High speed return

I slept quite well in a strange bed, and only woke up once during the night, after five hours asleep. That's a welcome improvement. I did some more computer trouble shooting, to minimise annoying pop-ups that Windows 10 presumes are helpful to users when they are no more than a distraction. It took quite a while to disable the desktop news feed, one problem being as it's not evident what the function is called in order to target it, for instance.

I walked to Sainsbury's at the far end of the row of shops on Bellevue Road, facing Wandsworth Common. The store used to house a branch of NatWest bank and the architecture still advertises its history. It's rather cramped, but quite well stocked. I had to use the self-checkout till, as only one staff member was on till duty, dealing with tobacco and lottery ticket sales, and overseeing the tills at a distance. Unfortunately for him I needed help as I picked up several loose bananas and couldn't work out how to add them to the bill. It was a matter of counting and paying for them at a fixed price for each. When it came to paying, I had trouble using the card's contactless device, I think because of a latency issue with the payment network. Inserting the card led to a read error calling for a second human intervention to reset the payment routine. No matter how cleverly designed they are, I still hate auto-checkouts!

After lunch, June's weekly on-line grocery order from Tesco's was delivered, four bag-fulls, deposited at the door of her flat. It normally takes her an age to unload and carry the content indoors, but as I was there, I carried them in sorted the content and stocked most of them in the fridge, or in her store. Then the doorbell rang again for another delivery of an on-line order. Neither of us were sure that the courier had heard and was responding to the answerphone button, or if it was working - it's temperamental - so I ran downstairs and found the courier putting the parcel into June's dustbin enclosure. Confusion avoided.

I made some hummous sandwiches for the journey home, and parted company with June about six, to take the train back to Victoria and the Circle Line underground to Paddington. At seven I stepped on to the 19.18 train for Cardiff, and ate my sandwiches while I waited for departure. With four stops, the journey to Cardiff took one hour and fifty nine minutes. Non-stop, if would take one hour forty five. The upgrade of Brunel's GWR line to new Hitachi electric trains is most welcome. It reminded me of train travel in France and Switzerland, and in a way compensates for not being able to travel freely in Europe at the moment.

Thankfully the weather was fine, so I walked home from the station savouring the experience, and the peace and quiet of late evening streets. June worries about me getting mugged in the dark. It happens here in Cardiff too, but less often than in the metropolis, so it's not a common anxiety. What a blessing to live a quiet and safe provincial life. 

Reunion

An easy drive across town to St Germans's to celebrate the Harvest Festival Mass this morning in a church bathed in autumnal sunshine, a lovely experience. Then a speedy return home for lunch, followed by a walk back to Cardiff Central Station to catch the 14.20 train to London to visit my sister. The journey was half an hour longer than the usual two hours as the Severn tunnel is closed on Sundays for maintenance. Instead the train goes through Chepstow up the Estuary to Gloucester, down to Stonehouse, and then through to Cotswolds to rejoin the main line at Swindon. The weather all the way was sunny with a few clouds, and the journey through less familiar landscape on the first half of the trip was delightful. I didn't doze, nor did I read. I did a big batch of Duo Lingo exercises for part of the way, and stared out of the window, enjoying the landscape for the rest of the time.

From Paddington to Wandsworth Common is a journey I have done many times, but not for the best part of ten years, maybe longer. Essentially little has changed, but superficially the signage has changed and as a result of covid it's not always easy to register familiar routes as things look different, and I missed the correct underground entrance first time and almost went in the wrong direction around the, which cost me ten minutes, but once I recovered, the journey was straightforward, and an hour later I was knocking on June's apartment door - again someone had left the front door open, a nightmare issue in this property.

It's more than three years since i was last with my sister in person, although we have spent many hours on the phone. I have given her a Linux HP laptop which is set up as identically as possible to resemble her existing machine, so that she has a backup device if the other one decides to give up the ghost. She relies on a computer for being able to order food as well as communicate with others, so I am comforted to know she has a fallback which I am confident won't give her much trouble, or a learning curve. But more than anything else it was good to see her face to face again, and see how well she's coping at eighty six.

