Marmalade all made

After a clear night with a full moon, a cold clear day with a funeral to take at Western Cemetery entirely in the open air, at the request of the deceased. His widow was in a wheelchair and the service had to be short simple and said at three degrees centigrade. Early cloud parted and the sun shone on the fifteen mourners gathered before the open grave. I was pleased that those present responded with Amens to the prayers and said the Lord's Prayer together with me, rather than just being uncomfortable dumb spectators.

As I had no lectern to hold my service sheet, I picked up a stiff black backed notebook from my bookshelf, to contain the service sheet. I was driven to the cemetery from Pidgeon's funeral home, arrived early, and waited in the car for the family to arrive. The notebook I'd picked up turned out to be my last handwritten journal from the autumn of 2004, giving my account of the week's flamenco course I took with Anto at the Carmen de las Cuevas school in Granada - a present from our spouses. We were there during Michaelmass weekend, and watched the procession of the huge trona de San Miguel from the Parish Church up the hill to the local hermita and back. A wonderful experience. Autumn in the following year was when I opened my Blogger account, and with a few changes of name it's been the repository for telling stories about my life ever since.

I cooked mussels and rice with veggies for lunch when I got back, right on time for Clare's return from her Tuesday group. She discovered that one of the second kilo batch of Seville oranges waiting to be cooked for the past week was covered with mould, so she got them ready for pressure cooking. I got them started, and cooking for fifteen minutes then went for a walk in the park while they cooled. The sunset was spectacular while I was out, and I got some good photos. Then it was a matter of cutting up the oranges and lemons, de-pipping the pulp, and cooking them with sugar until the jam was ready to be potted. Six and a half small jars and three large jars this time, to add to the seven large jars produced last week. All done in time for supper and the Archers.

Another amazing Winterwatch programme was showing on BBC Two, and I divided my time between this and completing this week's Thursday Morning Prayer video for uploading to YouTube. I expected somehow to feel very tired and stiff after a demanding weekend of fresh air and exercise, but so far so good. Today has been satisfyingly productive too.

Blogger improvement improved

Nothing much to say about yesterday. It was uneventful except for walking into town to get a few things for Clare from Lakeland and finished editing the completed texts of the six reflections on priesthood for the Benefice Facebook page. All that remained was to find images to match the theme of each, to draw attention to the posting of the day. 

I got around to it this morning, settling for Byzantine icons, then had to figure out how to send docx files to Emma for uploading via WhtasApp. I'd created the files in Google docs, and didn't want the fiddle of sending a link to the page, but rather a proper copy of the file in question. I could only download a pdf to attach however. Normally this is all I need, but couldn't risk sending these for upload to Facebook in case it didn't work. Eventually I found a way to download the docx files from Google Drive, and attach them, one at a time to WhatsApp messages for sending. Hopefully these won't break.

Since the weekend, there have been several welcome changes in the Blogger user interface. Once again  what you type in the 'Labels' subject search box is immediately visible and it offers suggestions quickly. Instead of burying the 'page justification' icon in a slow drop-down menu, it's back on top in its old position. A welcome improvement. There's still a drop-down menu, but it contains less used format items now. The new interface became the default last month, but features I moaned about at the time have only been changed now, three weeks later. What took them so long? I wonder how many other users complained?

New Blogger UI not fit for purpose

Google's new Blogger user interface is far from ready to warrant forcing it on users. It's intended to give a degree of consistency between use on a phone, tablet and PC, but its drop down menus are slow both to reveal and dismiss. The 'search label' function is time wastingly slow. Type in a word to add, it doesn't appear in the search box as you type, so you don't know if you have typed it correctly. It can take ten to twenty seconds to show up with a checklist of labels and/or option to create new one. And I don't have a slow internet connection. But there's worse to come.

