Covid jab day

To my surprise, a good night's sleep, more relaxed, benefiting from getting to bed earlier. I remembered to drink more water at breakfast time, to replace the amount I pee out at night. Though the cloud cover broke up yesterday afternoon to give us a beautiful mackerel sky for a while before sunset, it was overcast again and grey this morning. As my medication regime is now less complex than it was a couple of weeks ago I set about editing my daily medication tick sheet file, made for me by Owain. It was in pdf format. It took a while to remember what I had to do with the version stored in Google Docs, which was uncooperative to say the least. I had to convert the pdf to docx using an online conversion app in Adobe Acrobat, and edit it using Open Office and then upload it to Google Docs ready to print off later. 

After an early lunch, I did a circuit of Llandaff Fields before taking a taxi with Clare to arrive at the Bay Scout Den, Grangetown's vaccination centre, for our covid jabs at two thirty. It didn't seem very busy, mostly people in our age group. Fifteen minutes later we were on our way to a bus stop nearby for a number 7 bus that toured around parts of Grangetown I didn't know, taking half an hour to return to the City Centre. When we got on, Clare took  out her expired bus card, causing the ticket machine to issue an embarrassing loud noise, but the driver issued her a ticket anyway. Meanwhile she retrieved the renewed card, but the driver didn't ask to see it. Drivers are probably used to old people muddling up cards.

At the City Centre bus Hub a number 61 was waiting to leave and we were back home again eating choc ices by four. A couple of teenagers got on. One of them said he'd lost his phone and travel card and didn't have the means to pay, or convince the driver he was genuine. He and his mate started to get belligerent so the driver pressed a panic button which emitted a loud alarm call. The boys got off and made themselves scarce. No benefit of the doubt for them. Did they not appear to be of school age in the driver's eyes? Was the story he was told true or not? Will it teach the lads a lesson about being careful with your bus pass and your phone, maybe keeping them separate, however inconvenient? An hour's walk home won't do the lad any harm and may reinforce the lesson learnt. I'll never know.

After returning home and taking my tea time meds, I did another circuit of Llandaff Fields to complete my current daily step goal of 10,500 around 8km. I may do more but I'm not going to increase the goal to 10km as it has been for several years, until I can do so comfortably. My legs and joints are stiffer and take longer to warm up, so the walk is taking me longer but I'm not in a hurry and must avoid tiring myself out. Fitness will return as long as I keep going at a steady modest pace every day.

After supper I watched a couple of episodes of Rocco Schiavone. He's with his Roman childhood mates in Latin America, searching for one of their number who betrayed Rocco and got the love of his life murdered. His mates are out for revenge on the traitor. They follow a trail which goes from Buenos Aires to Mexico City and then to Costa Rica across two episodes in which Italian and Spanish exchanges of dialogue take place, making this an interesting exercise in comprehension, not over reliant on subtitles as I'm familiar enough with both languages to enjoy following. It turned out to be a moving finale with the discovery that the traitor had a wife and two teenage children none of his Roman mates knew about. The desire to express anger and the hunt for revenge dissipated. They left the traitor alone with an indication that his old friends had found him. There would be no question of punishing his family for his betrayal. Enough suffering had come from his failure to protect his childhood friends, and he was forever separated from them as a result. A sad ending, but in many ways a noble spirited one. Time for bed already.

Eucharistic homecoming

I think I must have slept rather well. My phone notification to take my first round of pills surprised me into wakefulness at nine. I resolved last night to walk to church this morning. I know I can do the distance, especially if I'm refreshed by sleep and breakfast. Clare, Kath and I walked together to St Catherine's for the Harvest Festival Family Eucharist. The sky, autumnal overcast again, noisy leaf blowers at work clearing leaves in Severn Grove. Thankfully I'm a little more resilient to noise and flurries of movement now than a few days ago, but conscious of constraints in my field of vision when I'm not in bright light and I'm slower to recognise objects and people as a result. 

