App Annoyance

Cooler and cloudy today, a return to colder weather predicted for the weekend. I went to St Catherine's and celebrated the Eucharist with six others and collected this week's veg bag from Chapter on the way home.  For lunch instead of a veggie burger Clare cooked me a lamb chop with brown onion gravy complemented with butternut squash, an excellent combination of sweet and savoury, one to remember for another time.

While Clare had a flute lesson after lunch I went to the Coop for groceries. When I returned, Clare took a turn with the shopping trolley to go to Beanfreaks. While she was out and I had the house to myself, I took advantage of the quiet to record Easter Thursday Morning Prayer and Reflection, and edited it. Having received a notification about checking in for my outgoing flight to Malaga, I went to the EasyJet website and got my boarding pass, using my Chromebook, and transferred the barcoded ticket to my phone. I also installed the EasyJet app on my phone for convenience but not without difficulty as installation forced me to reset my memorised password. It seems the criteria for setting one have changed again, to make it that much harder to hack. Fair enough I suppose, but annoying when I had to repeat the performance on my Chromebook, despite Chrome OS efficiently replicating the password change on a different device. 

Another annoyance was clicking the notification email's web-link saying 'Manage Bookings', and finding that it took me to the EasyJet home page with the last flight booking I'd made displayed in a box, as if I was about to book it. There was a secondary 'Manage Bookings' box which popped up and then vanished, so had to hunt for that page, on top of the login hassles. Too much information, too complex to work as it should to and give you what you want first go, and yet such a site has so much information about me and my current flight bookings, you'd think this would be easy. Will AI be able to improve this? I doubt it. Last night I similar issues with the Post Office Travel Money card app on my phone, which will not allow me to enter my password, as the keyboard pops up and the vanishes in an instant. It's been like this for months. I can access the account easily through Chrome browser, but the print is a bit smaller. What a waste of an app!

I remembered a couple of items I needed but forgot to buy for myself and went back to the shops on Cowbridge Road East. On the way back I discovered that R J Berry butcher's shop has closed after 32 years of trading, probably because the man himself is retiring. His shop is where we've bought the festive turkey, sausage stuffing and pigs in blankets in those years we have hosted family Christmas in Meadow Street. Although I only bought meat and sausages there occasionally, he always remembered my name. An old fashioned food retailer with a long memory and personal touch. Next time round, it'll be one of the traditional butchers in Cardiff Market we go to for the best meat. Meat for the boys too - it's only Anto, Owain and myself who are the family omnivores.

After supper, I continued watching 'Top Dog' for the rest of the evening, and made an effort to go to bed earlier, so it won't be a shock when the clocks go forward.

Surprise visit

The same weather pattern continues, overcast and damp in the morning, the bouts of rain intermittently all day, sometimes heavy. Quite depressing really. I was up for breakfast at eight thirty, answering emails and writing a reflection through the morning until it was time to cook lunch. I thought the scaffolding might be taken down today, but when a workman turned up, it was to take advantage of our scaffolding to go up and examine the roofing next door around the chimney as our neighbour has found a leak. It's nothing to do with our roof being replaced, but with an existing fault.

When it was time for a walk after lunch it was raining, so I had to dress up and take a brolly. It drizzled for the first hour and rained persistently for the last fifteen minutes, I didn't get as soaked as I did yesterday, thankfully. It's just unpleasant, day after day.

When I got back, I thought I'd check my Post Office money card account, which still has a few euros on it from last year and worked normally. When I tried to use the Money Card app on my phone, I discovered it had been updated and the new version failed to let me log in, or recreate my account. When Clare checked the app on her phone to access her own Post Office Money card, she was able to update it perfectly, witn no problem. The app on my phone was confused by the fact that I have more than one gmail account, and wouldn't let me choose between them. 

When I looked at the reviews on Google Play Store, as many of them had the same experience of logging in as Clare, and an equal number reported a failure or an app so dysfunctional as to be unusable. This is a strange state of affairs. I found I could log into the Money Card website through Chrome on my phone without any problem, so that's what I'll do if I need to check expenditure in future. To hell with the app.

I finished preparing the text for next Thursday's Morning Prayer after supper, but didn't get around to recording it. I watched a couple more episodes of 'Bones', while we waited for Rhiannon to arrive. She came late on a flying visit, having taken a train straight after work. She's on her way to a film studio Bridgend where she has a job as an extra. She has to take an early morning train to arrive there for seven o'clock so she'll only have a short night's sleep, It was delightful to see her again and hear about her recent trip to Venice with her auntie Viv before going to bed at midnight.

Left in Limbo

With the car in for MOT, I had to leave for St German's before ten this morning, to look for a bus to take me into town. When I reached the junction of Romilly Road and Llandaff road, I could see a 61 waiting behind a car for the lights to change. I took off and ran the hundred yards to the next stop at the Methodist Church, and was there before it arrived. It dropped me off in Wood Street at ten past ten, and then I walked the rest of the way, arriving at church just after half past ten. It was bright and sunny with a cool breeze, a perfect summer morning to rejoice in. The church was filled with bright sunlight and clouds of incense. It was a lovely celebration. The congregation say they'll miss me, but I'll miss them all as well. It's been a place of refuge and great comfort to me since I retired.

