof ridge in the street beyond the back garden, not yet risen above the chimney stack. An enchanting sight. I took out three different cameras to take pictures, mostly on auto settings as there wasn't enough time for adjustments to match the night scene, or set up a tripod. None of them were particularly good, but I think the Olympus OMD E-M10.1 was better than the others. At 25C the temperature was comfortable enough to sleep without a covering, though not long enough. 

The doorbell rang frenetically at eight o'clock, so I had to jump out of bed and run down stairs shouting 'Coming!' hoping I'd be heard. It was the Ashton's fishmonger delivery man with a heavy bag of supplies for freezing. I took the mixing bowl of pancake batter from the fridge and replaced it with the fish bag,  then returned to empty the dishwasher, lay the breakfast table and cook pancakes, a double amount. As expected, Jasmine and Louie surfaced late after their flight. Louie then went back to bed, Clare, Jasmine and I went to Thompson's Park to check on the moorhens. By this time the temperature had risen to 33C. In the year since I last experienced such hot weather in Nerja, I seem to be adjusting to the heat more slowly. A product of ageing I suppose. 

Neither Jasmine nor Louie were ready to eat lunch or are not accustomed to a midday meal, so Jasmine took him to explore streets of Pontcanna she remembers from her last visit. I had another go at setting up the Mesh wireless extenders, and succeeded in attaching a second one to the network. Then I finished setting up my new Dell laptop, installing a link to my phone. The data transfer from old to new phone was comprehensive except for one tiny feature, the link to my customised ring tone. I found the original MP3, but not an excerpt from it, and realised I'd used a three minute track instead. I had to send a copy to my laptop to edit the track and make a 30 second ringtone, to send back to the phone. I had no desire to learn how to do sound editing on my phone. I didn't think it would be such a fiddle to send files back and forth between devices. In the end I connected them by USB-C cable, a familiar routine, and in effect quicker. Job done. Then I uploaded all the photos taken in the past week and editing where necessary. and didn't venture out again until late afternoon.

It was still very hot, but wearing a hat and walking in the shade as much as possible made it bearable for an hour or so, then I headed home to cook a veggie pasta dish for supper. Unfortunately Louie was feeling poorly and didn't join us, just Jasmine. As sunset approached and the temperature dropped to 25C Jasmine and I went out and walked for an hour, talking photography. She said that on this trip she's brought a film camera with her, but accidentally forgot to extract them from her baggage for scan free inspection at the airport in Phoenix. She's using low speed film rolls which can survive CT and Xray scans unimpaired. It's the most sensitive high ISO films that are most vulnerable. It's a case of traveller beware, I'm afraid.

Just as I was about to go to bed, Jasmine asked for a door key, as she decided to go out in the dark and  take Louise with her to enjoy the cooler night air. Both of them are used to air conditioned houses, so our little heatwave must be hard going for them, on top of jet lag.

Solstice snowdrops

After last night's party, I didn't sleep too well, overstimulated by socialising I guess. We live a quiet life for the most part these days. The doorbell rang just after half past seven this morning. It was a delivery man from Ashton's with the Christmas salmon Clare ordered. I was awake and ran downstairs to collect the fish as Clare wasn't quite awake yet. Then I went back to bed to listen to Thought for the Day and the news. By the time I eventually got up it was nearly nine and Clare had cooked Saturday pancakes for breakfast, and started making a fish soup for lunch. And thought she'd gone back to bed after putting the huge salmon fillets in the freezer for the weekend!

It rained until mid morning, then a strong cold wind sprung up and drove the rain clouds away. The internet was inaccessible and it took forty minutes of landline phone time to get it restored. The landline is being taken away, unless you pay £150 a year to retain the sevice. This will hit hardest those whose emergency devices only connect by hardwire. Scandalous. We don't need that and must switch to the all digital service to retain our landline. It doesn't bode well when the fibre lines are stil prone to outages. Changing our account to all digital costs nothing apart from another half hour on line via Direct Messaging, once the internet was restored.

At last I was able to make an effort to email digital greetings, over fifty of them, spanning decades of family life and ministry. It took a long time morning and afternoon to finish the job. The remains of the filleted salmon Clare transformed into a delicious fish soup with spuds and carrots for our lunch.

The chilling wind made walking the park on ordeal, but compensated by finding a few tiny snowdrops on the verge of the long avenue near the stables. There's a patch of ground where they first appear year after year. Finding them on winter solstice day is remarkable, about ten days earlier than last year. It was about the fifth of January the year before that. A symptom of climate driven change as the average temperature for this time of year creeps up incrementally.

I got home as the sun was setting and finished the Christmas emailing. After supper I watched the final two episodes of Crá, a complex 'whodunit' in a close knit rural community with shameful family  secrets and abusive relationships. Then made an effort to go to bed and catch up on sleep I lost last night.