I received a loving welcome from several congregation members. It was so fulfilling just being there in our usual pew near the altar, with children in front and around us, engaging with Fr Sion as he started some yeast to show the children how it works, as part of his address. Participating in the routine normality of Sunday Mass in a familiar reconnected me to the life of the Spirit at the beating heart of the church in a way that's healing, as it is reassuring. An oasis after a sojourn in a 'dry weary land where no water is ..' It's the same experience of connectedness as I had when receiving the Sacraments from clergy colleagues in A&E

The last time I sat there a month ago, the clot on my brain's occipital lobe was making its impact felt. Today I could see the altar and the eucharistic action clearly, and stand with Clare and Kath to receive Communion without stumbling and clinging to furniture. I was apprehensive about my emotional reaction on top of the stimulus of being in a lively group of people but wasn't overwhelmed, rather I felt uplifted, overjoyed, at home again in God's house, among friends.

Last night Clare prepared the foraged crab apples, cooked them and hung up the boiled mass in a bag to strain out the juice. Alongside making lunch, Clare added the soft brown sugar to the juice which I bought when out for a walk yesterday evening, ready for the transformation of the mixture into crab apple jelly. It's not a huge amount, two small jars, but it brings home a special taste of autumn fruit, subtly spicy and aromatic.

When we'd eaten Kath helped me to open savings accounts with on-line banking, to decant some of my unspent pension into. Santander's current account interest rate has dropped recently, so there's an incentive to take a fruitful initiative. Then she returned to Kenilworth. She has work tomorrow. I walked in Llandaff Fields for an hour before sunset. Owain called to check me out when I was walking. After supper, a new episode of 'Ice Cold Murders' with Inspector Rocco Schiavone in the Val d'Aosta. He investigates a rich young addict's death during Mardi Gras spent in a remote alpine winter chalet with a few friends and relatives. Much of the episode consists of Rocco questioning three other young people staying at the chalet about what led to the disappearance of their friend, exposing the weakness of their story ending with a crime and cover-up being admitted. Meanwhile the CSI and forensic team work in the background to inform him. It's a splendid example of interview cum interrogation, full of subtle tension. It reminded me of dialogues in the 'Line of Duty' interrogation scenes. And now bed.

Turning point

It's the shortest day today, I'm pleased to say. Slowly lighter evenings will return. I wake up at first light , switch on the radio to hear the news and then doze, often until eight thirty before getting up, frequently missing Thought for the Day and needing to listen on catch-up. After breakfast the fourth and final Reith Lecture for this year, on  'Freedom from Fear' by Fiona Hill a British born international relations advisor who worked for several US presidents sharing her expertise as a Russian affairs analyst. 

She started with a useful long perspective on geopolitical power struggles and conflicts over the past centuries, observing a tendency for history to repeat itself, and then analysing the war in Ukraine and Putin's strategy of arousing fear as a primary instrument of war. This I thought was a brilliant take on the situation, particularly her idea that the only way to counter the impact of fear was with resolute courage. Nicely timed this week as President Zelenski ventures away from Ukraine for the first time to visit the USA and make a bid to the US Congress for continued support. 

Then a walk in the rain to St Catherine's for the Eucharist. There were a dozen of us present and ten stayed on for coffee chat afterwards. Then I walked in the rain to collect the weeks veggie bag and return to cook lunch. A full stalk of brussels sprouts and huge red cabbage this week. Christmas fare indeed! I cooked a batch of soaked yellow split peas for lunch, but these took far longer than anticipated, so they were added to the vegetables sooner than necessary, and then needed pressure cooking to make them palatable. I was rather disappointed with my effort.

It stopped raining and the sky cleared of cloud after lunch. I started preparing the texts for the next two Thursdays' Morning Prayer, then went out for a walk just as the sun was settiing. By this time clouds were filling the sky and the temperature dropped enough to cloak the Fields with mist, quite beautiful.