Last night, I decided to complete the day's post on my phone before bed, having started the post on my Chromebook earlier. The draft showed up on my phone just fine, and I completed writing it, and then posted it without error messages. When I came to check out what I wrote on my Chromebook this morning, the post title showed up, but when I clicked on it, last night's partial draft showed up in the text editor and in preview, not the full version, written and posted last night. Evidently, the text posted from my phone had not sync'ed. I had enough phone signal for it to confirm posting, so what happened? Why did the posting not sync with the Chromebook app. This never happened with posting from the phone on the old user interface. I can only draw the conclusion that the slowness of the new version caused this.

If Google responds in its own defence by saying that the hew user interface doesn't work on seven year old Chromebook, how come every other Google app works just fine and hasn't let me down before? 

Progress, for better and for worse

Another sunny morning for a walk to St Catherine's for the Eucharist. We were about thirty this week, and it was Fr Benedict's first appearance at a church service there. Emma preached a superb sermon evoking memories of childhood in the Valleys, talking about 'Our Mam's' ability to conjure up a plate of food for anyone who turned up, when often it seemed she had very little in the larder to conjure with. The context was the Gospel about feeding the five thousand. She also talked about moments when Jesus just wanted to be alone for a brief while, to absorb what was happening before re-engaging with the crowd. It rang true.

Good news! The mid-week Eucharists can resume this week. St Luke's on Tuesday, St Catherine's on Wednesday and St John's Thursday, all at 10.30, so there's a standard time to remember across the Parish. Socially distanced coffee and chat to follow - bring your own!

I walked to the Cathedral in the afternoon for the third Sunday in a row, and said Evening Prayer from my phone, just at the time Choral Evensong would normally be taking place. Will it ever return?

Mother Francis asked Clare if she would video herself reading in Welsh the section of the Song of Azariah which features as a canticle in the daily office of the Church in Wales. She was bewildered, as there were a few oddities in the Welsh text. She wanted to cross check with the English version that she'd understood it correctly so she could recite it correctly, but was even more bewilderment when she couldn't find it in her bible. 

She was looking in a Bible without the Apocrypha - that slim volume of scriptural texts regarded by some, though not all Protestants as of secondary significance because their origin was not in a Hebrew text, but a Greek one. They come from the three centuries before Christ, and played a part in Catholic and Orthodox Churches, whereas reformers regarded them with suspicion, alleging they were source of abuse and false doctrine. Hence they find their place as supplement in reputable translations, and are omitted from conservative ones like the KJV. 

I realised Clare doesn't have a Welsh Bible with Apocrypha, only a Testament Newydd. Anyway I was able to find her the right passage for checking. A phone call to Eleri revealed that the Welsh text of the canticle published in the new Prayer Book office contains two typos. And how many more, I wonder. That's disgraceful in a bilingual church, although these days one can always get away with laying the blame on digital text editing rather than inattention or ignorance.

The new Google blogger interface is awful to use, as its drop down menus and search facility are so slow. I hope this is a work in progress and that it will improve. It makes my old Chromebook almost unusable. It's also uncomfortably slow on my Windows workstation, which equally robs me of time forcing me to machine mind whenever it updates. They're all the same, these big tech corporations  taking a simple easy to get used to product and imposing changes unasked for and unwanted.

A Google own goal

Getting started in the morning is troublesome at the moment, since I resumed taking the Doxazosin extra medication to control high blood pressure. The side effects seem to be more pronounced this time than on previous occasions when I used it - light headedness, but not quite giddy. It's the same whether I take it at bedtime, or if I take it with the other pills at breakfast. This effect continues for a couple of hours and slows me down, as it's un-nerving.

Fortunately it was warm enough to sit out in St Catherine's churchyard for the Wednesday group coffee and chat this morning. There were eleven of us, plus Emma's bairns, but few of the regulars. Hopefully they'll return when midweek Communion starts up again.

I had a Zoom bereavement meeting to plan Paul's funeral scheduled for two. It took twenty minutes to get started as there were problems with account access, which took that long to sort. I talked with his wife and son, and came away with the task of writing a eulogy, as I've known and worked alongside Paul for over seventeen years. If it was just a family group at the crem, a eulogy might be redundant, maybe replaced by poems, but as the service will be web-casted, followed by scores of city centre colleagues, they thought a tribute might be appropriate. 