Mission reported

Another overcast day with showery spells. Promptly at eight the door bell disrupted our slumber. Our fish order for the month arriving from Ashtons. After breakfast, Clare spent ages unpacking and bagging up the content of the order ready for freezing. Fish soup for lunch!

I sent the final revision of my end of stay report to Emma at diocesan HQ. Later we talked about it on the phone. I heard that I wasn't alone among locum chaplains in not receiving invitations to visit or meet with congregation members. A habit which seems to have been lost in the aftermath of COVID. Gathered church becoming nothing more than a gathering of religious consumers, hospitable when gathered, but not otherwise? 

Clare ordered Venetian blinds for the front room, and a man arrived to install them just before lunch. Then a fancy airbed with built-in pump was delivered. We expect a houseful when Rachel and Jasmine arrive at the end of the month, and everyone here for Owain's birthday. Poor guy, his iMac won't power up after ten months in storage. Heaven knows what's wrong with it. He's expecting a big pay rise eventually but getting to know the worst, and whether it can be fixed will have to wait until then.

After lunch, I worked on a reflection for next Thursday. It's difficult to think of something fresh to say in 500 words on The Rich Man and Lazarus when you've covered it so many times. Impossible not to repeat some ideas, but important to find a new insight, even if it does take ages. While I was writing, Clare had her first clarinet lesson with a loaned instrument. While she's mastered basic flute playing she feels the strain on her shoulders from the transverse playing position. The vertical playing of the clarinet could be more amenable to her. She's not afraid to give things a try, that's for sure.

As soon as I set out for a walk at tea time, it started to rain. Rather than get soaked, instead of ending my walk with a visit to Tesco's for a bottle of wine, I went straight there and back in between showers. It's so frustrating, this unpredictable weather. 

As I have my MRI appointment at eight in the morning, I rang the Radiology department at UHW to confirm attendance, I asked about parking and was told Saturday is the best day of the week to get a place in the multi-storey car park. So I don't have to get up extra early to walk there, in order to avoid having to hunt for a parking space in competition with thousands of others.

After supper, I went out again to complete my daily steps quota on a damp drizzly dull evening, before an early night.

Ready for the feast

I was awake at seven and found a message pointing out an error in the advertised timing of one of the services on Sway. I got up straight away to correct this, and rather than return to bed, I carried on working on next Thursday's Morning Prayer for uploading to YouTube while Clare cooked waffles for breakfast. I finished the job afterwards, and then went into town to collect the filleted salmon she ordered by phone yesterday. Walk down Romilly Crescent I car passed me by with 'Feliz Navidad' playing loudly on the car stereo - a reminder of the presence of so many Spanish ex-pats in our neighbourhood.

Ashton's the venerable fishmonger's stall in Cardiff Market was surrounded by customers of many nations buying their Christmas specials. On one side of the stall were several dozen bags of fish and game orders awaiting collection. It was a pleasure to wait, as people were chatty and in a good mood. You never have to wait very long as there are so many staff behind the counter, well organised, working efficiently. It's a little seasonal treat I really enjoy, that ten minutes at the fish counter, remembering standing there with my Dad seventy years ago, while he ate a dish of Penclawdd cockles.

I caught a bus which dropped me in Cowbridge Road East, also known as Canton High Street, as it still has a good assortment of small shops. The Codfather, a fish and chip shop which suffered a fire nineteen months ago, has now reopened, and there's a new supermarket which isn't part of one of the major chains. It may be middle eastern or eastern European, I didn't have time to stop and check it out. I went straight to Mr Berry's the butcher, to collect our small turkey, some streaky bacon and sausage meat for stuffing. The fish and the turkey between them cost nearly a hundred pounds. Very much a sign of the times.

When I got back I checked my sermons and printed off all three, so that I don't have to think about this at the last minute. This should help me to relax as I face an intense twenty for hours of leading worship and preaching, and hopefully not be too exhausted to enjoy the fast approaching fiesta.

After a snack lunch, I slept in the chair for over an hour, catching up on what I missed earlier. I then had the energy to hoover the carpets and wash the floors, while Clare went out shopping, so the house looks welcoming when the family arrives.

I've been thinking a lot about Gaza this past few days, with the death toll past twenty thousand now, and two third of them women and children. Hospitals are no longer able to operate and women in danger of dying because there is no longer the means for them to be delivered by caesarian section. Despite rising desperation anger at the situation in countries sympathetic to Israel, and persistent efforts to get urgent aid into the Gaza Strip, through northern and southern border crossings, there is no movement. 