After supper, another evening watching the last couple of episodes of Rocco Schiavone. Apart from the interesting story-line there are occasional sympathetic vignettes of characters marginal to the plot, encountered in the course of the investigation. Often old, or poor. There are still a few unresolved threads in the overarching story, maybe to do with high level corruption and vendettas that would benefit from several more episodes. If the sixteen episodes so far fourteen were made between 2016 and 2019, and two more last year, so the series survived the pandemic. I hope there'll be more.

Before turning in for the night, I recorded the audio for next week's Morning Prayer and set up the Video creation app ready to complete the task tomorrow to make ready for a work-free Christmas feast.

Truth suppression

I got to bed very late last night and rose just after nine having switched on the radio at half past seven and then fallen asleep again. The battle for control of one of Ukraine's nuclear power stations led to an office building being set alight. but none of the nuclear reactors were damaged thankfully. This has sent a frisson of anxiety around the world, given the likelihood of the conflict escalating even more dangerously. 

Putin's government has imposed a complete ban on all independent news gathering organisations in Russia in the hope of suppressing all news except that from officially sanctioned government sources. Officially, all news not propagated by the Russian government is deemed fake news and communicating it is an offence punishable by years in prison. Mobile phones can still be used to relay news across borders on a one to one basis. Russians are used to keeping up to date by word of mouth, however, and foreign websites can still be accessed by tech savvy VPN users which hide the true location and identity of users. One hopes that this kind of news leakage will alert people at grass roots level to what is being done in their name and lead them to act eventually, hopefully not too late for the world..

Clare had her piano lesson after breakfast, and I had to wait for the house to fall silent again before I could start making recordings, both video and audio. I cooked a veggie pasta sauce for lunch while she was having her lesson, then recorded a short video introduction for next Tuesday's extra prayer video assignment. I wanted to incorporate a video clip introduction with the slides and audio, but the software I used didn't do what I assumed it would, but once the slide show video was complete it was easy to join it with the other clip, and all turned out well. There must be other ways of doing this. I'm amazed some folk manage to record and edit video on their phones with ease. I don't like viewing myself talking to camera, let alone editing the result. I find it embarrassing to look at myself while I talk.

It was four o'clock by the time I went out for a long walk at a brisk pace, much needed after all that digital wrestling. Clare went off to the Royal Welsh College for this week's Amser Jazz. Highlight of the evening was another two hour episode of Rocco Schiavone on More Four. I moves slowly and stories are complex, but full of marvellous character portrayals. Each week's story stands on its own, but there are linked threads running through the series, the characters and relationships it explores.

New kit and a favourite returns

After I good night's sleep I woke up feeling full of energy, which showed itself when I went out for a walk before lunch, covering ground at a faster pace than I have for a long time. It was the same again when I went out after lunch, totalling ten kilometres in under two hours instead of the more usual nine to nine and a half. Strange, I don't know where the energy came from. I still can't walk as fast as others younger than me. Some folk in their sixties set a fair pace when out on their daily stroll.

Overheard on the street after school, a mum talking to her four year old - "No darling the tiny bug can't hurt you, it's been caught inside the stone for thousands of years..." I wonder what she was being shown in nursery school today?

I've been getting rather frustrated with the slowness of my desktop workstation since I bought the laptop with a SSD drive and a quick modern processor. It takes far too long to start up, access apps and files, it's getting in the way of workflow. The same old story of built in redundancy. So, I gave in and visited our local tech shop to buy a cheap used Dell server running Windows 10 Pro. I chatted with Davey, the guy who runs TouroTech about old devices and he showed me a laptop brought in for repair to a hinge that was about thirty years old, one of the original small Compaq portables with a seven inch screen. It's about that amount of time since I bought my first laptop, as we were about to move to Switzerland. It's so long ago I can't remember what make it was. Nor for that matter, how many I've had since then.