I had a lift home with Fr Malcolm, and arrived at the usual time which surprised Clare, who was expecting me to be late returning. After lunch, I revived my Post Office Money Card with some Euros, and loaded the app on my phone, all of which was easier than I imagined, and drew some more sterling from the bank to pay for my airport taxi. All I need to do tomorrow is acquire Euros in cash. A trial packing of my new travel bags hasn't presented any problems, so I'm nearly ready to go. 

After her siesta I helped Clare navigate through the on-line check-in procedure to get her flight boarding pass. Even though it's a month away, she already had a seat booked, so this was possible. Then I took her to the location of the veggie bag drop-off depot, as she's not had to collect from the new site before.

I continued watching remaining episodes of 'Trom' on BBC iPlayer during the evening. It reached a fair conclusion, then there was a surprise cliff hanger ending, which means a second series is proposed, but there's no indication of whether this has been made yet, let alone launched in Denmark. The first six episodes were made this year, so disappointingly we're left in narrative limbo.

There's no shortage of MPs promoting themselves as a future Tory Prime Minister even before electoral rules governing the contest are officially announced. If only they realised how silly they all look.

Cwm Rhonnda, Smart Metering and Travel Money

I had an email this morning from Peter Hammond in La Cala de Mijas, who's been invited to give a Lent talk about a favourite hymn. He's chosen 'Guide me O thou great Redeemer' and was asking me what tune it might have been sung to before 'Cwm Rhondda' was composed in 1905. The English translation dates from 1771, the Welsh original by William Williams Pantycelyn was part of a collection of hymns written in 1762. Pantycelyn, his pen-name taken after his place of birth was a prolific hymn writer, a poet and a theological writer in the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist tradition. 

It was an interesting but unsuccessful hunt for an earlier Welsh hymn tune. The Welsh  version didn't cross over from non-conformist use into the Welsh Anglican hymn book 'Emanau'r Eglwys', but the English version found its way into the 1861 Hymns Ancient and Modern. Truth to tell, several 87 87 87 metre Welsh melodies would fit the bill, and may have been used in different chapels and churches in either language. It was only this evening when checking far down into the a wiki page on Cwm Rhondda that I discovered the essential detail that the original Welsh tune used with the Welsh language version is Capel y Ddôl. I must tell Peter!. 

Lunchtime, a technician from energy supplier SSE arrived to upgrade our electricity smart metering device and before fitting one to the gas supply, installed a new gas meter. Two years ago when we went 'smart' the technicians who came couldn't fit the gas smart metering device because the meter cupboard wasn't big enough - there was a disused legacy gas pipe obstructing the space. We have on a few occasions enquired when this would be done, as we've had to take a reading and phone it in, or enter it on SSE's website, a nuisance if you're away and keep on getting email reminders. When we had our annual inspection a couple of weeks ago, the guy who came rang up and organised a new gas meter and the upgraded second generation smart meter. 

Now its done, and we have a new posh monitor to tell us how much energy we are using at the moment or across different periods of time. All very clever, but whether we'll bother much with it I doubt. We are steady although not big users of energy and our bills showed little variation over years until I got sick and then had a post operational wound to manage. Then, there was a lot of extra energy and water consumed washing sheets and towels. Thankfully, that's reduced again over the past six months of improvement with less washing needing to be done.

I went to the Post Office after lunch to buy one of their Travel Money cards and some Euros, so that I have a ready source of digital cash as well as banknotes left over from previous travels, to cover different circumstances on my way to Ibiza next week. The card comes free, the real cost of use is embedded in the exchange rate used.

Clare has used one for several years and has used it for Euros Dollars and Swiss Francs. Rachel has one as well, which Clare has the details of and uses to send her Dollars from time to time. I've been reluctant to adopt this kind digital finance technology, also contactless payment, as I know how vulnerable to fraud all kinds of digital creations are. The volume of digital transactions is growing exponentially and replacing the use of physical money. Poor people and others on the margins of society are likely to suffer most from this. Safeguards on digital finance are on the whole pretty good, but the hassle of having cope when something bad happens is a risk I want to take only if it's really necessary. Maybe I've got to that point now. We'll see after this trial run.

No Parish pancake party for me tonight. Pancakes contain eggs I can't eat without them giving me stomach cramps, and I've already renounced wine, dark chocolate and chocolate biscuits for the time being, being very scrupulous about the diary free diet to allow my digestive system to recover completely after last weekend's episode of stomach cramp. It seems to be working, and already Lent is here, time for a little restraint. It's an easy win, compared to dealing with the irritable humour that wound irritation provokes. I'm impatient and not good at coping with any physical impediment to my version of normality. I need to do better.




My afternoon walk in the park was accompanied by strong cold winds. It started off sunny, then the rain clouds gathered and showered me with hailstones on the way back.