Talks about a pause in hostilities and release of hostages are still unfruitful, and pockets of fierce fighting continue producing even more casualties. Houthi rebels in Yemen, armed by Iran are shutting down the Red Sea to shipping traffic, which is now re-routing via South Africa, adding huge delays and expense that will soon be reflected in the cost of commodities internationally. None of the heavily armed nations want to intervene in a way that will draw Iran into the conflict, or the Iranian backed militia in Lebanon but the more the Israelis persist the greater the risk of escalation becomes. It's going to be an unquiet Christmas throughout the MIddle East, as well as in Ukraine.

I went for a walk in the drizzle as the sun was setting. Occasional strong gusts of wind made it hard to control the brolly, so I gave up, and only got slightly damp in the end. 

Owain arrived at eight and we sat and drank a bottle of Swiss Gamay which he bought last year and kept until now. It was still healthy and good to taste. I headed for bed early, with an early start to Christmas Eve at St Peter's in the morning.

O Sapientia

My goodness, a week until it's Christmas Eve already! 

By the time I got up this morning the temperature was already rising above zero and stayed there all day into the night. Clare cooked pancakes for our habitual Saturday breakfast. Then we went into town and ordered a salmon from Ashton's to take with us for Christmas, buy some more cards, and investigate reading lamps in John Lewis. We identified one to buy, but there wasn't one in stock apart from the display model, so we had to order one on-line for home delivery when we got home. Hopefully it will arrive before we leave for Kenilworth next Friday. 

We had a drink and a snack in John Lewis, and caught a C1 bus that took us to Cowbridge road shops to buy some cards as we'd forgotten while we were in town. We came out of the shop and saw a 61 bus in the distance. We caught it and were home sooner than expected, cooking lunch late. 

By the time we'd finished and cleared up, the sun was low and it was getting dark by the time I went out for a walk in the park. Several cyclists were riding along the edge of Llandaff Fields with helmets and bikes decorated with LED Christmas lights. In the night time most dogs out with their owners have illuminated collars these days, now they're cheap to acquire and run. It was quiet and deserted away from the road, until I heard a noise sounding like moped with no silencer coming from the Llandaff direction on the footpath, but the approaching bright light was too high to come from a moped. Then a guy with a light on his helmet sped past me standing on a skateboard with a small two stroke engine attached, the sort of engine you'd find on a noisy chainsaw or hedge trimmer. Skateboards with electric motors I've seen out and about, but this outfit was likely to be a DIY enthusiast's home engineering project.

I watched the third and thoughtful concluding episode of 'Granite Harbour'. Strangely, it turns out that Series One has only three episodes encompassing one story. More like a pilot for a series. No report yet of a follow up, though it's been well reviewed. Then I watched 'The Eagle has Landed' premiered in 1976. I've seen it a couple of times over the years since. Michael Caine and Donald Sutherland both look ever so young in it.

Fish shopping

I woke early and posted the link for today's Morning Prayer to WhatsApp before getting breakfast ready. On the way to the Eucharist at John's early, I shopped for food bank items at Tesco's in order to leave them at church for collection. There were just seven of us today. Linda has kindly agreed to drive me to St Joseph's after the service on Thursday three weeks hence when I have my cataract operation. Over coffee we talked about opening St John's for a 'warm church' morning on a day when there are other community activities during the day and the church heating needs to be on. With churches paying business rates for energy it's hard to see how any heating is going to be affordable. We must hope that the Lord provides!

I cooked rice and veg with mussels for our lunch. After a siesta we walked into town to buy our monthly consignment of fresh fish for freezing. We omitted to bring a freezer bag with us, but bought one from the fishmonger's stock. It's a good sized bag branded stylishly with E. Ashton's Ltd, Fishmonger (est.1800) on the side and top. Normally I hate any design which carries product branding, but this is an exception as it's a Cardiff institution to which we have regular recourse for supplies.

We then went to John Lewis for a cuppa before returning home on a 61 bus. Unfortunately the young man who served us at Ashton's had put ice in with the fish in the freezer bag, but not contained it in a plastic bag of its own. By the time we were on the bus, some of the ice had started to melt and left a trail of water on the floor. It didn't smell fishy, as everything inside the bag was neatly wrapped up, but the sight of a fishmonger's bag leaking was embarrassing, suggesting a smell without producing one.

After supper, I watched the second episode of Michael Portillo's travelogue through the Pyrenees, and then the first two episodes of 'The Capture' series two. A cleverly devised political thriller about deep fake video technology, able to work in real time without lag or distortion. It's science fiction, but may be possible sooner than we think. The bad guys in this story are, or seem to be so far the Chinese, and it probes assumptions, stereotypes, and disinformation as a weapon of war, much as the recent thriller on Channel Four about cyber warfare expounded Russian efforts of a similar kind. It's a bit like twentieth century war time propaganda drama about 'fifth columnists', designed to alert the public to the enemy in our midst. Except that now the very technologies on which modern life relies so heavily are weaponised and used against us. Disturbing stuff. What have we done to ourselves?