The new workstation is a couple of years old, but as it has a SSD it boots as fast as my laptop. Getting started and synchronised took less time than I thought it would, perhaps because of our much faster internet connection, so it was useable in half an hour, rather than half a day, as happened when I bought my last desktop PC about six years ago. The only problem I had was setting it up to work with my trusty Swiss French keyboard which gives me all the accents and umlauts when I need them. This task used to be fairly straightforward, but now the keyboard language setup module is very hard to find, buried among a plethora of other options for things you can do either with a physical or an on-screen keyboard. One of the many frustrating features of Windows 10.

A special treat on telly tonight, the second series on More Four Walter Presents of the remarkable Italian crimmie 'Ice Cold Murders - Rocco Schiavone'. Now the Valdostano police have the full tragic story of why the maverick Roman detective inspector has been exiled in the Alps, with him getting on the wrong side of gang leaders in the Eternal City. The lust for revenge has followed him five hundred miles from home, costing the life of his wife and the wife of a close friend. The portrayal of the impact of violence on some of the police officers is thoughtfully done.  

Watch rescue

Another day of strong winds, clouds and occasional light showers, but not as bad as the past few days. We are promised warmer weather later in the week, for how long, I wonder? This week, the Parish offering of Morning Prayer six days a week starts on rotation between three lay people, Fr Rhys, Mthr Frances, now back at work half time, and myself. This seems to me a good idea, with the variety of voices, and thoughts in a brief reflection as part of the Daily Office. It would be great to add even more lay contributors as time passes and others get used to the idea that they can do it too.

Last night, I had an email request from my sister June to shop for some special 'pill' batteries for a digital clock, as she can't get out to hunt for them herself. With difficulty she'd identified the serial number on the dead battery and sent it to me. I googled the serial number and got the impression that it shouldn't be too difficult to track this type down. I went to Tesco's where I knew a variety of common battery types were on sale. There was nothing with the same serial number on the rack, but when I googled again on my phone standing awkwardly by the shelf, I found info about the serial numbers for equivalent batteries, and that made it easy to buy the right type.

I popped home and put the purchase in an envelope, then took it to the Post Office, as the envelope wasn't thin enough to travel on a single first class stamp. The counter clerk quoted me £3.50 to send the envelope but I was even more surprised when when she pushed a customs declaration towards me. "Since when" I asked, "Since when was it necessary to declare the contents of anything going from Wales to London?" Then the penny dropped "Oh, I thought you said France." she said, staring blankly at the address on the envelope.

After lunch, I walked into town and visited the digital watch stall in Central Market with both my Casio broken watches in hand, to see if the repair guy there could make one good watch out of the parts of two. He took the older one apart and inserted a new battery, but the LED screen wouldn't display fully. In working on it, he had an insight into why the one he tried to fix two weeks ago wasn't working properly. He took that one apart, fiddled about with it, and got the control buttons to work properly. Last time he changed the battery but refused to take payment because it didn't work as intended. This time I insisted on paying him although he was reluctant to let me. I'm glad to have it working again. This means I have two watches to choose from now for the first time in my life.

I rang the Public Health covid Screening centre to confirm my attendance on Tuesday, and mentioned the fact that the facility doesn't show up on Google maps, wile asking for the post code and street location, to be sure I can go straight there without having to stop and ask anyone. From this evening on I'm going to avoid others, apart from Clare, eighteen hours ahead of the test. I'm not taking any risks with surgery at last on Friday this week.

This evening I watched another episode of 'Rocco Schiavone' on Walter Presents. It's another one of those series in which the landscape is as much a star as the actors. It's interesting to have a storyline running in between episodes revealing that this tough detective with unconventional often rule breaking methods and a certain way with the women in his life is also a grieving widower who cannot let go of his wife. He has conversations with his wife about his cases and his life alone which are often philosophical and poetic and that distinguishes this series from other crimmies. Inspector Montalbano is another Italian detective with whom it's tempting to make comparison, and episodes so far have similar richness, complexity and social observations to them. It'll be interesting to see how Rocco's character develops in the dozen remaining episodes to come and how this portrayal compares with that of Montalbano.