Valleys visit

Last week, I set myself the task of preparing all the material needed for the next three Thursday Morning Prayer and Reflection videos before we leave for our fortnight's holiday in Watchet a week today. After breakfast this morning, I recorded and edited the audio for next Thursday's video, and then had to rush to get myself out of the house in time to reach Cardiff Central station, and buy tickets for a trip to Crosskeys to spend the afternoon with Rufus. 

I also wanted to buy advance tickets for a trip to London to visit my sister for the first time in three years, as I have Monday and Tuesday free, and feel confident about making the journey, after such a long time needing to plan every step with medical needs at the forefront of my thinking. I'm looking forward to this.

Fortunately, I gave myself time to do both, and was pleased to find that advance booking of off-peak fares gave me a reasonably priced ride to London on Sunday afternoon with return ticket I can use any time off-peak within the next month. I can stay for one or two nights and choose when I head for home, as long as it's later in the day, which suits me anyway. Electrification of the line has reduced journey time now to two hours. It costs three times more than by bus, but the travel time and convenience make it worthwhile.

Crosskeys is on the Ebbw Vale line north of Newport. The line heads inland, rising from the coastal plain  through suburbia and a then wooded valley where the line runs above the villages. It made me think of places I'd visited in Switzerland, a memory enhanced by the appearance of a young fair haired train conductor with a local accent, enjoying her job on the train. She reminded me of her equivalent on Swiss railways, sometimes, an apprenti, accompanied by an older railwayman. It's funny how memory surprises you like that.

Rufus and Daria are re-settling happily in their family home of twenty eight years, after ten years elsewhere in ministry. They live in a part of the village where four terraces of neat well kept houses, typical of the mining Valleys enclose a garden with the village war memorial at the centre. The back of their house overlooks a wooded valley, and the terrace is dug into the steep slope. They have converted the loft, and below the ground floor is a day room overlooking the garden below, and the valley. Over the years, Rufus has done all the work himself. Craftsmanship of all kinds is his hobby. I often heard him talk of this when I was his College tutor. This was the first time for me to see what he'd done with the house, and I was most impressed.

We had a good three hours of conversation before I took the return journey at five. It was good to see him at home, relaxing and pondering on how his next period in ministry might develop, now that he's officially a pensioner, and free to accept or reject whatever invitations come his way. The church is more than ever reliant on clergy with means of their own to sustain its offer of ministry in this time when the slide into bankruptcy is a grim reality. Retired clerics are not seen as stakeholders but beneficiaries of the church excluded from participating in its decision making processes. It makes no sense. I wonder how desperate the hierarchy needs to get before acknowledging that a radical change is needed towards voluntary clergy, who see themselves as stakeholders in the church's mission notwithstanding?

After supper, I walked to St Catherine's to deliver stuff for tomorrow's Autumn Fayre, then continued work I started earlier in the day. There was nothing worth watching on telly anyway.

Unexpected chaos

This morning after breakfast I walked up to St Michael's College with a bag of books on Orthodoxy to leave there for Ross, who forgot to take them with him from St German's on Sunday last. I intended to go by bus from Llandaff straight into town to buy Clare's birthday present, but left without a face mask, so I had to return home to collect one, and then catch the 61 into town. The Tudor Street road works impose a one way system, and the buses have adopted this, entering the city centre from Fitzhamon embankment over the Wood Street Bridge, then continuing to a bus stop on one side of Westgate Street, where inbound and outbound passengers get on and off. It must get pretty crowded at peak times, and in these covid times that's not such a good thing.