It's a new challenge for me, but one I am honoured to accept. He was a man I much respected and admired. As I suspected, I learned that he worked at home during lock-down, even on his deathbed. The Wales Online obituary misleadingly spoke of him as a former City Council worker, which is a pity. He knew how much needed to be done once lock-down restrictions were eased, as he saw the whole moving picture of city centre life in detail and wouldn't give up until he had to.

Writing this tribute took most of the evening. I also wrote to my GP as well, concerned about the high blood pressure reading I got. Despite the antibiotics and doxazosin it's not yet returned to normal. Time for some blood tests I think.

Google Blogger has now forced the new user interface on me as the default. I resent having to relearn a user interface with which I am well experienced after fourteen years of blogging. Lots of its features are tucked away in drop down menus rather than immediately visible, they are slower to react on my ancient Chromebook which means the new interface is more resource hungry. Just like the new Gmail is slower to load than the old version. Sure it'll look good on a tablet or phone, but little is gained when using it in a computer web browser. As far as I'm concerned this is an own goal on Google's part. 

 

Holy Week Wednesday - Spiritual Capital Cardiff revisited

I've had an exchange of text messages with Roy Thomas who's out in South Africa at the moment, we have been sharing thoughts about discerning vocation recently, but today we shared thoughts about a possible re-opening of the Spiritual Capital research project we ran together 2006-8.

Funnily enough, responses to Monday's Notre Dame fire got me reflecting again on the economic and social role of religious edifices and institutions in this post modern era. The majority may stay well away from church, yet the presence and activity of religious faith based things, still seems not to be a matter of indifference to everyone. Even if ideas and opinions on these matters can be ill-informed, they can't be ignored or barred from consciousness. They continue to pose questions that challenge our sense of self anf our values.

Thoughts about Spiritual Capital were particularly prompted by an invoice from internet service provider Servage for another two years registration of the sarcic.org.uk URL which was used as our project web page. It's still active, although it looks terribly dated, and a few of the links are broken. We used two Google blog sites as well. Both are still there, frozen in time. The steering group blog final entry was in mid July 2008. Entries on the Spiritual Capital blog petered out over the next eighteen months as I wound down towards retirement, with one stray entry two years later.

I gave up access details to Parish web assets, including the Spiritual Capital material, when I retired. St John's web presence has changed since then, and old stuff is unused. I found a written record of old access codes, and they still work, but Google's beefed up security protocol showed its worth. Neither my present IP address nor the devices were used then, so confirmation of my access privilege was automatically required from current keeper - St John's tower captain Bob Hardy. I emailed him, and he confirmed he'd received a security alert, and I reassured him of the reason for this surprise, while he is away on holiday. We'll see to it when he returns next week! Meanwhile I need to draft a way of linking current aspirations and interest in Spiritual with those last expressed over a decade ago to discuss with Roy.

After lunch, I went to the wound clinic, and then collected this week's veggie bag from Chapter, before walking down to Blackweir Bridge before supper. I saw a couple of baseball teams out on the Fields at match practice. Baseball came to Cardiff a century ago. It's not at big as cricket, but it has always had a core of keen followers. After a few days of cold weather, it's warming up again, so it's quite pleasant to be out and about,

As it's Holy Week in an interregnum, there are no mid-week morning Masses, just a single evening Mass for the Benefice. Tonight, we were at St Catherine's, with twenty in the congregation and ten in the choir, as predicted by Clive. This would work if all who attended mid-week services regularly in the morning were to come, but they don't. Some older people, though not all to be fair, aren't keen  to venture out after tea. If changing routine is a big effort, they miss out. It's a bit sad, but reflects a time of change. No news yet of a new Team Rector, the appointment process seems still to be a work in progress.

Friends and family re-connecting

Sometimes, especially in winter it seems, several days slip quietly by when it's an effort to remember what I've busied myself with if I've had no appointments in my diary or duties to perform and don't find time to write this blog, I have investigate whether I've taken photos, worked on any documents, or ask Clare if she can remember what either of us did.

I quite forgot that having talked to Rachel about publicity for herself as a performing musician, I then spent all of Tuesday using Blogger to build her a site to host some of her gig videos. Some of these we have on home devices, others are on the internet and have to be tracked down and linked up. It's several years since I built a new website using Blogger, so a good deal of time was spent re-learning its edit functions, before I had something to show her. The next problem is obtaining a response from her as she's so fully occupied scraping a living, and without a decent home internet connection, that it takes ages for her to get around to viewing and commenting. No quick results around here, but a day well spent anyway.

Last weekend I noticed that Delbert Field an old friend from Geneva Days, I haven't seen for more than a decade started following me on Twitter. I sent him a Direct Message, and on Wednesday got a response. He and his artist wife Araceli now live in Sta Fe, Colombia, where both are involved with the local episcopal church, Ara is creating a mosaic to decorate the sanctuary of their church there.

Delbert worked for the International Organisation for Migration, and was involved in moving people out of danger zones and later resettling them during the Bosnian war. He made it possible for me to accompany him on a visit to Sarajevo in November 1996 when IOM was establishing a new office there, about six months after the siege was lifted and SFOR was enabling the return of the civilian rule of law. I digitized the photos I took there many years ago. One day I must get around to re-reading and transcribing the journal I wrote of that memorable week in my life.

Thursday afternoon I made a brief visit to the CBS RadioNet office, but there's still no development in response to our request for an enquiry into questionable business initiative of For Cardiff. In the evening we went to Jacquie and Russell's house for their annual soirée of readings stories and songs around around their Christmas tree, a very pleasant occasion with two dozen other guests present.

Friday we drove up to the Yorkshire village of Northowram outside Halifax to attend the Memorial Service for Clare's cousin John's wife Dorothy, who died last month. It was held in St Matthew's Parish church where John had been Vicar, after they returned from a spell as missionaries in Zambia. She was eighty three and had lived a full an active life, despite being disabled by a stroke in her early seventies, singing with a big local choral society, involved with the work of the Mothers Union Overseas, and campaigning to retain rural Post Offices during a time of widespread closures. Their four children and offspring told her life story and they also sang together in the service, and two of them contributed also with organ accompaniment. The ladies of the Parish laid on refreshments to follow, and people, relatives, friends, parishioners, lingered for a long time after the service chatting and remniscing.

Rather than drive home four hours in the dark, we drove to Kenilworth to stay the night with Kath Anto and Rhiannon. Although it's less than half the complete distance, the journey still took us three hours in Friday rush hour traffic, and we were somewhat bemused by the way Google kept offering us alternative routes for the fastest journey time to avoid congestion hot spots. It changed each time a bottleneck cleared or developed. We just stuck to the M1/M42 route back to the West Midlands, once we left the Leed conurbation, where the impact of congestion was worst. Kath had a meal ready for us when we arrived, and we enjoyed a delightful family supper at the end of a long travel day in less than ideal conditions.

Blogger's nightmare

While I was writing my Sunday sermon yesterday morning I had a phone call from a worried Owain. He'd got back late last night from a week off in Berlin, and had just got around to checking his music and media blog for the first time in a week, only to discover that the homepage wasn't delivering any content. All his content is hosted on a web server we've been sharing for the past ten years. He needed to check the access details before logging into the server, and it was quicker to ask me than rummage through his paper document hoard. I was soon able to verify the information, and left him to investigate.

Later in the day he came to Cardiff to have supper with friends and called in to leave his overnight bag as he was stopping over to watch the Wales v England rugby match, and have a drink with us first. He was still waiting to hear from his mate who designed and built his website, and set it up for him using WordPress on our shared server. He suspected a broken link to the SQL database, but didn't know how to fix it. I couldn't help him as I never had occasion to learn how to use the software, having used Blogger exclusively since I started in November 2005, so it was a matter of just waiting. I enquired about site  back-ups, and he admitted he didn't really know much about what happened where his own site was concerned, a thought which gave me the horrors.