Ann was due to arrive from Felixstowe at three thirty five this afternoon, but her train was delayed by just over an hour.  I left the house to collect her by car in what I thought was good time, but traffic in Canton was very heavy. I thought I would have to queue for ages at the Tudor Street junction, but this wasn't the case. I was only five minutes later than Ann's first ETA, then she texted me about an extension to the delay. The train arrived five minutes later than the delayed time advertised on the information panel and went to a different platform. The barrier operator let me through to look for Ann, but with no success. I phoned her and discovered she took a wrong turning from an unfamiliar platform and got lost. One of the station staff kindly escorted her to the other end of the station, and all was well.

Apparently the conductor on her train got off at Swindon, so it had to wait for a replacement conductor to arrive by car from Bristol, forty five minutes away on the M4. The added fifteen minutes was him needing to find a petrol station en route. Due to a shortage of trained fuel delivery drivers some petrol stations have none to sell, and others have queues as a result of motorists panic buying. How soon chaos spreads. 

The first thing Ann did on arrive was make an on-line compensation claim to the train operators. She may get some of her outbound fare refunded. The procedure was understandable enough once you understood what was required, but the web page layout was tricky to negotiate, and took two of us to figure out. It requires a photo of your ticket, and either a ticket number or a booking reference. Nothing on the ticket  indicates which is which of the three groups of numbers it contains. The long ticket number (presumably) seemed to be accepted, but the web application form crashed and had to be re-started. What seems to be the booking reference, a much smaller code of letters and numbers worked. Next time we won't need to guess. Anyway, within minutes of completion Ann had an acknowledgment of her refund application, so the system is functional, and will deliver compensation to her bank account, in a matter of weeks.

Owain arrived at seven, his train from Bristol was delayed twenty minutes, so I collected him from the station, so that we could assemble ourselves in good time to walk to Stefano's for supper at eight. It was an enjoyable way to spend the rest of the day, excellent food nicely served, no mishaps, a return to order after journey chaos.

Supper in Easton

This morning I went to St German's to celebrate Mass. Clare drove me there and then went on by car to the School of Optometry to collect a new pair of specs. It was good to have an opportunity to observe the feast of the Transfiguration a day late, as there wasn't a service I could get to yesterday. Peter gave me a lift into town afterwards and I caught a bus home from there.

There was a letter from HSBC waiting for me in the post when I returned, containing the remaining
balance of the closed Cardiff Crime Limited account in the form of an up to date cheque. This will be used to balance the books, and dissolve CCL, finally owing nothing, and with nothing left over. It was advice from someone who didn't understand the Cardiff RadioNet setup, which led us to believe we needed to establish a 'not for profit' company alongside the business to fund the BCRP business crime manager role. It was a sledgehammer to crack a nut, a waste of time and energy, but at last we have closure, ahead of winding up Cardiff Business Safe.

Late afternoon, Rachel, Clare and I went to Bristol by train, benefiting from a group ticket offer which gave us three tickets for the price of two. Our train stopped in Lawrence Hill station, where Owain met us, as he'd just finished work. The DVSA office is five minutes walk from the station and he lives ten minutes away. He was pleased to have an opportunity to show Rachel his new abode, and for Mum to adjust his curtains, now equipped with blackout material, thanks to her extra efforts.

We'd agreed to go out for a meal together, so we walked a mile from his neighbourhood across to St Mark's Road in Easton, to a recommended Indian diner called Thali, serving an excellent selection of spicy food - not too hot - set out on a tray in small portion dishes, offering a variety of different tastes around one's key dish of choice, whether meat, fish or vegetarian. This way of serving is what is apparently known as a Thali in India. We were delighted with the food we tried, and walking there certainly gave us an appetite.

The restaurant is only a few hundred yards from Stapleton Road station, so it was possible for us to check for a return train time to coincide with finishing the meal and getting back to Cardiff not too late. There wasn't an outbound train stopping there at this time of night, so we had to take an train going into Bristol Temple Meads to pick up a Cardiff train. We were very lucky, as a long distance train bound for Cardiff had just arrived twenty minutes late. Instead of having to wait until nine for the next scheduled train, we were on our way half an hour early, and reached home by ten.