Owain writes and edits copy for a living, daily uploading stuff to an assortment of sites with  more experience than me of different content management systems. I hired server space for us to share not long after I started blogging, and he's used it more than I have, both of us using the excellent CuteFTP browser based app for server file management. I thought he was better acquainted with back end stuff than I am, but apparently not. 

At the time we got started with the web server, I hadn't checked he knew about backups or made this part of his discipline when it came to managing his own web based publications. So, I feel as if I am partly responsible if this glitch turns into a catastrophic failure, and Owain loses the past three years of blogging output.

Part of my evolution as a computer user meant that twelve years ago, all my data was kept on hardware which lived with me, some of which, if needed on-line, would be 'backed up' to the web server. My, how things have changed with the advent of Cloud based computing in the past five years. I still keep hardware backups of everything, and that's a bit of an effort when Windows 10 with OneDrive is the ever so handy default. I'm still reluctant to entrust my entire digital life to web storage. If things can go wrong they may well do, sooner or later. And there's also the threat of getting hacked, and ransomware attacks out there to insure against as well.

I'm crossing my fingers this'll be easily resolved. It's taught me another lesson about being those who seek my help and advice about computing matters both understand and are properly informed. There are some good aspects of this troublesome situation, however. It's the first time anything has gone wrong for Owain with his blog since he got started. This shows how reliable, easy and user friendly it has become to make and run a custom website. Also, he now has the motivation and need to know more about troubleshooting and tackling server issues when his helpful techie friends are un-contactable. But it's not over until it's over!

    

Red light St Andrew's day

I had one of those 'red light' starts to the day, it was red traffic lights all the way there and almost all the way back. I was crossing town as usual on a Wednesday morning to reach St German's for the St Andrew's Day 'Class Mass' the last of the series of this term with Tredegarville school children. Next Tuesday, the whole school will be in church for their service lessons and carols, and the midweek Mass will be a more staid and muted affair in the Lady chapel.

After the service, before heading for the dentists in Llandaff North for a check up. I headed back home to Pontcanna to collect a spare 'phone battery, as mine was nearly dead and I was going to be out for the afternoon. The traffic through Llandaff itself was slow, more red lights, and I made it by the skin of my teeth, only to discover that my appointment is tomorrow at the same time. 

Then I headed for Newport, a little earlier than expected to visit Martin for a lovely afternoon of catch-up, after my time away. I meet a couple of young Iranian asylum seekers he's befriended lately, meeting them through Karim, the Farsi speaking Afghan live-in support worker who helps Martin and Chris to look after Andrew and Robert, their foster sons. It's is the most hospitable of homes I have ever had the pleasure to know, open to women and men of all ages, all abilities, and nations, needy and privileged alike. A wonderful practical domestic expression of the highest human and Christian ideals. I come away feeling inspired, uplifted, and glad they are such long standing friends.

While I was there, I introduced Martin to Google Blogger, and showed him how to start an account of his own. As an experienced priest and journalist, he wants to write some reflections on the news and mass media and how present things, as observed from a Christian perspective. It's several years since I last introduced anyone to the use of Blogger. Its user interface has changed, and my ability to use it has changed a little, though not much. I've not done anything to develop my blogs or enhance the sites I use, being too busy with content, so it took me a while to tune myself in to the essential procedures. This wasn't made any easier by working on a Macbook, something I haven't tried for years. It's irritatingly different for a Windows and Linux/Android/Chrome user in in-grained habits, but we got to first base in the end. I look forward to when he starts writing and publishing. I'm sure it won't be dull!

I left just at sunset, and after a cloudless day all over South Wales the entire western half of the horizon was fringed with colour, grading from russet to orange and yellow merging into pale clear blue, an exquisite sight. Such a pity I was in no position to stop and gaze in the evening rush hour traffic. At least on this home run, there were fewer red lights.